This piece considers the merits of applying the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test when an elected judge threatens a litigant's due process rights. We argue that this approach is particularly compelling in light of the Supreme Court's 2009 decision in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. In Caperton, the Supreme Court recognized that a litigant's due process may be violated if the judge harbors an objective "probability of bias." In perhaps his most vigorous dissent since joining the Court, Chief Justice Roberts posed over forty questions about the potential scope of the decision. Given the Court's 2002 decision in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, Justice Roberts has good reason to be concerned. In White, the Court ruled that once a state allows judges to be elected, it can't muzzle them - candidates for judicial office have the right to announce their views on contentious issues of the day. Taken together, Caperton and White provide the makings of a constitutional crisis. On the one hand judges have a First Amendment right to say almost anything, even if it seems to effectively bind them in future cases. On the other hand, litigants have a due process right not to face a judge whom a reasonable person may deem biased given his previously advertised views. This Article argues that weighing the due process violation by using the reliable and flexible approach developed in Mathews v. Eldridge keeps both decisions intact, while protecting the rights of both the judicial candidates and the litigants.


The nature of indemnities and reliance on futures price averaging during two distinct time intervals throughout the production year imply Crop Revenue Coverage (CRC) insurance behaves like an exotic put option. Treating this type of insurance as a derivative security, an analytical model is developed and an algorithm for solving the model to place a lower bound on insurance premiums is presented. Monte Carlo simulation, taking into account the path-dependent nature of an Asian-type option, is then used to determine lower-bound estimates for insurance premiums on corn gross revenue under specified price and yield distributions.


ABSTRACT Many business combinations are justified by management on the basis of expected synergistic benefits from the post-combination operations. This study analyzes the top four product lines of the 442 largest business combinations between U.S. publicly owned companies during 1995-2000. The study shows a high association between the industrial product lines of the acquiring and acquired companies. This suggests that expected operating synergistic benefits may be obtainable by the post-combination entity. However, a study of the correlations between the amount of the premiums paid by the acquiring companies to the acquired companies, and the degree of industrial association between the companies, showed that the premiums are not related to the degree of industrial associations between the companies. INTRODUCTION Corporate mergers and acquisitions are a major aspect of business activity and involve billions of dollars. The extant finance and accounting literature suggest a variety of strategic policies for the selection of combination candidates. One of these strategic policies is to acquire another company in order to obtain synergistic gains from the operation of the combined entity by utilizing scale and scope economies. Specifically, it has been posited that operating synergies are more likely in a business combination involving similar industrial lines because the factors of production and the market factors have the highest degree of association and can most easily be integrated. The fair market value of the company as a stand-alone entity is measured by its total stock market capitalization. The merger premium is the difference between the target company's market value prior to the announcement of the combination and the offering price for the target company and it should reflect the expected synergies that will be generated from the post-combination entity. Although the business press often states that seeking synergy is one of the basic reasons for business combination activity, the empirical search for the synergistic return has been inconclusive. Early studies by Bradley, Desai, and Kim (1983), and Ravenscraft and Scherer (1987), suggest that the post-combination stock prices do not provide evidence for synergistic premiums due to poor post-takeover performance of the combined firm. Porter (1987) found that many acquired firms are subsequently divested, and some very shortly after the acquisition. Roll (1986) proposes the "hubris hypothesis" to explain that bidding firms infected by hubris simply pay too much for their targets, and that the acquisition premiums are not related to synergy. Varaiya and Ferris (1987) use the explanation of the "winner's curse" for explaining the acquisition premium paid to the target in cases in which there is competition for a takeover candidate. For 96 acquisitions between 1974 and 1983, they find that the winning bid premium, on average, overstates the market's estimate of the takeover gain, and that, following the acquisition, a majority of the acquiring firms have a significant, negative cumulative average return in their stock prices. In contrast to the above studies, Henning, Lewis, and Shaw (2000) find that the synergy created from business combinations is valued by the market. Henning et al. (2001) measure the synergy component of accounting goodwill by combining the cumulative abnormal returns of the acquiring firm and the target firm. Using a sample of 1,576 purchase combinations from the period 1990--1994 in a levels model, Henning et al. (2000), find that the market values the synergistic component of goodwill. We find that although companies tend to buy other firms in similar industrial lines implying synergy, there is no relation between the premium paid and the proximity of the industrial association. OBJECTIVES OF THIS STUDY AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS It is expected that industrial synergies would be more possible in combinations between companies in the same or similar industries. …


To gain increased ability in working with movies, two films were made, one of which was an adaptation of a novel. An adaptation of that adaptation was also made in the form of a play, in an effort to gain greater theatrical skill. Using the experience of working on a similar story in the form of both a movie and a play, the similarities and differences of the two mediums were compared and contrasted. These projects were also used, along with some research, to gain increased theoretical and practical knowledge of what goes into making a good adaptation. It was determined that, for movies and plays, neither one is essentially better than the other overall, but that there are certain areas where each one does excel. As for adaptations, key areas were identified as being likely to cause an adaptations success or failure, both for faithful and loose adaptations. Degree Type Open Access Senior Honors Thesis Department Communication, Media and Theatre Arts First Advisor Dr. John Cooper Second Advisor Professor Wallace Bridges Third Advisor Dr. Chris Wood Foreman


We present a compact diffractive silicon-based multilevel phase Fresnel lens (MPFL) with up to 50 mm in diameter and a numerical aperture up to 0.86 designed and fabricated for compact terahertz (THz) imaging systems. The laser direct writing technology based on a picosecond laser was used to fabricate diffractive optics on silicon with a different number of phase quantization levels P reaching an almost kinoform spherical surface needed for efficient THz beam focusing. Focusing performance was investigated by measuring Gaussian beam intensity distribution in the focal plane and along the optical axis of the lens. The beam waist and the focal depth for each MPFL were evaluated. The influence of the phase quantization number on the focused beam amplitude was estimated, and the power transmission efficiency reaching more than 90% was revealed. The THz imaging of less than 1 mm using a robust 50 mm diameter multilevel THz lens was achieved and demonstrated at 580 GHz frequency.


Alexandru C. V. Ceapa suggested in his work posthumously published here that comtemorary physicists deny the role of Divine revelation in the making of modern physics and yet Einstein's derivation of the Lorentz transformation in his 1905 paper on Special Theory of Relativity ("STR") and his later disregarding of it were the most striking proof that revelation played an essential role in the making of STR. Ceapa's work challenges all truth seekers to think deeply about the origin of scientific insight and creativity and examine closely the ontological basis of the pillars of modern physics, e.g., Einstein's STR. If doing so shall assist us move "toward an exciting rebuilding of modern physics" as Ceapa hoped, he had not fought in vain and his work should not be forgotten.


The Aharon-Vaidman (AV) game exemplifies the advantage of using simple quantum systems to outperform classical strategies. We present an experimental test of this quantum advantage by using a three-state quantum system (qutrit) encoded in a spatial mode of a single photon passing through a system of three slits. The preparation of a particular state is controlled as the photon propagates through the slits by varying the number of open slits and their respective phases. The measurements are achieved by placing detectors in the specific positions in the near and far-field after the slits. This set of tools allowed us to perform tomographic reconstructions of generalized qutrit states, and implement the quantum version of the AV game with compelling evidence of the quantum advantage.


Health care services are not only service delivery at the hospital from outdoor, indoor and consultation but also providing health promotional services. Health promotional services have very important role to grow awareness, improve knowledge on practices regarding health. This assist mass population to change knowledge, attitude and practice on different health issues. The sustainable financial independence changes the test and demand for a living. This change plays an important role in changes the lifestyle and behavior pattern of human being.  The three most important factors for human lives are work, family and friend, and health. Occupation (work) gives people's individual identity and recognition in society and world. Successful accomplishment of each task gives people's confidence and strength. People's gets peace from family and friends. These two issues are also responsible for social pathology. It leads to deteriorating mental stability and people's suffering from stress, tension, depression, and anxiety. Lastly, the health by nature people invest on health getting everyday food and people didn't give concern on health during the healthy time or up to middle age or till fall complete sickness. Present world people were suffering from non-communicable diseases. The causes of this diseases mostly due to the important three issues of human life. Altering of the physiological function of the human body due to the practice of unhealthy lifestyle and social pathology. This paper discusses the connection of lifestyle and behavior with the onset of non-communicable diseases. It will also present the preventive measures for these unhealthy practices and its role to prevent onset, delayed onset of consequences of diseases.


We study the problem of minimizing the sum of three convex functions: a differentiable, twice-differentiable and a non-smooth term in a high dimensional setting. To this effect we propose and analyze a randomized block cubic Newton (RBCN) method, which in each iteration builds a model of the objective function formed as the sum of the natural models of its three components: a linear model with a quadratic regularizer for the differentiable term, a quadratic model with a cubic regularizer for the twice differentiable term, and perfect (proximal) model for the nonsmooth term. Our method in each iteration minimizes the model over a random subset of blocks of the search variable. RBCN is the first algorithm with these properties, generalizing several existing methods, matching the best known bounds in all special cases. We establish ${\cal O}(1/\epsilon)$, ${\cal O}(1/\sqrt{\epsilon})$ and ${\cal O}(\log (1/\epsilon))$ rates under different assumptions on the component functions. Lastly, we show numerically that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art on a variety of machine learning problems, including cubically regularized least-squares, logistic regression with constraints, and Poisson regression.


