Primary dysmenorrhea refers to painful menstrual cramps accompanied with diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, mood swings and headache. This condition is a leading cause of recurrent class absenteeism with 80.2% of adolescent girls affected in Kenya. The adolescent might not be able to achieve the supplemental dosage (500-1000 mg) for magnesium no matter how much foods rich in magnesium she takes especially during menstruation when she is experiencing nausea and vomiting. Besides, the conventional treatment methods have a failure rate and have often been abused. This study therefore sought to find out nutritional alternatives to treatments of primary dysmenorrhea. The study adopted a randomized trial design with an aim to compare Magnesium supplements and Ibuprofen as treatments on the duration, intensity of menstrual pain, frequency of systemic symptoms, interference on daily activities and the side effects of the two treatments among adolescent girls in Machakos District. Data was cleaned, coded and entered using social statistical package for social sciences. Median, IQR, percentages, chi-square tests, Mann-whitney U, spearman's correlation and Odds ratio (α = 0.05) were used for analysis. Findings show that at baseline, those who had pain for a shorter time (1/2 day) were 31% and 30% in magnesium and ibuprofen group respectively. After the second treatment more girls had pain for half a day (85%) in magnesium group and (78%) in ibuprofen group than for 2 days or more (7%) in magnesium group and (8%) in ibuprofen group. At baseline 32% and 40% of adolescents had severe pain in magnesium and ibuprofen group respectively, but due to the effect of the treatments, only 6% and 10% presented with severe pains after the second treatment. At baseline, more than half of the girls were able to do their daily activities in magnesium (62%) and ibuprofen group (64%). After the second treatment, almost all (97%) of the adolescents studied were able to do their daily activities in the two treatment groups. There was a positive improvement after the second treatment for the adolescents who had symptoms of primary dysmenorrhea at baseline. Magnesium had no side effects while Ibuprofen had minor side effects on the girls. The adolescent girls who reported not having taken breakfast everyday had a 2.13 increased likelihood to have severe menstrual pain compared to those who did not take breakfast (OR=2.13;95% CI:0.42-31.57;P=0.002). The respondents who took 3-4 cups of coffee and or black tea and or chocolate beverages had a 1.31 increased likelihood to have severe menstrual pain compared to those who rarely or did not take (OR=1.31; 95% CI: 0.49-3.4; P=0.002). Towards the days of their menses, adolescent girls felt the urge to take sweets, chocolate or juggery. In addition, a regression of the urge to take sweet food was very significant at P=0.003. The odds of having a person who is has severe pains to have the urge to eat sweet foods towards their menstruation was 2.56 times higher than the person who did not have severe pain (that is those who either have moderate or no pain). There is no significant difference in Magnesium and Ibuprofen as treatments of primary dysmenorrhea, Magnesium can therefore be used as a nutrition alternative in the management of period pains.


This dissertation tests theories about catch share approaches to fishery management, examining their validity and limits relative to the Northeast groundfish sector program, and potentially modifies them in light of research outcomes. Participants of the groundfish fishery based in New Hampshire are the particular focus of research, but broader impacts are considered. Studies of this catch share program have been limited to date, and studies of catch share programs generally have focused on a particular dimension (e.g., biological, social, economic) rather than integrate across dimensions, despite increasing needs to do so for management. Here, six key aspects of fishing are investigated: fishing practices, social capital, bycatch, economic performance, safety, and well-being. Thus, this work is a novel contribution to the field of impact assessment research, both in its topic and scope. The primary research question is: How has the advent of catch shares impacted the Northeast commercial multispecies fishery, particularly in New Hampshire? This is answered through a case study that involved a mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches, using semi-structured interviews of 2 informants, including members of groundfish sectors, common pool members, former fishermen, and fish dealers. Although social research often involves a process of theory generation, in the case of the Northeast groundfish fishery, and catch share programs more generally, a number of theories have already emerged that are ripe for testing. It was hypothesized here that fishing under the control rules governing sectors has resulted in: more efficiency and flexibility for fishermen to decide where, when, and how to fish; greater social capital among fishermen; reduced bycatch; and improved economic performance, safety, and well-being. The groundfish fishermen of New Hampshire revealed that the theorized benefits of catch share programs do not necessarily hold true. Of the six key aspects of fishing investigated here, only the benefits related to fishing practices, bycatch and safety aligned with what has occurred in this local fishery, but even some of those benefits have qualifiers. The informants who were sector members generally felt that fishing in a sector was more efficient and flexible than the former Days-At-Sea program had been, generally due to shifting catch limits from a trip basis to an annual one. This had allowed more concentration of effort during times with greater potential for profitability (e.g., fish availability, favorable markets). Reducing bycatch was an important goal of the informants, and the sector participants indicated that their level of bycatch had decreased, primarily through eliminating the trip limits and discards of legal-sized fish. Some informants went above and beyond regulations to avoid bycatch in recognition of the need to steward stocks for the future. However, some sector members identified new pressures to discard when unobserved, driven largely by the high lease costs of choke stocks. There were no major changes in safety, because the informants largely strive to be safe no matter the management program. However, removal of trip limits for sector participants created flexibility and less pressure to fish in unsafe conditions. Theorized benefits for social capital, economic performance, and well-being did not hold true. Despite being a novel focal point for industry organization, informants felt that sectors have not been catalysts for social capital. Rather, sectors have been based on and built off of preexisting social capital. In some cases, social capital was reduced as increased organizational responsibilities were seen as a burden and fishing became more competitive and secretive. Economic profitability and predictability had not been realized, though the concomitant decline in, and persistently low, catch limits for certain key species (e.g., cod, yellowtail flounder) vanquished any potential that catch shares had for the economic success of this fishery. The need to lease quota of constraining stocks to harvest the available fish in one's own portfolio has been a substantial and new cost, with risky debt obligations, for several informants. Business predictability declined for a majority of informants. Catch shares has, however, transformed the business climate of the groundfish industry, with more focus on maximizing one's utility. With declines in This dissertation is available at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/2234 fishery participation, and dim potential for positive economic performance, the sense of well-being and future outlook for self and fishery had diminished since the advent of the catch share program. Job satisfaction decreased for most of the sector members, and a majority of all informants said that they would not advise a young person to enter fishing. The New Hampshire-based fishermen have, on the whole, not fared as well as could be assumed based on theory, exemplifying the consequences of catch shares, the potential for declining performance by those participants unable to adapt.


The emulsion polymerization of vinyl acetate was studied at 50°C. It was found that the rate of polymerization was proportional to the 0.5 power of the initiator concentration and the 0.25 power of the number of particles. The number of particles was proportional to the power 0.5 ± 0.05 of the emulsifier concentration, but independent of the initiator concentration. The limiting viscosity number of the polymers produced was independent of the initiator concentration and number of polymer particles. It is suggested that the mechanism of vinyl acetate emulsion polymerization is similar to that of vinyl chloride. The linearity of the conversion-versus-time curve is explained as being due partly to a decrease in the desorption rate of radicals from the polymer particles and partly to a decrease in the termination rate constant.


Do you believe that more than one single security paradigm exists? We do.
 We also believe that we have a major problem because of all these security paradigms: until we find a way to identify and understand how these paradigms restrict our analyses we will never have the ability to do a good job identifying risks and threats, let alone protect ourselves from them.
 We also believe that the majority of people working in the security community use only one paradigm without recognizing that self-imposed constraint. The paradigm they use may change or even expand based on new data and experiences, but it still continues to limit their approaches and analyses, and therefore limit their effectiveness.
 At NSPW 2009 we presented a panel simulation using four analysts in order to demonstrate how security paradigms constrain perceptions and points of view, and how the combination of the different paradigms confuses the analysts' conclusions. Our panel used real-time, interactive exploration to investigate how individuals in the security community work together within their different paradigms and how they often lack awareness of their particular paradigms while working in the same way that a fish does not notice the water in which it swims.
 We presented a provocative, live scenario followed by an intensive analysis with NSPW audience participation. We hoped that this would illustrate the misunderstandings and erroneous conclusions that can emerge from the inadvertent and often faulty composition of differing universes of discourse.
 Ultimately this led to a new paradigm for dealing with the compositions of the paradigms held by various individuals that we call "Multi-Paradigm Composition Analysis."


In this paper, we provide a participatory design study of a mobile health platform for older adults that provides an integrative perspective on health data collected from different devices and apps. We illustrate the diversity and complexity of older adults' perspectives in the context of health and technology use, the challenges which follow on for the design of mobile health platforms that support active and healthy ageing (AHA) and our approach to addressing these challenges through a participatory design (PD) process. Interviews were conducted with older adults aged 65+ in a two-month study with the goal of understanding perspectives on health and technologies for AHA support. We identified challenges and derived design ideas for a mobile health platform called "MyAHA". For researchers in this field, the structured documentation of our procedures and results, as well as the implications derived provide valuable insights for the design of mobile health platforms for older adults.


