Suicide is an important scientific phenomenon. Yet its causes remain poorly understood. This study documents a paradox: the happiest places have the highest suicide rates. The study combines findings from two large and rich individual-level data sets—one on life satisfaction and another on suicide deaths—to establish the paradox in a consistent way across U.S. states. It replicates the finding in data on Western industrialized nations and checks that the paradox is not an artifact of population composition or confounding factors. The study concludes with the conjecture that people may find it particularly painful to be unhappy in a happy place, so that the decision to commit suicide is influenced by relative comparisons.


This paper estimates the effect of exposure to teacher pay-for-performance programs on adult outcomes. We construct a comprehensive data set of schools which have implemented teacher performance pay programs across the United States since 1986, and use our data to calculate the fraction of students by race in each grade and in each state who are affected by a teacher performance pay program in a given year. We then calculate the expected years of exposure for each race-specific birth state-grade cohort in the American Community Survey. Cohorts with more exposure are more likely to graduate from high school and earn higher wages as adults. The positive effect is concentrated in grades 1-3 and on programs that targeted schools with a higher fraction of students who are eligible for free and reduced lunch.


This project report is an attempt to find better conditions and reaction parameters for the potential commercialization of the enzymatic production of amoxicillin. A kinetic model from the literature was used to describe a reaction between p-hydroxyphenylglycine methyl ester (PHPGME) and 6-aminopenicillanic acid (6-APA) that is catalyzed by penicillin G acylase immobilized onto glyoxyl-agarose gel beads. A C++ computer program was developed using the Fourth Order Runge-Kutta method to simulate higher substrate and enzyme concentration during the reaction. For model validation, simulation results were compared with experimental data from the literature and fractional errors. This simulation model predicted 24% yield of amoxicillin at high substrate concentration (50mM of 6-APA; 300mM of PHPGME). It also predicted that increasing the enzyme concentration by four fold could produce a similar amoxicillin yield four times faster. The simulation results obtained in this work could be used in the future to aid in optimization and in further modifications of the kinetic model to predict even better yields. This enzymatic process could therefore become an industrial process to substitute the existing chemical route, which contains toxic organic solvents.


A 1994-1995 survey (Babits and Kjorness 1995) discovered the presence of several abandoned vessel complexes in Wright's Creek a rural area located between the Pamlico and Pungo Rivers in North Carolina. These graveyards composed of the discarded vessels and equipment of the commercial fishing community serve a purpose for those who create and maintain them along their property boundaries bestowing them with meaning and regard. Rather than aesthetically displeasing "eye-sores " these sites serve as a repository for the memories and nostalgia of the commercial fishers. In addition they provide materials for salvage and reuse aiding in maintenance of working vessels proving a financial boon in the process of boat breaking. The archaeological study of a commercial fishing graveyard allows interpretation of the social economic and technological changes affecting the surrounding community. The concentration of abandoned vessels in this embayment presents a unique opportunity to study behavioral patterns associated with a rural boat graveyard as the adjacent community is still interacting with the discarded material remains. Continued interaction demonstrates social significance as the surrounding community has intimate ties to the abandoned. This area of Belhaven once a vital waterway for commercial fishers is experiencing economic decline as evidenced by the high number of vessel and equipment graveyards.


In this work, we report on the fabrication and characterization of organic light-emitting transistors (OLETs) within an indium–tin-oxide (ITO)-free platform, using graphene-based transparent conductive electrodes in place of ITO as gate electrode. A direct comparison between twin bottom-gate/top-contacts OLETs, where a standard ITO layer is replaced with a film made of a few graphene layers, shows that comparable electrical characteristics can be obtained along with a clear improvement in the electroluminescence generation characteristics. Our experimental findings pave the way to the exploitation of graphene-based transparent conductive electrodes within this class of emerging devices on flexible substrates, further promoting the novel era of flexible organic electronics.


Given that the auditory system is rather well developed at the end of the third trimester of pregnancy, it is likely that couplings between acoustics and motor activity can be integrated as early as at the beginning of postnatal life. The aim of the present mini-review was to summarize and discuss studies on early auditory-motor integration, focusing particularly on upper-limb movements (one of the most crucial means to interact with the environment) in association with auditory stimuli, to develop further understanding of their significance with regard to early infant development. Many studies have investigated the relationship between various infant behaviors (e.g., sucking, visual fixation, head turning) and auditory stimuli, and established that human infants can be observed displaying couplings between action and environmental sensory stimulation already from just after birth, clearly indicating a propensity for intentional behavior. Surprisingly few studies, however, have investigated the associations between upper-limb movements and different auditory stimuli in newborns and young infants, infants born at risk for developmental disorders/delays in particular. Findings from studies of early auditory-motor interaction support that the developing integration of sensory and motor systems is a fundamental part of the process guiding the development of goal-directed action in infancy, of great importance for continued motor, perceptual, and cognitive development. At-risk infants (e.g., those born preterm) may display increasing central auditory processing disorders, negatively affecting early sensory-motor integration, and resulting in long-term consequences on gesturing, language development, and social communication. Consequently, there is a need for more studies on such implications.


OBJECTIVE
Among the existing epidemiologic studies that have examined the relationship between depression and sleep disturbances, there are few nationwide studies that have been conducted on subjects representing the general population. The present study was therefore conducted to clarify the relationship between depression and sleep disturbances, in particular the relationship between depression and both sleep duration and subjective sleep sufficiency, using a large sample representative of the general population.

METHOD
The survey was conducted in June 2000, using self-administered questionnaires, targeting a population that was selected randomly from among 300 communities throughout Japan. Among the respondents, data from 24,686 individuals aged 20 years or older were analyzed. The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale was used to assess the presence of depression. Sleep status, including sleep duration, subjective sleep sufficiency, and the presence or absence of insomnia symptoms, was evaluated.

RESULTS
Those whose sleep duration was less than 6 hours and those whose sleep duration was 8 hours or more tended to be more depressed than those whose sleep duration was between 6 and 8 hours. Thus, sleep duration exhibited a U-shaped association with symptoms of depression. As subjective sleep sufficiency decreased, symptoms of depression increased, indicating a linear inverse-proportional relationship.

CONCLUSION
The fact that sleep duration and subjective sleep sufficiency exhibited different relationships with symptoms of depression indicates that these 2 sleep parameters each have their own significance with regard to depression. These findings may be useful in the medical management of mental diseases.


ATRX is a chromatin remodelling factor found at a wide range of tandemly repeated sequences including telomeres (TTAGGG)n. ATRX mutations are found in nearly all tumours that maintain their telomeres via the alternative lengthening of telomere (ALT) pathway, and ATRX is known to suppress this pathway. Here, we show that recruitment of ATRX to telomeric repeats depends on repeat number, orientation and, critically, on repeat transcription. Importantly, the transcribed telomeric repeats form RNA–DNA hybrids (R‐loops) whose abundance correlates with the recruitment of ATRX. Here, we show loss of ATRX is also associated with increased R‐loop formation. Our data suggest that the presence of ATRX at telomeres may have a central role in suppressing deleterious DNA secondary structures that form at transcribed telomeric repeats, and this may account for the increased DNA damage, stalling of replication and homology‐directed repair previously observed upon loss of ATRX function.


This article explores Catholic, transnational Latin American migration to Rome as a gendered and ethnicized Atlantic Return, which is figured as a source of 'new blood' that fortifies the Catholic Church but which also profoundly unsettles it. I analyze this Atlantic Return as an angle on the affective force of history in critical relation to two main sources: Diego Von Vacano's reading of the work of Bartolomeo de las Casas, a 16th-century Spanish Dominican friar; and to Nelson Maldonado-Torres' notion of the 'coloniality of being' which he suggests has operated in Atlantic relations as enduring and present forms of racial de-humanization. In his view this latter can be counterbalanced by embracing an economy of the gift understood as gendered. However, I argue that in the light of a contemporary payback of evangelization related to the original 'gift of faith' to the Americas, this economy of the gift is less liberatory than Maldonado-Torres imagines, and instead part of a polyfaceted reproduction of a postsecular neoliberal affective, and gendered labour regime.


The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of an urban middle school dropout prevention program on the academic achievement, attendance, attitudes toward self and school, and conflict resolution skills of potential dropout candidates. The study compared the differences in grade point averages and Iowa Test of Basic Skills scores, percentages of absences, self concept and motivation towards school scores, and the percentage of suspensions of subjects in three middle schools in Portsmouth, Virginia. A review of literature revealed that traditional dropout prevention efforts have addressed the dropout dilemma with varying degrees of success. More recent dropout initiatives have focused on addressing the physical, social, psychological, and educational needs of atrisk students and early intervention. Additionally, the inclusion of a holistic dropout approach can have positive effects on school related dropout predictors of middle school students. Three defined groups of middle school at-risk students represented levels of the independent variable. Subjects in group one (N=32) were participants in the CAPP holistic dropout treatment at Cradock Middle School. Subjects in group two (N=24) were members of an intact split grade level class Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. at Hunt-Mapp Middle School who did not receive dropout intervention. This group served as a control group. Subjects in group three (N=18) were assigned to an intact class at Churchland Middle School who participated in an academic remediation treatment. Post intervention data were collected from school records on grade point averages, Iowa composite scaled test scores, percentage of absences, and percentage of suspensions. One-way analyses of variance were used to analyze the dependent variables. A one-way analysis of variance was also employed to measure an attitude subscale relevant to conflict management. Additionally, postmeasures on five subscales of the School Attitude Measures inventory were collected and analyzed using a multivariate analysis of variance. The findings of the analyses revealed that the grade point averages and school attendance percentages for subjects in CAPP were significantly higher than subjects in the two comparison groups. CAPP subjects also scored higher, overall, on the attitude inventory. As a result of this study, information was provided that contributed to the assessment of the Portsmouth Public Middle Schools dropout prevention program.


