In wireless networks, transmissions must be scheduled to opportunistically exploit the time-varying capacity of the wireless channels to achieve maximum throughput. These opportunistic policies require global knowledge of the current network state to schedule transmissions efficiently; however, providing a controller with complete channel state information (CSI) requires significant bandwidth. In this thesis, we investigate the impact of control information on the ability to effectively schedule transmissions. In particular, we study the tradeoff between the availability and accuracy of CSI at the scheduler and the attainable throughput. Moreover, we investigate strategies for controlling the network with limited CSI. In the first half of the thesis, we consider a multi-channel communication system in which the transmitter chooses one of M channels over which to transmit. We model the channel state using an ON/OFF Markov process. First, we consider channel probing policies, in which the transmitter probes a channel to learn its state, and uses the CSI obtained from channel probes to make a scheduling decision. We investigate the optimal channel probing strategies and characterize the tradeoff between probing frequency and throughput. Furthermore, we characterize a fundamental limit on the rate at which CSI must be conveyed to the transmitter in order to meet a constraint on expected throughput. In particular, we develop a novel formulation of the opportunistic scheduling problem as a causal rate distortion optimization of a Markov source. The second half of this thesis considers scheduling policies under delayed CSI, resulting from the transmission and propagation delays inherent in conveying CSI across the network. By accounting for these delays as they relate to the network topology, we revisit the comparison between centralized and distributed scheduling, showing that there exist conditions under which distributed scheduling outperforms the optimal centralized policy. Additionally, we illustrate that the location of a centralized controller impacts the achievable throughput. We propose a dynamic controller placement framework, in which the controller is repositioned using delayed queue length information (QLI). We characterize the throughput region under all such policies, and propose a throughput-optimal joint controller placement and scheduling policy using 3 delayed CSI and QLI. Thesis Supervisor: Eytan H. Modiano Title: Professor


Knowledge Management (KM) is of growing interest in today's business and academic community. The increase in the number of books, articles and papers written reflects practitioners and academics alike trying to improve theories and concepts put forth by their peers to further support KM practice. This paper contributes to the stream of research on KM systems by proposing a KM environment to facilitate the knowledge evolution cycle. Guided by well-reviewed KM activities and the role of information technology and communication in strategically supporting knowledge processes, we have developed a KM system called KMsharer. The system consists of three major components: the XML editor, the KM tools and the WebShare server. The KMsharer uses an innovative XML knowledge-based schema for document conversion and storage has demonstrated to have better searching/accessing performance than the documents stored in common Word and XML formats. The KMsharer indeed is a powerful and useful tool for all personnel to access, create and store information in order to enhance knowledge sharing, collaboration and expedite decision-making strategically.


Wound is a common injury due to internal and or external factors, which are subsequently associated with many immunological events, including necrosis, inflammation, etc. Significant amounts of tissue damage and infection are two silent features of wound along with other co-morbidities. Wound healing is a complex process where immunohistochemistry, tissue regeneration, and remodeling are predominant events. Since early human life, there are many traditional procedures are in use to treat wounds of various kind. However, the modern medical practices are rapidly growing in wound healing, traditional herbal medicine and use of medicinal plant products are showing equal ability and drawing the attention of medical practitioners. Herbal/traditional medicine is one of the oldest procedures in countries like India and China. In recent days, it has become reliable option in developed nations such as USA, UK, and other European nations for treatment of many deadly diseases including cancer. India is one of the biggest biodiversity reservoirs in the world with vast range of plant species and high access to the ancient medical practices. According to the WHO data and available sources, there more than 80% world population depends on herbal medical products. This indicates that despite the lack of clinical and scientific evidences, the herbal or traditional market is growing at rapid pace. In this literature review, we presented the role of herbal medicine in wound healing, some of the common medicinal plants, the quality, safety, and efficacy concerns of herbal medical products.


To assess the total human-health and material-damage risks associated with air-pollutant exposure, the concentrations and fates of pollutants in indoor atmospheres must be understood. Three observations reinforce this point: (1) concentrations of many pollutants are commonly higher in indoor air than in outdoor air, (2) in many countries, people spend more time indoors than outside; and (3) many of the most precious material possessions of society are kept indoors. In this thesis, mathematical models are developed as tools to improve the understanding of pollutant dynamics in indoor air. These tools are applied to the problem of protecting works of art from damage due to air pollutant exposure, particularly for the purpose of understanding how to control soiling due to airborne particle deposition.

A deterministic mathematical model first is formulated to describe the time-dependent concentrations of chemically reactive gases and airborne particles in indoor air, then implemented as a computer program. Using a flexible, multichamber description of a building, the model accounts for the effects of ventilation, filtration, deposition onto surfaces, and direct emission for all pollutants. In addition, the influence of homogeneous photolytic and thermal chemical reactions is computed for gases that are present in the photochemical smog system. The model is capable of determining the chemical composition and size distribution of indoor aerosols, accounting for the effect of coagulation in addition to the processes itemized above. The model computes the fate of pollutants in indoor air, determining the absolute strengths of the sources and sinks for each species.

To permit the simulation of soiling problems, modeling calculations for the deposition of particles and other pollutants onto surfaces are particularly detailed. Equations that predict the rate of pollutant deposition onto indoor surfaces are developed, accounting for the effects of advection, diffusion, and, for particles, gravitational settling and thermophoresis. Three air flow regimes are analyzed: natural convection induced by a temperature difference between the surface and the nearby air, forced laminar flow parallel to a surface, and homogeneous turbulence in the core of the room. The analysis of a vertical isothermal flat plate in natural convection flow shows that, for this flow regime, thermophoresis is an important particle transport process within the boundary layer adjacent to the surface, effectively repelling particles larger than approximately 0.1 µm in diameter if the surface is even a few degrees K warmer than the nearby air.

To test model performance, and to investigate the dynamic behavior of indoor pollutants, the model is applied to several indoor air quality problems. In one case, modeling predictions are made of pollutant concentrations in a museum gallery in Southern California into which photochemical smog is introduced by the ventilation system. Good agreement is obtained between measured and modeled concentrations of NO, NO[2] and O[3]. The model predicts substantial production of several species, including HNO[2], HNO[3], NO[3], and N[2]O[5], due to chemical reaction within the museum atmosphere. The aerosol mechanics aspects are tested by applying the model to the problem of predicting the evolution of the aerosol size distribution following combustion of a cigarette in a single room having a low air-exchange rate, and good agreement is found between model predictions and measured values.

The completed indoor air quality model next is used to evaluate the soiling hazard to art objects in museums resulting from the deposition of particles containing elemental carbon (soot) or soil dust. Time-resolved measurements of the indoor and outdoor aerosol size distribution in three Southern California museums are reported. Model predictions of indoor aerosol characteristics based on measured outdoor aerosol characteristics and data on building dynamics agree well with measurements. The predictions also show that generally less than 1% of the fine particles (0.05-2 µm in diameter) entering the museums deposit onto the walls. Nevertheless, deposition calculations indicate that, at the rates determined for the study days, elemental carbon (soot) particles would accumulate on vertical surfaces in the museums at a rate sufficient to yield perceptible soiling in characteristic times of 1-40 years, depending on the museum studied. These are very short periods, considering that many art objects are to be preserved indefinitely.

To test the accuracy of the particle deposition calculations, model predictions are made of the annual mean deposition velocity of particles onto the walls of five Southern California museums, using the results of short-term monitoring of near-wall air velocities and long-term monitoring of surface-air temperature differences. The predictions are compared against the results of measurements in these museums of the deposition velocities of sulfates and of fine particles. The modeling and measurement results generally concur, revealing that the deposition velocities for a given particle size vary by a factor of as much as 30 among the sites studied, with the lowest values associated with laminar forced flow adjacent to the building walls, and highest values found in museums where deposition is driven by turbulence in the core of the room.

Methods for reducing the soiling rate of objects displayed in museums are identified and include the following: (1) reducing the rate of supply of outdoor air into the building; (2) increasing the effectiveness of particle filtration; (3) altering the air flow conditions within the building to reduce the particle deposition velocity onto surfaces of concern; (4) placing objects within display cases or framing objects behind glass; (5) managing the building site to achieve low outdoor concentrations; and (6) eliminating indoor particle sources. The mathematical model of indoor aerosol dynamics is combined with experimental data collected at an historic museum in Southern California to determine the potential effectiveness of these control measures. According to model results, with careful design of control measures the soiling rate can be reduced by at least two orders of magnitude, thereby extending to periods of a century or more the time before noticeable soiling will occur.


It is difficult to avoid politics. The news headlines which interrupt our favourite
television programs and the news banners which scroll across the most popular
websites are filled with stories of wars, government failures and corruption. While
we are all aware of politics, increasingly, as a society, we are sceptical about
politics and uninterested in the activities of our governments and leaders. Given
such views, few were surprised when a recent opinion poll found that only 9% of
Australians regarded federal politicians as having 'very high standards of honesty
and ethics'. Such findings are not unique to Australia as
international surveys reveal similar trends and voter participation rates (voting is
voluntary in most countries) have been declining across the Western world. Such responses might be a natural reaction to the sensationalist coverage
which dominates the popular press, but the fact remains that politics will always be
an essential feature of modern life because we need civilised ways of resolving the
disagreements that inevitably arise in any society. In short, politics is fundamental
for social stability and economic development because we need agreed procedures
for making decisions and resolving conflicts in an efficient and legitimate manner.