A review of the structural grain of Southern Alps in Lombardy is here integrated with new subsurface data, in order to contribute to detailed reconstruction of the chronology of Alpine deformation of the South Alpine chain and foreland. According to the recent structural schemes, we firstly describe the northern structural zones of the mountain belt. From N to S these are: the Orobian Thrust, involving Variscan basement and Permian sedimentary cover; the Orobian Anticlines, which include basement to lower Mesozoic units (De Sitter & De Sitter Koomans, 1949); the Carbonate Allochthonous Units, forming a stack of imbricated thrusts of Mesozoic formations (Gaetani & Jadoul, 1979); the Flessura Pedemontana (Desio, 1929), which involves the South Alpine succession up to the Cretaceous formations in an out of sequence, thrust-related fold belt of late Neoalpine age; the Structures of the South Alpine border (Bersezio et alii, 2001), which represent the southernmost marginal belt of faulted folds involving mostly the Cretaceous Lombardian Flysch. Secondly we describe three structural belts, which can be recognised at the buried front of Southern Alps and in the Po Plain foreland area: the Imbricate Tertiary Units Bersezio et alii, 2001), which involve the Mesozoic and Tertiary successions, the former underlying at great depth the stack of imbricated Tertiary clastic wedges; the Structures of the Central Lombardy plain (Bersezio et alii, 2001), a belt of regional folds due to propagation of deep fault planes ramping up from the metamorphic basement of the Po Plain; the Southernmost Po Plain Structures, which are represented by gentle folds affecting the Tertiary clastic wedges at the southern tip of the South Alpine thrusts. Analysis of deformation chronology has allowed us to identify the structures predating the Adamello magmatic intrusion (older than 42 Ma), both in the mountain chain (Orobic thrust) and in the foreland (inversion structures of the Lacchiarella and Villafortuna-Trecate areas), where Pre-Adamello foreland deformation is represented by gentle inversion of the pre-Cretaceous extensional basins. Post-Adamello (Neoalpine) deformation is responsible for foreland propagation of the thrust belt, with formation of the Imbricate Tertiary Units, which are kinematically linked with the Structures of the South Alpine border. Their deformation lasted until the Tortonian, as documented by preservation of Tortonian sediments in the foot-wall of the most external South Alpine thrusts. Neoalpine strong inversion of the Mesozoic basins occurred in the southernmost Po plain foreland. In the most external foreland area of the western Southern Alps (Piedmont-Lombardy area), Neoalpine compression came to an end after deposition of the Lower Messinian units and reasonably before the Pliocene. However, east of the Giudicarie line, South Alpine deformation lasted until the Pleistocene.


This article presents an integrated assessment of climate change, air pollution, and energy security policy. Basis of our analysis is the MERGE model, designed to study the interaction between the global economy, energy use, and the impacts of climate change. For our purposes we expanded MERGE with expressions that quantify damages incurred to regional economies as a result of air pollution and lack of energy security. One of the main findings of our cost-benefit analysis is that energy security policy alone does not decrease the use of oil: global oil consumption is only delayed by several decades and oil reserves are still practically depleted before the end of the 21st century. If, on the other hand, energy security policy is integrated with optimal climate change and air pollution policy, the world's oil reserves will not be depleted, at least not before our modeling horizon well into the 22nd century: total cumulative demand for oil then decreases by about 20%. More generally, we demonstrate that there are multiple other benefits of combining climate change, air pollution, and energy security policies and exploiting the possible synergies between them. These benefits can be large: for Europe the achievable CO2 emission abatement and oil consumption reduction levels are significantly deeper for integrated policy than when a strategy is adopted in which one of the three policies is omitted. Integrated optimal energy policy can reduce the number of premature deaths from air pollution by about 14,000 annually in Europe and over 3 million per year globally, by lowering the chronic exposure to ambient particulate matter. Only the optimal strategy combining the three types of energy policy can constrain the global average atmospheric temperature increase to a limit of 3ºC with respect to the pre-industrial level.


Introducing Bacterial Electrophysiology Bacterial electrophysiology has been limited by the inability to measure the membrane potential of single cells. Kralj et al. (p. 345) engineered a class of voltage-sensitive fluorescent membrane proteins to perform electrophysiological measurements on individual intact bacteria. These measurements showed that Escherichia coli generate electrical spikes, reminiscent of action potentials in neurons. The response of electrical spiking in bacteria was assessed in response to a wide range of physical and chemical perturbations, and was correlated with efflux activity. In the future, the probe should be useful in determining the roles of membrane potential in a variety of medically, environmentally, and industrially important bacteria. An optical bioprobe reveals action potential–like electrical spikes in individual bacteria. Bacteria have many voltage- and ligand-gated ion channels, and population-level measurements indicate that membrane potential is important for bacterial survival. However, it has not been possible to probe voltage dynamics in an intact bacterium. Here we developed a method to reveal electrical spiking in Escherichia coli. To probe bacterial membrane potential, we engineered a voltage-sensitive fluorescent protein based on green-absorbing proteorhodopsin. Expression of the proteorhodopsin optical proton sensor (PROPS) in E. coli revealed electrical spiking at up to 1 hertz. Spiking was sensitive to chemical and physical perturbations and coincided with rapid efflux of a small-molecule fluorophore, suggesting that bacterial efflux machinery may be electrically regulated.


This paper introduces a small but useful generalisation to the 'derivative' operation on datatypes underlying Huet's notion of 'zipper', giving a concrete representation to one-hole contexts in data which is undergoing transformation. This operator, 'dissection', turns a container-like functor into a bifunctor representing a one-hole context in which elements to the left of the hole are distinguished in type from elements to its right.
 I present dissection here as a generic program, albeit for polynomial functors only. The notion is certainly applicable more widely, but here I prefer to concentrate on its diverse applications. For a start, map-like operations over the functor and fold-like operations over the recursive data structure it induces can be expressed by tail recursion alone. Further, the derivative is readily recovered from the dissection. Indeed, it is the dissection structure which delivers Huet's operations for navigating zippers.
 The original motivation for dissection was to define 'division', capturing the notion of leftmost hole, canonically distinguishing values with no elements from those with at least one. Division gives rise to an isomorphism corresponding to the remainder theorem in algebra. By way of a larger example, division and dissection are exploited to give a relatively efficient generic algorithm for abstracting all occurrences of one term from another in a first-order syntax. The source code for the paper is available online and compiles with recent extensions to the Glasgow Haskell Compiler.


This thesis develops a 3-D modelling framework that determines exact location and pattern of buildings, detailed information of their roofs, and generate computer-based 3-D building models. The proposed framework has utilisation in a range of applications, such as city planning, disaster management, urban modelling, and virtual reality. In addition, this thesis provides an automated system for large-scale assessment of the solar potential for industrial and govt energy businesses.


"Using Tanzania as a test case, this study demonstrates how household survey data can be used to assess the impacts of public investments on growth and poverty. A two step procedure is used. First, household survey data are used to link household welfare measures to human capital and household access to infrastructure and technology, while controlling for other community and household characteristics. The second step links household human capital and access to infrastructure and technology to past public investments in these factors. As in the Asian studies, the growth effects (measured as per capita income) of investments in agricultural research, roads, and education are found to be large. But unlike Asia, no clear distinction emerges between the measured impacts for high and low potential areas. In many high potential areas, returns to investments are still high and there is no sign of any diminishing marginal returns. This suggests that there has been insufficient public investment in all kinds of regions. Nevertheless, the results show that there is opportunity to improve on the growth and poverty impacts of total public investment through better regional targeting of specific types of investment. For example, additional investments in rural education have attractive growth and poverty impacts in all regions, whereas additional investments in roads and agricultural research are better spent in the central and southern regions of the country." Authors' Abstract


We propose a new elementary definition of the Higman-Sims graph in which the 100 vertices are parametrised with ${\Bbb Z}_4\times{\Bbb Z}_5\times{\Bbb Z}_5$ and adjacencies are described by linear and quadratic equations. This definition extends Robertson's pentagon-pentagram definition of the Hoffman-Singleton graph and is obtained by studying maximum cocliques of the Hoffman-Singleton graph in Robertson's parametrisation. The new description is used to count the 704 Hoffman-Singleton subgraphs in the Higman-Sims graph, and to describe the two orbits of the simple group HS on them, including a description of the doubly transitive action of HS within the Higman-Sims graph. Numerous geometric connections are pointed out. As a by-product we also have a new construction of the Steiner system $S(3,6,22)$.


Since the FDA approved Viagra in March 1998, the « little blue pill has been prescribed to over twenty million men. The Viagra Ad Venture: Masculinity, Media, and the Performance of Sexual Health chronicles the story of Viagra as reported in our nation's news outlets and promoted by Pfizer Pharmaceutical's marketing materials. In this critical discourse analysis, author Jay Baglia uses feminist and performance theory to uncover the meaning of Viagra and its relationship to performances of masculinity. At stake are the ways in which we construct normalcy, particularly as it relates to health, sexuality, gender, and the body. This book fits well in a variety of classes including gender studies, media studies, research methods, feminist theory, human sexuality, and health communication.


In this paper, we propose a new universal machine translation approach focusing on languages with a limited amount of parallel data. Our proposed approach utilizes a transfer-learning approach to share lexical and sentence level representations across multiple source languages into one target language. The lexical part is shared through a Universal Lexical Representation to support multi-lingual word-level sharing. The sentence-level sharing is represented by a model of experts from all source languages that share the source encoders with all other languages. This enables the low-resource language to utilize the lexical and sentence representations of the higher resource languages. Our approach is able to achieve 23 BLEU on Romanian-English WMT2016 using a tiny parallel corpus of 6k sentences, compared to the 18 BLEU of strong baseline system which uses multi-lingual training and back-translation. Furthermore, we show that the proposed approach can achieve almost 20 BLEU on the same dataset through fine-tuning a pre-trained multi-lingual system in a zero-shot setting.