The semi-arid regions of Iran have experienced severe water resources stress due to natural (e.g., drought) and anthropogenic (e.g., depletion of water in various sectors) factors. Assessing the impact of climate change on water resources and crop production could significantly help toward better water management and hence prevention of land degradation in this area. A hydrological model of the Razan–Ghahavand basin was used as a representative case study of a semi-arid region of Iran. Future climate scenarios in the mid-21st century were generated from four global circulation models (GCMs) with three scenarios under the fourth assessment report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emission projections. The GCMs have been downscaled based on observed data at 10 climate stations across the basin. The results showed that for the basin as a whole, the mean annual precipitation is likely to decrease while the maximum temperature increases. The changes in these two climate variables resulted in substantial reduction in groundwater recharge as the main source of water supply in this area. Furthermore, soil water content was decreased which resulted in the reduction of crop yield in rain-fed areas. Indeed, the risk of drought in the south and flooding in the north was high.


The Ferruginous sandstone ore was obtained from Ramlet Hemeyir area, Southwestern Sinai, Egypt. It was found to contain 0.26 % U and 10 % REE (rare earth elements). A representative sample has been subjected to acid agitation leaching using H2SO4 by which 89% U and 93% REE were released by mixing the sample with concentrated H2SO4 at solid/ liquid (S/L) ratio of 1/2 for 5h at a temperature range (250 - 300oC). After precipitation of rare earth elements and lead. Uranium was separated from the filtrate by liquid – liquid extraction using a synergistic system of D2EHPA/TBP in kerosene as a diluent under the following conditions: a solvent concentration of 0.5 M at pH 1, anA/O ratio of 1:1 and a contact time 10 min. The loaded organic solvent was stripped with 10%sodiumcarbonate at ratio 3:1. Then NaOH was added to the stripped solution to precipitate U-cake at pH 12.0.


Multiple sclerosis is a neurological disease caused by discrete plaques of demyelination at sites throughout the central nervous system caused by a T-Cell mediated immune response with an unknown trigger. It has a lifetime risk of 1:1000 in the UK, and is twice as prevalent in females with the typical onset being between 20 and 40 years of age, namely the childbearing ages. There are many disease-modifying therapies used to treat Multiple Sclerosis. However, immunomodulatory and immunosuppressive drugs used at any stage of pregnancy may affect fetus formation and/or development. Interferons are a group of naturally occurring macromolecules with antiviral, antiproliferative and immunomodulatory properties, and interferon beta is currently the most widely used therapy for multiple sclerosis. However, limited data in primates suggests that interferon beta may be abortifacient. Due to this and due to lack of experience with drug safety, it is usually suggested that either treatment is suspended when a pregnancy is planned, or a critical assessment of the pros and cons of ceasing therapy should be performed. A literature review of the last ten years identified nine papers, which looked at maternal (relapse rates, mode of delivery) and fetal/neonatal outcomes (spontaneous abortion, pre-term delivery, birth weight, birth defects, still births and developmental milestones) associated with its use in pregnancy. The literature review highlighted conflicting results, however, on the whole, for most outcomes most studies did not associate IFN beta use during pregnancy with adverse outcomes. Further trials investigating important maternal, fetal and neonatal outcomes are called for.


Anti-nuclear antibodies (ANA) have traditionally been evaluated using indirect fluorescence assays (IFA) with HEp-2 cells. Quantitative immunoassays (EIA) have replaced the use of HEp-2 cells in some laboratories. Here, we evaluated ANA in 400 consecutive and unselected routinely referred patients using IFA and automated EIA techniques. The IFA results generated by two independent laboratories were compared with the EIA results from antibodies against double-stranded DNA (dsDNA), from ANA screening, and from tests of the seven included subantigens. The final IFA and EIA results for 386 unique patients were compared. The majority of the results were the same between the two methods (n = 325, 84%); however, 8% (n = 30) yielded equivocal results (equivocal-negative and equivocal-positive) and 8% (n = 31) yielded divergent results (positive-negative). The results showed fairly good agreement, with Cohen's kappa value of 0.30 (95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.14–0.46), which decreased to 0.23 (95% CI = 0.06–0.40) when the results for dsDNA were omitted. The EIA method was less reliable for assessing nuclear and speckled reactivity patterns, whereas the IFA method presented difficulties detecting dsDNA and Ro activity. The automated EIA method was performed in a similar way to the conventional IFA method using HEp-2 cells; thus, automated EIA may be used as a screening test.


Pyogenic granuloma are common reactive lesions occurring as a result of chronic infection or constant irritation. The clinical appearance of pyogenic granuloma is non-specific. We report a case of pyogenic granuloma occurring as a result of food entrapment between teeth, which was managed by surgical excision of lesion and restoration of caries tooth.


The purpose of this study was to examine faculty members' perception of the status of technology support and services, their attitudes towards the incorporation of technology in general and with specific applications, and the barriers they perceive to technology use. Additionally, the study focused on the association among the predictor variables of faculty members' gender, age, professional status, years of higher education teaching experience, and tenure versus nontenure status with their degree of technology use. An online survey was designed to collect data to address the research questions in the study. The survey consisted of 44 questions, including areas for comments. Two-hundred ninety faculty members out of a possible 867 responded to the survey. Based on the results, conclusions have been drawn. According to the literature, the results of this study both contradict and support previous studies. Dimension 1, perceived technology support and services, and Dimension 2, perceived barriers to technology use, provided no significant difference when considering the demographic variables of age, gender, years of experience, faculty rank, and tenure versus nontenure status. Though, Dimension 3, attitudes towards the use of technology and specific applications, provided no significant difference when considering the demographic variable of age, faculty rank, and tenure versus nontenure status but there was a slight indication of significance based on years of experience. In addition, gender differences appeared among attitudes toward the use of technology and specific applications. Based on the results, females have been shown to have better attitudes toward the use of technology and specific applications, an area historically dominated by men. Also, faculty members with 1-9 to 10-19 years of experience have better attitudes toward the use of technology. While faculty members with 20 or more years of experience attitude is not significantly affected by years of experience. Additional research needs to be established to include: 1) research faculty members in other southeast states to determine whether or not findings from this study could be generalized, 2) research to include all community colleges within the Tennessee Board of Regents higher education system, and 3) research faculty members responses regarding community colleges role in providing technology training.


Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) is an opportunistic pathogen that can cause infections in patients with compromised immunity including patients with neutropenia, HIV infection, burns, cancer, organ transplant surgery or in intensive care as well as Cystic Fibrosis (CF) patients. CF patients may have a T-helper (Th)-2 and Th-17-biased immune response which suggest that, either the absence of Th-1 and/or enhanced Th-17 responses may contribute to chronic PA infection with a deterioration of lung function in CF. A previous study in our laboratory showed that interferon (IFN)-γ production by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from CF patients positively correlates with lung function, particularly in patients chronically infected with PA. In contrast, IL-17A levels correlated negatively with lung function especially in patients chronically infected with PA. These results agreed with the notion that IFN-γ and IL-17A play protective and detrimental roles, respectively, in CF disease. To explore the protective effect of IFN-γ in CF, the effect of IFN-γ alone or in combination with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), on the ability of human macrophages to control PA growth, resist the cytotoxicity induced by PA or promote inflammation was investigated previously in our laboratory. Treatment of macrophages with IFN-γ, in the presence and absence of GM-CSF did not alter bacterial growth or macrophage survival upon PA infection, but made the macrophages more pro-inflammatory. As neutrophils have been reported to be the key effector cells for the clearance of PA, there was therefore the need to include neutrophils in the macrophage cultures so as to determine how inflammatory conditions affect PA clearance. Although neutrophils are essential for protection against extracellular bacteria, neutrophil-dominated inflammation can compromise organ function by causing tissue damage. Optimal anti-bacterial immunity should harness the microbicidal activity of neutrophils while minimising their potential for causing injury. However, neutrophils do not act in isolation, they respond to cues provided by other cells such as macrophages, which influence their activation and life span. In vivo models have dominated the study of anti-bacterial immunity and there is a need of human models for the dissection of macrophage/neutrophil communication during bacterial infection. This work describes the development of a human macrophage/neutrophil infection assay and its use to model Th-1 (IFN-γ) - and Th-17 (IL-17A)-driven microbicidal activity and inflammatory potential upon infection. Results show that IFN-γ and IL-17A have opposite effects on the killing ability of macrophages and neutrophils co-cultures; bacterial killing was reduced by IFN-γ and promoted by IL-17A. In addition, macrophages and neutrophils specifically collaborated for the production of IL-1β and IL-1α and IFN-γ-treated co-cultures generated significantly less IL-1β and IL-1α compared to those treated with IL-17A. This effect was not observed with other cytokines such as TNF-α, IL-6, MIP-1α and MCP-1. Also, there was increased production of IL-1β upon addition of neutrophils to infected macrophage cultures and this depended on caspase-1 activity. Thus phagocyte co-cultures provide a suitable model of human anti-microbial immunity and unveil an unappreciated collaboration between macrophages and neutrophils in the promotion of IL-1-mediated inflammation. The reduction of inflammation in the presence of IFN-γ highlights the potential of IFN-γ as a therapeutic strategy in extracellular bacterial infections such as infections with PA.


