We study the recent dynamics of the central Nepal Himalaya, focusing on possible reactivation of the footwall of the Main Central thrust, which is marked by an abrupt topographic transition. Different tectonic mechanisms, such as overthrusting of a major crustal ramp, underplating, or out-of-sequence thrusting, have been suggested to explain the morphology and exhumation patterns in this area. We present 25 new apatite fission-track ages collected along a north-south transect in central Nepal, as well as two age-elevation profiles. Ages are consistently younger than 3 Ma old in the Main Central thrust zone and increase continuously to 4–6 Ma old in the south. No jump in apatite fission-track ages is observed across the topographic transition. Apparent exhumation rates from age-elevation relationships vary from 0.46 +0.13/−0.09 km/Ma in the Palung granite south of Kathmandu to 4.4 +4.8/−1.5 km/Ma in the Main Central thrust zone; the latter rate is probably overestimated by a factor of two due to topographic effects. As shown by a new numerical model, these strongly varying exhumation rates can be explained by overthrusting of a crustal ramp, which exerts a primary control on age patterns, and do not require out-of-sequence reactivation of thrusts in the Main Central thrust zone.


Within the fields of community music and community arts in Australia, community service learning is gaining prominence as a key pedagogical strategy that connects community service with structured reflection and learning activities (Siebenaler 2005). Arts-based service learning is increasingly being used to bring together university students and community members to work on community-led projects of cultural significance. This arts focus combines well with the service-learning approach as it promotes what Rendon (2009) calls sentipensante (sensing/thinking) pedagogy. Sentipensante pedagogy aims to disrupt entrenched belief systems that divide knowing, thinking and feeling. Such disruption can bring to light experiences that are threshold and transformative. Patricia Cranton, a leading writer on transformative learning, explains that the "elegantly simple" definition of Transformative Learning includes the idea of people changing the way they interpret their experiences and their interactions with the world (2006). In order to flesh these ideas out further within the Australian context, this chapter draws on the reflections of pre-service teachers and arts students from three universities during and after their experiences participating in arts-based service learning with Aboriginal communities. These reflections centre on Yunkaporta's "8 Ways Framework" (2009, 10), a view of Australian Aboriginal cultural competence that allows the inclusion of Aboriginal perspectives and learning techniques. This chapter argues that arts-based service learning can be transformative when participants engage in all the dimensions of the 8 Ways Framework and allow shared knowledge to become wisdom in their lives and practices.


B-mode ultrasound imaging has recently shown promise in achieving higher classification accuracies than surface electromyography for predicting discrete hand gestures and individual finger movements. This preliminary study investigates the performance in classifying finger flexions when reducing the lateral sampling interval resolution of a conventional clinical ultrasonic imaging probe with data collected from one subject. An experiment using spatial and temporal features, extracted from ultrasound radio-frequency (RF) signals are used with linear discriminant analysis to classify individual thumb, index, middle, ring and pinky finger flexion movements. The spatial lateral sampling interval is increased from 315 μm to 10 mm (reduction in lateral resolution) by averaging four groups of 32 consecutively acquired A-mode ultrasound RF signals from a 40 mm probe. The results for the four averaged RF ultrasound signals with a 10 mm lateral sampling interval had an F1 score ranging between 77-91% with a classification accuracy of 84% for all five finger flexions. This classification accuracy was similar when using the acquired 315 μm lateral resolution and decreases to a classification accuracy of 32% for no lateral resolution, when the full 40 mm width is averaged into a single RF signal. The results show motivation for using a wearable multichannel ultrasound device for predicting individual finger flexions for prosthetic devices. Keywords— Ultrasound RF signal acquisition, lateral resolution, finger motion classification, prosthetic hand control.