Abstract. A new method for calculating the altitude UV dependence is proposed for different types of biologically active UV radiation (erythemally weighted, vitamin-D-weighted and cataract-weighted types). We show that for the specified groups of parameters the altitude UV amplification (AUV) can be presented as a composite of independent contributions of UV amplification from different factors within a wide range of their changes with mean uncertainty of 1 % and standard deviation of 3 % compared with the exact model simulations with the same input parameters. The parameterization takes into account for the altitude dependence of molecular number density, ozone content, aerosol and spatial surface albedo. We also provide generalized altitude dependencies of the parameters for evaluating the AUV. The resulting comparison of the altitude UV effects using the proposed method shows a good agreement with the accurate 8-stream DISORT model simulations with correlation coefficient r  >  0.996. A satisfactory agreement was also obtained with the experimental UV data in mountain regions. Using this parameterization we analyzed the role of different geophysical parameters in UV variations with altitude. The decrease in molecular number density, especially at high altitudes, and the increase in surface albedo play the most significant role in the UV growth. Typical aerosol and ozone altitude UV effects do not exceed 10–20 %. Using the proposed parameterization implemented in the on-line UV tool ( http://momsu.ru/uv/ ) for Northern Eurasia over the PEEX domain we analyzed the altitude UV increase and its possible effects on human health considering different skin types and various open body fraction for January and April conditions in the Alpine region.


PURPOSE
This study aimed not only to describe the development and implementation of the module but also to evaluate the nursing students' perceptions.

DESIGN AND METHODS
A cross-sectional design including 101 students who were asked to participate and answer a survey. We describe the development of the pedagogic module Students Active Learning via Internet Observations based on situated learning.

FINDINGS
The findings show that learning about service users' own lived experiences via web-based platforms was instructive according to the students: 81% agreed to a high or very high degree. Another important finding was that 96% of students responded that the module had clinical relevance for nursing work.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS
We argue that learning that engages students with data that are contextually and culturally situated is important for developing competence in caregiving.


The highest unemployment rates recorded in South Africa since 2003 were announced in November 2016. Youth unemployment is still higher than the national average, adding to the conundrum. Government officials have long been mentioning entrepreneurship education as a potential contributor to addressing this challenge, but it seems like progress is slow. One instrument that could contribute to addressing youth unemployment is the national school curriculum, in the form of entrepreneurship education. The South African school curriculum has, however, undergone several changes in recent years and up-to-date analysis of the current curriculum is scarce. As no distinct entrepreneurship subject exists in the curriculum, a scaffold qualitative document analysis was launched to investigate how and to what extent entrepreneurship education is included in the intended high school curriculum of South Africa. Based on the findings and conclusions of the research, recommendations were made to improve the potential of the current high school curriculum to contribute to youth entrepreneurship education. These recommendations will be presented to authorities in the Department of Basic Education for consideration in subsequent curriculum upgrades, to bolster entrepreneurship education as part of formal schooling in South Africa.


Using the eye-movement monitoring technique, the present study examined whether wh-dependency formation is sensitive to island constraints in second language (L2) sentence comprehension, and whether the presence of an intervening relative clause island has any effects on learners' ability to ultimately resolve long wh-dependencies. Participants included proficient learners of L2 English from typologically different language backgrounds (German, Chinese), as well as a group of native English-speaking controls. Our results indicate that both the learners and the native speakers were sensitive to relative clause islands during processing, irrespective of typological differences between the learners' L1s, but that the learners had more difficulty than native speakers linking distant wh-fillers to their lexical subcategorizers during processing. We provide a unified processing-based account for our findings.


Evolving systems rely on the storage and replication of genetic information. Here we present an autonomous, purely thermally driven replication mechanism. A pool of hairpin molecules, derived from transfer RNA replicates the succession of a two-letter code. Energy is first stored thermally in metastable hairpins. Thereafter, energy is released by a highly specific and exponential replication with a duplication time of 30 s, which is much faster than the tendency to produce false positives in the absence of template. Our experiments propose a physical rather than a chemical scenario for the autonomous replication of protein encoding information in a disequilibrium setting.


We compute the limit distribution for the (centered and scaled) length of the longest increasing subsequence of random colored permutations. The limit distribution function is a power of that for usual random permutations computed recently by Baik, Deift, and Johansson (math.CO/9810105). In the two–colored case our method provides a different proof of a similar result by Tracy and Widom about the longest increasing subsequences of signed permutations (math.CO/9811154). Our main idea is to reduce the 'colored' problem to the case of usual random permutations using certain combinatorial results and elementary probabilistic arguments.


Abstract An intergenerational justice perspective requires that we look at the condition of the existing generation of children and those to be born in the future. Many millions of the existing generation of children are now in trouble and at high risk of never fulfilling their human potential. These children are in turn unlikely, if they live to produce children, to be capable of providing the nurturing parenting that the next generation will need. The article's starting premises are that we should count child interests as of equivalent value to adult interests and that we do owe justice not just to the existing generation of children but to the next generations as well. Justice to the next generations means encouraging the creation of children who will have a good chance to enjoy the pleasures of life, children who will be born healthy and will be brought up by nurturing parents. Given these premises, there is much wrong with current reality and related policy. We now encourage the reproduction of more children than we can care for, provide limited child welfare enabling poor parents to better care for their children, and discourage adoption both domestic and international. We should reverse these policies. We should change the pronatalist and anti-contraception policies that encourage the reproduction of children who won't likely be born healthy or receive nurturing care. We should provide child welfare so that poor parents who want to keep and raise their children can do so. We should encourage adoption, both domestic and international.


Background The effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on physical activity and sleep patterns in individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) remain unclear. Method We examined the effects of rTMS treatment on the rest–activity cycle and sleep disturbances in MDD. In this open-label pilot study, 14 patients with medication-resistant MDD underwent 10 rTMS sessions over the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. In addition to Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scores, waist actigraphy was used to evaluate alterations in the rest–activity cycle over the course of rTMS treatments. Actigraphic data were evaluated at baseline and in the first (rTMS sessions 1–3), second (rTMS sessions 4–7), and third (rTMS sessions 8–10) sections. Results Although Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scores were significantly improved by rTMS, sleep variables assessed by actigraphy did not show significant changes. However, post hoc tests indicated a significant increase in mean steps per day between the baseline and first section time points (P = 0.014; t13 = −2.316). Conclusions Our data indicated that a daytime physical activity response to rTMS occurred in early sessions, whereas subjective symptom improvements were consistent across all sessions. Future double-blind placebo-controlled studies assessing the effects of rTMS on the rest–activity cycle and sleep disturbances in MDD are warranted.


1. Based on surface temperature, steady-state rates of evaporation of the mantle of inactive Otala lactea are very low even down to 1.5% relative humidity. 2. Mantle permeability is 0.016 mg/cm 2 /h per mmHg vapour pressure difference. 3. Marked peaks in surface temperature following humidity change are interpreted as net gain or loss of water to the mantle. 4. Smaller flucations in surface temperature are interpreted as limited mucusgland activity. 5. The existence of a superficial hygroscopic layer overlying an impermeable barrier in the mantle is discussed.


We describe methods for analyzing and visualizing document metadata to provide insights about collaborations over time. We investigate the use of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) based topic modeling to compute areas of interest on which people collaborate. The topics are represented in a node-link force directed graph by persistent fixed nodes laid out with multidimensional scaling (MDS), and the people by transient movable nodes. The topics are also analyzed to detect bursts to highlight "hot" topics during a time interval. As the user manipulates a time interval slider, the people nodes and links are dynamically updated. We evaluate the results of LDA topic modeling for the visualization by comparing topic keywords against the submitted keywords from the InfoVis 2004 Contest, and we found that the additional terms provided by LDA-based keyword sets result in improved similarity between a topic keyword set and the documents in a corpus. We extended the InfoVis dataset from 8 to 20 years and collected publication metadata from our lab over a period of 21 years, and created interactive visualizations for exploring these larger datasets.


This qualitative ethnographic research is focused on Jewish Iranians currently living in Iran. I examine the vital role of gender, ethnicity, religion, class, family, and community in daily social and cultural practices among middle-class Judeo-Persians living in Tehran. This research promotes cultural awareness and examines the continuing presence of Jewish Iranians in the cultural and social landscape of contemporary Iran. In addition, I explore how the lives of Tehrani urban upper- and middle-class Jewish women have changed, addressing social demographic, structural, and cultural factors that impact their experiences as an ethnoreligious minority both during the Pahlavi era and in the current context of the Islamic Republic.