Revised and expanded seminal work on families, with more than a million copies sold in 12 languages. The New Peoplemaking expresses Satir's most evolved thoughts on self-worth, communication, family systems, and the ways in which people relate to one another. Drawn on Satir's lifetime of experience with thousands of families around the world, it is written in the engaging style for which she is famous. The New Peoplemaking is completely revised and enlarged by six new chapters that elaborate on the whole of life.


Leighton et al. developed a sophisticated screen to specifically detect mouse proteins that function in axonal guidance. To identify cell-surface and secreted proteins, which would include receptors and ligands that contribute to proper patterning in the brain, they used a gene trapping strategy that selects for vector insertion into a gene that encodes a signal sequence. To identify axons expressing such targeted genes, they included an internal ribosome entry site (IRES) to drive the expression of placental alkaline phosphatase (PLAP), a convenient axonal marker. Such labeling of axons allowed visualization of the wiring pattern of altered cells in the brains of transgenic mice. Among the targeted genes, the authors identified those encoding semaphorin 6A, a transmembrane protein previously implicated as a receptor that signals axon repulsion, and the Eph4a receptor tyrosine kinase. The authors suggest that this method will contribute to the creation of a "molecular map of axonal projections" and will deposit the information about PLAP-expressing embryonic stem cells and transgenic mouse lines in an online database (www.genetrap.org). P. A. Leighton, K. J. Mitchell, L. V. Goodrich, X. Lu, K. Pinson, P. Scherz, W. C. Skarnes, M. Tessier-Lavigne. Defining brain wiring patterns and mechanisms through gene trapping in mice. Nature 410, 174-179 (2001). [Online Journal]


Background: Previous studies of air pollution and birth outcomes have not evaluated whether complicated pregnancies might be susceptible to the adverse effects of air pollution. It was hypothesised that trimester mean pollutant concentrations could be associated with fetal growth restriction, with larger risks among complicated pregnancies. Methods: A multiyear linked birth certificate and maternal/newborn hospital discharge dataset of singleton, term births to mothers residing in New Jersey at the time of birth, who were white (non-Hispanic), African–American (non-Hispanic) or Hispanic was used. Very small for gestational age (VSGA) was defined as a fetal growth ratio <0.75, small for gestational age (SGA) as ⩾0.75 and <0.85, and 'reference' births as ⩾0.85. Using polytomous logistic regression, associations between mean pollutant concentrations during the first, second and third trimesters and the risks of SGA/VSGA were examined, as well as effect modification of these associations by several pregnancy complications. Results: Significantly increased risk of SGA was associated with first and third trimester PM2.5 (particulate matter <2.5 μm in aerodynamic diameter), and increased risk of VSGA associated with first, second and third trimester nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations. Pregnancies complicated by placental abruption and premature rupture of the membrane had ∼two- to fivefold greater excess risks of SGA/VSGA than pregnancies not complicated by these conditions, although these estimates were not statistically significant. Conclusions: These findings suggest that ambient air pollution, perhaps specifically traffic emissions during early and late pregnancy and/or factors associated with residence near a roadway during pregnancy, may affect fetal growth. Further, pregnancy complications may increase susceptibility to these effects in late pregnancy.


American consumers today access financial services in fragmented, product-specific marketplaces in which each provider optimizes its consumer relationships based on profitability. Providers regularly exploit information advantages, geographical proximity, behavioral biases, high "shopping costs" and other asymmetries. Consumers, under pressure to make quick personal decisions, frequently make suboptimal or affirmatively damaging choices that benefit the provider and constrain the consumers' options in follow-on decisions. The responsibility for managing outcomes in consumer financial services is — absent the most egregious abuse — left in the hands of the individual consumer. These practices arguably have led to suboptimal outcomes for all consumers and high levels of financial insecurity among the most vulnerable populations.

In the face of these problems, state and federal governments have, over time, adopted a variety of statutory and regulatory regimes intended to protect consumers. The resulting system of consumer financial regulation has had an inconsistent record in advancing the interests of consumers, particularly more vulnerable lower-income consumers, despite the existence of large bodies of law and regulation, extensive consumer disclosure, the enforcement efforts of dozens of state and federal regulatory agencies and an enormous investment in regulatory compliance by financial services providers. The system has historically operated in a data vacuum where regulators had little insight into the results of product usage, relying instead on disclosure-based regimes intended to inform consumer choice regarding product pricing and terms, narrow proscriptions regarding provider practices that impede informed decision-making and limited interventions regarding pricing or fees.

This situation has begun to change. Digitization and the ongoing "big data" revolution, coupled with the emergence of new measures of "financial health" outcomes, now make it possible to analyze the impact on individuals of the use of financial services. This, in turn, may allow historic regulatory regimes to be reimagined using these new data capabilities. Over time, a regulatory framework based upon outcomes measurement has the potential to supplement and ultimately replace the current system.

Something similar has begun to occur in the health care field, where insurers (and the state and federal governments that administer Medicare and Medicaid) represent powerful payor interests that are largely aligned with patient wellbeing. These health care market participants now use outcomes-based data to guide a wide range of medical practices and clinical decisions on the part of hospitals, physicians and medical service providers. Increasingly, a variety of standardized and publicly disclosed metrics enable payors to reward providers for lowering costs and improving patient outcomes.

Drawing from the health care example, we advance a three-stage proposal to better align financial services provider interests with improved customer outcomes, through data analysis, public disclosure and market-based regulatory intervention. The proposal would introduce into the financial services marketplace a form of "outcomes-based regulation" that has been advanced elsewhere. Implementation of the new framework would not be an immediate substitute for existing consumer financial protection law; but by generating an empirical basis for identifying harms and benefits correlated with particular practices or product features, it would for the first time allow policymakers to measure the impact of statutory and regulatory interventions, determine product/practice "appropriateness" for particular consumer circumstances, and tailor policies to remedy harms incurred by users of particular products and/or providers. When fully tested and implemented, the three-stage process should shift provider incentives meaningfully towards improved customer outcomes, leading to a gradual shift away from prescriptive and disclosure-based regulation to a "learning" system that is principles-based, data-driven, transparent and leverages market mechanisms to deliver improved financial health for consumers.


The International Energy Agency's annual detailed reference work on gas supply and demand covering not only the OECD countries but also the rest of the world, this publication contains essential information on LNG and pipeline trade, gas reserves, storage capacity and prices. This edition also includes a special report on the Development of Competitive Gas Trading in Continental Europe.
The main part of the book, however, concentrates on OECD countries, showing a detailed supply and demand balance for each country and for the three OECD regions: North America, Europe and Pacific, as well as a breakdown of gas consumption by end-user. Import and export data are reported by source and destination.


This paper provides estimates of poverty and inequality across states as also for different sub-groups of population for 2004-05 by using the old and new methods of the Planning Commission. The new method is critically evaluated with the help of some existing literature and its limitations discussed with regard to doing away with calorie norm, use of median expenditure as a norm for education when the distribution is positively skewed, difficulty in reproducing results for earlier rounds acting as a constraint on comparisons, and using urban poverty ration of the old method as a starting point to decide a consumption basket. More importantly, it discusses the implications on financial transfers across states if the share of poor is only taken into account without accounting for an increase in the total number of poor. Despite these limitations, on grounds of parsimony and prudence the state-specific poverty lines suggested in the new method, as also in the old method, are used to calculate incidence, depth (intensity) and severity (inequality among poor) estimates of poverty for different sub-groups of population, viz., NSS regions, social groups and occupation groups.


Any data exchanged between the processor and main memory uses the memory bus, sharing it with data exchanged between I/O devices and main memory. If the processor and a device try to transfer data at the same time, an impact can be seen on the processor as well as on the device. As a result, the execution time of an application on the processor may increase due to memory-bus load generated by I/O devices. In real-time environments, this impact can result in missed deadlines and a behavior that is different to that intended by the designer of the system. This paper gives a method for describing and quantifying the impact of such load on applications executed by the processor.