Human activity analysis has attracted great interest from computer vision researchers due to its promising applications in many areas such as automated visual surveillance, computer-human interactions, and motion-based identification and diagnosis.
This dissertation presents work in two areas: general human activity recognition from video, and human activity analysis for the purpose of identifying pathological gait from both 3D captured data and from video.
Even though the research in human activity recognition has been going on for many years, still there are many issues that need more research. This includes the effective representation and modeling of human activities and the segmentation of sequences of continuous activities. In this thesis we present an algorithm that combines shape and motion features to represent human activities. In order to handle the activity recognition from any viewing angle we quantize the viewing direction and build a set of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), where each model represents the activity from a given view. Finally, a voting based algorithm is used to segment and recognize a sequence of human activities from video. Our method of representing activities has good attributes and is suitable for both low resolution and high resolution video. The voting based algorithm performs the segmentation and recognition simultaneously. Experiments on two sets of video clips of different activities show that our method is effective.
Our work on identifying pathological gait is based on the assumption of gait symmetry. Previous work on gait analysis measures the symmetry of gait based on Ground Reaction Force data, stance time, swing time or step length. Since the trajectories of the body parts contain information about the whole body movement, we measure the symmetry of the gait based on the trajectories of the body parts. Two algorithms, which can work with different data sources, are presented. The first algorithm works on 3D motion-captured data and the second works on video data. Both algorithms use support vector machine (SVM) for classification. Each of the two methods has three steps: the first step is data preparation, i.e., obtaining the trajectories of the body parts; the second step is gait representation based on a measure of gait symmetry; and the last step is SVM based classification. For 3D motion-captured data, a set of features based on Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) is used to represent the gait. We demonstrate the accuracy of the classification by a set of experiments that shows that the method for 3D motion-captured data is highly effective. For video data, a model based tracking algorithm for human body parts is developed for preparing the data. Then, a symmetry measure that works on the sequence of 2D data, i.e. sequence of video frames, is derived to represent the gait. We performed experiments on both 2D projected data and real video data to examine this algorithm. The experimental results on 2D projected data showed that the presented algorithm is promising for identifying pathological gait from video. The experimental results on the real video data are not good as the results on 2D projected data. We believe that better results could be obtained if the accuracy of the tracking algorithm is improved.


The design of permanent-magnet assisted synchronous reluctance machines (PMRSMs) for optimum reluctance and magnetic torque components is a complex task since rotor dimensioning for one torque component (magnet or reluctance torque) limits the possibility to optimize the other torque component. This paper identifies and relates the design parameters that influence these torque components. It describes the influence of insulation ratio, magnet size and magnet placement on the performance of the machine using finite element (FEM) based simulations. The results are compared based on developed torque, torque ripple and relative values of the resulting magnet and reluctance torque.


A generation has passed since the term relationship marketing was first defined, yet this concept remains illusive, fragmented, and dominated by isolated theoretical frameworks. As this paradigm moves uneasily into its second generation, it is now increasingly characterised by a polarization of opinion and would be better served by focusing on resolving two fundamental issues. Firstly, there needs to be some form of consensus and convergence in thinking regarding the actual nature of the paradigm in order to direct future research activities toward common ground and replication among its various conceptualisations. Secondly, this convergent position in the paradigm needs to be communicated to the practitioner more coherently in an attempt to move it from being an academic discipline and into the jurisdiction of the practitioner and implementable validity.

The purpose of this paper is to articulate a new, but more importantly, convergent conceptual framework for relationship marketing. It draws on a range of traditional and contemporary theory, and importantly, considers how this theoretical base was used in a practitioner environment when developing a relationship marketing strategy. The convergent framework presented in this paper comprises of three fundamental elements, from which past and future research can be (re)focused, developed and extended to produce a paradigm that can be subjected to more rigorous and extensive interrogation. This paper takes a strategic, reflective and organisational look at relationship marketing and contributes to existing knowledge by proposing three fundamental elements, (Organisational Customer Focus, Customer Management Focus and Customer Knowledge Focus) which if successfully integrated by organisations, will converge to produce an effective relationship marketing strategy.


The effects of 100 mg indomethacin daily for three weeks on blood pressure and urinary excretion of prostaglandin F2 alpha were studied in a double-blind, placebo-controlled comparison of two groups of patients with essential hypertension, eight receiving propranolol and seven thiazide diuretics. Compared with placebo, adding indomethacin to the patients' established antihypertensive treatment increased blood pressure by 14/5 Hg supine and 16/9 mm Hg erect in the patients receiving propranolol, and by 13/9 mm Hg supine and 16/9 mm Hg erect in the patients receiving thiazide diuretics (all p less than or equal to 0.05). The excretion of the major urinary metabolite of prostaglandin F2 alpha was reduced by 67% in the propranolol-treated patients and by 57% in those receiving a thiazide diuretic. Body weight increased by 0 . 8 kg (propranolol) and 1 . 1 kg (thiazide diuretic) when indomethacin was given, but there were no significant changes in creatinine clearance, urinary sodium excretion, or packed cell volume in either treatment group. These results suggest that products formed by the arachidonic acid cyclo-oxygenase contribute to the regulation of blood pressure during treatment with both propranolol and thiazide diuretics. Inhibition of the cyclo-oxygenase with indomethacin partially antagonises the hypotensive effect of these drugs.


Abstract : High-fidelity e-Learning preserves the quality of the educational experience while minimizing or eliminating the need to be in a specific place at a specific time with a live instructor. The principles of this type of learning include personalization, multimodality, lean-forward learning, collaboration, accessibility, modularity, progress tracking, and balancing control. The SEI's Virtual Training Environment (VTE) is an example of a high-fidelity e-Learning success. The VTE was developed to draw upon the principles of high-fidelity e-learning to provide high-quality learning with infinite scalability. The purpose of this document is to describe the tenets of high-fidelity e-learning, to describe how VTE reflects these, and to summarize how organizations have used and are using VTE.


Criticising someone's conduct is a disaffiliative action that can attract recipient objections, particularly in the form of defensive detailing by which the recipient volunteers extenuating circumstances that undermine the criticism. In Therapeutic Community (TC) meetings for clients with drug addiction, support staff regularly criticise clients' behaviours that violate therapeutic principles or norms of conduct. This study examines cases where, rather than criticising a client's behaviour directly, TC staff members do so indirectly through an anecdote: a case illustrating the inappropriateness of the type of conduct of which the client's behaviour is an instantiation. TC staff members design the anecdote to convey a principle or norm of conduct which the client has putatively violated, and they systematically pursue endorsement of that principle by the client. By constructing the anecdote as an exemplary case, distanced from the individual client's personal experience, TC staff members make it an empirically unverifiable, self-evident, and therefore hard to challenge, illustration of a norm.


The four texts below were delivered orally and in tandem at the interdisciplinary conference "Alexander Pushkin: An Historic Symposium at Harvard, Exploring the Dual Heritage of Russia's Greatest Poet, Father of Modern Russian Literature and the Black Russians of the 20th Century," held at Harvard University on April 4, 2008. We opened with a brief biographical introduction to the modernist composer Arthur Vincent Lourie (1891-1966), reproduced here as a timeline, followed by a summary of the plot of his Apart [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. Then Klara Moricz provided a musical and thematic interpretation of the opera. Caryl Emerson closed as a discussant, commenting on three themes from that presentation. To date the opera has not been recorded or staged. I Biographical-Musical Prelude Caryl Emerson Arthur Vincent Lourie [ApTyp Aypbe] (1891-1966) * Born Naum Izraelevich Lur'ya, 1891 St. Petersburg, son of a timber merchant; d. 1966 Princeton, NJ and buried behind St. Paul's Catholic Church on Nassau Street. * Student of Glazunov's and classmate of Prokofiev's at the Petersburg Conservatory; active in Symbolist-Decadent, pre-Revolutionary St. Petersburg (idolizes Alexander Blok, Velimir Khlebnikov). Gains fame among the poets of his generation for his wit, superb piano skills, and fastidious dandy-like dress. * Early career is avant-garde: by 1913 he is well-known as a minimalist "musical Futurist," indebted to Debussy, Scriabin, and, briefly, to the Futurist Nikolai Kul'bin, a rarefied modernist composer who worked with microtones and an altered piano. * 1912: Prior to marrying the pianist Yadwiga Tsybul'skaia (Polish by birth), Lourie is baptized in the Roman Catholic faith. (Later influences of this religiosity on the opera: Ibrahim gets a patron saint, "St. Benedict the Moor"; portions of the score resemble oratorio and medieval chant.) * 1921-22: Intimate of Olga Glebova-Sudeikina and Anna Akhmatova. Among the first to set Akhmatova's verse to music; also one of her early lovers. * 1921-22: Serves Lunacharsky as Head of Music Division of the Commissariat for Popular Enlightenment. Possible financial mismanagement. * 1922: Defects to Berlin during a business trip, leaving his wife and daughter in Russia. * 1924: Settles in Paris; works as musical arranger and public spokesperson for Igor Stravinsky. * 1920s: Lourie's music, like Stravinsky's at the time, is an exotic mix of styles with a strong neoclassical accent: influence of Palestrina, Monteverdi, sacred genres of the Roman Catholic church (masses, motets). While remaining a minimalist, he filters these medieval Western sounds through dense bass sonorities of Russian liturgical chants. * 1920s-30s: Contact with Parisian Russian Eurasianists. * 1920s: Befriends French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) and his Russian-Jewish wife Raissa. ** Maritain, a celebrated interpreter of St. Thomas Aquinas, founds a Catholic social action movement and "liberal Christian humanism." In Paris associates with Nicholas Berdiaev. ** In 1940 Maritain moves to USA, teaches at Princeton (1941-42) and Columbia (1941-44); 1944-48 serves as French ambassador to the Vatican. ** In 1960 Maritain returns to France, and wills his Princeton house to the Louries. * 1926, March 12: Lourie appears at Pougny's ball on 14 rue de la Croix-Nivert in turban and blackface, anticipating the Parisian craze for la negritude in the 1930s. According to Stefan Hulliger, head of the Lourie Gesellschaft in Basel (November 30, 2007, personal communication), Lourie relished such outre masquerades. He chose to remain an outsider among aristocratic Russian emigres in Paris, where he was known as the "Bolshevik commissar who had been 'nationalizing' their Stradivarius and Amati instruments for the Communist regime. …


With shrinking of minimum feature size of advanced technology nodes, the impact of litho process variations on the resulting electrical parameters of printed circuits dramatically increases. Litho process variations correspond to random changes in the actual optical conditions (dose and focus) which develop at every mask exposure, hence from die to die. In this way the litho process variations act as a global variability component affecting all devices on a particular die in the same way. In contrast to this, the intrinsic variability of the devices and interconnects originating mostly from local Random Dopant Fluctuations (RDF) and Line Edge Roughness (LER) has a purely spatially uncorrelated component. Yet, it is not clear which of the two limits scaling down variability sensitive circuits such as SRAM beyond 45 nm. This paper presents a tool flow to perform SRAM wide statistical analysis subject to combinations of global litho and local variability components. The tool flow is illustrated in 45 nm industry grade SRAM vehicle. Selected case studies show how this tool flow successfully captures non-trivial statistical interactions between the SRAM cell and the periphery, otherwise less visible when using statistical electrical simulations of the critical path alone.