Context: Obesity is considered as one of the risk indicators of periodontal diseases. Resistin could be one such marker that could provide a link among the periodontitis-obesity. Aims: The aim of this study was to corelate the serum and saliva resistin levels and its association in obese individuals with chronic periodontitis. Settings and Design: A cross-sectional study was done to co-relate the serum and saliva resistin levels and its association in obese individuals with chronic periodontitis. Subjects and Methods: Participants were divided into Group I comprising 15 obese individuals with healthy gingiva (control group) and Group II comprising 15 obese individuals with chronic moderate periodontitis (periodontitis group).Gingival index, clinical attachment level and body mass index were determined. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay test was used to determine the level of resistin in both serum and saliva. Statistical Analysis Used: To study the difference in the levels of resistin between two groups in terms of saliva and serum, independent sample t-test was used. Results: The highest resistin levels were seen in the serum and saliva of Group II. Correlation of serum resistin concentration with salivary resistin concentration was positive among both the groups. A positive corelation was observed between resistin and clinical parameters and was statistically significant. Conclusion: Thus, resistin can be considered as a potential mediator linking obesity and periodontal disease. Hence, it can be concluded that resistin probably may bear similar features of a proinflammatory cytokine and could play a role in inflammatory diseases like periodontitis.


Digital photography can be invaluable in visually oriented medical practice. Providing a visual record, digital photographs aid diagnosis, monitor change and quantify response to therapy. Incorporating digital photography into general practice is growing easier. Widespread ownership of smartphones with inbuilt cameras has stimulated this practice. Smartphone cameras are simple and familiar to use, capture high resolution images that enhance the medical record, expedite advice and, ultimately, can improve patient care.

The development and use of the smartphone is part of a broad wave of accelerated technological change. That change, the information revolution of the last 30 years, has enabled the collection and dissemination of that information on a scale previously unimaginable. It has also changed how Australians treat personal privacy. Personal information can be instantaneously shared, with or without consent, with friends and strangers. Expectations of privacy in younger generations may have dropped, but for many Australians, protection of privacy has become more urgent.

In response, Australia has tried to unify its legal and regulatory approaches to privacy protection through recent amendments to the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). The Australian Privacy Principles were introduced to clarify and govern how personal information, such as healthcare information, can be collected, used and disclosed. The central role of the doctor in the collection and use of healthcare information required specific guidance for the profession. This was achieved through the professional Code of Conduct regulated by the Australian Medical Board.

Despite these legislative and regulatory changes there appears to be a divergence between practitioners' conduct and their legal and professional obligations when using clinical photography in their healthcare practice. Are doctors aware of the requirements of consent, use and disclosure, and storage security, as they apply to clinical photography? The relevant literature suggested they are not. To explore how technology has impacted privacy this paper examines how the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) affects digital photography used in the clinical management of skin conditions. The paper will describe how well-delineated boundaries of clinical information sharing are blurred in practice, if not in law. It seeks to address the reasons for the apparent knowledge deficit of privacy obligations amongst practitioners.

Doctors looking to understand their privacy obligations will find it difficult; inconsistencies between laws and regulations making the regime challenging to traverse. This paper proposes possible solutions to raising awareness, promoting safer practices and can help mitigate privacy risks. Compliant use of digital photography is a value clinical tool which can facilitate patient care, while not endangering patient privacy.


Syrian immigrant Khadra Shamy is growing up in a devout, tightly knit Muslim family in 1970s Indiana, at the crossroads of bad polyester and Islamic dress codes. Along with her brother Eyad and her African-American friends, Hakim and Hanifa, she bikes the Indianapolis streets exploring the fault-lines between "Muslim" and "American." When her picture-perfect marriage goes sour, Khadra flees to Syria and learns how to pray again. On returning to America she works in an eastern state -- taking care to stay away from Indiana, where the murder of her friend Tayiba's sister by Klan violence years before still haunts her. But when her job sends her to cover a national Islamic conference in Indianapolis, she's back on familiar ground: Attending a concert by her brother's interfaith band The Clash of Civilizations, dodging questions from the "aunties" and "uncles," and running into the recently divorced Hakim everywhere. Beautifully written and featuring an exuberant cast of characters, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf charts the spiritual and social landscape of Muslims in middle America, from five daily prayers to the Indy 500 car race. It is a riveting debut from an important new voice.


Recent studies have shown that the Antarctic cryosphere is sensitive to external disturbances such as tidal stresses or dynamic stresses from remote large earthquakes. In this study, we systematically examine evidence of remotely triggered microseismicity around Mount (Mt.) Erebus, an active high elevation stratovolcano located on Ross Island, Antarctica. We detect microearthquakes recorded by multiple stations from the Mt. Erebus Volcano Observatory Seismic Network one day before and after 43 large teleseismic earthquakes, and find that seven large earthquakes (including the 2010 Mw 8.8 Maule, Chile, and 2012 Mw 8.6 Indian Ocean events) triggered local seismicity on the volcano, with most triggered events occurring during the passage of the shorter-period Rayleigh waves. In addition, their waveforms and locations for the triggered events are different when comparing with seismic events arising from the persistent small-scale eruptions, but similar to other detected events before and after the mainshocks. Based on the waveform characteristics and their locations, we infer that these triggered events are likely shallow icequakes triggered by dilatational stress perturbations from teleseismic surface waves. We show that teleseismic earthquakes with higher peak dynamic stress changes are more capable of triggering icequakes at Mt. Erebus. We also find that the icequakes in this study are more likely to be triggered during the austral summer months. Our study motivates the continued monitoring of Mount Erebus with dense seismic instrumentation to better understand interactions between dynamic seismic triggering, crospheric processes, and volcanic activity.


Introduction: The long forehead gives a less harmonious appearance, seems disproportionate and characterizes the aging face. Surgical procedures for frontal reduction with precapillary incision present insightful information and provide harmonious and pleasant restoration of the frontal region. This study evaluated results obtained in patients who underwent frontal reduction using precapillary incision at Daher Hospital plastic surgery service within the last ten years. Methods: This was a retrospective longitudinal study. The surgical technique entailed a careful dissection of the bilateral supraorbital ridge. The scalp was dissected in the parietoccipital region in order to easily move forward the flap. The vigorous hemostasis and resection of excessive flap were performed. In the end, synthesis of plans were performed. Results: The age of patients ranged from 48 to 76 years, the mean age was 58 years. Mean surgical time was 3 hours and 38 minutes. No complications were seen such as hematoma, flap necrosis, supratrochlear nerve injury, alopecia, infections, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism and/or dehiscence. Four patients (7%) had seroma that was drained. The symmetric of eyebrows and scars positioning was considered satisfactory in both assessment by patients and the technical evaluator. Conclusion: The aesthetic results in patients who underwent frontal reduction by precapillary incision were satisfactory. The choice of the ideal patient was crucial for success of the surgery. ■ ABSTRACT


Written over a thirty-five year career, the essays in Civilizing the Museum introduce students to the powerful, sometimes contested, and often unrealized notion that museums should welcome all because they house the collective memory of all. Drawing on her experience working in and with museums in the US and throughout the world, Author Elaine Heumann Gurian explores the possibilities for making museums more central and relevant to society. The twenty-two essays are organized around five main themes: * museum definitions * civic responsibility and social service * architectural spaces * exhibitions * spirituality and rationality. And these themes address the elements that would make museums more inclusive such as: * exhibition technique * space configurations * the personality of the director * the role of social service * power sharing * types of museums * the need for emotion humour and spirituality. Without abandoning the traditional museum processes, Gurian shows how museums can honour tradition whilst embracing the new. Enriched by her experience in groundbreaking museums, Gurian has provided a book that provokes thought, dialogue and action for students and professionals in the field to realize the inclusive potential of museums.


In the Netherlands, and indeed elsewhere in Europe, homeownership (rates) and housing consumption has increased over time. On basis of repetitive cross-section analysis one can conclude that homeownership rates are lower for younger and older people, while people aged in-between are overrepresented in the homeownership sector (m.m. for housing consumption). Based on these findings, one could conclude that the ageing of Europe will lead to lower demand for owner-occupied dwellings and more generally to lower levels of housing consumption. Actually, the relation between age and homeownership/housing consumption is more complicated than that. Three issues are at stake here: age, birth cohort (generation-effect) and time (period). On forehand, one can expect housing consumption by age follows an inverted U-shape, while housing consumption and both the cohort-effect and time-effect are positively related. The way to disentangle these processes is by cohort analysis. Cohort analysis seeks to de-compose the observed trend into distinct effects associated with the life cycle, birth cohort and time. The analysis treats an outcome variable - i.e. homeownership, housing consumption - as a function of age, cohort and time. We modelled several distinctive cohort-models to assess the relation between housing consumption and age/cohort/time. Our models show that in the coming decadeis one can expect - under the assumption of no structural breaks - that the ageing of society does not necessarily leads to lower housing consumption; i.e. the negative age-effect is offset by changing attitudes over time towards housing (positive cohort and time-effects).


An understanding of the nexus between water and energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is essential for sustainable water resources management. While a number of such studies on understanding this nexus have been carried out in the recent past, there have been virtually no studies that have done so for Asian cities. This study aims to plug this gap by analyzing the water–energy–carbon (WEC) nexus for Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand. Using mostly secondary data, and through interactions with concerned stakeholders, the study revealed that more than 335 GWh of energy is used per year for water supply (0.22 kWh of energy to drive 1 m3 of water from source to tap). About 276 million litres of water is consumed for total power production in Thailand; almost 16% of water supplied annually by the Metropolitan Waterworks Authority (MWA). Of this, 0.625 million litres is consumed by electricity, utilised for water supply in Bangkok. In addition 82.2 billion kgCO2-eq is emitted by the power sector annually and energy associated with water emits 187 million kgCO2-eq/year, equal to 0.11 kgCO2-eq of GHG emission from each 1 m3 of water supplied by the MWA. This study provides information on the WEC nexus in cities as evidenced by Bangkok, which can contribute to the formulation of a policy in water and energy sectors to fulfil the objective of reducing GHG emissions.