Innovation is an inherently risky and uncertain process. Many of the broader challenges to innovation in general are both mirrored and exaggerated in clean technology innovation. The development of environmental technologies is further complicated by the public goods nature of knowledge, environmental externalities, and uncertainty. This study on clean technology focuses on recent work on the role of uncertainty, the participation of emerging and developing nations, the controversy surrounding intellectual property rights, and the variety of market actors and strategies in place. The paper also considers the policy instruments that are available, the cost, benefits and consequences of their use. As scholars continue to analyze when, where, why and how clean technology innovations are developed and adopted, it is essential that government policymakers aim to reduce uncertainty and risk, incentivize innovation with effective intellectual property rights, and foster transparency in the market. This continues to be a field of increasing future importance, and a rich area for continued academic study and analysis. Consumers, government policymakers and innovators would all benefit from a greater understanding of the process of technological change in the development, diffusion and financing of clean technologies.


Abstract This article uses a multinomial endogenous treatment effects model in combination with propensity score matching techniques to evaluate the impact of land tenure on the adoption of agri-environmental practices by smallholder farmers in Benin. We rely on a unique and detailed cross-sectional plot-level dataset that covers a random sample of 2800 smallholder farmers and 4233 plots. The results indicate that land tenure arrangement significantly influences farmers' decision to invest in agri-environmental practices. The intensity of the adoption of agri-environmental practices is consistently higher on owned plots than borrowed, rented or sharecropped plots. We found strong evidence that the hypothesis of selectivity bias cannot be rejected. Although estimates of the adoption gap between plot owners and borrowers are larger when using the matched sample, the results are broadly consistent across specifications.


Background: Thrombolytic therapy for acute ischemic stroke has recently become available in India but its success depends on initiating the treatment in the narrow therapeutic time window. There is commonly a delay of several hours before patients with acute stroke seek medical attention. Materials and Methods: A prospective study was conducted to assess the factors influencing this delay in admission of acute stroke cases. 134cases (101 males, 33 females) of acute stroke that arrived within 72 hours at our hospital casualty were recruited. A standardized structured questionnaire was given to patients or their attendants. Results: The median time to casualty arrival was 9 hours with 13.4% cases arriving within 3 hours and 36.5 % cases within 6 hours. Distances from hospital, referral, belief in myths and alternate medicine and low threat perception of symptoms of stroke were independent factors associated with delay in arrival. Living in city, day time onset, urgency shown by attendant, availability of transport and presence of family history were associated with early arrival. There was no correlation with patients' or attendants' sex, educational status, history of previous stroke or transient ischemic attack, subtype or severity of stroke, time of stroke and availability of transport. 134 patients (65.7% were from rural population, 55.22%-smokers, 46.76%-alcoholics) with mean (SD) age of 53.83+/-18.02years [significantly lower in females (mean difference=9.73years p=0.002)], were admitted and diagnosed to have stroke. 87.3% had first episode of stroke and 12.7 had more than one episode of stroke. ICF rate was 26.1%. ICF rate has no relation with age (p=0.516), sex (p=0.460), number of episodes (0.795), underlying hypertension (p=0.905). Odds of diabetics dying were 12 times higher than non-diabetics. Inpatient mortality was also significantly higher in smokers compared with non-smokers (p=0.004), in patients with right-sided compared with left-sided hemiplegic (p=0.029) and who couldn't afford computed tomography (CT) scan (p=0.007). Kaplan Meier curve in Image-1 shows the survival following admission to emergency ward. Conclusion: Adequate measures need to be taken to improve the public awareness of stroke and the role of local doctors. Our study has shown that active smokers, involvement of the right side and non performance of CT were independent predictors of mortality which have not been shown earlier. Also, we found that diabetes mellitus is independent predictor of mortality in stroke, which has been seen in earlier studies too.