Abstract Where long forest-fallows are no longer practiced, productivity declines in the absence of input substitution, as does the ability of subsistence farmers to earn an adequate livelihood from shifting cultivation. Land availability, population density and traditional economic factors such as soil fertility and labour requirements are not the only factors that affect fallow length and land use intensification in shifting cultivation agroforestry systems. Households surveyed indicated that various other decision criteria (e.g., proximity to other fields and the protection of land use rights) are important in land use decisions. Even though one quarter of households reported insufficient land resources to maintain soil fertility, few actually indicated that their choices were constrained by land availability. In fact, many cleared much younger fallows than strictly necessary based on the age of fallows available in their land holdings – even those with fallows of sufficient age to maintain long-term productivity. This paper outlines an approach to soliciting information about the household preferences that influence land use decisions, discusses the implications of these decision criteria for land use intensification and uses them to model household decision-making in a way that effectively simulates the spatial and dynamic mosaic of land use characteristic of shifting cultivation. Not only are non-economic decision criteria important in land use decisions in general, they also have a significant impact on land use intensification. In fact, the research described here demonstrates that both household-specific preferences and household-specific initial


On August 13, 2015, the Federal Trade Commission issued a statement describing the standard the agency applies when enforcing its "standalone" unfair methods of competition authority pursuant to Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (the "Section 5 Statement") – a development 101 years in the making. The Section 5 Statement provides the Commission with an important tool to fulfill its purpose of contributing meaningfully to US competition law and policy. Whereas the Commission's standalone Section 5 authority provided the agency with potentially unbounded authority to prohibit any conduct the majority of the Commission deemed unpalatable – the Section 5 Statement clarifies that it views this authority as limited to economic welfare as understood under the Sherman and Clayton Acts. The Commission's commitment to analyzing conduct under Section 5 as it would under the traditional antitrust laws provides practitioners with the ability to counsel clients as to the contours of Section 5. Furthermore, the Section 5 Statement articulates a relationship between Section 5 and the traditional antitrust laws, as the Commission acknowledges it should refrain from exercising its Section 5 authority where the traditional antitrust laws are sufficient to address the conduct. We intend this article to provide insight from our perspective, as individuals involved in the creation of the Statement, and with the hopes that it will prove useful to those seeking to understand it and how it will and should be applied by courts and agencies.


The Ebola viral Protein 24 (VP24) inhibits interferon signaling through its interaction with the human protein Karyopherin, thus impairing the immune response of the host against the infection and increasing its rate of diffusion into the organism and its lethality. This makes VP24 a potential pharmacological target, as the inhibition of its interaction with Karyopherin could reduce Ebola virulence. In this work, we carried out an atomic level study of the network of interactions between VP24 and Karyopherin using molecular dynamics and computational alanine scanning. Modeling the VP24–Karyopherin complex allowed us to identify the amino acid residues responsible for protein–protein binding and led to the identification of a nonapeptide with VP24 binding potential. Subsequently, the ability of this peptide to actually bind VP24 in solution has been assayed using Saturation Transfer Difference NMR and Circular Dichroism. Experimental and molecular modeling data concerning the VP24–peptide complex have been compared and putative peptide binding sites and modes are discussed.


Convolutional neural networks excel in a number of computer vision tasks. One of their most crucial architectural elements is the effective receptive field size, which has to be manually set to accommodate a specific task. Standard solutions involve large kernels, down/up-sampling and dilated convolutions. These require testing a variety of dilation and down/up-sampling factors and result in non-compact networks and large number of parameters. We address this issue by proposing a new convolution filter composed of displaced aggregation units (DAU). DAUs learn spatial displacements and adapt the receptive field sizes of individual convolution filters to a given problem, thus reducing the need for hand-crafted modifications. DAUs provide a seam-less substitution of convolutional filters in existing state-of-the-art architectures, which we demonstrate on AlexNet, ResNet50, ResNet101, DeepLab and SRN-DeblurNet. The benefits of this design are demonstrated on a variety of computer vision tasks and datasets, such as image classification (ILSVRC 2012), semantic segmentation (PASCAL VOC 2011, Cityscape) and blind image de-blurring (GOPRO). Results show that DAUs efficiently allocate parameters resulting in up to four times more compact networks in terms of the number of parameters at similar or better performance.


The purpose of the present research was to investigate the psychological problems of adults who were abused in childhood because child abuse occurs in all geographic locations including both urban and rural areas. It cuts across socio-economic groups, races and religions as well. Child abuse is not an isolated problem; it is an issue of national concern.

It was hypothesized that adults who have been verbally, physically and sexually abused in childhood will be at greater risk in the development of psychological problems i.e., anxiety, depression, OCD, hostility, interpersonal sensitivity, phobia, somatization, paranoid ideation and psychoticism as compare to those adults who have not been abused 'in childhood.

In order to measure abused childhood a checklist questionnaire was prepared after conducting two pilot studies where as Symptoms Assessment - 45 scale was selected for measuring psychological problems of adults. The sample of the present research comprised of two hundred and forty eight (248) adults, 135 males and 113 females. Their ages range between 18 to 26 years. Checklist questionnaire and SA-45 scale were applied on a large population than on the basis of cut off scores non abused and abused groups were identified. ANOVA, Tukey's post hoc analysis and other descriptive statistics were performed for analyzing the data. For interpreting the results, I± 0.05 level of significance was set.

The results revealed that the adults who have been abused specifically in terms of verbal, physical and sexual tend to have anxiety, depression, OCD, phobia, somatization, hostility, interpersonal sensitivity, paranoid ideation and psychotic features as compared to those adults who have not been abused in childhood, on the other hand adults who have been abused specifically in terms of verbal and physical tended to reveal no significant difference in phobia and somatization scores in the comparison of those adults who have not been abused in childhood. However, comparison of verbally, physically and sexually severe abused and non-abused group on phobia scores depicted no significant differences.

Recommendations and avenue for further research have also been suggested.


In this paper, we propose a new computationally efficient framework for learning sparse models. We formulate a unified approach that contains as particular cases models promoting sparse synthesis and analysis type of priors, and mixtures thereof. The supervised training of the proposed model is formulated as a bilevel optimization problem, in which the operators are optimized to achieve the best possible performance on a specific task, e.g., reconstruction or classification. By restricting the operators to be shift invariant, our approach can be thought as a way of learning sparsity-promoting convolutional operators. Leveraging recent ideas on fast trainable regressors designed to approximate exact sparse codes, we propose a way of constructing feed-forward networks capable of approximating the learned models at a fraction of the computational cost of exact solvers. In the shift-invariant case, this leads to a principled way of constructing a form of task-specific convolutional networks. We illustrate the proposed models on several experiments in music analysis and image processing applications.


Raid, a robust and adaptable distributed database system for transaction processing, is described. Raid is a message-passing system, with server processes on each site. The servers manage concurrent processing, consistent replicated copies during site failures and atomic distributed commitment. A high-level, layered communications package provides a clean, location-independent interface between servers. The latest design of the communications package delivers messages via shared memory in a high-performance configuration in which several servers are linked into a single process. Raid provides the infrastructure to experimentally investigate various methods for supporting reliable distributed transaction processing. Measurements on transaction processing time and server CPU time are presented. Data and conclusions of experiments in three categories are also presented: communications software, consistent replicated copy control during site failures, and concurrent distributed checkpointing. A software tool for the evaluation of transaction processing algorithms in an operating system kernel is proposed. >


OBJECTIVE
To determine the incidence of infection and associated risk factors, after elective arthroscopy.

STUDY DESIGN
Retrospective case study.

ANIMALS
Horses (n=1079) undergoing elective arthroscopy.

METHODS
Medical records of all horses that underwent elective arthroscopy between 2006 and 2013 were reviewed. Age, gender, breed, surgeon, number of joints operated, total anesthetic time, perioperative antimicrobial administration, and the presence and size of osteochondral fragments/subchondral lesions were recorded. For each operated joint, the development of postoperative infection (surgical site infection [SSI] and/or septic arthritis) and long-term outcome (>6 months) were recorded. Multivariate logistic regression was used to test for association between the independent variables and the dependent outcomes.

RESULTS
A total of 1741 joints in 1079 horses underwent arthroscopy. SSI without septic arthritis occurred in 1 fetlock joint (0.14%), 1 tibiotarsal joint (0.19%), and 6 femoropatellar joints (1.67%). Thirteen joints (0.75%) were diagnosed with septic arthritis, including 1 fetlock joint (0.14%), 4 tibiotarsal joints (0.74%), and 8 femoropatellar joints (2.23%). The probability of postoperative SSI was higher when large lesions (>40 mm long) were treated, compared to medium (20-40 mm, P = .005) and small (<20 mm, P < .001) lesions. SSI was a significant risk factor for the development of septic arthritis (P < .001). Although age did not affect the incidence of SSI, increasing age was associated with a lower rate of septic arthritis rate (P = .028).

CONCLUSION
Septic arthritis after elective arthroscopy was more likely in the presence of SSI and younger age. Horses with large lesions were at risk for SSI, which translated into a higher incidence of postoperative septic arthritis after femoropatellar arthroscopy.


We show that the integrated Lyapunov exponents of C1 volume-preserving diffeomorphisms are simultaneously continuous at a given diffeomorphism only if the corresponding Oseledets splitting is trivial (all Lyapunov exponents are equal to zero) or else dominated (uniform hyperbolicity in the projective bundle) almost everywhere. We deduce a sharp dichotomy for generic volume-preserving diffeomorphisms on any compact manifold: almost every orbit either is projectively hyperbolic or has all Lyapunov exponents equal to zero. Similarly, for a residual subset of all C1 symplectic diffeomorphisms on any compact manifold, either the diffeomorphism is Anosov or almost every point has zero as a Lyapunov exponent, with multiplicity at least 2. Finally, given any set S ?? GL(d) satisfying an accessibility condition, for a residual subset of all continuous S-valued cocycles over any measure-preserving homeomorphism of a compact space, the Oseledets splitting is either dominated or trivial. The condition on S is satisfied for most common matrix groups and also for matrices that arise from discrete Schr?Nodinger operators.