The "Lemaire Act" for a Digital Republic, dated October 7, 2016, establishes two new default principles with respect to government data and public court opinions - with the enactment of the Lemaire Act this information will now by default be made public in France.

The creation of this "open data" case-law database still requires the adoption of implementing decrees by the regulatory power (i.e. the Ministry of Justice). To that end, the Minister of Justice has entrusted Professor Loic CADIET with the task to conduct a study to enlighten the drafters of the implementing decrees. Currently, there are concerns that the ambition of the reform will be revised down for budgetary reasons and due to a potential breach of data protection regulations.

In this context, Rules for Growth wants to contribute to the general reflection, assisting the study in the elaboration of the implementing decrees. Without ignoring the fears raised, we want to insist on the expected benefits of this reform, which we believe have been insufficiently brought to the attention of the public authorities. Among these benefits, the deployment of open data for court decisions produces economic returns, improves the transparency of the judiciary as well as strengthens the rule of law.

For this reason, it is particularly necessary to seek an adequate balance between the full openness of all court decisions and the protection of litigants' personal data. We also argue that although the principle of open case-law implies a significant investment by the State in the context of a difficult budgetary situation, it will, however, generate positive effects in the legal and economic spheres. These externalities must be to put in perspective with the immediate costs of this reform.


The optical performance of axisymmetric radiation concentrators and illuminators that are derived when two-dimensional edge-ray designs are rotated about their optic axis is investigated. Of particular interest are devices with spherical and cylindrical absorbers or light sources, for which the inherent ray rejection can be substantial. From the principle of etendue (phase-space) conservation, a lower bound for ray rejection can be established. With computer ray tracing, we demonstrate that this bound underestimates the actual ray rejection by only a few percent at most. Hence, to a good approximation, it can be used as an equality in analytic predictions of characteristic efficiency-concentration curves. By designing for absorbers or sources with a bald spot, the full range of efficiency and flux concentration values can be realizedand the trade-off between them can be quantified. The optical performance of these edge-ray designs is also compared against fundamental upper bounds on the flux concentration and efficiency of axisymmetric devices.


In this paper the ControCurator human-machine framework for identifying controversy in multimodal data is described. The goal of ControCurator is to enable modern information access systems to discover and understand controversial topics and events by bringing together crowds and machines in a joint active learning workflow for the creation of adequate training data. This active learning workflow allows a user to identify and understand controversy in ongoing issues, regardless of whether there is existing knowledge on the topic.


This paper presents a mostly digital multiplying delay-locked loop (MDLL) architecture that leverages a new time-to-digital converter (TDC) and a correlated double-sampling technique to achieve subpicosecond jitter performance. The key benefit of the proposed structure is that it provides a highly digital technique to reduce deterministic jitter in the MDLL output with low sensitivity to mismatch and offset in the associated tuning circuits. The TDC structure, which is based on a gated ring oscillator (GRO), is expected to benefit other PLL/DLL applications as well due to the fact that it scrambles and first-order noise shapes its associated quantization noise. Measured results are presented of a custom MDLL prototype that multiplies a 50 MHz reference frequency to 1.6 GHz with 928 fs rms jitter performance. The prototype consists of two 0.13 mum integrated circuits, which have a combined active area of 0.06 mm2 and a combined core power of 5.1 mW, in addition to an FPGA board, a discrete DAC, and a simple RC filter.


2 Abstract: SIMBA is a content based image retrieval system performing queries based on image appearance. SIMBA uses two feature extraction techniques: color and texture feature extraction, provided by Content Based Image Retrieval System. In SIMBA, object position is irrelevant for image similarity hence invariant features are used for the purpose. Based on general construction method, i.e. integration over the transformation group, the invariant feature histograms are derived that catch different cues of image content: features that are strongly influenced by colour and textural features that are robust to illumination changes. The feature extraction does not require any manual interaction, so that it might be used for fully automatic annotation in heavily fluctuating image databases.


The interstellar medium is enriched primarily by matter ejected from evolved low and intermediate mass stars. The outflows from these stars create a circumstellar envelope in which a rich gas-phase and dust-nucleation chemistry takes place. We observed the nearest carbon-rich evolved star, IRC +10216, using the PACS (55–210 μm) and SPIRE (194–672 μm) spectrometers on board Herschel. We find several tens of lines from SiS and SiO, including lines from the v = 1 vibrational level. For SiS these transitions range up to J = 124–123, corresponding to energies around 6700 K, while the highest detectable transition is J = 90–89 for SiO, which corresponds to an energy around 8400 K. Both species trace the dust formation zone of IRC +10216, and the broad energy ranges involved in their detected transitions permit us to derive the physical properties of the gas and the particular zone in which each species has been formed. This allows us to check the accuracy of chemical thermodynamical equilibrium models and the suggested depletion of SiS and SiO due to accretion onto dust grains.


OBJECTIVE
This practice quality improvement study of pediatric voiding cystourethrogram (VCUG) investigated the adequacy of substituting last-image capture for digital-spot images and dose reduction when this substitution was implemented and determined correlations between dose-area products (DAPs), patient ages, and fluoroscopy times.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The study consisted of three phases: phase 1 documented baseline data and evaluated diagnostic accuracy between last-image capture and digital-spot images. Phase 2 documented the change in dose after substituting last-image capture for digital-spot images. Phase 3 measured doses 3 years later. Each phase-1 VCUG study was segregated into two image sets: last-image capture and digital-spot images. Three radiologists graded vesicoureteral reflux on each side using the international grading scale. Weighted kappa statistics assessed grading differences between image sets. Patient age, fluoroscopy time, and DAP were assessed with parametric and nonparametric statistics.

RESULTS
Seventy-seven, 65, and 71 VCUGs were assessed for phases 1, 2, and 3, respectively. Weighted κ = 0.94-0.99 indicated nearly perfect agreement between last-image-capture and digital-spot-image interpretations. For phase 2, last-image capture was substituted for digital-spot images for early-filling and voiding images. DAP decreased for all three radiologists (p ≤ 0.01). Five of six (83%) correlations between DAP and age were higher than the correlations between DAP and fluoroscopy time. The dose remained significantly lower in phase 3.

CONCLUSION
This project changed practice by substituting last-image capture for digital-spot images without affecting vesicoureteral reflux grading while reducing radiation exposure. Monitoring DAP is a better assessment of radiation exposure than is fluoroscopy time.


We examined the structural plasticity of excitatory synapses from corticostriatal and thalamostriatal pathways and their postsynaptic targets in adult Sprague-Dawley rats to understand how these striatal circuits change in l-DOPA-induced dyskinesias (LIDs). We present here detailed electron and light microscopic analyses that provide new insight into the nature of the structural and synaptic remodeling of medium spiny neurons in response to LIDs. Numerous studies have implicated enhanced glutamate signaling and persistent long-term potentiation as central to the behavioral sensitization phenomenon of LIDs. Moreover, experience-dependent alterations in behavior are thought to involve structural modifications, specifically alterations in patterns of synaptic connectivity. Thus, we hypothesized that in the striatum of rats with LIDs, one of two major glutamatergic pathways would form new or altered contacts, especially onto the spines of medium spiny neuron (MSNs). Our data provide compelling evidence for a dramatic rewiring of the striatum of dyskinetic rats and that this rewiring involves corticostriatal but not thalamostriatal contacts onto MSNs. There is a dramatic increase in corticostriatal contacts onto spines and dendrites that appear to be directly linked to dyskinetic behaviors, since they were not seen in the striatum of animals that did not develop dyskinesia. There is also an aberrant increase in spines receiving more than one excitatory contact(i.e., multisynaptic spines) in the dyskinetic animals compared with the 6-hydroxydopamine-treated and control rats. Such alterations could substantially impair the ability of striatal neurons to gate cortically driven signals and contribute to the loss of bidirectional synaptic plasticity.


Abstract We report neutronics calculations for the most important natural uranium–fueled reactor types historically used for weapons plutonium production. These include an early design of the Hanford-type graphite-moderated and light-water-cooled reactor used in the United States; the Calder Hall–type graphite-moderated and gas-cooled reactor used in the United Kingdom; and the NRX-type heavy-water-moderated and light-water-cooled reactor, originally developed in Canada for civilian purposes but later used in India and Pakistan for military plutonium production. We show that while it is possible in principle to identify with a high level of confidence weapon-grade plutonium compositions produced in other types of reactors, e.g., light-water-cooled or fast neutron reactors, it is difficult to distinguish among plutonium compositions generated in dedicated production reactors fueled with natural uranium. This suggests that efforts to determine the origin of weapon-grade plutonium for a nuclear forensic analysis could well remain inconclusive without access to databases based on actual samples of the nuclear material.