The author claims that there is an emergent ethic of reconciliation which influences social and political action in the recent period. This ethic of reconciliation has four sources: neo-Gandhian dispositions in the global South that provide a critique of arms and of military solutions; post-racist and pro-peace and feminist discourses in the West that emerged through significant social movements of reflexive modernization; and post-Stalinist socialist ideas and practices that have renovated Marxism and the work of the arts, literature and performance. The article goes on to point to some serious sociological reasons why this ethic of reconciliation has consolidated its presence and how the experience of war, violence and instrumental reason have been and are seriously challenged.


UNLABELLED
The CD19 antigen, expressed on most B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemias (B-ALL), can be targeted with chimeric antigen receptor-armed T cells (CART-19), but relapses with epitope loss occur in 10% to 20% of pediatric responders. We detected hemizygous deletions spanning the CD19 locus and de novo frameshift and missense mutations in exon 2 of CD19 in some relapse samples. However, we also discovered alternatively spliced CD19 mRNA species, including one lacking exon 2. Pull-down/siRNA experiments identified SRSF3 as a splicing factor involved in exon 2 retention, and its levels were lower in relapsed B-ALL. Using genome editing, we demonstrated that exon 2 skipping bypasses exon 2 mutations in B-ALL cells and allows expression of the N-terminally truncated CD19 variant, which fails to trigger killing by CART-19 but partly rescues defects associated with CD19 loss. Thus, this mechanism of resistance is based on a combination of deleterious mutations and ensuing selection for alternatively spliced RNA isoforms.

SIGNIFICANCE
CART-19 yield 70% response rates in patients with B-ALL, but also produce escape variants. We discovered that the underlying mechanism is the selection for preexisting alternatively spliced CD19 isoforms with the compromised CART-19 epitope. This mechanism suggests a possibility of targeting alternative CD19 ectodomains, which could improve survival of patients with B-cell neoplasms.


Pancreatic disorders, such as acute and chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer, are until now challenging diseases to manage, with significant burdens of morbidity, mortality rate, and high financial costs. Acute pancreatitis (AP) is still a common and potentially fatal disease with nonspecific treatment and unpredictable prognosis. In spite of significant improvement in understanding the basic pathophysiology of the disease and advances in the diagnosis and management of acute pancreatitis, the mortality rate has remained stable since the 1970s. Chronic pancreatitis (CP), resulting in a slow irreversible damage of the organ associated with gradual declines in digestive enzyme production, is the major cause of pancreatic exocrine insufficiency in adults. Finally, pancreatic cancer is known as a devastating process with only 6-month median survival after diagnosis. In the present special issue, some recent advances in research concerning pancreatic diseases are presented. Croatian authors discussed epidemiology of AP in the North Adriatic Region of Croatia. They showed epidemiological characteristics typical of Mediterranean countries with predominant biliary etiology. Early prediction of severity of acute pancreatitis (AP) by a simple unique laboratory test would be very helpful as it could direct management from the very beginning and at the end improve the outcome. Commonly accepted scales estimating the AP severity are extremely hard to use in clinical practice. For this reason, it is understandable why further attempts to find a parameter or a set of parameters useful in diagnosis and prognosis in AP are so necessary. Despite the importance of early prognosis, many patients initially identified as having a mild disease progress to severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) over time. Many biochemical parameters (including C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin, and trypsinogen activation peptide (TAP)) have been evaluated in the severity assessment of AP. In the present issue, authors discussed prognostic value of interleukins (IL) 6, 8, and 10, soluble receptor for tumor necrosis factor (sTNFr), pancreatic elastase (E1), and C-reactive protein (CRP) as predictors of systemic complications in patients with AP. They found that IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, and sTNFr measured on admission and CRP and pancreatic elastase measured on the third day of admission represent valuable prognostic factors in the determination of severity and systemic complications in patients with AP. Recently, parameters showing distortion of water balance in the course of AP have been a subject of research and clinical observations and were found very promising in severity and death prediction. Although the pathogenesis of post-ERCP pancreatitis is not clearly understood, it seems that the patient's inflammatory response to pancreatic duct imaging and instrumentation plays a critical role. Several studies pointed out to special factors, which put an individual in high risk for the development of post-ERCP pancreatitis. The history of post-ERCP pancreatitis as an independent risk factor for a new episode of post-ERCP pancreatitis seems to be very important. On the other hand, some individuals can have a genetically predisposed susceptibility for this particular complication. However, in the article published in this issue, the authors were not able to associate the role of SPINK1N34S mutation with post-ERCP pancreatitis. Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the cancers of limited occurrence ; however, worldwide over 200000 people die annually of this disease. The highest incidence and mortality rates of pancreatic cancer are found in developed countries. In the United States, pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer death, and in Europe it is the sixth. PC occurs three times as often in high-income countries as in those of middle and low income. Therefore, understanding the etiology and identifying the risk factors remain essential for the primary prevention of this disease. The risk factors, which can be easily eliminated, include tobacco smoking, obesity, and diabetes mellitus. The extent to which diet affects pancreatic cancer risk is still unclear. The authors of the article included in the present issue have shown a correlation between PC and tobacco smoking (0.55 and 0.44). They also discussed that high consumptions of fats, sugar, and alcohol are potential risk factors for PC. Therefore, they suggest that positive changes in the diet such as lowering red meat consumption and increasing fruit consumption could influence incidence and reduction in future years. Furthermore, other investigators discussed some interesting data concerning some microenvironmental elements, which could be involved in the development of pancreatic cancer. It is well known that growth of dense, collagen-rich, extracellular matrix and stroma, known as the desmoplastic reaction, creates a unique microenvironment promoting both tumour growth, and metastatic spread and forms a barrier to specific chemotherapy drug penetration. The authors discussed new developments in the fight against desmoplastic reaction, including inhibitors of the epidermal growth factor, fibroblast growth factor as well as new molecular targets like CD40 agonist and their effects on T cells, extracellular matrix modifying enzymes such as LOXL2 inhibitor, and novel tumor-penetrating peptides for delivery of drugs. A group of scientists also described the involvement of macrophages in angiogenesis, process tumor growth and invasion of cancer cells. Macrophages are the source of angiogenic factors like VEGF and also MMP9, which degrade extracellular matrix. Therefore, macrophages infiltrating pancreatic tumor are another important factor promoting metastases. It was established that among many factors influencing tumor microenvironment c-Met receptor, infiltrating macrophages and MMP2 have significant influence on the development and invasion of pancreatic cancer. Endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) is now considered as one of the most useful methods for histological diagnosis and staging of pancreatic cancers. The Japanese discussed the usefulness, cost-effectiveness, and accuracy of EUS-FNA as a diagnostic modality for evaluating pancreatic tumors. They also underlined the role of molecular biological analyses for the diagnosis of PC. Other authors showed the utility of percutaneous ultrasonography-guided biopsy as a diagnostic tool for PC ; however, it seems that this method should be rather reserved for nonresectable tumors. We trust that the data presented in this special issue will help in understanding pancreatic disorder pathogenesis, especially microenvironment elements involved in the development of pancreatic cancer tumor. This hopefully will give new ideas for the development of new therapeutic strategies in pancreatic disorders.


Small agricultural producers around the country are finding it increasingly difficult to remain competitive in a market place dominated by the consolidation of agricultural production. This consolidation has had a serious impact on vegetable growers in northeastern Colorado who have recently banded together to form a cooperative in the hopes that they would be in a better position to market their vegetables. This paper discusses the results of the market and feasibility study. Section I provides a review of the literature on vertical coordination. Section II details the analysis of the fresh and processed vegetable market. Section III then provides a discussion of the processing feasibility study and addresses the importance of incorporating knowledge management into production decisions-even for producers with small operations. The paper then closes with recommendations and directions for future studies.


The COVID-19 pandemic has opened up futures for debate in an unprecedented manner and on an unforeseen scale. This article explores how ideas of immunity structured debates about pandemic management strategies as a means of securing a post-pandemic future during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. Building on queer theorization of temporality, the article asks how ideas of COVID-19 immunity derive their affective appeal and cultural legitimacy, and what is at stake in the imagined futures that unfold from such visions of post-pandemic immunity. The analysis focuses on two affective figures that circulated widely
in public discourse in March–May 2020: the figure of the soon-immune nation and the figure of the immune individual. I unsettle these figures by contextual- izing them through the histories of immunity politics around race, gender and sexuality. The analysis shows that the two figures have long affective histories entangled with nationalism, racism and discrimination. The article argues that these histories shape and curtail the kinds of post-pandemic futures that may be enacted and imagined through popular ideas of immunity.


TSmall and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have played an important role in South Asia and remain a critical source for employment creation as well as income generation. SMEs occupy an important position in the development strategy for inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction. In this respect, export-oriented SMEs, supplying competitive products and services with greater potential for backward and forward linkages, would substantially contribute towards higher national income and overall socio-economic progress of nations. Therefore, the development of export-led SMEs should be promoted through effective policy options in South Asian countries. However, SMEs in the subregion typically face considerable resource constraints and currently have limited capabilities to compete effectively in global and regional markets. It is thus imperative to further expand SMEs' capacity and competitiveness for survival and sustained development, particularly in the current competitive business environment. Furthermore, one of the most crucial challenges facing SMEs in South Asia is how to create new business opportunities in the global and regional markets. Domestic SMEs can access international markets through global (and regional) value chains (GVCs), which provide a full range of value added business activities across borders. In order to participate in GVCs effectively, SMEs in South Asia must remove entry barriers by developing capacities in a wide range of increasingly stringent international standards with regard to quality, price and timely delivery of products. However, SMEs typically lack an environment that would allow them to improve their capacity and competitiveness. This publication aims to propose practical policy interventions in improving business environment by targeting three South Asian countries, namely Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka and facilitating SMEs access to global and regional markets, especially through GVCs.