Global Political Economy presents a diverse and comprehensive selection of theories and issues. Debates are presented through a critical lens to encourage readers to unpack claims, form independent views, and challenge assumptions. This text has been updated with contemporary real word examples, including the impact of the Trump administration, Brexit, and economic nationalism. Furthermore, new analysis has been added on the international political economy of work, labour, and energy.


Objectives: To determine whether oral administration of Mimosa pudica (mimosa) leaves ethanol extract modifies fertility in normal rats. Design: Experimental study. Setting: Instituto de Investigaciones Clinicas, Facultad de Medicina, Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Hospital Nacional Hipolito Unanue, Lima, Peru. Biological material: Albino rats and Mimosa pudica leaves. Methods: Forty-eight animals were divided randomly into groups of six animals each. The first was control and received saline solution 5 mL/kg and the others 50, 250 and 500 mg/kg oral extracts for 28 days. Each group considered 6 males and 6 females together. The animals were killed to observe the presence of fetuses in uterus. FSH, estradiol and progesterone levels were determined in μg /dL in female rats' blood samples and hormone dosage was done by electrochemoluminiscence method. In the antiimplantation study 2 groups of 5 pregnant female rats were used; one group received water and the other 600 mg/kg plant extract doses for 10 days. Main outcome measures: Reduction in the number of fetuses and hormone levels. Results: Flavonoids, phenolics and tannins were in larger quantity in the ethanol extract. Rats that received 250 mg/kg showed a greater number of fetuses followed by 50 mg/kg, while 500 mg/kg dose decreased the number of fetuses as compared with rats not given the plant; FSH and progesterone showed increased levels. Conclusions: In experimental conditions Mimosa pudica's 250 mg/kg doses increased fertility but 500 mg reduced fertility in normal rats.


The caries prevalence, oral hygiene status, periodontal health and the treatment needs were assessed in a group of institutionalized psychiatric patients in Catanzaro, Italy. Of the total sample of 297 subjects, 165 (55.6%) were males, the mean age was 55.1 yr, the great majority (90.6%) was able to care for themselves, on average they had been institutionalized for 12.9 yr, and almost two-thirds were schizophrenic (65%). They did not receive any assistance in daily oral hygiene procedures, only 7.4% had visited a dentist and exclusively for emergency care. A total of 33 (11.1%) patients were edentulous, and the multiple logistic regression analysis showed a highly significant increase of edentulousness with increasing age (P < 0.001). No caries-free subjects were found and among the dentate the DMFT and DMFS scores for all age groups were respectively 15.5 and 88.6. The stepwise linear regression analysis showed that the mean DMFT index increased with age (t = 6.86; P < 0.001), and in the partly or totally helpless patients it was significantly higher than in the self-sufficient patients (t = 2.78; P = 0.006). Of the 264 dentate subjects, only 25 (9.5%) had no need of dental treatment; 213 (80.7%) required extractions with a mean number per person of 6.3 and the need for conservative dental care was recorded in 154 (58.3%) patients with a mean need for patient of 2.8. Mean OHI-S score was 4.2 and the stepwise linear regression analysis showed that it increased with age (t = 5.73; P < 0.001) and with the length of institutionalization (t = 3.42; P < 0.001). Only 0.9% of the entire sample was found with healthy periodontal tissue; bleeding on probing or a higher score was found in 4.6% of examined sextants; calculus in 10.1%; shallow pockets and deep pockets in 19.6% and 64.8% of all sextants. The results of the multiple logistic regression analysis indicated that the number of subjects with deep pockets as highest score increased with increasing age (P<0.001), and with the increasing length of institutionalization (P=0.005). The findings of this study demonstrate high caries prevalence, poor oral hygiene and periodontal health, and extensive unmet needs for dental treatment. More coordinated efforts between the social and dental care sector must be maintained to serve adequately the need of this disadvantaged group.


Objective: To establish the prevailing eye practices among traditional healers in Kitui district and establish whether these healers are able to identify ocular emergencies and refer in good time. Design: Community based qualitative survey Setting: Kitui district, Eastern Kenya Subjects: A total of 87 healers from 3 divisions of Kitui district were interviewed. Results: Seventy six (87.4%) said that they treat at least one of the eye conditions presented to them. Instillation of plant extracts into the conjuctival sac was the most preferred treatment modality and was practiced by 46(52.9%) healers for cataracts, 48(55.2%) for ocular injuries and 21(24.1%) for allergic conjunctivitis. The most commonly performed surgical procedures included rubbing the underside of the upper lid with a specifi c leaf for allergic conjunctivitis with papillary reaction performed by 43 (49.4%) healers; piercing chalazia with a thorn or needle by 11(12.6%) healers and making small incisions and applying herbs for ocular swelling by 4(4.6%) healers. The most preferred treatment for chemical injury was breast milk from any breast feeding mother practiced by 29 (33.3%) healers. Small extra ocular foreign bodies are removed by introducing seed from a specifi c plant in to the conjuctival sac by 51(58.6%) healers. Some healers mix traditional medicine with exorcism and rituals especially for squint as practiced by 14(16%) healers and ocular tumors by 9(10.3%) healers. The conditions the healers said they would refer included ocular tumors reported by 48(55.5%) healers, cataracts by 34(52.9%) healers, ocular injury by 30(34.5%) healers and squint by 21(24.1%) healers. Conclusion: Majority of the healers interviewed treat patients who present to them with eye diseases. Most did not refer emergencies like ocular injuries.


Coccolithophores have been extensively studied to understand the environmental control on calcification in a key biological group influencing the alkalinity of seawater. Previous studies have established that bulk calcification scales with cell division rates under a wide range of pH conditions. Yet the fine‐scale ultrastructural changes of the coccoliths and therefore the pH‐sensitive underlying mechanisms altering biomineralization of the coccoliths remain largely underconstrained. Using circularly polarized light and high‐resolution microscopy, we have generated mass estimates of cultured Gephyrocapsa oceanica coccoliths grown in media with pH values ranging from 7.4 to 9.0. These mass estimates representing a bulk calcification response were related to the morphological changes within the coccoliths. From optimal (pH 8.6) down to pH 7.4 conditions, we have observed that impaired cell growth and lower calcite quota are accompanied by a 35% decrease in mean coccolith mass. The data further show that seawater acidification does not homogenously affect calcification of the coccoliths, as a clear decrease of the breadth of the tube (a structure surrounding the central area of the coccoliths) was detected, whereas all other ultrastructural components were far less impacted. We discuss this specific sensitivity to acidification as the possible consequence of the altered interaction of the acidic polysaccharides used for biomineralization and ambient concentration of protons released by calcification that substantially modify the growth patterns, the morphology, and ultimately the mass of the coccoliths.


The effect of LiF and CBS glass additives on the microstructure and dielectric property of BaTiO3 (BT) ceramics was studied. The phase of BaLiF3 was observed from the interaction between BT and LiF when the samples were sintered at 900 °C for 1 h. Crystal grains with Ba and F in atomic ratios of 1:3 were observed from the SEM and TEM analysis of the microstructures. Abnormal grain growth (AGG) was observed to occur in the BT ceramics sintered at 950 °C. Further improvement to the composition was achieved by employing a two-stage process. This included CBS glass shell coating of the BT particles in the first stage, and the addition of LiF in the second stage. The composition thus formed had very good permittivity (1725) and an extremely low dielectric loss value (0.008).


Reducing the gender gap in education is a primary goal for many countries. Two major challenges for many girls are the distance to school and their safety when commuting to school. In Zambia, we studied the impact of providing a bicycle to a school-going girl who lives more than 3 km from the school. We randomized whether a girl received a bicycle with a small cost to her family to cover replacement parts, a bicycle where these costs are covered by the program, and therefore is zero cost to the family, or a control group. One year after the intervention, we find that the bicycle reduced average commuting time to school by 35%, reduced late arrival by 66%, and decreased absenteeism by 27%. We find continued improvement in girls' attendance and reduction in dropouts two, three, and four years after the intervention. We also find evidence of improved math test scores, girls expressing higher feelings of control over their lives and, for those who received bicycles with a small cost to her family, higher levels of aspirations, self-image, and a desire to delay marriage and pregnancy. Heterogeneity analysis by distance to school shows an inverted U-shape for most of the schooling and empowerment results, suggesting greater impact for girls that live further away from school. These results suggest that empowerment outcomes worked through increased attendance in school.


The homogeneous linewidths in the photoluminescence excitation spectrum of a single, naturally formed gallium arsenide (GaAs) quantum dot have been measured with high spatial and spectral resolution. The energies and linewidths of the homogeneous spectrum provide a new perspective on the dephasing dynamics of the exciton in a quantum-confined, solid-state system. The origins of the linewidths are discussed in terms of the dynamics of the exciton in zero dimensions, in particular, in terms of lifetime broadening through the emission or absorption of phonons and photons.


The Cooperativism and Democracy, edited by Bartlomiej Blesznowski is a selection of texts by important Polish thinkers of the early 20th century about cooperativism, including The Social Ideas of Cooperativism by Edward Abramowski – one of the most influential modern Polish philosophers.