Legitimacy Challenges of Intermediary Gatekeeping in the Chinese Internet Regulatory System In the Chinese legal and political framework, in order for the government to maintain control over information posted on social media platforms, commercial internet intermediaries are assigned the role of co-regulators to actively participate in content censorship and surveillance. In the literature concerning internet censorship and internet regulation in China, scholars dedicate a lot of their attention to analyzing the government's policies and the general cooperation between the Chinese government and ICT companies, especially in regards to enforcing censorship. This research suggests that, once we zoom in on specific gatekeeping processes, there are more nuanced interrelationships between government policies and private gatekeeping practices, as well as between different types of gatekeepers and individuals. The output of such intermediary gatekeeping, as analyzed through two empirical case studies, does not fully align with the government standards, private gatekeeping creates a breach in the government's censorship and surveillance policies. Both cooperation as well as tensions exist in this regard. Agreement, disagreement, mutual shaping, and even the disobedience of government rules and generation of alternative standards by private gatekeepers occur throughout intermediary gatekeeping processes. As a result, the dilemma of the substantive legitimacy of intermediary gatekeeping is that private gatekeepers have to rewrite or negotiate the standards set by government for the online gatekeeping practices in order to gain legitimacy from the end user community. Significantly, private actors on the Chinese internet, from commercial gatekeepers to grassroots end-users, manage to find a reasonable modus vivendi, to preserve a certain scope of internet freedom. Moreover, the traditional Chinese values, which may suggest a typically Chinese understanding of power and authority, as well as of rights and freedoms, mitigate some of the challenges to legitimacy of the Chinese internet regulations. Considering both the formal and substantive legitimacy deficit of the government rules and regulations, a relative "hands-off" approach towards internet governance is better than direct legal and administrative interventions. Social media platforms provide a new online public space for the deliberation of public issues and to formulate participatory self-regulation in interest groups, and for sub-cultural communities to exercise regulatory participation and deliberation. In this sense, traditional Chinese values can be a local cultural soil for cultivating the public culture of participation and deliberation on the Chinese internet.


Over the last years software development life-cycles have continuously been shortened and new releases are being deployed at a more and more frequent level. In order to ensure the quality of those releases, a strong shift towards automated testing at all testing levels has become noticeable throughout the software devel-opment industry. At system testing level, the scope of testing is the developed product as a whole, tested in a test environment that has a very close resemblance to the production system. Because of this system-wide scope and the many po-tential sources for failures, the implementation of automated tests at this level is challenging. Exhaustive testing is neither feasible nor maintainable, therefore proper designed test cases that cover important functionality are essential. Due to increasing laws and regulations on data protection and data privacy, proper man-agement of test data used in automated testing is as important. This paper dis-cusses how automated system tests for TeachCenter 3.0, Graz University of Technology's learning management system, were implemented.


In 2001, approximately 805,000 children in the United States were in foster care. The majority of children entering foster care have experienced prolonged and repeated abuse and neglect. Consequently, many have serious developmental, physical, and emotional problems and require numerous services to ameliorate their problems. Research indicates that the current foster care system does not adequately meet the needs of this population.


Existing works on the performance analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 networks with peer-to-peer (P2P) topologies assume the non-beacon unslotted mode in the MAC layer, which is not suitable for time-critical communications required by many applications, such as control, actuation and monitoring applications. In this paper, we introduce an enhanced guaranteed time slot (GTS) mechanism which can support time-critical P2P communications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). An efficient Markov chain that takes into account retransmission limits, acknowledgements, unsaturated traffic and packet delivery ratios of links is proposed to model P2P communications using this enhanced GTS mechanism. Based on this model, we analyze the expected reliability and energy consumptions under various traffic conditions. In addition, the impact of MAC parameters on these performance indexes is analyzed. Monte Carlo simulations show that our theoretical analysis is quite accurate, and thus can be used as guidance for networks configuration in WSNs.


I study a class of interacting conformal field theories and conformal windows in three dimensions, formulated using the Parisi large-N approach and a modified dimensional-regularization technique. Bosons are associated with composite operators and their propagators are dynamically generated by fermion bubbles. Renormalization-group flows between pairs of interacting fixed points satisfy a set of non-perturbative g1/g dualities. There is an exact relation between the beta function and the anomalous dimension of the composite boson. Non-abelian gauge fields have a non-renormalized and quantized gauge coupling, although no Chern-Simons term is present. A problem of the naive dimensional-regularization technique for these theories is uncovered and removed with a non-local, evanescent, non-renormalized kinetic term. The models are expected to be a fruitful arena for the study of odd-dimensional conformal field theory.


Optical pulse replicators generate multiple replicas of an optical waveform that are averaged to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of single-shot, high-bandwidth temporal measurements. Processing a replicated waveform requires that the delayed realizations of the waveform under test be retimed properly before averaging. Delay miscalibration significantly reduces the measurement bandwidth. Processing algorithms based on edge alignment, centroid matching, and minimization of the distance between replicas decrease the impact of the detrimental bandwidth reduction, and a global distance minimization, simultaneously taking into account the distance between all pairs of retimed replicas, has the best performance, even in the presence of significant measurement noise. The general impact of chromatic dispersion on the averaged waveform is derived in the framework of the temporal transport-of-intensity equation, and the measurement error is quantified for various optical signals.


A hallmark of visual intelligence is the ability to extract relationships among objects. One form of extraction produces stimulus-specific knowledge (statistical learning). Another form produces stimulus-general principles (inductive learning). These two learning processes seem incompatible on the surface, but may be related on a deeper level. Here we examine how statistical learning and inductive learning interact. In Experiment 1, observers were randomly assigned to one of three conditions where they viewed a sequence of circles of varying sizes. In the rule+regularities condition, the sequence contained repeated triplets (regularities) that followed a rule: the three circles increased in size in each triplet. In the rule-only condition, the sequence contained sets of three circles that followed the same rule, but all sets were unique (no regularities). In the regularities-only condition, the sequence contained repeated triplets that did not follow the rule. We found that learning of the rule and learning of the regularities were both stronger in the rule+regularities condition than in the rule-only, or the regularities-only condition. This suggests that statistical learning and inductive learning are mutually beneficial. To tease apart whether one learning process is necessary for the other, we increased the complexity of the rule in Experiment 2. Everything was identical to Experiment 1, except now the rule was that within each triplet or set, the first circle was smaller than the second circle, and the second was larger than the third. Learning of the rule was only successful in the rule+regularities condition, but not in the rule-only condition. Moreover, there was no learning of regularities. This suggests that the presence of regularities facilitated rule learning, but the presence of the rule did not help the learning of regularities. These findings demonstrate that statistical learning and inductive learning are related, and that stimulus-specific regularities are necessary for inductive learning. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


This thesis describes a search for transient phenomena using data from the
Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) observatories. With images taken of the
same region of sky every 15 minutes and a field-of-view of 974 degrees squared,
the WASP survey is ideal for identifying both short and long duration transients
to a limiting magnitude of 16 in V. A high cadence wide-field survey of this type
has not been carried out before so provides a different method of sampling variable
populations and has the potential to identify previously unknown phenomena.
An algorithm to carry out a full untargeted search of the database was developed,
tested and run on data from 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2008. False positives were
rejected based on their proximity to similar magnitude stars, the tightness of the
clustering of detections in sky coordinates, the focus of the images and the number
of corroborating detections.
Overall, 44 cataclysmic variable candidates, 144 extreme flare candidates, 63
variable star candidates and 57 transients of unknown type were identified. The cataclysmic
variable candidates showed similarities to the currently known population
although some selection effects were uncovered. Of particular note were two new WZ
Sge systems, an eclipsing system with a period of 540 minutes and an object with
an M-star spectrum and broad Balmer lines but no visible white dwarf. The flares
are some of the largest ever observed on M-type stars. The largest of these released
~1035erg in the V-band alone. A candidate flare was also identified on a G-type
star releasing 1.6×1037erg in the V-band. Alternatively, it may be unrelated to the
G-star and could be a gamma ray burst or similar transient without a persistent
counterpart. A known supernova and two known novae were also identified.


The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) presents the opportunity to transform our understanding of planets and the origins of life by revealing the atmospheric compositions, structures, and dynamics of transiting exoplanets in unprecedented detail. However, the high-precision, timeseries observations required for such investigations have unique technical challenges, and prior experience with Hubble, Spitzer, and other facilities indicates that there will be a steep learning curve when JWST becomes operational. In this paper, we describe the science objectives and detailed plans of the Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science (ERS) Program, which is a recently approved program for JWST observations early in Cycle 1. We also describe the simulations used to establish the program. The goal of this project, for which the obtained data will have no exclusive access period, is to accelerate the acquisition and diffusion of technical expertise for transiting exoplanet observations with JWST, while also providing a compelling set of representative data sets that will enable immediate scientific breakthroughs. The Transiting Exoplanet Community ERS Program will exercise the timeseries modes of all four JWST instruments that have been identified as the consensus highest priorities, observe the full suite of transiting planet characterization geometries (transits, eclipses, and phase curves), and target planets with host stars that span an illustrative range of brightnesses. The observations in this program were defined through an inclusive and transparent process that had participation from JWST instrument experts and international leaders in transiting exoplanet studies. The targets have been vetted with previous measurements, will be observable early in the mission, and have exceptional scientific merit. Community engagement in the project will be centered on a two-phase Data Challenge that culminates with the delivery of planetary spectra, timeseries instrument performance reports, and open-source data analysis toolkits in time to inform the agenda for Cycle 2 of the JWST mission.