It is theoretically shown that the phase noise of laser light source can be automatically eliminated by compensating the differential group delay due to the fiber dispersion between the two sidebands of the optical DSB signal. The bit error rate (BER) measurement of 60 GHz millimeter (mm)-wave subcarrier multiplexed optical double-sideband (DSB) signal transport in dispersion-compensated optical fiber link using fiber Bragg grating (FBG) mill show that the effect of the laser phase noise on the BER is as small as a few % relative to the other additive noise effect, thus realizing almost the ultimate performance.


Abstract Purpose The modified lateral pillar classification (mLPC) is used for prognostication in the fragmentation stage of Legg Calvé Perthes disease. Previous reliability assessments of mLPC range from fair to good agreement when evaluated by a small number of observers with pre-selected radiographs. The purpose of this study was to determine the inter-observer and intra-observer reliability of mLPC performed by a group of international paediatric orthopaedic surgeons. Surgeons self-selected the radiograph for mLPC assessment, as would be done clinically. Methods In total, 40 Perthes cases with serial radiographs were selected. For each case, 26 surgeons independently selected a radiograph and assigned mLPC and 21 raters re-evaluated the same 40 cases to establish intra-observer reliability. Rater performance was determined through surgeon consensus using the mode mLPC as 'gold standard'. Inter-observer and intra-observer reliability data were analysed using weighted kappa statistics. Results The weighted kappa for inter-observer correlation for mLPC was 0.64 (95% confidence interval: 0.55 to 0.74) and was 0.82 (range: 0.35 to 0.99) for intra-observer correlation. Individual surgeon's overall performance varied from 48% to 88% agreement. Surgeon mLPC performance was not influenced by years of experience (p = 0.51). Radiograph selection did not influence gold standard assignment of mLPC. There was greater agreement on cases of mild B hips and severe C hips. Conclusions mLPC has low good inter-observer agreement when performed by a large number of surgeons with varied experience. Surgeons frequently chose different radiographs, with no impact on mLPC agreement. Further refinement is needed to help differentiate hips on the border of group B and C. Level of evidence III


I. INTRODUCTION A new version of an old trend is rising in the advertising world. Often called "alternative" or "guerilla" marketing, the trend finds marketers giving expensive items from expensive product lines to trendsetting college students, potentially hot showbiz players, and young nightclub-goers with the understanding that each will use and talk up the products. (1) Further, drug companies frequently pay celebrities to tout pharmaceuticals during their public appearances. (2) Other examples include extensive product placements in movies and on television programs, and sponsorship of events and concerts. (3) Such alternative marketing only represents a tiny fraction of the $236 billion spent on advertising in America, but strong evidence shows that the money spent on these alternative marketing strategies is growing rapidly. (4) The recent spike in the marriage of content and advertisements is a response to machines like TiVo, (5) which allow users to record many hours of television programming while skipping commercials. (6) Network executives fear that the use of such devices bodes very ill for future advertising revenues, from which networks draw a bulk of their profits. (7) Jamie Kellner, CEO of Turner Broadcasting System, spoke of his concerns at the Association of National Advertisers' 2002 national conference, stating that "the [television] business cannot exist as its current model is today unless consumers are willing to give time for [advertisements]." (8) Kellner further asserted his belief that "advertising has driven this country. Without advertising, we wall damage this country." (9) These fears, echoed by other network executives, are powerful, but may be either premature (10) or altogether unwarranted. (11) Regardless, these same executives have time and time again adopted the alternative or guerilla marketing strategies outlined above. These activities have possible implications far beyond the executives' individual networks. The more advertisers fear that their messages will not reach the intended audience of television viewers, the more that advertisers will likely seek other outlets for these messages. These other outlets could include forums with obvious dangers attached, such as a larger proliferation of overly distracting advertisements on highways, including on vehicles. Advertising on some alternative outlets could pose more subtle dangers. One of these possible dangerous alternative outlets is public access television, which receives little protection from corporate advertisers under the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 ("CCPA"). (12) Under the CCPA, municipalities are free to adopt their own protective contractual measures with cable operators in their cable franchise agreements. Many municipalities, including New York City, deny the right to place advertisements on airwaves reserved for public access. However, these contractual terms are not mandated by the CCPA. This lack of protection is striking since, as argued, infra, corporate advertising often negatively distorts media content. Corporate advertising on public access channels could have alarming implications for those wishing to utilize their only meaningful access to public airwaves. This Note urges municipalities, cable franchisees, and courts to adopt the same protections afforded to the public by the Oyster Bay, New York, cable franchise agreement. Section II outlines the relevant provisions of the CCPA, the New York state regulations regarding cable franchise agreements, the Cable Franchise Agreement between the Oyster Bay, New York, and Cablevision Systems Corporation, and the recent Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Goldberg v. Cablevision Systems Corporation. Section III of this Note argues that corporate advertising has historically had several adverse effects on the content of television programming. Section IV further describes the recent upswing in guerilla marketing tactics. …


In this article, I deal with the complexities of "indigeneity" and "autochthony," two distinct yet closely interrelated concepts used by various actors in local, national, and international arenas in Africa and elsewhere. With the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2007, hopes were high among activists and organizations that the precarious situation of many minority groups might be gradually improved. However, sharing the concerns of other scholars, I argue that discourses of indigeneity and autochthony are highly politicized, are subject to local and national particularities, and produce ambivalent, sometimes paradoxical, outcomes. My elaborations are based on in-depth knowledge of the case of the Mbororo in Cameroon, a pastoralist group and national minority recognized by the United Nations as an "indigenous people" although locally perceived as "strangers" and "migrants." For comparative purposes, and drawing on related studies, I integrate the Bagyeli and Baka (also known as Pygmies) of southern and southeastern Cameroon into my analysis, as they share the designation of indigenous people with the Mbororo and face similar predicaments.


The current study aims to present a critical analysis of research on social networking sites (SNSs) in second language teaching and learning (L2TL) context. Twenty-two studies published from 2011 to 2017 were included in the analysis through the selection criteria devised by the researcher. The descriptive analysis reveals that Facebook was the most commonly explored medium, and more than half of the studies featured English language learners in various levels. Following the content analysis of the studies, the emerging aspects of the literature review are treated under five overarching themes: practicing multiple language areas and literacies; authenticity and negotiation of meaning through interaction; development of intercultural competence and socio-pragmatic awareness; membership in L2 communities; and (re)construction of identities. Following an account of pedagogical considerations such as the dynamics of classroom, technical features, and various cultural uses of the SNSs, the study concludes with suggestions and directions for future research in regards to the incorporation of SNSs such as Facebook and Twitter into L2 classrooms.


By the early fall of 2009, the business contraction that began in December 2007 appeared to be ending, (1) but the outlook, remained hazy. Despite a number of "green shoots," as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke liked to put it, (2) the data were not decisive enough to declare the end of the contraction. Employment was still falling through September 2009. (3) Although in October 2009 it certainly seemed that the economy was near the bottom, it was not safe to say that the crisis was history. (4) Nevertheless, much is already known about the causes of the financial crisis and government responses to it, permitting a much more than speculative review. David Wessel has provided a superb blow-by-blow account of events during the crisis; (5) there is no point in repeating that account here. Nevertheless, a brief chronology of the phases of the financial crisis should help to organize the discussion. I. CHRONOLOGY OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS The crisis broke in mid-August 2007, when the market suddenly cut off funding to several financial entities. (6) The Federal Reserve's initial response in August was to reduce the discount rate--the interest rate the Fed charges on loans to banks--in the hope that banks could provide funds to firms cut off by the market. (7) In mid-September 2007, the Fed began to cut its main policy interest rate, the federal funds rate. The rate had stood at 5.25% from June 2006 through August 2007. (8) Although the Fed ordinarily changes its fed funds rate target in steps of twenty-five basis points, the first reduction in September was by fifty basis points. (9) As financial strains grew and the economy gradually weakened, the Fed continued to reduce its fed funds target rate, reaching 3% in late January 2008. (10) In mid-March 2008, financial strains intensified as the market cut off funding to Bear Stearns, a large New York investment bank. (11) To prevent Bear Stearns from failing, the Federal Reserve provided an emergency loan and assumed the credit risk on some Bear Stearns assets, which persuaded JP Morgan Chase to buy Bear Stearns. (12) A few days later, the Federal Reserve cut its federal funds rate target by seventy-five basis points, down to 2.25%. (13) The Bear Stearns bailout marked the end of the first phase of the financial crisis. In April the Fed lowered its funds rate target another notch to 2%, which it held until September. (14) During this second phase of the crisis, the economy was drifting downward, but not at an alarming pace. This phase ended with the Lehman crisis. The Fed did not bail out Lehman Brothers, an investment bank twice the size of Bear Steams, and Lehman declared bankruptcy on September 15. (15) Lehman's collapse marked the beginning of phase three of the crisis, when market strains went from serious to calamitous. The Fed bailed out American International Group (AIG), a huge insurance company, the day after Lehman failed. (16) In October 2008, the Fed cut its target funds rate in two steps to 1% and further to near zero in December. (17) The flight to safety was so intense that in November and December 2008 the market bid the yield on Treasury bills literally to zero on some days. (18) Credit strains were severe and economic activity declined sharply. There is no particular date or event to mark the end of phase three of the crisis; markets gradually improved and the economy transitioned to phase four, in which credit conditions became more settled and credit began to flow again. The financial crisis was worldwide, with European banks and markets as severely affected as those in the United States. (19) Asian banks were stronger than U.S. and European banks, but Asia could not escape the effects of the crisis. (20) Output and employment fell around the world. II. CONDITIONS LEADING TO THE CRISIS (21) After the stock market peak in 2000 and to resist the 2001 recession, the Fed reduced its target federal funds rate in steps, eventually reaching 1% in 2003. …