Dating violence is a serious public health concern both per se and because victimization in the young adult years can be a precursor to more severe incidents of domestic violence later, in the context of cohabitation or marriage. To date, no quantitative studies have examined dating violence among college students in Chile. To address this gap, a survey on this topic was administered to students at a major public university. The present analyses focused on the female sample (n=441). Generalized ordered logit models were used to assess factors associated with physical victimization since age 14, considering three categories: no victimization, victimization with no injury, and victimization with injury. Approximately 21% of subjects reported one or more incidents of physical dating violence not involving injury since age 14, and another 5.0% reported at least one incident resulting in injury during this time period. The corresponding figures for the past 12 months were 12.9% and 2.4%, respectively. Childhood sexual abuse and witnessing domestic violence as a child were associated with substantially elevated odds of physical victimization later in life. Low parental education was also associated with higher vulnerability, in part because of its linkage with childhood experiences with aggression. Protective factors included maternal employment and religious service participation at age 14, residence in the parental home during the college years, and never having had sexual intercourse. The findings suggest that it would be desirable to develop public health initiatives to prevent and respond to this form of violence among Chilean college students.


The communication of patient information through use of handoff ensures continuity of care and patient safety. A study of hand-off reports between pre-hospital personnel and staff in the emergency department revealed a lack of complete or formal information dialogue. Nurses play a vital role in the process of communication and information exchange through the use of handoff despite minimal guidelines for that exchange in current nursing practice. The pre-hospital hand-off informational exchange impacts patient safety as well as the planning and implementation of nursing care based upon that information. The sample used was from a convenience sampling of patients arriving in the Emergency Department via ambulance over all days, shifts, and from all ambulance services that deliver patients who chose to participate in the study. The sample size was to observe hand offs occurring over a one month period of time equally distributed over all shifts and days of the week. The data was analyzed using a percentage distribution to classify the data related to hand off report content. This data was then divided and compared according to the categories of information transferred through utilization of the protocol and analyzed for frequency of occurrence. There are indications for nursing educational needs in relation to the importance of handoff documentation and how that documentation of the handoff report contents impacts nursing practice. There may also be implications for the standard format for handoff reporting and technology solutions to improve handoff content.


The authors provide a summary of the structural analysis of the compulsator stator as well as a detailed description of the major stator components. Fabrication and assembly techniques are also presented, along with the current status of the project. The range gun compulsator is a self-excited, air-cored alternator designed to provide pulsed power in a field portable electromagnetic launch system capable of accelerating a salvo of nine projectiles to a muzzle energy of 9 MJ at velocities ranging from 2.5 to 4.0 km/s. The compulsator is designed to deliver 3.2 MA current pulses to a railgun launcher at a peak power rating of 10 GW. The stator consists of a multiturn compensating winding with a laminated stainless steel support structure, an aluminum excitation field coil and support structure, a stainless steel stator casing and main end plates, hydrostatic bearings, seals, and support pedestals, and current collection mechanisms for the field excitation and main armature circuits. >


The MasPar MP-1 architecture is described. It is a massively parallel SIMD machine with the following key characteristics: scalable architecture in terms of the number of processing elements, system memory, and system communication bandwidth; reduced-instruction-set-computer-like instruction set design which leverages optimizing compiler technology; adherence to industry-standard floating point formats, specifically VAX and IEEE floating point; and an architectural design amenable to a VLSI implementation. The architecture provides not only high computational capability, but also a mesh and global interconnect style of communication. The computational model and subsystems of the MP-1, including the interconnection mechanisms, are described.<<ETX>>


Efficient GPU applications rely on programmers carefully structure their codes to
fully utilize the GPU resources. In general, programmers spend a significant amount
of time optimizing their applications to run efficiently on domain-specific architectures. To reduce the burden on programmers to utilize GPUs fully, I create several
hardware and software solutions that improve the resource utilization on parallel
processors without significant programmer intervention.

 Recently, GPUs are increasingly being deployed in data centers to accelerate
latency-driven applications, which exhibit a modest amount of data parallelism. The
synchronous kernel execution on these applications cannot fully utilize the entire
GPU. Thus, a GPU contains multiple hardware queues to improve its throughput by
executing multiple kernels on a single device simultaneously when there are sufficient
hardware resources. However, a GPU faces severe underutilization when the space in
these queues has been exhausted, and the performance benefit vanishes with the decreased parallelism. As a result, I proposed a GPU runtime system – Pagoda, which
virtualizes the GPU hardware resources by using an OS-like daemon kernel called
MasterKernel. Tasks (kernels) are spawned from the CPU onto Pagoda as they be-
come available, and are scheduled by the MasterKernel at the warp granularity to
increase the GPU throughput for latency-driven applications. This work invents several programming APIs to handle task spawning and synchronization and includes
parallel tasks and warp scheduling policies to reduce runtime overhead.

 Latency-driven applications have both high throughput demands and response
time constraints. These applications may launch many kernels that do not fully utilize
the GPU unless grouped with large batch sizes. However, batching forces jobs to wait,
which increases their latency. This wait time can be unacceptable when considering
real-world arrival times of jobs. However, the round-robin GPU kernel scheduler
is oblivious to application deadlines. This deadline-blind scheduling policy makes it
harder to ensure that kernels meet their QoS deadlines. To enhance the responsiveness
of the GPU, I also proposed LAX, including an execution time estimate for jobs with
one or many kernels. Moreover, LAX adjusts priorities of kernels dynamically based
on their slack time to increase the number of jobs that complete by their real-time
deadlines. LAX improves the responsiveness and throughput of GPUs.

 It is well-known that grouping threads into warps can create redundancy across
scalar values in GPU vector registers. However, I also found that the layout of thread
indices in multi-dimensional threadblocks (TBs) creates redundancy in the registers
storing thread IDs. This redundancy propagates into dependent instructions that
can be traced and identified statically. To remove GPU redundant instructions, I
proposed DARSIE that uses a per-kernel compiler finalization check that uses TB
dimensions to determine which instructions are redundant. Once identified, DARSIE
hardware skips TB-redundant instructions before they are fetched. DARSIE uses a
new multithreaded register renaming and instruction synchronization technique to
share the values from redundant instructions among warps in each TB. Altogether,
DARSIE decreases the number of executed instructions to improve GPU performance
and energy.


The performance of GPS receiver depends on the accuracy of the range measurements. The predominant errors in range measurements are due to propagation path delays, making the measured range longer than it would be, if the signal has not reflected or refracted while propagating. In this chapter, an algorithm is proposed to mitigate the multipath error on the pseudorange measured from L1 carrier frequency. The error is estimated considering the linear combination of the GPS measurements and carrier frequencies of L band, viz. L1 and L2. This algorithm exploits the random nature of the multipath error and it avoids complex calcula-tions involving sensitive parameter like reflection coefficient of the nearby reflectors. The multipath error is mitigated for standalone GPS receiver located in Indian subcontinent. Implementation of the algorithm shows pseudorange error due to multipath varied from 7 to 52 m, where the signals of low elevation satellites are most affected. GPS receiver position is calculated by considering multipath error corrected pseudoranges of all the visible satellites. This resulted in maximum error reduction of 30 m in receiver position estimates. This mitigation technique will be useful in selecting the site for GPS receiving antenna, where reflection coefficients are difficult to measure.


This paper describes an attempt to demonstrate by discriminant function analysis that psychotic and neurotic depressions are distinct conditions. The analysis was based on a comparison between 63 neurotic depressives and 115 psychotic depressives drawn from four series of consecutive admissions to public mental hospitals in London and New York. The clinical ratings were obtained by standardized interviewing techniques, and the choice of items for discriminant function analysis was based on prior chi-square comparisons between the two populations. In spite of these and other methodological refinements the distribution of the weighted scores of the 178 patients on the discriminant function was unimodal and did not differ significantly from a normal distribution. This finding reinforces the case for replacing the existing categorical classification of depressions by a dimensional classification.


Linear phase FIR filter banks form an integral part of the ISO/IEC JPEG 2000 image coding standard. One feature they enable is lossless subband coding based on reversible filter bank implementations. While this meshes well with symmetric boundary-handling techniques for whole-sample symmetric (odd- length) linear phase filters, there are obstructions with half- sample symmetric (even-length) filters, a fact that influenced the JPEG 2000 standard. We show how these obstructions can be overcome for a class of half-sample symmetric filter banks by employing lattice vector quantization to ensure symmetry- preserving rounding in reversible implementations.


This book presents a large-scale corpus-driven study of progressives in 'real' English and 'school' English, combining an analysis of general linguistic interest with a pedagogically motivated one. A systematic comparative analysis of more than 10,000 progressive forms taken from the largest existing corpora of spoken British English and from a small corpus of EFL textbook texts highlights numerous differences between actual language use and textbook language concerning the distribution of progressives, their preferred contexts, favoured functions, and typical lexical-grammatical patterns. On the basis of these differences, a number of pedagogical implications are derived, the integration of which then leads to a first draft of an innovative concept of teaching progressives - a concept which responds to three key criteria in pedagogical description: typicality, authenticity, and communicative utility. The analysis also demonstrates that many existing accounts of the progressive are inappropriate in several respects and that not enough attention is being paid to lexical-grammatical relations. ! Winner of the "Wissenschaftspreis Hannover 2006" for outstanding research monographs !