Lamb carcass value is widely reported to be a function of lean meat yield, which is the relationship between muscle, fat and bone. Five retailers and five wholesalers assessed 47 lamb carcasses from diverse genotypes and scored seven attributes. A hedonic model reveals that conformation attributes were more highly valued (16 c/kg) relative to yield characteristics (4 c/kg). Meat colour and fat distribution were significant for retailers, but less important for wholesalers. Genotype was not a strong indicator of conformation. Eye muscle area and depth were correlated with Fat C; however, these were not significant. These results indicate that carcass conformation, meat colour and fat distribution should be incorporated into carcass grading models.


In everyday economic interactions, it is not clear whether sequential choices are visible or not to other participants: agents might be deluded about opponents'capacity to acquire,interpret or keep track of data, or might simply unexpectedly forget what they previously observed (but not chose). Following this idea, this paper drops the assumption that the information structure of extensive-form games is commonly known; that is, it introduces uncertainty into players' capacity to observe each others' past choices. Using this approach, our main result provides the following epistemic characterisation: if players (i) are rational,(ii) have strong belief in both opponents' rationality and opponents' capacity to observe others' choices, and (iii) have common belief in both opponents' future rationality and op-ponents' future capacity to observe others' choices, then the backward induction outcome obtains. Consequently, we do not require perfect information, and players observing each others' choices is often irrelevant from a strategic point of view. The analysis extends {from generic games with perfect information to games with not necessarily perfect information{the work by Battigalli and Siniscalchi (2002) and Perea (2014), who provide different sufficient epistemic conditions for the backward induction outcome.


One of the major challenges in cardiovascular disease is the identification of reliable clinical biomarkers that can be routinely measured in plasma. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) were recently discovered to circulate in the bloodstream in a remarkably stable form. Because of their stability and often tissue- and disease-specific expression and the possibility to measure them with high sensitivity and specificity, miRNAs are emerging as new diagnostic biomarkers. In this review we will provide an overview of the potential of circulating miRNAs as biomarkers for a wide range of cardiovascular diseases such as coronary artery disease, myocardial infarction, hypertension, heart failure, viral myocarditis, and type-2 diabetes mellitus. Furthermore, we will discuss the challenges with regard to further validation in large patient cohorts, and we will discuss how the measurement of multiple miRNAs simultaneously might improve the accuracy of the diagnostic test.


The cutting process in water saturated sand has been the subject of research in the dredging industry for decades already. The Dutch dredging industry started this research in the sixties, resulting in a number of models in the seventies and eighties (van Leussen & van Os (1987) and Miedema (1987 and later). The application of the theory in the offshore industry is rare, although Palmer (1999) used it. In the last decades trenching has been a practice where these theories can be applied and with the tendencies of working in deeper water and in arctic conditions it is useful to try to combine the knowledge from the dredging and the offshore industry regarding cutting processes. The cutting process in water saturated sand is dominated by the phenomenon of dilatancy. Due to shear stresses, the porosity of the sand increases, resulting in an absolute decrease of the pore water pressures. Since the soil stresses are a constant, and equal to the sum of the grain stresses and the pore water stresses, this implies that the grain stresses increase with decreasing pore water stresses. This results in much higher cutting forces. The decrease of the pore water stresses is limited by the water vapor pressure and so are the cutting forces. At shallow waters, the pore water may start to cavitate if the strain rates are high enough, but at very deep water this will probably not occur. In this paper the basics of the cutting theory are explained. This cutting theory however requires a lot of finite element calculations in order to determine the pore water pressures. The paper gives simplification that allows the user to apply the theory with the help of pre-calculated coefficients.Copyright © 2011 by ASME


The purpose of this study was to develop a quantitative method for myocardial blood flow (MBF) measurement that can be used to derive accurate myocardial perfusion measurements from dynamic multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) images by using a compartment model for calculating the first-order transfer constant (K1) with correction for the capillary transit extraction fraction (E). Six canine models of left anterior descending (LAD) artery stenosis were prepared and underwent first-pass contrast-enhanced MDCT perfusion imaging during adenosine infusion (0.14-0.21 mg/kg/min). K1, which is the first-order transfer constant from left ventricular (LV) blood to myocardium, was measured using the Patlak plot method applied to time-density curve data of the LV blood pool and myocardium. The results were compared against microsphere MBF measurements, and the extraction fraction of contrast agent was calculated. K1 is related to the regional MBF as K1=EF, E=(1-exp(-PS/F)), where PS is the permeability-surface area product and F is myocardial flow. Based on the above relationship, a look-up table from K1 to MBF can be generated and Patlak plot-derived K1 values can be converted to the calculated MBF. The calculated MBF and microsphere MBF showed a strong linear association. The extraction fraction in dogs as a function of flow (F) was E=(1- exp(-(0.253F+0.7871)/F)). Regional MBF can be measured accurately using the Patlak plot method based on a compartment model and look-up table with extraction fraction correction from K1 to MBF.


Theonellamides A-F were isolated from Theonella swinhoei by Fusetani and co-workers. Despite considerable synthetic effort to produce theonellamide F by the Shioiri group in the early 1990s, the total synthesis of a theonellamide has yet to be reported. We report herein our efforts toward some of the required amino acid residues and construction of the western ring of theonellamide C.
We describe the synthesis of an uncoded amino acid, (2S,4R)-ɣ-hydroxy-α-amino adipic acid (Ahad), a building block for theonellamide C. We initially investigated the Corey-Lygo method for the catalytic asymmetric generation of the Cα stereocenter. Unfortunately, the alkylation of glycine benzophenone imines with a series of electrophiles, including [(S)-benzyl-3-(tert-butyl dimethylsilyl)oxy]-4-iodobutanoate (104a), was unsuccessful due to low inherent reactivity and steric hindrance.
A second approach was based on MacMillans enantioselective organocatalytic amine conjugate addition. Addition of CbzNHOTBS (136a) to (E)-benzyl-4-oxo-but-2-enoate (149), in the presence of catalytic (S)-2-diphenyl[trimethylsilyl)oxy]methylpyrrolidine (165) led to β-amino aldehyde (S)-benzyl 2-[(benzyloxycarbonyl)(tert-butyldimethylsilyloxy)amino-4-oxo-butanoate, (148a). A Wittig reaction between 148a and methyl-(triphenylphosphoranylidene)-acetate (142) afforded (2S,4E)-1-benzyl-2-[(benzyloxycarbonyl)(tert-butyldimethylsilyloxy)-amino-6-methyl-hex-4-enedioate (147a). The ɣ-hydroxy group was installed intramolecularly with 4:1 d.r. by treatment of 147a with TBAF. Hydrogenolysis was carried out to give unprotected Ahad.
The next challenge was to find the right combination of protecting groups for Ahad that would be compatible with the synthesis of the western hemisphere of theonellamide C. We performed model studies on α-aminoadipic acid (α-AAA) which revealed that the δ-COOMe, introduced in the Wittig reaction, was incompatible with a Cα-acetol ester and a Nα-Alloc carbamate. α-AAA and Ahad bearing a δ-COOtBu group were synthesized in an analogous fashion. The Ahad building block was synthesized in 11 steps and 6.5% overall yield. In readiness for coupling; the tert-butyl ester was cleaved to afford the free δ-acid.
Two tetrapeptides were assembled: Boc-Asn-HyAsn(OTBS)-Phe-β-Ala-OAll (249) and the simplified Fmoc-Asn(Trt)-Asn(Trt)-Phe-β-Ala-OAll (254). Removal of the N-terminal Fmoc-group from 254 and coupling with a suitably protected t-histidinoalanine acid afforded a linear hexapeptide that is a precursor to the western hemisphere of theonellamide C.


nfections caused by Escherichia coli have become a significant worldwide public health problem. The antibiotic resistance of E. coli isolated from the urine of patients of Omdurman Teaching Hospital, Sudan was investigated. The aim of this study was to evaluate the antimicrobial sensitivity of all the non serotyped urinary isolated E. coli. The antibiotic sensitivity test was carried out using antibiotic impregnated multi disc containing eight different antibiotics (Amikacin, Ciproflaxacin, Ceftriaxone, Co-amoxiclav, Imipenem, Norfloxacin and Cotrimoxazole). A total of eighty-six E. coliisolates were tested during the investigation. The E. coli isolated exhibited variations in their resistance pattern to the various antibiotics. Generally, no E. coli was resistant to all tested antibiotics, no E. coli isolate was also resistant to only one or a single antibiotic and only two isolates were completely sensitive to all the antibiotics used. The E. coli showed the highest resistance to Cotrimoxazole, Co-amoxiclav, Cipro-floxacin and Norfloxacin. Antimicrobial resistance is a local as well as a global problem and the emergence of multidrug resistance will hinder the therapeutic options, hence monitoring resistance is of paramount importance. The indiscriminate use and misuse of antibiotics should therefore be discouraged. The future usefulness of these drugs will however depend on effective interventions to halt the selection and spread of resistance among enteric organisms.

 Key words: Escherichia coli, antimicrobial sensitivity, emergence of resistant strains.


The problem of information overload has become more pressing with the emergence of the increasingly more popular Internet services. The main information retrieval mechanisms provided by the prevailing Internet Web software are based on either keyword search (e.g., Google and Yahoo) or hypertext browsing (e.g., Internet Explorer and Netscape). The research presented in this paper is aimed at providing an alternative concept-based categorization and search capability based on a combination of meta-search and self-organizing maps. Kohonen's self-organizing map is very well known as a clustering and dimension reduction tool. Clustering can be used for categorization of search results. Dimension reduction can be used for visualization and for reducing information in order to ease search.