An Introduction to Storage Devices, Subsystems, Applications, Management, and File Systems Learn fundamental storage concepts with this comprehensive introduction Compare storage device technologies, including Fibre Channel, SCSI, ATA, and SATA and understand their uses in network storage subsystems Learn about key storage processes such as volume management, storage virtualization, data snapshots, mirroring, RAID, backup, and multipathing Clarify the roles of file systems and databases within network storage Take the next step-this book prepares you to become a storage networking expertStorage networking has become an essential ingredient in Internet information infrastructures. Becoming competent in this new and important technology area requires a sound understanding of storage technologies and principles. Storage Networking Fundamentals gives you an in-depth look into the most important storage technologies. The entire storage landscape is described, incorporating a complete view of system, device, and subsystem operations and processes. Learn how to protect data effectively using mirroring, RAID, remote copy, and backup/ recovery systems. Virtual storage technologies, such as volume management, RAID, and network virtualization, are analyzed and discussed in detail. High-availability storage through dynamic multipathing and clustered/distributed file systems is explained as are designs for robust storage subsystems. Finally, the confusing and arcane worlds of file systems and SCSI are clarified, including the role of initiators, targets, logical units, and LUNs.Storage Networking Fundamentals is a comprehensive overview of storage technologies that also provides insights on designing and running SAN and NAS implementations.i? This book is part of the Cisco Press Fundamentals Series. Books in this series introduce networking professionals to new networking technologies, covering network topologies, example deployment concepts, protocols, and management techniques.


The United States and its trading partners have adopted cultural and innovation policies under which the government grants one-size-fits-all patents and copyrights to inventors and authors. On a global basis, the reasons for doing so vary, but in the United States granting intellectual property rights has been justified as the principal means of promoting innovation and cultural progress. Until recently, however, few have questioned the wisdom of using such blunt policy instruments to promote progress in a wide range of industries in which the economics of innovation varies considerably.Provisionally accepting the assumptions of the traditional economic case for intellectual property, this Article scrutinizes the presumption of uniformity in patent and copyright law and makes three contributions. First, it suggests three overarching metrics policymakers should use when choosing among innovation-related policies: (1) the government's comparative ability to direct resources toward innovation likely to lead to success; (2) the policy's "administrability;" and (3) the questions of political economy likely to effect a policy's success. From this analysis, the case for intellectual property rights emerges as a second-best solution based on the uncertainty of innovation and the comparatively better information possessed by private innovators.Second, this Article shows that these same three metrics supply the case for uniform intellectual property rights within the distinct domains of patent and copyright law as a default initial domestic policy. Third, intellectual property law is part of a dynamic system, and information obtained over time will support proposals to tailor patents and copyrights to improve their performance as innovation policy. Indeed, the distinction between patent and copyright law is a form of high-level tailoring, and in addition patent and copyright law each has been tailored in a number of ways by Congress, the federal courts, and administrative agencies. Intellectual property scholarship lacks a framework for assessing existing and proposed tailoring measures. This Article proposes such a framework derived from the logic of the traditional economic case for intellectual property. This framework applies to a wide range of pending policy questions, such as whether, or to what extent, software, business methods, tax shelters, or living organisms should be patentable and whether, or to what extent, statutory licenses should be granted for certain types of copyrighted works or for certain types of use, and whether fashion design should receive sui generis protection.


Background: Seborrheic dermatitis is a common chronic inflammatory skin condition that can have a negative impact on a patient's quality of life. Few studies have been conducted to assess the clinical characteristics of the disease and quality of life of the patients, especially in tropical countries. Aims and Objectives: The aim of this study was to demonstrate the clinical characteristics and quality of life of patients with seborrheic dermatitis in Thailand. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed at a university-based hospital and tertiary referral center in Bangkok, Thailand. The validated Thai version of the dermatology life quality index (DLQI) was used to evaluate patients' quality of life. Results: A total of 166 participants were included. One hundred and forty-seven patients (88.6%) experienced multiple episodes of the eruption. The mean of outbreaks was 7.8 times per years, ranging from once every 4 years to weekly eruption. The most common factor reported to aggravate seborrheic dermatitis was seasonality (34.9%), especially hot climate. The mean (SD) of the total DLQI score was 8.1 (6.0) with a range of 0 to 27. There was no statistically significant difference between the two DLQI categories regarding duration of disease, extent of involvement, symptoms or course of the disease. Conclusion: Although mild and asymptomatic, seborrheic dermatitis can have a great impact on the quality of life. Youth, female gender, and scalp lesions were significantly associated with higher DLQI scores.


Understanding the transformations of highly reduced enstatite chondrites (EC) in terrestrial environments, even on very short timescales, is important to make the best use of the cosmochemical and mineralogical information carried by these extraterrestrial rocks. Analogs of EC meteorites were synthesized at high pressure and high temperature. Then, their aqueous alterations, either abiotic or in the presence of the bacteria Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans or Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans, were studied under air, at pH ~2, 20 °C, and atmospheric pressure. They stayed in shaken batch reactors for 15 days. Reference experiments were carried out separately by altering only one mineral phase among those composing the synthetic EC (i.e., sulfides: troilite or Mg‐Ca‐rich sulfides, enstatite, and Fe70Si30). Composition of the alteration aqueous media and microstructures of the weathered solids were monitored by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy and by scanning electron microscopy, respectively. Alteration sequence of the different mineral components of the synthetic EC was found to occur in the following order: magnesium‐calcium sulfides > troilite > iron‐silicon metallic phase > enstatite regardless of the presence or absence of the microorganisms. Such small biological effects might be due to the fact that the alteration conditions are far from biologically optimal, which is likely the case in most natural environments. The exposed surfaces of an EC meteorite falling on Earth in a wet and acidic environment could lose within a few hours their Ca‐ and Mg‐rich sulfides (oldhamite and niningerite). Then, in <1 week, troilite and kamacite could be altered. In a wet and acidic environment, only the enstatite would remain intact and would weather on a much slower geological timescale.


Robotic handling systems are increasingly applied in distribution centers. They require little space, provide flexibility in managing varying demand requirements, and are able to work 24/7. This makes them particularly fit for e-commerce operations. This paper reviews new categories of automated and robotic handling systems, such as shuttle-based storage and retrieval systems, shuttle-based compact storage systems, and robotic mobile fulfillment systems. For each system, we categorize the literature in three groups: system analysis, design optimization, and operations planning and control. Our focus is to identify the research issue and operations research modeling methodology adopted to analyze the problem. We find that many new robotic systems and applications have hardly been studied in academic literature, despite their increasing use in practice. Because of unique system features (such as autonomous control, flexible layout, networked and dynamic operation), new models and methods are needed to address the design and operational control challenges for such systems, in particular, for the integration of subsystems. Integrated robotic warehouse systems will form the next category of warehouses. All vital warehouse design, planning, and control logic, such as methods to design layout, storage and order-picking system selection, storage slotting, order batching, picker routing, and picker to order assignment, will have to be revisited for new robotized warehouses.


We analyze the diffusion of buildings certified for energy efficiency across US property markets. Using a panel of 48 metropolitan areas (MSAs) observed over the last 15 years, we model the geographic patterns and dynamics of building certification, relating industry composition, changes in economic conditions, characteristics of the local commercial property market, and the presence of human capital, to the cross-sectional variation in energy-efficient building technologies and the diffusion of those technologies over time. Understanding the determinants and the rate at which energy-efficient building practices diffuse is important for designing policies to affect resource consumption in the built environment.


Introduction: legislation and ethics as one of the top five themes that preoccupied LIS scholars and practitioners in the first decade of the 21 century. This is true for Library and Information Science and its related disciplines such as Records, information and archives, archeology and museum study. Objective: This paper attempts to discuss the various trends in legislations relating to the Library and Information Science discipline and profession. Methodology: In this research, reviewing literature was used to define the main concepts of this research. Findings: There is a noticeable attribute that more legislations are likely to be drafted and passed. Indeed, there are noticeable trends in the nature of legislation relating to LIS which include the shift from a more right based form of legislations to legislations concerned with social order; a shift towards embracing changing technologies with in the legislations; thirdly, there is a shift towards the internationalisation; a shift towards open access to LIS material from closed access; the adoption of the Western values of LIS values; and adoption of LIS perspectives in other legislations Conclusion: Professionals cannot afford the comfort of waiting for new developments to be handed down to them but rather equip themselves with competences to; locate and evaluate primary and secondary material, understanding its value as a professional decision-making resource; apply existing legal tenets to various library environments and develop practical compliance; and express professional responsibility, views concerning the legal problems in the library and information sciences in which one is situated.