Background: Disturbance in movement is widely observed in autism and differences have been measured at the level of movement kinematics. Anzulewicz et al (2016) showed that gesture patterns from smart-tablet gameplay can distinguish between children with autism (ASD) and typically developing children (TD) with high accuracy using a machine learning algorithm, but a limitation of the data-driven approach used is that distinguishing features included in the algorithm may not be grounded in theory. It has been suggested that prospective control of movement is disrupted in autism, and this may result from impairments in using sensory feedback as the movement unfolds, despite intact control of internally generated movements. Furthermore, movement kinematics variables which are influenced by task difficulty and change with motor development have been identified to indicate prospective motor control. Objectives: The objective of the analysis is to explore differences between ASD and TD children in the kinematics of prospective motor control during goal-directed finger movements to different target distances, using data collected by Anzulewicz et al (2016). Methods: Touch-screen position coordinates of 4775 goal-directed swipes made during a smart-tablet gameplay by 82 children, aged 3-5 years old, were analysed. Target distance was calculated as the length between start and end position of each swipe and five kinematic variables related to prospective motor control were calculated from time differentials of position, namely: (1) peak velocity of the full movement, (2) peak velocity of the first movement unit (1MU), (3) number of movement units (velocity peaks), (4) % time in deceleration and (5) % time to peak velocity. Multilevel modelling was used to analyse the fixed effects and interaction effect of target distance and ASD diagnosis on each kinematic outcome, including a random effect to control for correlation in the kinematic outcome for swipes by the same individual. Results: Increase in 1cm target distance led to an increase in peak velocity of the full movement, and ASD children showed a greater increase than TD (Interaction: 3%, CI: 1% to 4%, p<0.001). TD children showed a 3% reduction in peak velocity (1MU) (CI: -5% to 0%, p=0.05) and decelerate 0.41% longer (CI: 0.20% - 0.63%, p<0.001) for more distant targets, but children with ASD showed the opposite relationship (Peak velocity (1MU) - Interaction: 9%, CI: 3% to 14%, p<0.001; Deceleration - interaction: -0.54%, CI: -0.93% to -0.14%, p=0.008). ASD children reached a peak in velocity later for more distant targets (Interaction: 1.28%, CI: 0.39% to 2.16%, p=0.005), but no relationship is seen for TD children. Overall, ASD children have 31% more movement units than TD (CI: 1% to 70%, p=0.04), but a 3% smaller increase in movement units for more distant targets (CI: -5% to -1%, p=0.007). Conclusions: The kinematics of prospective control is different for children with ASD and TD, and may help to identify children with autism. These findings are consistent with the idea that individuals with ASD may differ in the use of feedback control, and internal feedforward control may be influenced differently by external constraints such as target distance.


BACKGROUND/AIMS
To investigate the effects of different mechanisms on the development of pancreatitis after endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
40 male rats were randomly divided into four groups. After laparotomy, in Group 1, only duodenum was reached by a 24G cannula without performing any other procedure. In Groups 2, 3, and 4, biliopancreatic duct was cannulated transduodenally. Group 2 received no additional intervention after the cannulation. Group 3 received saline, whereas Group 4 received contrast agent into the duct. After a period of 24 hours, all rats were sacrificed. Laboratorytests for blood samples were performed and pancreatic tissue was also evaluated histopathologically.

RESULTS
Leukocyte, blood sugar, serum glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase, lactate dehydrogenase, amylase, C-reactive protein, and base excess parameters were evaluated. The values in Groups 2, 3, and 4 were found to be significantly higher than those in the control group, except for leukocyte count and base excess (p=0.551, p=0.031, p=0.0001, p=0.0001, p=0.0001, p=0.0001, p=0.683, respectively). Histopathological results demonstrated significant differences between the groups. Highest pathological damage scores were observed in Groups 3 and 4.

CONCLUSION
Among different theories for the pathogenesis of post-endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography pancreatitis, elevated intraductal hydrostatic pressure was observed to be the main underlying cause.


Interactions of Protein with Proteins: H.I. Chen and M. Sudol, Identification and Characterization of Protein Ligands to the WW Domain by Western Ligand Blotting. X. Cheng, S.A. Hofstadler, J.E. Bruce, A.C. Harms, R. Chen, T.C. Terwilliger, R.D. Smith, and P.N. Goudreau, Electrospray Ionization with High Performance Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometry for the Study of Noncovalent Biomolecular Complexes. J.Wen, T. Arakawa, J. Talvenheimo, A.A. Welcher, T. Horan, Y. Kita, J. Tseng, M. Nicolson, and J.S. Philo, A Light Scattering/Size Exclusion Chromatography Method for Studying the Stoichiometry of a Protein-Protein Complex. J. Li and R.M. Weis, Measurements of Protein-Protein Interaction by Isothermal Titration Calorimetry with Applications to the Bacterial Chemotaxis Systems. Z. Wu, K.W. Johnson, B. Goldstein, T.M. Laue, and T.L. Ciardelli, Solution Assembly of Cytokine Receptor Ectodomain Complexes. K.P.Williams, D.M. Evans, S. Rosenberg, and S.Jindal, Use of a Peptide Library to Characterize Differential Peptide Binding Specificities of Bacterial and Mammalian Hsp70. E. Perez-Paya, R.A. Houghten, and S.E. Blondelle, The Design of Self-Assembling Peptide Complexes Using Conformationally Defined Libraries. Interactions of Proteins with Ligands: K. Hollfelder, F. Wang, and Y.-C.E. Pan, "Fishing Out" Ligand Binding Proteins from Protein Mixtures by a Two-Dimensional Gel ElectrophoresisSystem Utilizing Native PAGE Followed by SDS-PAGE. W. Moore and J.D. Lambris, Mass Spectrometric Analyses of the Activation Products of the Third Component of Complement. D. Stanojevic and G.L. Verdine, Site-Specific Reversible Conjugation: A Novel Concept in Peptide-DNA Interactions. J.E. Scheffler, S.E. Kiefer, K. Prinzo, and E. Bekesi, Scintillation Proximity Assay to Measure the Binding of Ras-GTP to the Ras-Binding Domain of c-Raf-1. Behavior of Proteins at Surfaces: P.L.Derby, K.H. Aoki, V. Katta, M.F. Rohde, Asparagine Rearrangements in Two Isoforms of Erythropoietin Receptor. M. Monette, H. Gratkowski, S.J. Opella, J. Greenwood, A.E. Willis, and R.N. Perham, Initial Characterization of a Peptide Epitope Displayed on the Surface of fd Bacteriophage by Solution and Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy. J.D. Baleja, S.J. Freedman, B.C. Furie, and B. Furie, NMR Structures for the Membrane Binding Gla Domain of Blood Coagulation Factor IX. L. Niu, C. Grewer, and G.P. Hess, Chemical Kinetic Investigations of Neurotransmitter Receptors on a Cell Surface in the gh us Time Region. S. Sonar, C.-P. Lee, C.F.C. Ludlam, X.-M. Liu, M. Coleman, T. Marti, U.L. RajBhandary, and K.J. Rothschild, Site-Directed IsotopeLabeling of Membrane Proteins: A New Tool for Spectroscopists. Modifications to Proteins in Vivo: J. Hofsteenge, A. Loffler, D.R. Muller, W.J. Richter, T. de Beer, and F.G. Vliegenthart, Protein C-Glycosylation. C.A. Settineri, Y.D. Chen, K. Jiang, S.Z. Zhang, A.L. Burlingame, Characterization of the N- and O- Linked Oligosaccharides from Glucoamylase E4 from Monascus rubiginosus using Electrospray Mass Spectrometry and Glycosidase Digestion. F. Barry, R. Maciewicz, and M.T. Bayliss, Post-Translational Changes in the Protein Core of the Proteoglycan, Aggrecan, in Human Articular Cartilage. K.F. Geoghegan, C.A. Strick, S. Guhan, M.E. Kelly, A.J. Lanzetti, K.E. Cole, S.B. Jones, D.A. Cole, K.J. Rosnack,R.M. Guinn, A.R. Goulet, T.-P. I, L.W. Blocker, D.W. Melvin, and J.A. Funes, In Vivo Dipeptidylation of the Amino Terminus of Recombinant Glucagon-like Peptide-1(7-37) Produced in the Yeast Yarrowia lipolytica as a Fusion Protein. F. Ross, T.Zamborelli, A.C. Herman, C.-H. Yeh, N.I. Tedeschi, and E.S. Luedke, Detection of Acetylated Lysine Residues Using Sequencing by Edman Degradation and Mass Spectrometry. I. Lascu, S. Morera, M. Chiadmi, J. Cherfils, J. Janin, and M. Veron, Mechanism of the Nucleoside Diphosphate Kinase Reaction: X-Ray Structure of the Phosphohistidine Intermediate. Manipulation of Sulfur in Proteins: R. Singh, Selenol-Catalyzed Reduction of Disulfide Bonds in Peptides and Proteins. D.C. Brune, D.G.Hartzfeld, and T.W. Johnson, Cysteine Modification with Acrylonitrile for Amino Acid Analysis and Protein Sequencing. N.D. Denslow and H.P. Nguyen, Specific Cleavage of Blotted Proteins at Cysteine Residues after Cyanylation: Analysis of Products by Maldi-Tof. J.H. Robinson, M.D. McGinley, J.C. Leidli, D.E. Lyons, C.-H. Lin, B. Karan-Tamir, M.M. Zukowski, and M.F. Rohde, Disulfide Characterization of CD31 (PECAM). R.H. Angeletti, L. Bibbs, L.F. Bonewald, G.B. Fields, J.S. McMurray, W.T.Moore, and John T. Stults, Formation of a Disulfide Bond in an Octreotide-Like Peptide: A Multicenter Study. F.J. Shen, M.Y. Kwong, R.G. Keck, and R.J. Harris, The Application of tert-Butylhydroperoxide Oxidation to Study Sites of Potential Methionine Oxidation in a Recombinant Antibody. Methods Used in Primary Structural Analysis: M. Kirchner, J. Fernandez, Q.A. Shakey, F. Gharahdaghi, and S.M. Mische, Enzymatic Digestion of PVDF-Bound Proteins: A Survey of Sixteen Nonionic Detergents. M.R. Schlittler, B.A. Foy, J.J. Triska, B.N. Violand, and G.L. Bachman, Development and Optimization of a SE-HPLC Method for Proteins using Organic Mobile Phases. R.R. Ogorzalek Loo, C. Mitchell, T. Stevenson, J.A. Loo, and P.C. Andrews, Interfacing Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis with Mass Spectrometry. A.G. Craig, S.W. Sutton, J. Vaughan, and W.H. Fischer, Immunoprecipitation as a Means of Purification for Analysis with Mass Spectrometry. A.M. Mahrenholz, N.D. Denslow, T.T. Andersen, K.M. Schegg, K. Mann, S.A. Cohen, J.W. Fox, and K.U. Yuksel, Amino Acid Analysis--Recovery from PVDF Membranes: ABRF-95AAA Collaborative Trial. D.J. Strydom, Amino Acid Analysis Using Various Carbamate Reagents for PreColumn Derivatization. W.J. Henzel, J.T. Stults, S.C. Wong, A. Namenuk, J. Yashio, and C. Watanabe, Analysis of Mixture Sequences Derived from Edman Degradation Data. K.S. DeJongh, J. Fernandez, J.E. Gambee, G.A. Grant, B. Merrill, K.L. Stone, and J. Rush, Design and Analysis of ABRF-95SEQ, a Recombinant Protein with Sequence Heterogeneity. Three Dimensional Protein Structure: Q. Han and S.-X. Lin, A Technique of Protein Addition for Repeated Enlargement of Protein Crystals in Solution. J.K.M. Rao, M. Gribskov, J. Lubkowski, M. Miller, A.L. Swain, and A. Wlodawer, A Comparison of the Crystal Structures of Bacterial L-Asparaginases. G. Bujacz, M. Jaskolski, J. Alexandratos, A, Wlodawer, G. Merkel, R.A. Katz, and A.M. Skalka, Crystal Structure of the Catalytic Domain of Avian Sarcoma Virus Integrase. E.A. Komives, M.J. Hunter, D.P. Meininger, L.R. White, and C.E. White, Structure/Function of the Fourth and Fifth EGF Domains of Thrombomodulin. P.J. Neame and R.E. Boynton, The Structure of a C-type Lectin Isolated from Bovine Cartilage. D.N. Woolfson and T. Alber, Sequence Determinants of Oligomer Selection in Coiled Coils. C.-J. Tsai, S.L. Lin, H.J. Wolfson, and R. Nussinov, Techniques for Searching for Structural Similarities Between Protein Cores, Protein Surfaces, and Between Protein-Protein Interfaces. Folding and Stability of Proteins: K.E. Prehoda, S.N. Loh, and J.L. Markley, Modeling Volume Changes in Proteins Using Partial Molar Volumes of Model Compounds. C.V. Gegg, K.E. Bowers, and C.R. Matthews, A General Approach for the Design and Isolation of Protein Fragments: The Molecular Dissection of Dihydrofolate Reductase. J.M. Matthews, L.D. Ward, J.-G. Zhang, and R.J. Simpson, The Association of Unfolding Intermediates during the Equilibrium Unfolding of Recombinant Murine Interleukin-6. C.R. Johnson and E. Freire, Structural Stability of Small Oligomeric Proteins. S.L. Kazmirski, D.O.V. Alonso, F.E. Cohen, S.B. Prusiner, and V. Daggett, The Conformational Consequences of Mutations to the H1 Helix of the Prion Protein Explored by Molecular Dynamics Simulations. Methods and Uses for Synthetic Proteins: R.J. Simpson, J.-G. Zhang, D.S. Dorow, G.E. Reid, R.L. Moritz,and G.-F. Tu, Identification of Truncated E. coli-Expressed Proteins with a Novel C-Terminal 10Sa RNA Decapeptide Extension. C.J.A. Wallace, A.C. Woods, and J.G. Guillemette, Simplifying the Fragment Condensation Semisynthesis of Protein Analogs. C.J.A. Wallace and I. Clark-Lewis, Using Semisynthesis to Insert Heavy-Atom Labels in Functional Proteins. G. Barany, C.M. Gross, M. Ferrer, E. Barbar, H. Pan, and C. Woodward, Optimized Methods for Chemical Synthesis of Bovine Pancreatic Trypsin Inhibitor (BPTI) Analogues. S.A. Kates, E. Diekmann, A. El-Faham, L.W. Herman, D. Ionescu, B.F. McGuiness, S.A. Triolo, F. Albericio, L.A. Carpino, On the Use of Novel Coupling Reagents for Solid-Phase Peptide Synthesis. Subject Index.