As the field of study abroad grows and diversifies, scholars call for more research on how the components of such programming impact students. In response to such calls, this study explored how alumni of the Latin American Studies Program (LASP) perceived specific study abroad components to influence changes in their religious faith. LASP alumni completed an anonymous, qualitative survey that invited them to indicate whether studying abroad influenced a change in their religious faith, describe this change and its consequent actions, and identify LASP components that most influenced this change. The survey generated 430 responses, which represent 24% of LASP's alumni population. Results indicated that 89% of respondents perceived that studying abroad influenced a change in their religious faith. Respondents' descriptions of this change revealed six themes— increased awareness of culture's influence on religious faith, new embrace of doubt, more inclusive religious faith, greater emphasis on social justice, left Christianity, and solidified existing Christian faith. Respondents' descriptions of the actions that emerged from these changes illustrated five themes—justice-centered vocation, creating sustainable economies, transforming communities, family decisions, and personal development. Respondents identified a blend of components that drove this change, which was characterized by formal learning experiences (lectures, readings, assignments) that were brought to life by reflective engagement of the Latin American context (relationships with host families, study trips, discussion groups). The results contribute to a growing body of research that identifies intercultural experience as a driver of religious change. Furthermore, the findings encourage educational leaders to prioritize study abroad programs that achieve integration between formal learning experiences and direct engagement of the host context.


Abstract This paper examines the literary representation of the beginnings of the Northern Irish Troubles with regard to a gender variable (women's roles and functions ascribed to them, mostly punitively, by men), in the selected poems by Heaney, Durcan, Boland, Meehan and Morrissey. The reading of Heaney's "Punishment" will attempt to focus not solely on the poem's repeatedly criticized misogyny but on analyzing it in a broader, historical context of the North's conflict. In Durcan's case, his prominent nationalist descent or his declared contempt for any form of paramilitary terrorism (including the IRA) do not seem to prevent him entirely from immortalizing female victims of the Troubles. Boland's attitude seems the most unequivocal: the clear aversion to the language of death and rendering Irish women's experiences (and children's) in this discourse. The article concludes with analysis of Meehan's "Southern" guilt for the situation of Catholics in the North with the simultaneous critique of perpetrated violence and Morrissey's complicated standpoint: atheist/neutral/Protestant/communist and her striving for the impossible impartiality in a war-ridden and politically divided country. Trying to avoid systemic victimization of Irish women, the paper intends to analyze the historical and political circumstances which made them more susceptible to various forms of attacks at the beginnings of the Troubles, as reflected in the titular labels.


This paper presents the development of a cyber-physical system that monitors the environmental conditions or the ambient conditions in indoor spaces at remote locations. The communication between the system's components is per-formed using the existent wireless infrastructure based on the IEEE 802.11 b/g standards. The resulted solution provides the possibility of logging measurements from locations all over the world and of visualizing and analyzing the gathered data from any device connected to the Internet. This work encompasses the complete solution, a cyber-physical system, starting from the physical level, consisting of sensors and the communication protocol, and reaching data management and storage at the cyber level. The experimental results show that the proposed system represents a viable and straightforward solution for environmental and ambient monitoring applications.


Although assurance companies are pooling many risks, the law of large numbers does not fully apply. This leaves the companies with a possibility of insolvency and a corresponding need for contingency reserves which are matters of serious concern. In this thesis we derive some fundamental results that are useful when the time comes to set contingency reserves or to assess solvency. We use a model where both the mortality and the interest rates are random variables. We choose to model the force of interest by the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. For temporary assurances and endowment assurances we derive an efficient recursive method to find the first three moments of the present value of a portfolio of identical policies. We then use these moments to approximate accurately the distribution of the present value of such a portfolio, firstly when the number of policies in the portfolio tends to infinity, and secondly, for a portfolio of finite size.


The American bombing of terrorist bases in Afghanistan under the protection of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement has brought the Taliban into sharp focus as the most radical and extreme Islamic movement in the world today. Little is known about the Taliban because of the deep secrecy that surrounds their political movement, their leaders and their aims. The geo-strategic implications of the Taliban are already creating severe instability in Russia, Iran and the five Central Asian republics where the Taliban have become a major player in the new Great Game, as Western countries and companies compete to build oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia to Western and Asian markets. The Taliban's implementation of their extreme interpretation of Islam poses new challenges to the Muslim world and the West's understanding of radical Islam in the post-Cold War era. 'Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game' was runner-up in the prestigious annual British-Kuwait Friendship Society Prize, administered by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies.


Keeping kids safe takes vigilance. But when your child has food allergies, the challenge is greater and you worry that much more.
As a food-allergy mom (and someone seriously allergic herself), author Mireille Schwartz has been through it all. Now, in this clear, reassuring guide she helps you get a handle on food allergies, establish new routines, and restore peace and order to family life. You'll learn to:

Spot the signs and symptoms of an allergic reaction
Navigate testing and diagnosis
Decipher ingredient labels, keeping an eye out for ?hidden? allergens
Allergy-proof your whole home—not just the kitchen
Create an emergency kit and an allergy action plan
Make school a safe and enjoyable environment
Find lunchbox substitutions your kid will like
Deal with restaurants, playdates, birthday parties, holidays, and other group celebrations
Plan for safe travels—from summer camp to family getaways
And more

From protecting your child to teaching them to take care of themselves, When Your Child Has Food Allergies covers it all so your life can get back to normal.


BACKGROUND
Rest-activity and sleep-wake cycles are controlled by the endogenous circadian rhythm generated by the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) of the hypothalamus. Degenerative changes in the SCN appear to be a biological basis for circadian disturbances in people with dementia, and might be reversed by stimulation of the SCN by light.

OBJECTIVES
The review examines the effectiveness of light therapy in improving cognition, activities of daily living (ADLs), sleep, challenging behaviour, and psychiatric symptoms associated with dementia.

SEARCH METHODS
ALOIS, the Specialized Register of the Cochrane Dementia and Cognitive Improvement Group (CDCIG), The Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL and LILACS were searched on 20 January 2014 using the terms: "bright light*", "light box*", "light visor*", "dawn-dusk*", phototherapy, "photo therapy", "light therapy" "light treatment", light* . The CDCIG Specialized Register contains records from all major healthcare databases (The Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, LILACS) as well as from many trials databases and grey literature sources.

SELECTION CRITERIA
All relevant, randomized controlled trials were included in which light therapy, at any intensity and duration, was compared with a control group for the effect of improving cognition, ADLs, sleep, challenging behaviour, and psychiatric symptoms associated with dementia (as well as institutionalization rates or cost of care). Included were people with dementia of any type and degree of severity.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Two review authors independently assessed the retrieved articles for relevance, and four review authors independently assessed the selected studies for risk of bias and extracted the data. Statistically significant differences in outcomes between the treatment and control groups at the end of treatment and follow-up were examined. Each study was summarized using a measure of effect (for example mean difference).

MAIN RESULTS
Eleven trials (13 articles) met the inclusion criteria. However, three of the studies could not be included in the analyses either because the reported data could not be used in the meta-analysis or we were unable to retrieve the required data from the authors.This updated review found no effect of light therapy on cognitive function, sleep, challenging behaviour (for example agitation), or psychiatric symptoms associated with dementia. Reduction in the development of ADL limitations was reported in one study, at three of five time points, and light therapy was found to have an effect after six weeks and two years but not after one year.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
There is insufficient evidence to justify the use of bright light therapy in dementia. Further research should concentrate on replicating the suggested effect on ADLs, and establishing the biological mechanism for how light therapy improves these important outcomes.


In this work we emphasize some aspects of the numerical and computational performance of block preconditioners for systems with matrices of saddle point form. We discuss the quality of a sparse approximation of the related Schur complement for constructing an efficient preconditioner and the achieved numerical efficiency in terms of number of iterations. We also present a performance study of the computational efficiency of the corresponding preconditioned iterative solution methods, implemented using publicly available numerical linear algebra software packages, both on multicore CPU and GPU devices. We show that the presently available GPU accelerators can be very efficiently used in computer simulations involving inner-outer solution methods and hierarchical data structures. The benchmark problem originates from a geophysical application, namely, the elastic Glacial Isostatic Adjustment model, discretized using the finite element method.


Amidst the current situation in Europe the discussion of education and development of refugee children is more important than ever. As a result the increasing diversity and multilingualism must be considered in this discussion. In connection with the Ersamus+ project CultureShake the aim of this research paper is to show the normality of cultural hybridisation. In terms of language didactics and language psychology the concept focuses on opposing the feeling of foreignness by supporting language reflection and language awareness. Lanuage portraits are used as a tool to make children aware of their linguistic repertoire and to recognise this as a resource. This paper adapts this existing concept to refugee children with a low level of the, for them foreign, language German.


Effective small multiple displays are created by partitioning a visualization on variables that reveal interesting conditional structure in the data. We propose a method that automatically ranks partitioning variables, allowing analysts to focus on the most promising small multiple displays. Our approach is based on a randomized, non-parametric permutation test, which allows us to handle a wide range of quality measures for visual patterns defined on many different visualization types, while discounting spurious patterns. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on scatterplots of real-world, multidimensional datasets.