To examine the combined association of cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), muscular fitness (MF), and adherence to a Mediterranean diet (MeDiet) on cardiovascular risk in adolescents, a pooled study, including cross-sectional data from two projects [2477 adolescents (1320 girls) aged 12–18 years], was completed. A shuttle run test was used to assess CRF. MF was assessed by the standing-long jump and handgrip tests. Adherence to a MeDiet was assessed by the Kidmed questionnaire. A cardiovascular risk score was computed from the following components: Age and sex, waist circumference, triglycerides, systolic blood pressure, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL), and glucose. Analysis of covariance showed that participants classified as having optimal (High) adherence to a MeDiet/HighMF/HighCRF, as well those classified as low adherence to a MeDiet/HighMF/HighCRF, had, on average, the lowest cardiovascular risk score (F = 15.6; p < 0.001). In addition, the high adherence to a MeDiet/LowMF/LowCRF group had the highest odds of having a high cardiovascular risk (OR = 7.1; 95% CI: 3.4–15.1; p < 0.001), followed by the low adherence to a MeDiet/LowMF/LowCRF group (OR = 3.7; 95% CI: 2.2–6.3; p < 0.001), high adherence to a MeDiet/HighMF/LowCRF group (OR = 3.1; 95% CI: 1.4–7.0; p = 0.006), and low adherence to a MeDiet/LowMF/HighCRF group (OR = 2.5; 95% CI: 1.5–4.4; p = 0.002) when compared to those with high adherence to a MeDiet/HighMF/HighCRF, after adjustments for potential confounders. In conclusion, our findings showed that, regardless of the MeDiet status, adolescents with low MF and low CRF cumulatively, presented the highest cardiovascular disease risk. Therefore, these findings suggest that the combination of these two fitness components may be beneficial to adolescents' cardiometabolic profile, independent of MeDiet behaviour.


The AIDS-defining malignancies are Kaposi's sarcoma, aggressive B-cell lymphoma, primary CNS lymphoma and cervix carcinoma.
Non-AIDS-defining malignancies like Hodgkin's lymphoma and anal carcinoma occur more frequently in the HIV-positive population but are not necessarily related to the level of immune suppression.
Kaposi's sarcoma is a vascular tumour caused by human herpesvirus 8 and occurs mainly in the skin and mucous membranes but can involve any organ.
Management of Kaposi's sarcoma starts with HAART and, if clinically indicated, either local therapy like radiotherapy or systemic chemotherapy.
AIDS-related lymphomas present at an advanced stage, are usually associated with B-symptoms and extranodal disease, and often involve unusual sites.
The commonest histologies are diffuse large B-cell and Burkitts's lymphoma. Those seen almost exclusively in HIV are plasmablastic and primary effusion lymphoma.
Primary CNS lymphoma in HIV is associated with a CD4 count < 50, EBV in the tumour and CSF, and a very poor prognosis.
Cancer in HIV-infected individuals is usually associated with a viral cause, e.g. HPV in cervix and anal carcinoma and EBV and HHV8 in ARLs.
Patients with unusual and aggressive cancers should be tested for HIV.
With HAART the incidence of AIDS-defining malignancies has decreased but non-AIDS-defining malignancies are increasing as HIV has become a chronic disease.


Seventh-day Adventism (SDA) is a protestant religion that has adopted certain health practices as a fundamental belief, in order to live in optimal health. These include abstaining from alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and pork. Many SDAs are also vegetarian. Fresh fruits and vegetables, high fiber and low fat foods are encouraged. Daily exercise, fresh air, plenty of water and rest are also strongly recommended. Historically, SDAs have enjoyed longer lives with less disease. Little research has been done to examine the effects of the county's dramatic increase in obesity rates over the last two decades among SDAs. The purpose of this research was to study the current health status of SDAs living in Johnson County, Texas by using body mass index (BMI), then compare the results to non-Adventists living in the same region. This research also explores potential variables responsible for the current BMI status by comparing the BMI among vegetarian and non-vegetarian SDAs, as well as the correlations between age, church attendance, years vegetarian and years as a church member to BMI.


Paleoclimatic records from polar ice cores provide unique information about past atmospheric conditions, like temperature from stable water isotopes and greenhouse gas concentrations. To investigate leads and lags of temperature, measured in the ice phase, with gas concentration the exact dating of gas and ice is important. However, the age difference between the air and the surrounding ice complicates the exact dating. After the deposition the age of the snow increases with depth, whereas the pores only close in a certain depth, so called close-off depth (COD). Thus, the knowledge of the COD is crucial for dating the gas. Snow accumulation rate and temperature are known as the main factors of firn densification. Recently, a possible influence of impurities enclosed in the ice was found.

Here, we present a case study to investigate which impurities could have an influence on the densification of polar firn. We have analyzed 80 cm from an unbroken firn core from north-west Greenland from a depth of ~54 m, next to the firn-ice transition. Here the density is of very high variability. We can differentiate between layers of different densities in spite of the same temperatures and snow accumulation rates and its deep enough to analyse the influence of trace elements.
We measured the density using a new full core X-ray computer tomograph with a resolution of 113 µm. We analysed major ions (SO42-, CH3SO3-, NH4+, NO3-, F-, Br-, Na+, Cl-, K+, Ca2+ and Mg2+) and dust particles on discrete samples in 3-4 mm resolution and compared the obtained concentration profiles with the density of the firn. The uncertainty in depth correspondence is less than 1 mm, thus a comparison on this level is possible for the first time.

We found the highest correlations between the dust proxies (particle concentration and Ca2+-concentration), r = 0.6, indicating an influence of these impurities on the densification of firn. Correlation coefficients between other ion concentrations and the density range from r = -0.04 (F-) to r = 0.27 (NO3-). Only sulphur components (sulphate and MSA) show also higher correlations to the density of the firn (r~0.5).
For the first time in a direct comparison in a resolution of 1 mm or less it was possible to investigate the influence of impurities on firn densification. The correlation between the density and the dust proxies indicates that the dust particle or some other process linked to the dust proxies, have an influence on the densification of firn. However, the mechanism of densification is not clearly understood yet.


Analysis of the thermal regime of glaciers is crucial for glacier hazard assessment, especially in the context of a changing climate. In particular, the transient thermal regime of cold accumulation zones needs to be modeled. A modeling approach has therefore been developed to determine this thermal regime using only near-surface boundary conditions coming from meteorological observations. In the first step, a surface energy balance (SEB) model accounting for water percolation and radiation penetration in firn was applied to identify the main processes that control the subsurface temperatures in cold firn. Results agree well with subsurface temperatures measured at Col du Dome (4250 m above sea level (a.s.l.)), France. In the second step, a simplified model using only daily mean air temperature and potential solar radiation was developed. This model properly simulates the spatial variability of surface melting and subsurface firn temperatures and was used to accurately reconstruct the deep borehole temperature profiles measured at Col du Dome. Results show that percolation and refreezing are efficient processes for the transfer of energy from the surface to underlying layers. However, they are not responsible for any higher energy uptake at the surface, which is exclusively triggered by increasing energy flux from the atmosphere due to SEB changes when surface temperatures reach 0 °C. The resulting enhanced energy uptake makes cold accumulation zones very vulnerable to air temperature rise.


In 2006, Kanazawa University (KU) adopted a policy that made it mandatory for all freshmen to have a laptop PC, and started a new class called Introduction to Information Technology as a compulsory first-year subject. We designed this class as a model for developing an e-Learning environment across all departments. We realized that educational systems and support environments are important for the success of e-Learning, so we added portal functions with the cooperation of the company which developed the LMS for us. In addition, we set up a wireless LAN infrastructure, and upgraded some lecture rooms for the Introduction to Information Processing courses. We started up a support room to assist teachers in developing their teaching materials, and opened a PC support room for students in the university hall, near the hub of student activity. In this paper, we will show the outline of the educational system, and report the largely positive student evaluations of the Introduction to Information Technology course and the educational system during its first two years. The number of classes that use the educational system tripled in 2007.


A framework for pragmatic analysis is proposed which treats discourse as a game, with context as a scoreboard organized around the questions under discussion by the interlocutors. The framework is intended to be coordinated with a dynamic compositional semantics. Accordingly, the context of utterance is modeled as a tuple of different types of information, and the questions therein — modeled, as is usual in formal semantics, as alternative sets of propositions — constrain the felicitous flow of discourse. A requirement of Relevance is satisfied by an utterance (whether an assertion, a question or a suggestion) iff it addresses the question under discussion. Finally, it is argued that the prosodic focus of an utterance canonically serves to reflect the question under discussion (at least in English), placing additional constraints on felicity in context.

http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.5.6

 BibTeX info


High brightness Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) are appearing more frequently in lighting applications. As these LEDs are used and planned for more general lighting systems, more emphasis is placed on locating these high power package systems in close proximity to each other to produce high lighting levels. This close packing can take the form of locating level 1 packages next to each other or locating chip-on-board (COB) LEDs next to one another. This leads to the question of how close can the LEDs be placed by the circuit board designer, and there has been little published work to show what spacing is possible in multiple LED systems. The spacing issue is also affected by the type of printed circuit board (PCB) used, which is normally a composite made up of a thin PCB bonded to a relatively thick metal substrate (a metal core PCB-MCPCB). The variables of dielectric, copper and solder layer thicknesses result in different proximities possible for LED spacing, and are especially critical for COB applications. This paper explores the spacing and placement of LEDs in tight array for 1-watt class devices using a design of experiments (DOE) methodology for analytical computations.