Since the emergence of modern artificial intelligence research in the 1950s, scholars have striven to model the ways in which humans think, speak, move, and emote. A presumed measure of success is the degree to which computer-driven programs or mechanical constructs can reproduce (that is, simulate) behaviors of their human counterparts. With the development of robotic pets, comparable measures have been considered. The goal of simulation is based upon an assumption regarding the extent to which humans seek authenticity, more generally, in the representations they encounter. By "representation" we mean everything from an audio recording of a musical performance, to an architectural reproduction of an original edifice, to a sculpture depicting a person, to a robotic pet. This essay argues that authenticity in representation is not always a desired goal. As a result, as we think about the extent to which the robots of today (and tomorrow) are capable of expressing emotion and other behaviors that are judged to be life-like, it behooves us to consider the degree to which users of robots are actually seeking verisimilitude.


We give explicit formulas of the Bethe approximation with multipoint correlations for systems with magnetic field. The obtained formulas include the closed form of the magnetization and the correlations between adjacent degrees of freedom. On the basis of our results, we propose a new iterative algorithm of the improved Bethe approximation. We confirm that the proposed technique is available for the random spin systems and indeed gives more accurate locations of the critical points. We discuss the possibility of the application of our method to the inverse Ising model by use of these equations.


Optogenetics is a recently established neuromodulation technique in which photostimulation is used to manipulate neurons with high temporal and spatial precision. However, sequential genetic and optical insertion with double brain implantation tends to cause excessive tissue damage. In addition, the incorporation of light-sensitive genes requires the utilization of viral vectors, which remains a safety concern. Here, by combining device fabrication design, nanotechnology, and cell targeting technology, we developed a new gene-embedded optoelectrode array for neural implantation to enable spatiotemporal electroporation (EP) for gene delivery/transfection, photomodulation, and synchronous electrical monitoring of neural signals in the brain via one-time implantation. A biotic-abiotic neural interface (called PG) composed of reduced graphene oxide and conductive polyelectrolyte 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene-modified amphiphilic chitosan was developed to form a nanostructural hydrogel with assembled nanodomains for encapsulating nonviral gene vectors (called PEI-NT-pDNA) formulated by neurotensin (NT) and polyethylenimine (PEI)-coupled plasmid DNA (pDNA). The PG can maintain high charge storage ability to respond to a minimal current of 125 μA for controllable gene delivery. The in vitro analysis of PG-PEI-NT-pDNA on the microelectrode array chip showed that the microelectrodes provided electrically inductive electropermeabilization, which permitted gene transfection into localized rat adrenal pheochromocytoma cells with a strong green fluorescent protein expression that was up to 8-fold higher than that in nontreated cells. Furthermore, the in vivo implantation enabled on-demand spatiotemporal gene transfection to neurons with 10-fold enhancement of targeting ability compared with astrocytes. Finally, using the real optogenetic opsin channelrhodopsin-2, the flexible neural probe incorporated with an optical waveguide fiber displayed photoevoked extracellular spikes in the thalamic ventrobasal region after focal EP for only 7 days, which provided a proof of concept for the use of photomodulation to facilitate neural therapies.


The Atacama Planation Surface is an extensive west-dipping surface developed between 16°S and 27°S along the Pacific margin of South America. It is considered to have formed between 16 and 7.5 Ma and to have important chronostratigraphic significance. Here we present new cosmogenic 3He exposure dates of boulders on the planation surface using pyroxene and amphibole. Exposure ages display good within- and between-site consistency and range from 22 to 1.2 Ma, with ages of ca. 14.6, 7, and 3 Ma recurring at more than one site on the planation surface. The 14.6 Ma peak records the cessation of the main period of planation surface development, but, contrary to popular opinion, the younger ages reflect subsequent modification of the planation surface by alluvial activity. Comparison with other climate proxies for western South America suggests that since 14.6 Ma, a predominantly hyperarid climate, interspersed with short-lived phases of more intense runoff driven by global climate change, has prevailed. The longevity and composite nature of the Atacama Planation Surface suggest that regionally extensive planation surfaces may have a multiphase history, are unlikely to have any chronostratigraphic significance, and cannot be used to reconstruct uplift histories.


In the United States, the general standard for food safety is reasonable certainty of causing no harm under the intended conditions of use. In contrast to food safety policy in some other countries, the United States treats foods for infants and children no differently than foods for adults, other than requiring additional standards for infant formulas. In the United States, food safety falls under the regulatory control of more than a dozen government agencies. The principal responsibility is shared by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), but significant additional oversight authority is granted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and others. Furthermore, while a large number of legislative statutes provide the basis for regulatory oversight, the principal laws that govern food safety are the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, the Federal Meat, Poultry Products and Egg Products Inspection Acts, and the Food Safety Modernization Act. The latter statute, enacted in 2011, has provided for a broad range of new industry responsibilities for the safe manufacture of food products and has significantly expanded federal enforcement authority for violations.


Abstract The eastern subterranean termite, Reticulitermes flavipes, currently inhabits previously glaciated regions of the northeastern U.S., as well as the unglaciated southern Appalachian Mountains and surrounding areas. We hypothesized that Pleistocene climatic fluctuations have influenced the distribution of R. flavipes, and thus the evolutionary history of the species. We estimated contemporary and historical geographic distributions of R. flavipes by constructing Species Distribution Models (SDM). We also inferred the evolutionary and demographic history of the species using mitochondrial (cytochrome oxidase I and II) and nuclear (endo‐beta‐1,4‐glucanase) DNA sequence data. To do this, genetic populations were delineated using Bayesian spatial‐genetic clustering, competing hypotheses about population divergence were assessed using approximate Bayesian computation (ABC), and changes in population size were estimated using Bayesian skyline plots. SDMs identified areas in the north with suitable habitat during the transition from the Last Interglacial to the Last Glacial Maximum, as well as an expanding distribution from the mid‐Holocene to the present. Genetic analyses identified three geographically cohesive populations, corresponding with northern, central, and southern portions of the study region. Based on ABC analyses, divergence between the Northern and Southern populations was the oldest, estimated to have occurred 64.80 thousand years ago (kya), which corresponds with the timing of available habitat in the north. The Central and Northern populations diverged in the mid‐Holocene, 8.63 kya, after which the Central population continued to expand. Accordingly, phylogeographic patterns of R. flavipes in the southern Appalachians appear to have been strongly influenced by glacial‐interglacial climate change. OPEN RESEARCH BADGES This article has been awarded Open Materials, Open Data Badges. All materials and data are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.5hr7f31.


This study is about George Bernard Shaw's satire on medical profession. Bernard Shaw who likes to write criticism on social problem sees medical profession differently from the society at that time. Through The Doctor's Dilemma he wants to satirize the medical profession. He thinks that medical profession can do the wrong things for the patients. Since this fact is different from the society's"opinion, the writer of this thesis is curious to know the aspects of medical profession that Shaw satirizes and the way he satirizes it. Through all the doctor characters, the writer will find out the aspects of medical profession and also the way he does it. Besides, she also uses some literary theories to discuss it. She will use the theory of characterization and theory of satire. Here, the writer finds that the doctor is not like what people at that time thought. The doctor also has the bad sides. It means that doctor is not always on the right position. Actually, Shaw's explanation shows that doctor is jus t human beings and has the characteristics of human beings. The doctor can make a mistake and tell a lie. Shaw also shows that there is the doctor with an average ability. Through this fact, Shaw wants to show the right position for doctors is next to othe r human beings.


One of the most inspiring features of medicine is the unending quest for better treatments for the affected patients. This is also the area where experimental and clinical medicine can merge and give rise to translational research. As far as heart failure is concerned, there have been interesting developments. Here, I will review the background that has prompted the initial attempts to modulate autonomic activity, and I will discuss the most recent data and current directions.

Heart failure is characterised by an autonomic imbalance with the combination of sympathetic upregulation and parasympathetic withdrawal, associated with progressive ventricular remodelling, arrhythmia generation and disease progression.1 This type of autonomic imbalance can be quantified at clinical level by baroreflex sensitivity, or by heart rate variability, and is associated with increased mortality after myocardial infarction,2–4 and in heart failure.5 ,6 Acute cardiac decompensation in patients with heart failure is often preceded by signs of further vagal withdrawal.7 Although β-blockers can be used to modify the impact of elevated levels of norepinephrine and the effects of augmented sympathetic tone, the ability of drug therapy to influence parasympathetic function is limited.

These considerations could not be separated by the evidence that increases in vagal activity, either by exercise training8 ,9 or by direct electrical vagal stimulation,10 have a powerful antifibrillatory effect, and can reduce sudden cardiac death. Altogether, they have provided a strong rationale for the evaluation of the potential benefit of chronic vagal stimulation in patients with heart failure.