Two small chargers, a plate and a tube particle charger, were compared in terms of their performance at low DC-corona current. Both chargers are designed for compact/miniature electrical-mobility-based particle sizers and were operated at a corona current of 0.3 µA for simultaneous low energy consumption and high charging efficiency. A thin wire was utilized in the plate charger for the ion generation via the DC-corona discharge, while a sharp-tipped needle was used in the tube charger. The intrinsic and extrinsic charging efficiencies of particles in various electrical mobility sizes were measured for both chargers at aerosol flow rates of 0.3 and 0.6 L min–1. In general, the plate charger exhibited a lower intrinsic charging efficiency than the tube charger. Also, its extrinsic charging efficiency was slightly higher at 0.3 L min–1 than 0.6 L min–1 and reached approximately 80% for particles larger than 40 nm. On the other hand, the extrinsic charging efficiency of the tube charger was higher at 0.6 L min–1 than 0.3 L min–1 for particles larger than 60 nm, with the reverse being true for smaller particles. The extrinsic charge distributions of particles with mobility sizes smaller than 300 nm were also characterized. It was found that a multiple-charge status occurred on particles larger than 20 nm for both chargers. At the same particle size, more charges attached to particles in the tube charger than the plate charger. The birth-and-death charging model was proposed for calculating the extrinsic charge distributions of particles measured in this study. In addition, the Gaussian distribution function was also suggested for best fitting the measured extrinsic charge distributions of particles.


Abstract Background: Studies on advanced maternal age—defined here as age 35 or older—and children's cognitive ability report mixed evidence. Previous studies have not analysed how the time period considered in existing studies influences the association. Methods: We analysed trends in the association between maternal age and cognitive ability using data from the 1958 National Child Development Study (n = 10 969), the 1970 British Cohort Study (n = 9362) and the 2000–2002 Millennium Cohort Study (n = 11 600). The dependent variable measures cognitive ability at age 10/11 years. Cognitive scores were standardised to a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. Results: For the 1958–70 cohort studies, maternal ages 35 –39 were negatively associated with children's cognitive ability compared with maternal ages 25–29 (1958 cohort β = −0.06 standard deviations (SD) 95% confidence interval (CI): −0.13, −0.00; 1970 cohort β = −0.12 SD 95% CI: −0.20, −0.03). By contrast, for the 2000–2002 cohort study maternal ages 35–39 were positively associated with cognitive ability (β = 0.16 SD 95% CI: 0.09, 0.23). For maternal ages 40+, the pattern was qualitatively similar. These cross-cohort differences were explained by the fact that in the earlier cohorts advanced maternal age was associated with high parity, whereas in the 2000–2002 cohort it was associated with socioeconomically advantaged family background. Conclusions: The association between advanced maternal age and children's cognitive ability changed from negative in the 1958 and 1970 cohorts to positive in the 2000–2002 cohort because of changing parental characteristics. The time period considered can constitute an important factor in determining the association between maternal age and cognitive ability.


The present article aims to explore the social representations of creativity in a Western cultural context. In doing so it starts by addressing the theoretical bases for such an investigation and especially the more developed literature on implicit theories of creativity. Contributions of the social representations approach are discussed, in particular the mechanisms of anchoring and objectification and processes of thematisation. The empirical research was based on an on-line survey and the analysis included 106 responses, mainly from participants living in the US and the UK. The questionnaire employed both closed and open-ended questions concerning: a) common creativity symbols; b) existing dichotomies about the nature of creativity, and c) self-evaluations of creativity. Participants were first asked to think of what would be the best creativity symbol for them and to rate and comment on eight symbols emerging out of a pre-study of Google Images. Findings indicate that current representations of creativity are complex and multifaceted and the strongest association present was between creativity and the arts (especially symbols like paintbrush and colour, children's drawings, etc.). This has several important practical implications for how creativity is understood, recognised and legitimated in everyday contexts.


Inositol pyrophosphates are emerging players in the cell regulation arena. Although it was previously reported that diphosphoinositol pentakisphosphate [5-PP-Ins(1,2,3,4,6)P5, also abbreviated IP7] phosphorylates proteins in yeast and mammals, Bhandari et al. now provide biochemical evidence that this phosphorylation is a pyrophosphorylation event with different chemical characteristics than phosphorylation mediated by ATP. The authors found that although yeast proteins were readily phosphorylated by IP7, when the same targets were expressed in bacteria, these proteins were not phosphorylated by IP7. The addition of yeast extract and ATP or GTP to the bacterially produced proteins restored IP7-mediated phosphorylation. Casein kinase 2 (CK2) is an enzyme that can use either GTP or ATP to phosphorylate target proteins. Phosphorylation of an IP7 target expressed in bacteria (a fragment of protein NSR1) by CK2 or isolation of the NSR1 fragment from bacteria also expressing CK2 made the peptide a target for IP7-mediated phosphorylation, suggesting that there is a priming phosphorylation required for IP7-mediated phosphorylation. A synthetic peptide from another IP7 and CK2 target, Nopp140, was phosphorylated by IP7, but only when the peptide was synthesized with the serine residues prephosphorylated. The number of sites phosphorylated by IP7 always correlated with the number of preexisting phosphates on the peptide, and methylation of phosphates prevented IP7-mediated phosphorylation of prephosphorylated peptides. A peptide in which the sites were pyrophosphorylated during synthesis was not a target for IP7-mediated phosphorylation. Together these data suggest that IP7 mediates a pyrophosphorylation modification after priming by an enzymatic ATP-mediated phosphorylation event. Consistent with a different type of bond, the phosphorylation by IP7 was more labile under acid conditions than was phosphorylation through an ATP-mediated process. In contrast, IP7-mediated phosphorylation was resistant to the action of phosphatases (λ-phosphatase, alkaline phosphatase, calcineurin, or protein phosphatase 1). Whether this type of pyrophosphorylation event influences protein activity and function and how this process might be regulated are interesting questions. R. Bhandari, A. Saiardi, Y. Ahmadibeni, A. M. Snowman, A. C. Resnick, T. Z. Kristiansen, H. Molina, A. Pandey, J. K. Werner Jr., K. R. Juluri, Y. Xu, G. D. Prestwich, K. Parang, S. H. Snyder, Protein pyrophosphorylation by inositol pyrophosphates is a posttranslational event. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 104, 15305-15310 (2007). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Knowledge about the spatial distribution of seasonal snow is essential e.g. to efficiently manage fresh water resources or for hydro-power companies. The large-scale gradient of snow accumulation over mountain ranges is mainly determined by lifting condensation and downstream drying. On the slope-scale, snow redistribution by wind and avalanches is the main source of variability. On a mountain-ridge to mountainvalley scale, small-scale orographic precipitation enhancement and preferential deposition interact and lead to asymmetric snow distribution across mountain ridges. However, their relative importance is barely known and the characteristics of preferential deposition are still under debate. Yet, especially in a changing climate, which may go along with modified dominant wind directions, it is important to understand precipitation processes shaping the snow cover. Therefore, we investigate terrain-flow-precipitation interactions and their effect on mountain-ridge to mountain-valley scale snow precipitation and deposition in complex alpine terrain. To this end, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is set up to downscale Consortium for Small-Scale Modeling (COSMO) analysis to a horizontal resolution of 50m using a nesting approach. At 450m resolution these simulations fairly represent large-scale precipitation variability with respect to highresolution operational weather radar precipitation estimates, capturing the effect of large-scale orographic enhancement. Although, the model misses substantial small-scale precipitation variability even at a 50m resolution, we demonstrate that the lee-side flow field and mountain-ridge scale precipitation processes start to be represented at this resolution. Thus, a model resolution of ≤50m is required to represent mountain-ridge to mountain-valley scale precipitation patterns, which is far higher than model resolutions conventionally used to simulate snow water resources in alpine regions. Small-scale orographic precipitation enhancement and mean advection are estimated to increase leeside precipitation by up to 20%, while a conservative estimate of (near-surface) preferential deposition reveals lee-side snow deposition enhancement on the order of 10%. However, both processes strongly depend on atmospheric conditions such as atmospheric humidity or the strength of mean advection. The peculiarity of the lee-side flow field is of particular importance for the spatial distribution of snow accumulation, especially with regards to preferential deposition. This is further demonstrated by a very persistent eddy-like structure on the leeward side of the Sattelhorn ridge in the Dischma valley (Davos, CH), as reported based on Doppler wind lidar measurements and with corresponding flow field simulations at a resolution of 25m by the Advanced Regional Prediction System (ARPS). Corresponding snow accumulation, assessed by the means of terrestrial laser scanning, confirms that snow distribution in very steep terrain is strongly influenced by post-depositional snow redistribution. Nevertheless, we can report a certain agreement of simulated pre-depositional precipitation patterns across mountain ridges with photogrammetrically determined snow distribution. Overall, we demonstrate the necessity and value of high-resolution snow precipitation measurements and simulations, and we contribute to the understanding of the small-scale variability of snow distribution in alpine terrain.