Medical investigations use a wide variety of outcome indicators that are often not comparable. It can be challenging to integrate results across multiple studies that do not share a common metric. Some conditions such as Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy have a predictable course of disease progression. Severity can be inferred from a patient's medical history. This paper describes the development of a disease severity measure using common markers of disease progression. Rasch modeling was used to estimate severity using dichotomous events that indicate disease progression. Caregivers of 34 young men with Duchenne or Becker muscular dystrophy completed structured interviews about their care and medical history. Interview questions included surgeries (tendon release, scoliosis, tracheostomy), respiratory equipment (assisted ventilation, cough assist devices), and the use of other medical equipment (e.g., braces, walkers, wheelchairs, transfer boards, hospital beds). The resulting measure had a reliability of .83. The correlation between the severity measure and the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Functional Rating Scale (ALSFRS) was .68. Preliminary results and item calibrations are provided for the severity measure that can be estimated from caregiver reports or administrative data. DOI:10.2458/azu_jmmss_v1i1_davis


The branding literature has long recognized the power of storytelling to provide meaning to the brand and practitioners have used storytelling to enhance consumers' connections with brands. The premise of brand storytelling has been that the story and its content, production, and distribution are the brand owner's realm and the consumer primarily a listener. The emergence of social media has changed the consumers' role in storytelling from that of a passive listener to a more active participant. Our paper uses the metaphor of improvisation (improv) theater to show that in social media, brand owners do not tell brand stories alone but co-create brand performances in collaboration with the consumers. The first and foremost contribution of such a conceptualization is that it offers a semantic framework that resolves issues in storytelling , demonstrates the necessity of co-creation in storytelling, and identifies the core of an inspiring story. The improv theater metaphor also helps identify the following three propositions relevant for branding in social media: (i) the process of improvisation is more important than the output, (ii) managing brands is about keeping the brand performance alive, and (iii) understanding the audience and its roles is the prerequisite for a successful brand performance.


"The paradox of the lie that might as well be true," writes Paul Strohm, "must interest anyone who seeks to understand texts in history or the historical influence of texts." In these seven essays, all recent and most published here for the first time, the author examines historical and literary texts from fourteenth-century England. He not only demonstrates the fictionality of narrative and documentary sources, but also argues that these fictions are themselves fully historical. Together the essays institute a dialogue between texts and events that restores historical documents and literary works to their larger environments. Strohm begins by inspecting legal records that accuse Hochon of Liverpool in 1384 of threatening to shoot an arrow at a political adversary urinating against a wall, and shows how the text embodies and interconnects language, social space, and historical interpretation itself. Throughout his analyses, which cover such topics as Chaucer's verses on the accession of Henry IV, Froissart's account of Queen Philippa interceding for the burghers of Calais, and Thomas Usk's accusations against John Northampton, Strohm alerts us to the distortions of textuality itself while challenging our notions of "invented" and "true."Originally published in 1992.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


Photons are produced through various processes in the particle and nuclei collisions at the LHC, and pose as useful probes of the formation of a QaurkGluon Plasma. The probability of a photon converting within the central tracking detectors of ALICE has been found to be approximately 8–9 % [53]. The thesis explores the performance of the photon reconstruction through the conversion method, for the High Level Trigger using the central tracking detectors of ALICE. The photon reconstruction method through its conversion will compliment the photon detection performed by the calorimeters. However, due to the large acceptance of the central tracking detectors, the method has proved equally beneficial through the off-line event reconstruction, even though the conversion probability is low. It has therefore been a goal to map the potential performance of an on-line reconstruction of the photons through the conversion method. The performance of the photon reconstruction has been analyzed through the simulation, and subsequent High Level Trigger reconstruction, of highly contrived events and minimum bias p-p collisions at √ s = 14 TeV per nucleon pair. The events were embedded with additional γs in the central pseudo-rapidity range to provide higher statistics. The analysis led to the optimization and further development of the existing code in the High Level Trigger, dedicated to the on-line reconstruction of neutral particles through the detection of their decay products. An overview of the reconstruction algorithm and potential future upgrades is provided. The results obtained for the simulated data is presented along side the optimal off-line results. The final results obtained for the γ embedded minimum bias p-p collisions for the on-line reconstruction, yielded an average photon conversion reconstruction efficiency of 41.7 %, with an average purity of the reconstructed sample of 74.2 %.


The founding Treaties of the European Union (EU) provide the Commission with bureaucratic structures and functions, and the authority to take a political leadership role in the integration process. However, the legitimacy of the Commission's authority to act either as a bureaucracy or as a political institution is periodically contested, as is the authority and leadership of its President. Max Weber's theory of the legitimation of authority suggests itself in this context as a working tool for assessing the nature of institutional and individual authority and leadership in the Commission and the broader EU context. Weber's typology of authority offers both an understanding of the changes in the Commission's fortunes within the 'would-be polity' of the European institutions, and an appraisal of claims to authority at the individual level by the Commission President. When applied to two contrasting moments in the Commission's life during the presidency of Jacques Delors (the generating of the White Papers of 1985 and 1993), Weber's typology provides an explanation for the evolution of the legitimation of these forms of authority in terms of, first, the Union's imperfect provisions for legitimate claims to leadership authority on 'charismatic' grounds and, second, the absence in the Union of resources for leadership legitimacy based on 'traditional'-type authority, such as explicit, popular, or party political European-wide support for the project of European union. These are resources which, if present in the EU, would legitimise calls to reform the EU's institutions in the direction of more integration and a more federal polity. The case studies offer an appraisal of the functioning and malfunctioning of authority within the Union, as well as a critical assessment of the applicability of the Weberian model to the legitimation of authority in the EU.


Background: Composition of renal stones influences management of patients with renal stone disease. Currently stone composition can only be analysed ex vivo after stone extraction or passage, but recent introduction of dual-energy computed tomography (CT) to clinical practice has raised interest in the ability of this technology to determine composition of renal stones in vivo . Objectives: To determine renal stone composition in patients using single-source dual-energy rapid-peak kilovolt (kVp) switching CT. Method: Nineteen patients with renal stones for percutaneous nephrolithotomy were evaluated with single-source dual-energy computed tomography on a Discovery CT 750HD. The Gemstone Spectral Imaging (GSI) effective atomic number (Z eff ) and attenuation at 70 keV monochromatic energy were used to predict the stone composition. Infrared spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction of stones after extraction served as the reference standard. Results: Two (10.5%) of the 19 stones had uric acid as major component. The other 17 (89.5%) were calcium-based stones. No statistically significant difference between the GSI Z eff and calculated effective atomic number (Z) for stone compounds was found. The GSI Z eff and attenuation could differentiate between uric acid and non-uric acid stones. No differentiation between different calcium stones could be made. Conclusion: Uric acid and non-uric acid renal stones can be differentiated with single-source dual-energy  in vivo . The GSI Z eff reflects the dominant material in polycrystalline stones.


Discovering association rules from transaction databases is one of the most studied data mining task. Many effective techniques have been proposed over the years. All these algorithms share the same two steps methodology: frequent itemsets enumeration followed by effective association rules generation step. In this paper, we propose a new propositional satisfiability based approach to mine association rules in a single step. The task is modeled as a Boolean formula whose models correspond to the rules to be mined. To highlight the flexibility of our proposed framework, we also address two other variants, namely the closed and indirect association rules mining tasks. Experiments on many datasets show that on both closed and indirect association rules mining tasks, our declarative approach achieves better performance than the state-of-the-art specialized techniques.


This thesis takes the form of an investigation into the lack of progress towards
the professionalisation of mental nurses during the period 1850 to 1950 and
concentrates on their failure to become a professional sub-group within
nursing. The proposal is put forward that their relative failure to advance was
due to the fact that mental nurses were controlled and dominated by other
more powerful health care groups with their own agendas. These were the
asylum doctors in the (Royal) Medico-Psychological Association ((R)MPA),
and the doctors and general trained nurses in the General Nursing Council
(GNC).
During the 1850s the (R)MPA's main concern was to raise the status of
asylum doctors. The association aimed to achieve this by developing the care
and treatment of the insane into another recognised speciality of medicine.
To do this they needed to hospitalise the asylums, a process which would
include transforming asylum attendants into qualified mental nurses. To this
end a mental nursing textbook was published by the (R)MPA in 1885. This
was followed by the inauguration of a national training scheme with
certification for successful candidates.
In order to advance the goal of hospitalisation, female nurses were
introduced into male wards in many asylums. It was also asserted that the
care of insane male patients was improved, a claim which led to conflicts with
the trade unions, which were totally opposed to female nurses on male wards.
The impact of unionisation of mental nurses will also be discussed in
relationship to the struggle for professionalisation.
Even when the Nurses' Registration Act 1919 was passed, mental
nurses were caught in the middle of an internecine conflict over who
controlled them: on one side was the GNC with its new supplementary register
for mental nurses; on the other stood the (R)MPA, reluctant to give up their
training and examination scheme under the conditions offered by the GNC.
So a dual system of registration continued to exist until the introduction of the
National Health Service in 1948. Even then mental nursing was still controlled
by the general trained dominated GNC.