Potential doubts towards the implementation of a non-traditional treatment were progressively dismissed by the evidence of a clear benefit in different animal models for heart failure,11 and by the fact that chronic vagal stimulation has been used without complications in a very high number of patients with …


Naturally acidic fresh waters have high conservation value, with their habitats supporting a high level of biodiversity as well as providing for rare organisms that are specially adapted to life in low-pH environments.
Food webs within naturally acidic waterways are heavily reliant on the input of large amounts of organic matter from the surrounding terrestrial environment.
Although these systems are found worldwide, the increasing threats of global climate change and urban developments are placing naturally acidic environments under threat of catastrophic changes to their ecology. Despite this, studies of these unique systems remain in their infancy, especially when compared with systems acidified by anthropogenic means.
This paper aims to explore the varying influences on key food-web elements in naturally acidic waterways, particularly with regard to allochthonous organic matter (AOM).
A conceptual model for the food webs of naturally acidic environments is presented, with the aim of providing a framework to understand the ecological functioning of these under-studied systems. This information will be critical in informing management decisions as naturally acidic streams are challenged by increasing environmental pressures.
The possibility that dissolved organic carbon (DOC) can buffer organisms in naturally acidic environments against the toxicity caused by low pH is also explored.

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


In this study, the production and characterization of a biosurfactant from yeast Wickerhamomyces anomalus strain PY189 was carried out. The highest efficiency for biosurfactant production was found when the organism was grown in a medium containing 4% (v/v) soya bean oil and 0.4% (w/v) NaNO3 at 30 °C and pH 5.5 for 7 days. After 7 days of cultivation, W. anomalus PY189 was able to produce up to 0.57 g/l of biosurfactant as ethyl acetate extracts. The culture supernatant was able to reduce the surface tension of the culture broth from 42.5 mN/m to 36.5 mN/m with a critical micelle concentration of 204 mg/l. The crude extract of biosurfactants was then applied to the encapsulation of lemongrass oil. Emulsions of lemongrass oil in 20 mg/dl maltodextrin solution (oil:maltodextrin solution ratios of 0.2:1, 0.15:1, and 0.1:1) containing 0.8% and 1% (w/v) crude biosurfactant extract were stable for at least 24 h and had an average oil droplet size of less than 10 μm. Lemongrass oil microcapsules were later produced using a spray drying technique. This microcapsule exhibited microbial growth inhibition activity against E. coli, S. aureus, and Salmonella at 5% (w/v) concentration.


A key purpose of this study is to explore the lessons learned from international retail divestment and market withdrawal experiences. Drawing on 33 in-depth interviews with leading investment banks and key retail executives at Tesco, the study investigates the company's international restructuring and divestment activities in Ireland and France during the mid -1980s and 1990s. It has been demonstrated that, despite the progressive merger and acquisition wave sweeping through the corporate retail landscape recently, international retail divestment is quite widespread. The main conclusion from this study is that Tesco originally did not envisage divestment or de-internationalisation as part of the original internationalisation strategy process in either the acquisition of Three Guys in Ireland or Catteau in France. There was no appreciation from Tesco during their early period of expansion of the fact that exit pressures might arise during the course of market entry. In this regard, the case study provides insights into the relationship between investment and divestment within the context of international retail restructuring. The case evidence also demonstrates the positive impact of the Three Guys and Catteau divestments which helped management to refocus and rejuvenate the company's internationalisation process.


Newly hatched ducklinigs were exposed to a moving, imprinted stiulullls; if they followed it, the stimnulus was withdrawn briefly. The tendency to follow gradually declined durinig punishment periods, but it returned to prepunishment amounts whlen punishmnent terminated. This finding attests to the efficacy of withdrawal of reinforcement as a techniquie for behavioral control.


BACKGROUND
Minimal change disease (MCD) is one of the leading causes of nephrotic syndrome. Steroid therapy is effective in achieving remission, but relapses, steroid dependence, and steroid resistance are therapeutic challenges. The use of second-line agents such as cyclophosphamide is associated with toxicity and adverse effects. Therefore, we studied the effect of rituximab (RTX) on proteinuria in adult patients with immunosuppressive (IS)-dependent MCD.

METHODS
In this single-center, prospective, open series study, 6 consecutive patients with IS-dependent MCD and frequent relapses on different IS regimens - one of them after previous RTX treatment - were included. Patients were treated with a single dose of RTX (375 mg/m²). An additional dose of RTX was administered depending on B-cell count and proteinuria.

RESULTS
5 out of 6 patients achieved complete remission at the end of the follow-up; the other patient had a partial remission. All patients are free of additional IS agents and other medications were remarkably reduced. Three patients had a relapse, which was successfully treated with a further RTX treatment.

CONCLUSIONS
RTX could be an alternative in the therapy of patients with IS-dependent MCD, leading to successful cessation of other IS treatment.


No period in black American cultural history was more mercurial, and at the present time, no period is less understood than the "nadir," which stretched from the end of Reconstruction to World War I. (1) With the exception of touring spiritual choirs celebrated for their natural power, black artists were largely invisible to white Americans until the mid-1890s when ragtime exploded, minstrel stars sold millions of copies of their sheet music, and Paul Laurence Dunbar rose to national prominence. (2) A pioneering novelist who was hailed as the "black poet laureate" and "prince of 'coon' song writers" ("Paul Laurence Dunbar" n. pag.), Dunbar represents perhaps the best starting place for a reassessment of the black nadir. Using Dunbar's varied, often misunderstood career as a lens, this essay studies the fraught relationship between turn-of-the-century black art and racism. Dunbar was enmeshed like no other nadir-period artist in the politics and possibilities of racial representation. Despite burgeoning scholarly interest in black minstrelsy, the standard history of Dunbar's songwriting career is plagued with errors and misconceptions. (3) This is unfortunate because the full complexity of Dunbar's dynamic approach to racial representation is only accessible through a careful excavation of his work with Bert Williams, George Walker, and the other members of what I call the Marshall Circle--the talented group of African American and African Caribbean performers who gathered at the black-owned Marshall Hotel. (4) By exploring the continuities and discontinuities of Dunbar's racial representations, I hope to provide insight into the racist forms that turn-of-the-century black artists inherited, the new modes of cultural expression that they struggled to produce, and the political tensions between the two. My analysis begins with a simple claim: Racist expectations did not trap Dunbar; rather, they prompted his remarkable movement across genres and forms. By working within and against conventional black representations in poetry and song, Dunbar reached diverse black audiences, achieved politically "representative" success, and contributed to emergent cultural forms. I will examine how different orientations to the dominant politics of respectability imbued plantation verse and "coon" songs with distinct, uneven cultural possibilities. My essay culminates in a discussion of Dunbar's 1902 novel, The Sport of the Gods. Dunbar's contribution to the nascent black naturalist tradition doubles as his state-of-the-nadir address on black representation in art and politics. Overlooked archival evidence suggests that Dunbar drafted Sport in the wake of the 1900 theater-district riot, which targeted Williams, Walker, and the Marshall Circle. Featuring a veiled homage to Williams, Sport delineates the forces that impinge on black identity, while retaining a slender hope that vital art can emerge from violently racist environments. But the novel also underscores a painful reality. Dunbar could never quite unify the diverse approaches to racial representation that he spent his brief, brilliant career developing because diverse turn-of-the-century black cultural forms were generated from quite distinct orientations to contemporaneous political and social conditions. Being the "Black Poet Laureate": Signifying and Re-Presenting Blackness The 1898 Wilmington Massacre, which marked the violent suppression of democracy in the South, was the era's watershed event, but it was the North's tacit approval that led Dunbar to remark: "The race spirit in the United States is not local but general" in his most militant essay, "Recession Never" (36). Although the nadir in the North never reached Southern depths of legal disenfranchisement, it was marked by both overt and implicit racial hostility. The national ascendance of Southern white perspectives on race would find expression in intensified racial violence. In August 1900, a brutal Manhattan race riot crystallized the nadir's national scope. …


From ancient times to the present day, the story of England has been laced with drama, intrigue, courage and passion - a rich and vibrant narrative of heroes and villains, kings and rebels, artists and highwaymen, bishops and scientists. Now, in Great Tales of English History, Robert Lacey captures one hundred of the most pivotal moments: the stories and extraordinary characters who helped shape a nation. This first volume begins in 7150 BC with the life and death of Cheddar Man and ends in 1381with Wat Tyler and the Peasants' Revolt. We meet the Greek navigator Pytheus, whose description of the Celts as prettanike (the 'painted people') yielded the Latin word Britannici. We witness the Roman victory celebrations of AD 43, where a squadron of elephants were paraded through Colchester. And we visit the New Forest, in 1100, and the mysterious shooting of King William Rufus. Packed with insight, humour and fascinating detail, Robert Lacey brings the stories that made England brilliantly to life. From Ethelred the Unready to Richard the Lionheart, the Venerable Bede to the Black Prince, this is, quite simply, history as history should be told.