The effect of light on neuroendocrine functions is thought to be mediated through retinal inputs to the circadian pacemaker, the hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). The present studies were conducted to provide experimental evidence for this signaling modality in non‐human primates. In the St. Kitts vervet monkey, anterograde tracing of SCN efferents revealed a monosynaptic pathway between the circadian clock and hypothalamic neurons producing luteinizing hormone‐releasing hormone (LHRH). Using a variety of tracing techniques, direct retinal input was found to be abundant in the SCN and in other hypothalamic sites. Strikingly, in hypothalamic areas other than the SCN, primary visual afferents established direct contacts with neuroendocrine cells including those producing LHRH and dopamine, neurons that are the hypothalamic regulators of pituitary gonadotrops and prolactin. Thus, our data reveal for the first time in primates that light stimuli can reach the hypothalamo–pituitary–gonadal axis, directly providing a pathway independent of but parallel to that of the circadian clock for the photic modulation of hormone release.


In 2001, the ACM and the IEEE-CS published Computing Curricula 2001 which contains curriculum recommendations for undergraduate programs in computer science. That report also called for additional discipline-specific volumes for each of computer engineering, information systems, and software engineering. In addition, it called for an Overview Volume to provide a synthesis of the various volumes. The Computing Curricula 2004 Task Force has undertaken a two-pronged strategy to fulfill the latter charge. The purpose of this session is to present an overview of the Task Force's work and to generate feedback from the SIGCSE membership to the Task Force about the direction and plans we have undertaken.


The locking collar on a machine failed suddenly when the shaft it restrained was inadvertently subjected to an axial load slightly higher than the allowable working load. The locking collar fractured abruptly, producing four large fragments. This allowed the shaft to be propelled forcefully in the direction of the load, causing substantial damage to other machinery components in the vicinity. The failed component, which was 43 cm (17 in.) in diameter, was machined from 4140 plate and heat treated to 34 to 36 HRC. Analysis (visual inspection, composite micrographs, scanning electron microscopy, and mechanical-property analysis) supported the conclusions that the alloy steel plate used in this application contained significant brittle microstructural fibering or banding. This condition produced considerable anisotropy in ductility and toughness as revealed by mechanical testing. Unfortunately, the potential effects of anisotropy were apparently neglected when this component was designed and manufactured from the plate stock, because the loading was applied in a direction that stressed the weakest planes in the material, that is, a direction normal to the fibering. No recommendations were made.


A secondary diaminophosphane-borane (Et2N)2PH(BH3) was prepared from a chlorophosphane precursor and LiBH4 and metalated by reaction with anion bases (n-BuLi, KN(SiMe3)2) to yield the corresponding metal diaminophosphanide-boranes [(Et2N)2P(BH3)]M (M = Li, K). Multinuclear NMR studies permitted the first spectroscopic characterisation of the metalation products and revealed the presence of monomeric (for M = Li) contact ion pairs in solution. NMR spectroscopic evidence that the ions in each pair interact via LiP- rather than LiH3B-interactions as had been inferred for a Ph-substituted analogue was confirmed by DFT studies, which revealed also that the borane coordination plays a decisive role in boosting the PH-acidity of the original secondary diaminophosphane precursor. Transmetalation of the potassium and lithium diaminophosphanide-boranes with Cu(i) and Zn(ii) chlorides afforded the first functional transition metal complexes of a P-heteroatom-functionalised phosphanide-borane ligand. Both products were fully characterised. Thermolysis of the Cu-complex induced a reaction which involved transfer of an NHC ligand from the metal to the phosphorus atom and yielded a phosphaalkene NHC[double bond, length as m-dash]PH (NHC = N-heterocyclic carbene) as the major phosphorus-containing product.

publisher-specific, author manuscript: http://rsc.li/journals-terms-of-use


Changes of metabolism have been implicated in renal ischemia/reperfusion injury (IRI). However, a global analysis of the metabolic changes in renal IRI is lacking and the association of the changes with ischemic kidney injury and subsequent recovery are unclear. In this study, mice were subjected to 25 minutes of bilateral renal IRI followed by 2 hours to 7 days of reperfusion. Kidney injury and subsequent recovery was verified by serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen measurements. The metabolome of plasma, kidney cortex, and medulla were profiled by the newly developed global metabolomics analysis. Renal IRI induced overall changes of the metabolome in plasma and kidney tissues. The changes started in renal cortex, followed by medulla and plasma. In addition, we identified specific metabolites that may contribute to early renal injury response, perturbed energy metabolism, impaired purine metabolism, impacted osmotic regulation and the induction of inflammation. Some metabolites, such as 3-indoxyl sulfate, were induced at the earliest time point of renal IRI, suggesting the potential of being used as diagnostic biomarkers. There was a notable switch of energy source from glucose to lipids, implicating the importance of appropriate nutrition supply during treatment. In addition, we detected the depressed polyols for osmotic regulation which may contribute to the loss of kidney function. Several pathways involved in inflammation regulation were also induced. Finally, there was a late induction of prostaglandins, suggesting their possible involvement in kidney recovery. In conclusion, this study demonstrates significant changes of metabolome kidney tissues and plasma in renal IRI. The changes in specific metabolites are associated with and may contribute to early injury, shift of energy source, inflammation, and late phase kidney recovery.


This thesis analyzes the forces responsible for stalling the urgently needed changes to America's political and economic structures in the face of climate change. Within today's capitalistic paradigm defined by consumerism and corporate power, there is an extremely complex network of political and economic powers at work in the climate debate. Renewable forms of energy are used as an example of an available and effective mitigation technique currently inhibited by this clogged system. The role of the fossil fuel industry in blockading the adoption of alternative forms of energy is used to highlight the malicious intent of this industry in particular. The thesis uncovers the dirty past of the oil and gas industry and considers its current abuses of public and environmental health. It's manipulative role in policymaking and dissemination of anti-climate change propaganda illustrates corporate power gone wrong—in this case, at the expense of life on earth as we know it. The environmental sociology that has shaped today's paradigm is analyzed to provide a historical context of prevailing modern ideologies and their current implications in the climate change narrative. The normalization of capitalistic ideologies such as expansionism and consumerism are addressed as catalysts to destructive humanenvironment relationships that now dominate modern society. A range of disciplines including environmental politics, economics, psychology, and sociology are utilized to illustrate the complexity of effectively addressing climate change implications in our society. In order to ensure a sustainable future, the impediments to renewable energy expansion must be removed, the political clout of the fossil fuel industry must be relinquished, the economy's dependence on oil and gas must be removed, and American culture must embrace new ways of respecting nature.


We establish a procedure to track the tax valuation history of properties that are fully or partially restricted with conservation easements to test the assertion that easements result in lower property valuations. Easements didn't decrease property valuations; they merely decreased the rate of value for the affected properties. On average, the restricted properties' valuations increased at a rate lower than did those for unrestricted properties - but not always, and certainly not uniformly. Valuation policy is specific to the local tax assessor: no sweeping assertions about easements and property taxes is warranted.


Beginning in 2014, individuals and small businesses will be able to purchase private health insurance through competitive marketplaces. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) provides for a program of risk adjustment in the individual and small group markets in 2014 as Marketplaces are implemented and new market reforms take effect. The purpose of risk adjustment is to lessen or eliminate the influence of risk selection on the premiums that plans charge and the incentive for plans to avoid sicker enrollees. This article--the first of three in the Medicare & Medicaid Research Review--describes the key program goal and issues in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) developed risk adjustment methodology, and identifies key choices in how the methodology responds to these issues. The goal of the HHS risk adjustment methodology is to compensate health insurance plans for differences in enrollee health mix so that plan premiums reflect differences in scope of coverage and other plan factors, but not differences in health status. The methodology includes a risk adjustment model and a risk transfer formula that together address this program goal as well as three issues specific to ACA risk adjustment: 1) new population; 2) cost and rating factors; and 3) balanced transfers within state/market. The risk adjustment model, described in the second article, estimates differences in health risks taking into account the new population and scope of coverage (actuarial value level). The transfer formula, described in the third article, calculates balanced transfers that are intended to account for health risk differences while preserving permissible premium differences.