Introduction The colon is a soft biological tissue that exhibits complex viscoelastic behaviour. The aim of this study is to mechanically model relaxation of colonic tissue after indentation, to eventually quantify tissue recovery after stress application. Methods A single stress value of 51kPa was applied to ex vivo porcine colon for 5, 30 and 60 seconds. 20 indentations were applied to either the mucosal or muscular layers. The relaxation portion was analysed by calculating the difference between the highest and lowest force (ΔF). The Maxwell and Wiechert models were fitted to the data and compared. Histological evidence of tissue damage was assessed. Results Mean ΔF was higher with indentations at the muscular surface as compared to mucosal surface at 5 and 30s timepoints. This reversed at 60s. The Wiechert model fit improved with longer duration (30 and 60s). Evidence of histological damage was found consistently in the stressed region. Conclusion The Maxwell model is the simplest form that exhibits viscoelastic behaviour, but refining this and linking it to the anatomical tissue structure, using the Wiechert model, provides a better fit. We will now use this model in further studies correlating the model coefficients with histological damage grading.


Due to the wide adoption of IoT/CPS systems, embedded devices (IoT frontends) become increasingly connected and mission-critical, which in turn has attracted advanced attacks (e.g., control-flow hijacks and data-only attacks). Unfortunately, IoT backends (e.g., remote controllers or in-cloud services) are unable to detect if such attacks have happened while receiving data, service requests, or operation status from IoT devices (remotely deployed embedded devices). As a result, currently, IoT backends are forced to blindly trust the IoT devices that they interact with.To fill this void, we first formulate a new security property for embedded devices, called "Operation Execution Integrity" or OEI. We then design and build a system, OAT, that enables remote OEI attestation for ARM-based bare-metal embedded devices. Our formulation of OEI captures the integrity of both control flow and critical data involved in an operation execution. Therefore, satisfying OEI entails that an operation execution is free of unexpected control and data manipulations, which existing attestation methods cannot check. Our design of OAT strikes a balance between prover's constraints (embedded devices' limited computing power and storage) and verifier's requirements (complete verifiability and forensic assistance). OAT uses a new control-flow measurement scheme, which enables lightweight and space-efficient collection of measurements (97% space reduction from the trace-based approach). OAT performs the remote control-flow verification through abstract execution, which is fast and deterministic. OAT also features lightweight integrity checking for critical data (74% less instrumentation needed than previous work). Our security analysis shows that OAT allows remote verifiers or IoT backends to detect both controlflow hijacks and data-only attacks that affect the execution of operations on IoT devices. In our evaluation using real embedded programs, OAT incurs a runtime overhead of 2.7%.


This article offers a political history of the first major federal campaign finance law, the 1907 ban on corporate contributions to candidates. This law has been widely misunderstood by courts and scholars who contend that the corporate contribution ban was motivated primarily by progressive era fears of the excessive power and influence of big business. Challenging this prevailing wisdom, this article shows that concerns about excessive corporate power, while present, were matched if not exceed by a different conception of corporate political corruption. At the turn of the century, corporate political contributions were widely understood to be corrupt because they amounted to a misuse of other people's money: company executives were opportunistically misappropriating the owners' money to purchase legislation designed to immunize executives from the oversight of owners. In other words, corporate political corruption was also conceptualized as a problem of agency costs within firms. This agency costs story of corporate contributions was especially salient in the wake of the radical transformation in corporate law at the end of the nineteenth century that broadened managerial discretion, restricted traditional rights of owners, and paved the way for the separation of ownership from control. Moreover, the underlying campaign finance scandal that paved the way for adoption of the corporate contribution ban - the New York Life Insurance scandal - was one in which opportunism and misuse of other people's money was a paramount theme. As a result of this scandal, the various political partners in the coalition behind the Tillman Act were attracted to, and unified by, the other people's money theme. For Congress and President Roosevelt, partisanship, ideology, and self-interest were all better served by emphasizing other people's money instead of excessive corporate power. This other people's money definition of electoral corruption not only shaped the first federal regulation of corporate campaign activity, but ultimately defined the main channel through which almost all subsequent federal election laws pertaining to corporations would flow. Whereas legal scholars argue that corporations have been subject to special restrictions on their campaign activity due to a desire to restrain excessive corporate power - and thus are meant to further political equality - this article suggests that agency costs provides a better explanation of the trajectory and details of federal law pertaining to corporate involvement in elections. The prevailing tendency in federal campaign finance law on corporations has been to allow corporate involvement so long as firms organize their political activity to avoid agency costs. While other people's money began as a tool to limit corporate involvement in elections, the long reliance since on agency costs since has opened up new avenues of corporate influence - at the expense of political equality rather than in its service. Although we often think of corporate political corruption as business interests buying too much influence, this Article shows that agency costs has also played a formative role in the regulation of corporate politics and, indeed, has become a hidden cornerstone of campaign finance law.