By generalizing the theory of convection to any type of thermal and compositional source terms (diabatic processes), we show that thermohaline convection in Earth's oceans, fingering convection in stellar atmospheres, and moist convection in Earth's atmosphere are derived from the same general diabatic convective instability. We also show that "radiative convection" triggered by the CO/CH4 transition with radiative transfer in the atmospheres of brown dwarfs is analogous to moist and thermohaline convection. We derive a generalization of the mixing-length theory to include the effect of source terms in 1D codes. We show that CO/CH4 "radiative" convection could significantly reduce the temperature gradient in the atmospheres of brown dwarfs similarly to moist convection in Earth's atmosphere, thus possibly explaining the reddening in brown dwarf spectra. By using idealized 2D hydrodynamic simulations in the Ledoux unstable regime, we show that compositional source terms can indeed provoke a reduction of the temperature gradient. The L/T transition could be explained by a bifurcation between the adiabatic and diabatic convective transports and seen as a giant cooling crisis: an analog of the boiling crisis in liquid/steam-water convective flows. This mechanism, with other chemical transitions, could be present in many giant and Earth-like exoplanets. The study of the impact of different parameters (effective temperature, compositional changes) on CO/CH4 radiative convection and the analogy with Earth moist and thermohaline convection is opening the possibility of using brown dwarfs to better understand some aspects of the physics at play in the climate of our own planet.


A meta-analysis of treatments in myocardial infarction published in 1992 retrospectively showed that streptokinase was associated with a highly significant fall in mortality by 1977, after inclusion of 15 trials.1 Thrombolysis was, however, not widely recommended until 10 years later—after the effect was confirmed in two mega trials.1 2 3 In the case of magnesium, a substantial fall in mortality was evident by 1990, after inclusion of seven trials. In 1993, based on an updated meta-analysis it was argued that magnesium treatment represented an "effective, safe, simple and inexpensive" intervention that should be introduced into clinical practice without further delay.4 The negative results of ISIS 4 (the fourth international study of infarct survival), published in last week's Lancet,5 have dealt a blow to enthusiasm for both magnesium and meta-analysis.6 As the findings of meta-analyses and systematic reviews are generally not tested in mega trials the situation regarding magnesium represents an opportunity to examine a false positive meta-analysis.

The table compares the meta-analyses of trials of magnesium and streptokinase after myocardial infarction. Trials were cumulatively included until the treatment effect was significant at P<0.001. For magnesium, seven small trials whose results were published in the 1980s were sufficient to establish the effect. Although trials were larger in the case of fibrinolytic treatment, twice as many studies and two decades were necessary to reach the same level of significance. Until recently it could …


The concept of imperialism lies at the heart of Marxist analysis and debate. This text offers a prescient analysis of a world shaken by competitive instability, war and crisis, dominated by monopolies, the merging of finance and industrial capital and fierce territorial competition. Originally published in 1916, it explains how colonialism and World War I were inherent features of the global development of the capitalist economy. The introduction to this edition contrasts Lenin's approach with that adopted by contemporary theories of globalization. It argues that, while much has changed since Lenin wrote, his theoretical framework remains the best method for understanding recent global developments.


Flow estimates for ungauged catchments are often derived through regionalisation methods, which enable data transfer from a pool of hydrologically similar catchments with existing gauging stations (i.e., pooling-groups). This paper presents a methodology for indexing the utility of gauged catchments within widely used pooling-group methodologies for high and low flow estimation; this methodology is then used as the basis for a network evaluation strategy. The utility of monitoring stations is assessed using catchment properties and a parallel, but independent, appraisal of the quality of gauging station data, which considers hydrometric performance, anthropogenic disturbances and record length. Results from the application of the method to a national network of over 1,100 gauging stations in England and Wales are presented. First, the method is used to appraise the fitness-for-purpose of the network for regionalisation. The method is then used to identify gauges which monitor catchments with high potential for regionalisation, but which are deficient in terms of data quality – where upgrades in hydrometric performance would yield the greatest benefits. Finally, gauging stations with limited value for regionalisation, given the pooling-group criteria employed, are identified. Alongside a wider review of other uses of the network, this analysis could inform a judicious approach to network rationalisation.


In this paper, we investigate a joint scheduling and power control for an infrastructure-based cognitive radio network (CRN) in coexistence with a cellular primary radio network (PRN). The PRN uses a set of licensed nonoverlapping orthogonal frequency channels for transmission. This set of channels is also accessed in an opportunistic manner by a set of cognitive radio base stations (CR-BSs) to support secondary users (SUs). The problem is formulated to maximize the spectrum utilization of SUs without causing excessive interference to active primary users (PUs) of the PRN. In addition, all the serviced SUs must meet a certain Quality of Service (QoS), such as satisfying a predefined signal to interference noise ratio (SINR). A centralized solution for joint scheduling and power control is derived to make the global accessing decision for all unserved SUs. With the assumption that the knowledge of all subscribers is available, a coordinator of the CRN can use the joint scheduling and power control algorithm to maximize the spectrum utilization of serviced SUs by solving a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) with an NP-hard complexity. To avoid the NP-hard complexity, we propose a suboptimal heuristic greedy algorithm that can be obtained at a much lower complexity based on the coloring interference graph among unserved SUs effected by serviced SUs and active PUs. Its superior performance over the existing algorithms is demonstrated through simulations.


This paper examines the changes in land use in the U.S. likely to be induced by biofuel and climate policies and the implications of these policies for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the 2007–2022 period. The policies considered here include a modified Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) by itself as well as combined with a cellulosic biofuel tax credit or a carbon price policy. We use a dynamic, spatial, multi-market equilibrium model, Biofuel and Environmental Policy Analysis Model (BEPAM), to endogenously determine the effects of these policies on cropland allocation, food and fuel prices, and the mix of first- and second-generation biofuels. We find that the RFS could be met by diverting 6% of cropland for biofuel production and would result in corn prices increasing by 16% in 2002 relative to the business-as-usual baseline. The reduction in GHG emissions in the U.S. due to the RFS is about 2%; these domestic GHG savings can be severely eroded by emissions due to indirect land-use changes and the increase in gasoline consumption in the rest of the world. Supplementing the RFS with a carbon price policy or a cellulosic biofuel tax credit induces a switch away from corn ethanol to cellulosic biofuels and achieves the mandated level of biofuel production with a smaller adverse impact on crop prices. These supplementary policies enhance the GHG savings achieved by the RFS alone, although through different mechanisms; greater production of cellulosic biofuels with the tax credit but larger reduction in fossil fuel consumption with a carbon tax.


During the recent reordering of the RCVS headquarters a  6 inch square box was found containing a cardboard model and a folded piece of paper.  Further  investigation revealed it was something rather exciting – the pasteboard model of a horse's hoof. Colleagues at the Royal Veterinary College kindly produced a 3D model of the Hoof, which you can view in the interactive video below. You can also read more about Bracy Clark's model hoof on our Blog . Bracy Clark hoof model c1820 by rcvsknowledge on Sketchfab


In this paper, we present an experimental and theoretical study of passive mode-locking in semiconductor Fabry-Pérot, quantum-well, lasers operating at around 1550 nm and producing picosecond pulses at a repetition frequency of 40 GHz. The different regimes that occur as the reverse bias voltage applied to the saturable absorber (SA) section or the bias current injected into the amplifier section are characterized both in the time and frequency/wavelength domains. Our results reveal that the lasers display spectral competition between the gain of the amplifier section and the absorption of the SA, with variations of the lasing wavelength up to 25 nm as the bias conditions are changed. These wavelength variations result from the thermal drift of the SA band-edge due to Joule heating by the generated photocurrent and from the competition between two possible lasing regions placed either at the amplifier gain peak or near the band-edge of the SA. The experimental observations are satisfactorily reproduced and explained in the framework of a Traveling Wave Model complemented by a time-domain description of the semiconductor susceptibility.


Abstract There is an evident need to shift from focusing merely on designers' tasks and methods towards taking a more holistic approach to socially responsible design. In order to do this, this paper looks firstly in retrospect at the global design research work done by the World Design Research Group and secondly examines an on-going research project in the development context. In both cases, the connections and differences between social design and service design are highlighted. As a concrete outcome this paper proposes a framework that can be applied to the development context. In other words, in design cases where the aim is to collaborate, share knowledge and experiences as well as co-design change in a multinational group. The framework itself gives designers an understanding of how to both navigate in the development field and work for improving the livelihoods of communities.


The act of walking represents an important (yet underexamined) element of political protest and collective action, as well as an increasingly common form of historical commemoration. In this article I examine the development of a series of "memory walks" by labor activists in the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. I argue that these peripatetic practices constitute a particular spatial, kinesthetic, and sensorial form of historical and archival production. Along the way, I consider what these events reveal about postcolonial forms of archival production and the importance of historical praxis to the formation of political subjectivities.


In "New Grub Street" George Gissing re-created a microcosm of London's literary society as he had experienced it. His novel is at once a major social document and a story that draws us irresistibly into the twilit world of Edwin Reardon, a struggling novelist, and his friends and acquaintances in Grub Street including Jasper Milvain, an ambitious journalist, and Alfred Yule, an embittered critic. Here Gissing brings to life the bitter battles (fought out in obscure garrets or in the Reading Room of the British Museum) between integrity and the dictates of the market place, the miseries of genteel poverty and the damage that failure and hardship do to human personality and relationships.