Satellite environment provides a whole new spectrum of challenges to communications and networking. The ability to study satellite network conditions in a reproducible and controlled manner has relied mainly on simulations and experimental testbed. Investigations on network protocols and multimedia applications over satellite networks via operational hardware-based testbed are costly and inflexible while results from simulators may be inaccurate due to assumptions made during the modeling process. Hence, a satellite network emulator is proposed to overcome these obstacles as it has complementing properties of both hardware-based testbed and pure softwarebased simulators. The proposed emulator is to imitate the performance dynamics in IP networks over satellite links. Operating at the Medium Access Control (MAC) of Data Link Layer, the emulator is able to emulate the propagation delay and bit errors of satellite channels. This is a very useful and cost-effective approach to show the impact of satellite link delay and transmission errors on Internet services and applications. Architecturally, the paper describes how the emulator is built upon LINUX IEEE 802.3 bridging facility (brctl) and LINUX firewall (netfilter). As packet level emulation paradigm is used, the emulator is capable of producing precise satellite channel model and thus, put forward itself as a reliable, adaptable and economical alternative for research on satellite communication networking and applications. This paper presents a project on a LINUX-based satellite link emulator, including the design and algorithm of the emulator and performance evaluation of Internet applications (data, voice and video) based on the emulator. It also explains the design and setup of a flexible and expandable testbed to supplement the performance evaluation process. The effects of the satellite emulator on voice, video and data are also studied through the use of Internet applications such as Microsoft Netmeeting and TCP/IP based data transfer.


Politics is dying, politics is dead! This funeral oration is delivered time and again, but what is it that is being mourned? The classless society and the withering away of the state predicted by Marx? The advent of Nietzsche's "last man," of a world resembling a herd with no shepherd, where everyone finds it too burdensome to rule or to obey, or to enter into conflict with others? Or is it the arrival, denounced by Hannah Arendt, of a society in which action defined by politics (that is, by public dialogue and by war) has been displaced by production, and then by consumption—in other words, by a purely biological life in which politics is revived only fleetingly in the rare revolutionary moments when citizens meet and talk?


Eleven campgrounds in Yellowstone National Park were studied to determine the geography of 10 spe- cific exotic plant species adjacent to campgrounds. Exotics were found in only 6 campgrounds. Six species were found at Mammoth campground, a low-elevation, dry site with year-round use. Only 2 species were found in the other 5 camp- grounds. Exotics decreased with distance from Mammoth campground out to 6 m and then increased, suggesting a spread in their distribution. Significant associations were found between exotic presence and both open and closed canopies and low levels of disturbance. Generally, exotics decreased with an increase in cover of other vegetation forms. Five species were found most frequently in big sagebrush habitat types.


Absbact-A new methodology for formal logic vedication of combinational circuits is presented. Specifically, a structural (logic network) approach is used, based on indirect implications derived by recursive learning. It is shown that implications can be used to capture similarity between designs. This is extended to formulate a hybrid approach, this structural (logic network) information is used to reduce the complexity of a subsequent functional method based on OBDD's. We demonstrate that OBDD-based verification can take great advantage of structural preprocessing in a synthesis environment where many small operations are performed that modify the circuit. The experimental results show that an effective combination can be achieved between memory efficient structural methods and powerful functional methods.


About the necessity and usefulness of developing a philosophy specific to the blockchain technology, emphasizing on the ontological aspects. After an Introduction that highlights the main philosophical directions for this emerging technology, in Blockchain Technology I explain the way the blockchain works, discussing ontological development directions of this technology in Designing and Modeling. The next section is dedicated to the main application of blockchain technology, Bitcoin, with the social implications of this cryptocurrency. There follows a section of Philosophy in which I identify the blockchain technology with the concept of heterotopia developed by Michel Foucault and I interpret it in the light of the notational technology developed by Nelson Goodman as a notational system. In the Ontology section, I present two developmental paths that I consider important: Narrative Ontology, based on the idea of order and structure of history transmitted through Paul Ricoeur's narrative history, and the Enterprise Ontology system based on concepts and models of an enterprise, specific to the semantic web, and which I consider to be the most well developed and which will probably become the formal ontological system, at least in terms of the economic and legal aspects of blockchain technology. In Conclusions I am talking about the future directions of developing the blockchain technology philosophy in general as an explanatory and robust theory from a phenomenologically consistent point of view, which allows testability and ontologies in particular, arguing for the need of a global adoption of an ontological system for develop cross-cutting solutions and to make this technology profitable.


Routine post surgery surveillance of total hip arthroplasty (THA) is widely recommended to identify asymptomatic failure but inclusion of an x-ray adds to service costs. Evidence is needed to support orthopaedic opinion in order to identify what should be included in surveillance. An investigation was conducted to establish whether an x-ray is needed in addition to patient reported outcome measures. One hundred and fifty-four THA had been assessed at 3 years and were reviewed again at 6 to 9 years (mid-term) when radiographic signs of deterioration commonly appear. Data were explored for associations between radiographic changes and changes in the participants' Oxford Hip Score, age, EuroQol 5-D score or comorbidities. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that the number of radiographic changes could not be predicted by any of the other variables. This supports the inclusion of an x-ray in THA surveillance and suggests that the state of the THA cannot be determined by the use of patient reported outcome measures alone. This has implications for future arthroplasty surveillance.


The 'Right to Request' initiative was introduced by the Labour Government in 2008 as a process through which NHS clinicians and managers working in England could seek to develop a social enterprise to deliver Community Health Services. Building on the experiences of the Social Enterprise Pathfinder Programme it addressed key barriers that had been identified such as NHS staff transferring their current pension entitlements and security over the initial contract lengths. It also provided access to the Social Enterprise Investment Fund which could be used to support staff groups in completing their business cases and bringing in external consultancy and support. The Coalition Government continued the scheme, and it is estimated that approximately 10% of the community health services currently provided by Primary Care Trusts are in the process of completing their business cases or have already launched as social enterprises. The University of Birmingham have been supporting managers and clinicians within the West Midlands who are seeking to develop a social enterprise. In this paper we reflect on their experiences and the response of the local health systems in which they work. We identify that there have been a number of barriers to staff who were keen to pursue this option, and make recommendations for what could be done to encourage and support NHS staff to set up social enterprises in the future. The findings and recommendations are also of relevance for other parts of the public sector in which a 'right of challenge' is being introduced.


Criminology, forensic science and policing scholars have a significant role to play in exploring new developments and directions in modern policing. Yet while the concept of forensic intelligence has caught the attention of a number of policing agencies around the world, it has yet to become a mainstream undertaking. In part this is an artefact of a pragmatic policing culture that only institutes new practices based on demonstrable, research and practice-based effectiveness. Here, we seek to draw attention to efforts in the scholarly community to accumulate a body of evidence on the efficacy of forensic intelligence. The article describes the international landscape of research pertaining to the development of forensic intelligence. We outline the key use of digitised, triangulated data on biometrics, scene of crime and illicit substances. In doing so, we draw attention to the challenges remaining for scholars and professionals to further understand and advance the use of forensic intelligence in mainstream policing.


While in standard housing economics housing is regarded as an asset and a consumption good, we study in this paper the consequences for housing prices if housing is also a status good. More concretely, if a family's housing wealth relative to others is an important marker for relative status in the marriage market, then competition for marriage partners might motivate people to pursue a bigger and more expensive house/apartment beyond its direct consumption (and financial investment) value. To test the empirical validity of the hypothesis, we have to overcome the usual difficulty of not being able to observe the intensity of status competition. Our innovation is to explore regional variations in the sex ratio for the pre-marital age cohort across China, which likely has triggered variations in the intensity of competition in the marriage market. The empirical evidence appears to support this hypothesis. We estimate that due to the status good feature of housing, a rise in the sex ratio accounts for 30-48% of the rise in real urban housing prices in China during 2003-2009.


In the sixteenth century, the vast and sophisticated empire of China lay almost entirely unknown to Western travellers. As global trade expanded, this land of reputedly boundless wealth, pale-faced women, and indecipherable tongues began to feed the fantasies of European merchants and adventurers. The Catholic Church, meanwhile, saw in this great people millions of souls who would be damned unless the Christian message could be brought to them. In this book, Mary Laven tells the extraordinary story of the first Jesuit mission to China. Confronting enormous challenges, the Italian priest Matteo Ricci and a tiny handful of learned companions gained permission from the notoriously xenophobic Wanli emperor to settle in the fabled Forbidden City. Living among eunuchs and mandarins, wearing the clothes of Confucian scholars, Ricci and his associates strove to master the language and culture of their hosts. At the same time, they energetically preached the virtues of Western art and science. In "Mission to China" Mary Laven brings this remote world vividly to life.


It is shown that a smooth global deformation of quartic double solids, i.e. double covers of $\mathbb P^3$ branched along smooth quartics, is again a quartic double solid without assuming the projectivity of the global deformation. The analogous result for smooth intersections of two quadrics in $\mathbb P^ 5$ is also shown, which is, however, much easier.
In a weak form this extends results of J. Koll\'ar and I. Nakamura on Moishezon manifolds that are homeomorphic to certain Fano threefolds and it gives some further evidence for the question whether global deformations of Fano manifolds of Picard rank $1$ are Fano themselves.


American folklife is steeped in world cultures, or invented as new culture, always evolving, yet often practiced as it was created many years or even centuries ago. This fascinating encyclopedia explores the rich and varied cultural traditions of folklife in America - from barn raisings to the Internet, tattoos, and Zydeco - through expressions that include ritual, custom, crafts, architecture, food, clothing, and art. Featuring more than 350 A-Z entries, "Encyclopedia of American Folklife" is wide-ranging and inclusive. Entries cover major cities and urban centers new and established immigrant groups as well as native Americans American territories, such as Guam and Samoa major issues, such as education and intellectual property and expressions of material culture, such as homes, dress, food, and crafts. This encyclopedia covers notable folklife areas as well as general regional categories. It addresses religious groups (reflecting diversity within groups such as the Amish and the Jews), age groups (both old age and youth gangs), and contemporary folk groups (skateboarders and psychobillies) - placing all of them in the vivid tapestry of folklife in America. In addition, this resource offers useful insights on folklife concepts through entries such as "community and group" and "tradition and culture." The set also features complete indexes in each volume, as well as a bibliography for further research.