Sarnelli House lacks a reliable energy source affecting the completion of regular, everyday tasks including bathing, cooking, and studying in the evenings. The goal of this project was to perform a comparative study for Sarnelli House and recommend alternative energy options that would provide them with reliable power and lower their electricity costs. We made observations during our site visit, conducted interviews with stakeholders, and held a focus group with middle school girls to collect data. The data collected revealed that power outages are a nagging inconvenience but reducing electrical costs and educating the residents on sustainability are priorities. We determined that solar power systems provided the best options for meeting our goals. This project provides large-scale, small-scale, and educational recommendations based on the collected data and analysis that will benefit Sarnelli House the most. ENERGY ALTERNATIVES FOR AN ORPHANAGE IN THAILAND ii


Traditional pavement deterioration modeling is normally based on historical condition data alone without incorporating the fundamental relationships between the causal factors and the response. Also, typical approaches do not quantify the uncertainty of the predicted response. This paper uses Bayesian regression for pavement deterioration modeling. This method is applied to an existing model for the prediction of rut depth progression from the AASHO Road Test. A classical regression model developed elsewhere is herein summarized and its results are then compared with those from the Bayesian regression in order to validate.  A second model based on the entire dataset of the AASHO road test is used to demonstrate the advantages of such approach. The models are capable of employing expert criteria combined with historical knowledge and current observations in order estimate posterior probabilistic distributions for the regression coefficients of the mechanistic equation. The predictive model calibrated to local conditions is able to forecast within pre-specified confidence intervals the range of values for the expected deterioration. Bayesian regression modeling produces more reliable predictions for deterioration performance, which in turn, can be used to improve decision-making on road management systems


A reconsideration of the Rb-Sr isotope systematics in the late Archean gneisses of West Greenland shows that they can be divided into two groups with contrasting magmatic or metamorphic histories. Around Godthaab the gneisses were emplaced at 3000-3100 Ma, in part as magmas containing previously unrecognized excess radiogenic strontium. Because these rocks also contain varying amounts of early Archean lead, it appears that some of them contain silicate and other components of Amitsoq-type gneisses that were introduced by anatexis or magmatic contamination. To the south of Godthaab, in the Fiskenaesset region, the Rb-Sr isotope systematics contain no record for a crustal history prior to 2800 Ma. There the gneisses are the products either of a more recent addition of juvenile later Archean calc-alkaline magmas at 2800 Ma or of regional Rb and Sr metasomatism that has profoundly modified the Rb-Sr isotope systematics of 3000-3100 Ma gneisses during the 2800 Ma high-grade metamorphism. 33 references, 3 figures, 1 table.


Four years of experience in applying inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) to the analysis of actinides and fission products in high level waste (HLW) samples at the Savannah River Site has led to the development of a number of techniques to aid in the interpretation of the mass spectral data. The goal has been to develop rapid and reliable analytical procedures that provide the necessary chemical and isotopic information to answer the process needs of the customers. Techniques that have been developed include the writing of computer software to strip the experimental data from the instrumental data files into spreadsheets or into a spectral data processing package so that the raw mass spectra can be overlain for comparison or plotted with higher output resolution. These procedures have been applied to problems ranging from the analysis of the high level waste tanks to reactor moderator water as well as environmental samples. Criticality safety analyses in some HLW waste treatment processes depend upon actinide concentration and isotopic information generated by ICP-MS, particularly in tanks with high concentrations of {sup 137}Cs and {sup 90}Sr. Experimental results for a number of these applications will be presented. These procedures represent a considerable saving in timemore » and expense as compared to conventional chemical separation followed by radiochemical analyses, as well as decreased radiation exposure for the analysts.« less


Dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) is one of the key issues for the current (1G) and next-generation (10G) Ethernet-based passive optical network (EPON) systems. We present a novel bandwidth scheduling scheme that integrates specific scheduling implementations in the optical line terminal and optical network units. This scheduling enables multiservice access with scalable quality of service support for the triple-play (video, voice, and data) services and open access. Our simulation results show that the proposed scheduling algorithm performs very well in supporting service differentiation and fair allocation of bandwidth to different service providers. A performance comparison between 1G and 10G systems is also presented. To the best of our knowledge, no detailed study of DBA in a 10G EPON can be found in the literature so far.


Blended learning is the new buzzword in higher education. International trends in open and distance learning proclaim that the use of blended learning is essential for any distance education institution that wishes to remain relevant in an increasingly contested market. Blended learning refers to the use of a variety of technologies, pedagogies, contexts and delivery modes (such as online learning) to create a strategic mix that will increase student success. Online learning environments form a crucial part of any blended learning strategy. In the South African context, access to such online environments is a controversial issue. This article reports on a study which attempted to determine how many of the students registered for Accounting at second year level at the University of South Africa (UNISA) would benefit from a blended learning approach.


ABSTRACT Introduction: Psoriasis is a chronic immune-mediated disorder with predominantly dermatological manifestations and varying prevalence in different parts of the world. Data on the ocular features of this disease are limited. Hence, we aimed to estimate the burden of ocular disease in psoriatic patients in the Indian population. Materials and methods: An interdisciplinary cross-sectional hospital-based observational study was conducted in South India, wherein an ophthalmological evaluation was performed for the patients with Psoriasis. The ocular features were recorded and compared with the severity of psoriasis using the Psoriasis Area Severity Index (PASI) score. Results: Ocular morbidity was observed in 80% of the patients with psoriasis which increased with increasing duration (p = 0.004) and increasing PASI score (p < 0.001). Blepharitis and dry eye disease were common in our patients with psoriasis. Conclusion: It is important to screen patients with psoriasis for ocular comorbidities so as to prevent sight-threatening complications.


Logarithmic bounds for Roth's theorem via almost-periodicity, Discrete Analysis 2019:4, 20pp.

A central result of additive combinatorics, Roth's theorem, asserts that for every $\delta>0$ there exists $N$ such that every subset of $\{1,2,\dots,N\}$ of size at least $\delta N$ contains an arithmetic progression of length 3. This is the first non-trivial case of Szemeredi's theorem, proved over 20 years later, which is the corresponding statement for progressions of general length. If we define $\rho_k(N)$ to be the minimum real number such that every subset of $\{1,2,\dots,N\}$ of density at least $\rho_k(N)$ contains an arithmetic progression of length $k$, then Roth's theorem asserts that $\rho_3(N)\to 0$ and Szemeredi's theorem asserts that $\rho_k(N)\to 0$ for all $k$.

These results leave open the question of bounds. Roth's proof shows that $\rho_3(N)\leq C/\log\log N$ for an absolute constant $C$. Following a sequence of improvements by Szemeredi, Heath-Brown, Bourgain and Sanders, the current record, due to the first author of this paper, stands at $C(\log\log N)^4/\log N$. This is tantalizingly close to $1/\log N$, which is an important barrier because if one could get past it then one would be able to prove that every set $A\subset\mathbb N$ such that $\sum_{x\in A}x^{-1}=\infty$ contains an arithmetic progression of length 3, which is the first non-trivial case of perhaps the most famous of all conjectures of Erdős.

At the time of writing, the problem of beating the log barrier is particularly alive, because there is some evidence that we already have the technology needed to solve it. This evidence comes from a closely related problem, the cap-set problem, which concerns the density that a subset $A\subset\mathbb F_3^n$ must have in order to contain an affine line, which is the natural notion of an arithmetic progression of length 3 in $\mathbb F_3^n$. For a long time the best known upper bound was stuck at $Cn^{-1}$, which is also a logarithmic bound, since the cardinality of $\mathbb F_3^n$ is $3^n$. Then a few years ago, Michael Bateman and Nets Katz improved the bound to $Cn^{-(1+\epsilon)}$ for a small positive $\epsilon$, and more recently, in a spectacular development, Jordan Ellenberg and Dion Gijswijt, building on work of Ernie Croot, Seva Lev and Peter Pach, obtained an upper bound of $c^n$ for a constant $c<1$. Ellenberg and Gijswijt used the polynomial method, and it is far from clear whether any analogue of that method can be made to work for Roth's theorem, so there is continued interest in the argument of Bateman and Katz, which involved a delicate analysis of the structure of the set of large Fourier coefficients of a dense set. Could a similar analysis be used to improve the current record for Roth's theorem by a power of $\log n$? There are significant difficulties (not least of which is the complexity of the arguments that one would be trying to combine), but there does not appear to be a clear reason to suppose that such a programme cannot be carried out.

Given the difficulties, there is a premium on understanding existing results as well as possible, and that is the purpose of this paper. It does not improve on the best known bound for Roth's theorem, but it obtains a comparable bound (that is, one of the form $(\log\log N)^t/\log N$) in a new way. The main tool used in the proof, which also played a very important role in Sanders's proof, which was the first to obtain a bound of this type, is so-called almost periodicity, a kind of argument pioneered by Ernie Croot and the second author of this paper that takes place in physical space and thereby avoids certain recurring difficulties with Fourier analysis. The difference with previous proofs of strong bounds for Roth's theorem is that it is somewhat simpler, and that the proportion of the argument that uses Fourier analysis is much smaller, and restricted to a relatively standard step. The paper thus gives us a new angle on the theorem, which should increase the chance that some suitable combination of techniques will be found that can break the log barrier.


A survey was carried out to evaluate goat production in a crop-livestock farming area in the north of Zimbabwe. The objectives of the study were to determine goat production systems and productivity. Qualitative information was obtained using participatory rural appraisal techniques (PRA) while quantitative data was obtained through administration of a structured questionnaire to 317 households. The major finding of the survey indicated that the predominant goat breed found was the small indigenous Mashona goat. The goats were reared exclusively through extensive foraging during the dry season but were herded, tethered or a combination was used during the cropping season. Flock sizes were small, averaging 12 goats/household resulting in few goats available for sale or slaughter. All goat sales were informal. Ninety one percent of farmers indicated interest in cross breeding Mashona does with Boer bucks to improve the size of the Mashona.