At the Polls is a series of national election studies prepared by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy and Research. Books in the series include volumes on some thirty national democratic elections around the world. Distinguished foreign and American scholars have contributed to the studies.


The outbreak of COVID-19 has severely impacted the performance of contracts across the globe. In some situations, the outbreak may render the performance of contracts impossible as a result of governmental restrictions in the form of national lockdowns to curb the spread of the virus. In other situations, the pandemic may adversely impact the execution of contractual obligations by dramatically affecting the price of the performance and, thus, resulting in hardship or commercial impracticability, while in certain situations the pandemic may be legally construed to not affect the performance of a contract. In domestic contracts, the consequences of such non-performance would depend on the principles of national law. In comparison, agreements with a foreign element (international contracts) are likely to increase the complexity of deciding claims arising from the non-performance of contracts due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The rights and liability of the parties would chiefly depend on the law that will govern the agreement – which differs across the globe. Some contracts would include a force majeure clause to exonerate the parties from performance on the occurrence of an event such as a pandemic. The courts' interpretations of such force majeure clauses similarly differ across the globe. The laws of some countries would excuse the parties from performing their contractual obligations even if the pandemic resulted in hardship. Others would strictly construe the terms of such clauses and would invalidate them if the occurrence of the pandemic did not make the performance impossible. This paper examines the non-performance of transnational contracts due to the COVID-19 outbreak when they are governed by Indian law. It highlights the situations when an international contract for the sale of goods or services whose performance has been allegedly hindered due to COVID-19 would (a) frustrate and (b) breach the agreement under Indian law. The paper provides a comparative analysis of Indian law with jurisdictions such as France, Germany, Austria, China, the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States to demonstrate that Indian law is not well equipped to deal with complex lawsuits arising due to the non-performance of contracts as a result of the pandemic.


Advocates of growth management and smart growth often propose policies that raise housing prices, thereby making housing less affordable to many households trying to buy or rent homes. Such policies include urban growth boundaries, zoning restrictions on multi-family housing, utility district lines, building permit caps, and even construction moratoria. Does this mean there is an inherent conflict between growth management and smart growth on the one hand, and creating more affordable housing on the other? Or can growth management and smart growth promote policies that help increase the supply of affordable housing? These issues are critical to the future of affordable housing because so many local communities are adopting various forms of growth management or smart growth in response to growth-related problems. Those problems include rising traffic congestion, the absorption of open space by new subdivisions, and higher taxes to pay for new infrastructures. This book explores the relationship between growth management and smart growth and affordable housing in depth. It draws from material presented at a symposium on these subjects held at the Brookings Institution in May 2003, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the National Association of Realtors, and the Fannie Mae Foundation. Contributors seek to inform the debate and provide some useful answers to help the nation accommodate the curtailment of growth in urban and suburban domains while still ensuring a supply of affordable housing. Contributors include Karen Destorel Brown (Brookings), Robert Burchell, (Rutgers University), Daniel Carlson (University of Washington), David L. Crawford (Econsult Corporation), Anthony Downs (Brookings), Ingrid Gould Ellen (New York University), William Fischel (Dartmouth College), George C. Galster (Wayne State University), Jill Khadduri (Abt Associates), Gerrit J. Knaap (University of Maryland), Robert Lang (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), Shishir Mathur (University of Washington), Arthur C. Nelson (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), Rolf Pendall (Cornell University), Douglas R. Porter, (Growth Management Institute), Michael Pyatok (University of Washington), Michael Schill (New York University School of Law), Samuel R. Staley (Reason Public Policy Institute), Richard P. Voith (Econsult Corporation).


The light microclimate of phototrophic endoliths growing within the scleractinian corals Porites cylindrica and Montipora monasteriata was described by scalar irradiance microprobe measurements within different layers of the coral skeleton. Characterisation of the pigments in individual layers was done by reflectance spectroscopy with fibre-optic radiance microprobes. The spectral measurements showed the presence of an endolithic community largely comprised of the green alga Ostreobium sp. within a 1 to 2 mm thick green band 2 to 6 mm. below the coral surface. Additionally, spectral signatures of cyanobacteria and anoxygenic phototrophic bacteria were detected both in the coral tissue-containing top layer and within the skeleton matrix. The light microclimate within the coral skeleton was extremely poor in visible light but enriched in far-red wavelengths. Only a fraction of the incident photosynthetically available radiation (PAR, 400 to 700 nm) penetrated the coral tissue-containing layer, wherein 90 to 99 % of the incident irradiance was attenuated due to intense scattering and absorption. Near-infrared radiation (NIR, > 700 to 1000 nm.) was mainly scattered in the tissue-skeleton matrix and penetrated much deeper into the skeleton. Multiple scattering and light-trapping effects caused high NIR scalar irradiance levels in the topmost layers of the coral. Our data show that the endolithic community in healthy corals is strongly light-limited with respect to PAR, but not with respect to NIR in shallow waters where water absorption of NIR is not limiting. Light limitation of PAR is mainly imposed by the tissue-containing part of the coral, and could thus be alleviated during coral bleaching, resulting in blooming of the phototrophic endoliths.


This special theme issue of the International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning is entitled ''Town and Gown' in the Bush: Contemporary Regional Universities and Transforming Communities' and provides a forum for multiple engagements with the relationships (or lack thereof) between contemporary regional universities and their communities, whether in Australia or in other countries.

Many of the world's most prestigious universities, such as Oxford, Cambridge, Heidelberg and Yale, are located in regional settings. Indeed in some cases, such as Utrecht, the regional town has developed around the university. Certainly, owing to the concentration of academics and students within a relatively underpopulated location, the atmosphere within a regional university town seems to be quite distinctive.

Such an atmosphere has not always been mutually fruitful, and there is a long history of distrust between the university and the town of which it is ostensibly a part. In the case of Oxford, tensions between townspeople, who resented the university's growing arrogance and authority, and students boiled over on 10 February 1354, the Feast of Scholastica: 'The countrymen advanced crying...'Smyt fast, give gude knocks'....Such Scholars as they found...they killed or maimed, or grievously wounded....Our mother the University of Oxon, which had but two days before many sons is now almost forsaken and left forlorn' (Anthony Wood, History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, 1674; cited in Drake 1991, p.3). The battle led to 62 students being killed and the rest being driven from the town.

In the case of Australia, most of the longstanding traditional universities were constructed within metropolitan centres and capital cities. One exception is the University of New England in Armidale. Indeed, up until the 1980s, higher education institutions in most country areas were limited to Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges and colleges of advanced education (CAEs). The reforms by John Dawkins, the then Federal Minister for Employment, Education and Training, to higher education in that decade saw these CAEs attain the status of universities, a change that enabled them to award postgraduate degrees and be recognised for research. Colloquially known as 'gumnut universities', these regional campuses have faced ongoing challenges in recruiting and retaining students and academics, building a competitive research profile and finding a secure niche within the Australian higher education field on the one hand and within the often culturally diverse and geographically dispersed regional communities from which they draw their allegiance on the other.

While several discourses can be discerned in these relationships, commentators on regional universities and communities commonly invoke at least two distinct narratives:

 Regional universities, like their communities, are marginalised and under threat, and their best chance for survival lies in working together to create alternative opportunities and futures.
 Regional universities, like their metropolitan counterparts, must increasingly adopt free market ideologies and practices whereby regional communities will be sidelined unless they can compete with national and international clients in accessing services from 'their' universities.

In interrogating, contesting and reconstructing these discourses, the authors of the articles in this issue address three key questions currently confronting regional universities and their communities:

 What are the identities and the missions of contemporary regional universities?
 How are those identities and missions manifested in the universities' negotiated relationships with their communities, only some of which might also be regional?
 What are the implications of those relationships for the likely future sustainability and survival of both regional universities and communities?

In seeking to address these questions, the issue is also directed at re-examining the concept of 'transformations' in regional communities in the early 21st century. Transformations, understood as permanent and substantial changes and improvements, are crucial for the ongoing development of individuals and groups. Yet often these transformations occur in spite of, not because of, the planned interventions of institutions. So it is vital, now more than ever before, to understand the drivers, influences and potential outcomes of and on genuinely meaningful and productive transformations in regional communities. Within that quest for understanding, a process of evaluating the roles and responsibilities of regional universities and communities with regard to themselves and to one another is a worthwhile endeavour.

At this point we need to offer an important explanatory note. The articles that comprise this volume were largely composed in 2004. Owing to various constraints publication has been delayed until 2006. Despite this delay, we believe that the approaches outlined and issues canvassed within the articles offer an enriching understanding of the relationships between town and gown within regional settings.


The interaction between corporate social responsibility (CSR) obligations and directors' legal duties is underexamined. This article addresses that void by examining directors' duties in case law and legislation across the major commonwealth countries and the U.S.A. It provides an analysis of leading cases and examines how they deal with directors' duties, the doctrine of shareholder primacy, corporate legal theory and CSR. The article reviews fiduciary relations and duties and analyzes the directors ' duties to exercise power in the best interests of the company as a whole and for proper purposes. The article concludes that CSR is well within the accepted range of directors' duties and, in some instances, mandates.