Background: Clinical management guidelines (CMGs) can be useful tools to guide clinician's decision making and enable consistent evidence-based high-quality care. Here, we assessed whether their objective quality has improved over time by considering CMGs for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and from different timepoints for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Methods: We performed a rapid literature review, quality assessment and focus group consultation. The Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE-II) tool was used to evaluate the quality of the CMGs. In total, six COVID-19 treatments were selected to assess the responsiveness of a subset of guidelines and their updates to 20th November 2020. We ran two sessions of focus groups with patient advocates to elicit their views on guideline development. Results: We included 37 COVID-19, six SARS, and four MERS CMGs. Evidence appraisals in CMGs generally focused on novel drugs rather than basic supportive care; where evidence for the latter was provided it was generally of a low quality. Most CMGs had major methodological flaws and there was no evidence of improvement in quality over time. CMGs scored lowest in the following AGREE-II domains: scope and purpose, editorial independence, stakeholder engagement, and rigour of development. Of the COVID-19 CMGs, only eight included specific guidance for the management of elderly patients and only ten for high-risk groups; a further eight did not specify the target patient group. Early in the pandemic, multiple guidelines recommended unproven treatments and whilst in general findings of major clinical trials were eventually adopted, this was not universally the case. Conclusions: The quality of most CMGs produced in coronaviridae outbreaks is poor and we have found limited evidence of improvement over time, highlighting that current development frameworks must be improved. PROSPERO registration: CRD42020167361 (17/02/2020)


SummarySeveral Ascosphaera species were tested for their pathogenicity for larvae of the alfalfa leafcutting bee, Megachile rotundata. Larvae were reared aseptically on a sterile pollen-based diet and inoculated at 6 days of age with spores of the fungi. A. aggregata caused the distinctive syndrome called 'chalk brood'. Both A. apis and A. proliperda were pathogenic for larvae and produced syndromes similar to chalk brood in Apis mellifera. Chalk brood in M. rotundata was characterized by colour changes and sporulation of A. aggregala beneath the host cuticle. A. apis and A. proliperda caused no colour changes in infected larvae; white mycelia erupted through the cuticle before sporulation occurred. A. atra and A. major grew saprophytically on provisions of leafcutting-bee cells and did not cause larval disease. Spores taken from larvae killed by A. apis or A. proliperda grew less readily on the pollen diet, and appeared to be more virulent, than spores taken from subcultures.


Objective:To assess the relationship between platelet counts and risk of AIDS and non-AIDS-defining events. Design:Prospective cohort. Methods:EuroSIDA patients with at least one platelet count were followed from baseline (first platelet ≥ 1 January 2005) until last visit or death. Multivariate Poisson regression was used to assess the relationship between current platelet counts and the incidence of non-AIDS-defining (pancreatitis, end-stage liver/renal disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease) and AIDS-defining events. Results:There were 62 898 person-years of follow-up (PYFU) among 12 279 patients, including 1168 non-AIDS-defining events [crude incidence 18.6/1000 PYFU, 95% confidence interval (CI) 17.5–19.6] and 735 AIDS-defining events (crude incidence 11.7/1000 PYFU, 95% CI 10.8–12.5). Patients with thrombocytopenia (platelet count ⩽100 × 109/l) had a slightly increased incidence of AIDS-defining events [adjusted incidence rate ratio (aIRR) 1.42, 95% CI 1.07–1.86], when compared to those with platelet counts 101–200 × 109/l, whereas the incidence of non-AIDS-defining events was more than two-fold higher (aIRR 2.66, 95% CI 2.17–3.26). Among non-AIDS-defining events, the adjusted incidence of cancer (aIRR 2.20, 95% CI 1.61–3.01), but not cardiovascular disease (aIRR 0.66, 95% CI 0.32–1.34), was significantly higher in patients with thrombocytopenia. The association between thrombocytopenia and cancer remained unaltered in sensitivity analyses requiring repeated platelet counts to confirm thrombocytopenia and lagging platelets by 1 year prior to clinical events. Conclusion:Patients with thrombocytopenia had increased incidence of AIDS-defining and non-AIDS-defining events, but the association with the latter, in particular cancer, was stronger. Future studies should investigate whether the pathophysiological processes underlying thrombocytopenia are associated with the development of cancer during treated HIV disease.


By Yngve Troye NordkvelleEditorThis issue of Seminar.net offers four different experiences on how students can gain from using educational technologies. In the article "Adopting digital skills in an international project in teacher education", associate professor Hugo Nordseth of Nord-Trøndelag University College present the aims of a project aimed at making students in teacher training able to collaborate across national borders and contexts. The project demonstrates the feasibility of training students to use new technologies that offer opportunities for learning. Nordseth emphasizes the importance of proper training in the selected tools.Professor Ragnhild Nilsen, of the University of Tromsø, presents her article "Digital Network as a Learning Tool for Health Sciences Students", as an example from studies in health. She presents how an online learning module for health sciences students with different educational backgrounds was implemented at the University of Tromsø (UiT). The intention was to improve communication and cooperation abilities across professional boundaries. The purpose of this article is to examine how participation in a joint, web-based course can be a didactic tool that helps health sciences students learn from one another by means of collaboration. Yvonne Fritze and Yngve Troye Nordkvelle, both editors of the journal present their article "Online dating and education". The research was carried out in their home institution, Lillehammer University College.Taking its inspiration from Luhmann's communication theory, this article looks at online dating from the perspective of teaching and education. The findings of this project indicate that students do use netdating as an experience and that quite a few of them find this valuable for their own communicative skills. The article explores those features of online dating characteristic of distance dialogue, and discusses the extent to which these can be transferred to communication in the teaching context. The article was first presented in a book published in Danish (Michael Paulsen & Lars Qvortrup (ed.) (2007) Luhmann og dannelse, København: Unge Pædagoger). This version provides extended discussions of the implications for flexible education. In the final article, with the title "Developing Contextual Knowledge Arenas in the Global Classroom", associate professor Siv Oltedal of Nordland University, discuss challenges in the development of contextual knowledge arenas by focusing on how the contextual perspective is brought into a masters program in social work. She explores the development of different knowledge areas and how they offer different learning opportunities for a group of international students.


In this paper we consider a single-product single-machine manufacturing system, with the machine characterized by multiple working modes. A cost is associated both with inventory surplus and demand backlog and the policy which minimizes the overall long-run expected cost, which based on previous work in literature is known to be a multiple hedging point policy, is analyzed. This paper derives a condition on system parameters for the optimality of just-in-time (JIT) policies and investigates the dependence of hedging points on the ratio among inventory surplus and backlog cost parameters. Some numerical examples are included to illustrate the effectiveness of the achieved results.


The structural determinations of basaltic glass under pressure were conducted. The obtained structure factor, S(Q) indicates that the position of the first sharp diffraction peak (FSDP) shifts to higher–Q region with increasing pressure up to 6 GPa. This result indicates the intermediate–range order structure of glass becomes compact. The radial distribution function, RDF shows the shrinkage of the average T–T length with increasing pressure, but indicates no detectable change of the average T–O length (T = Si4+ and Al3+) and its coordination. This result implies that the positional shift of the FSDP is attributed to the polymerization of TO4 tetrahedra to form ...–T–O–T–... linkage, with the concomitant narrowing of the mean T–O–T angle. The RDF also shows that the distances of Fe(Mg)–O extend due to the changes in the structural roles of Fe and Mg from the network modifiers to the charge–balancing cations. The structural data of the recovered condition imply that the tetrahedral networks of the present glass is permanently polymerized and densified after compression. On the other hand, the network modifier cations undergo both contraction and relaxation processes.


We report prototype development and testing of a new mobile-phone-based brain-muscle-computer interface for severely paralyzed persons, based on previous results from our group showing that humans may actively create specified power levels in two separate frequency bands of a single surface electromyography (sEMG) signal. EMG activity on the surface of a single face muscle site (auricularis superior) is recorded with a standard electrode. This analog electrical signal is imported into an Android-based mobile phone and digitized via an internal A/D converter. The digital signal is split, and then simultaneously filtered with two band-pass filters to extract total power within two separate frequency bands. The user-modulated power in each frequency band serves as two separate control channels for machine control. After signal processing, the Android phone sends commands to external devices via a Bluetooth interface. Users are trained to use the device via visually based operant conditioning, with simple cursor-to-target activities on the phone screen. The mobile-phone prototype interface is formally evaluated on a single advanced Spinal Muscle Atrophy subject, who has successfully used the interface in his home in evaluation trials and for remote control of a television. Development of this new device will not only guide future interface design for community use, but will also serve as an information technology bridge for in situ data collection to quantify human sEMG manipulation abilities for a relevant population.


A compact two-mode (de)multiplexer (TM-MUX) based on Si nanowire for mode-division multiplexing is designed. The TM-MUX is composed of two multimode interference (MMI) waveguides and a butterfly-shape tapered phase shifter between two MMI waveguides. Numerical simulations show that the designed device is compact compared with conventional-mode (de)multiplexer and operates as a TM-MUX in the whole C-band. In addition, we show that the designed TM-MUX has relatively good fabrication tolerance.


This chapter focuses on face-to-face advice provided to two Chinese male migrants to facilitate the transition from an educational to a workplace context. The migrants are completing a course aimed at helping them develop sociopragmatic competence in New Zealand English and as part of this course undertake workplace internships. We examine how their workplace mentors advise them during the internships, and the ways in which the migrants respond. The advice is given explicitly and directly, although the discourse also provides considerable evidence of attention to relational aspects of interaction. Overall, the analysis suggests that advice-giving interactions are experienced positively by the skilled migrants in our data, and that they contribute to easing their transition to employment in New Zealand organisations.