This paper attempts to grapple with the collective dimension of the phenomenon of the digital transformation of work. In particular, it explores the relevant legal framework, as well as practical obstacles and concrete responses to the process of "platformisation" of labour. It questions why and for what collective bargaining may be a viable tool to "negotiate" the direction(s) of this paradigm shift. In particular, it focuses on institutional approaches that pursue inclusive and engaging strategies aimed at organising across labour market segments. It also discusses the extent to which trade unions are interested in the fate of non-standard workers, what strategies they follow and what tools they employ. At the same time, it maps other actions and initiatives carried out by self-organised groups. It focuses on the actors and factors which either hinder or facilitate the development of solidarity.

The topic of mobilisation has been a central interest of academics in the fields of industrial relations, labour sociology and social movement studies. By adopting an empirical approach and a cross-disciplinary analytical lens, this work places itself at the crossroads of these disciplines.

The paper is organised as follows. After providing an outline of the main implications of the spread of new technologies and its impacts on employment relationships, part 2 explores the legal framework regulating collective rights, by considering a number of supranational systems of regulation and discussing the potential impediments arising from a narrow interpretation of antitrust immunities and restrictions. However, practical, in addition to legal, obstacles hamper or make less attractive the exercise of fundamental freedoms for non-standard workers. Accordingly, after describing current difficulties, principal actors, key actions and success factors in a selection of European countries, part 3 assesses recent initiatives and achievements. Finally, part 4 sets out the paper's key conclusions by estimating future developments and offering policy pointers.


This work presents a dual-junction, single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) with electrical μ-lens designed and simulated in 90 nm standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The evaluated structure can collect the photons impinging beneath the pixel guard ring, as well as the pixel active area. The fill factor of the SPAD increases from 12.5% to 42% in comparison with similar works on the same technology, according to new charge collections. Although the designed SPAD suffers from high dark count rate (DCR of 300kHz at 0.17V excess bias at room temperature) due to high amount of tunneling which was predicted in previous similar works, it still can be used in different applications such as random number generators and charged particle positioning pixels.


Light-harvesting pigment-protein complexes (PPC) represent the fundamental units through which the photosynthetic organisms absorb sunlight and funnel the energy to the reaction centre for carrying out the primary energy conversion reactions of photosynthesis. Here we apply a multiscale computational strategy to a specific PPC present in the photosystem II of plants and algae (CP29) to investigate in what detail should the environment effects due to protein and membrane/solvent be included for an accurate description of optical spectra. We find that a refinement of the crystal structure is needed before any meaningful quantum chemical calculations of pigment transition energies can be performed. For this purpose we apply classical molecular dynamics simulations of the PPC within its natural environment and we perform ab initio computations of the exciton Hamiltonian of the complex, including the environment either implicitly by the polarizable continuum model (PCM) or explicitly using the polarizable QM/MM methodology (MMPol). However, PCM essentially leads to an unspecific redshift of all transition energies, and MMPol is able to reveal site-specific changes in the optical properties of the pigments. Based on the latter and the excitonic couplings obtained within a polarizable QM/MM methodology, optical spectra are calculated, which are in good qualitative agreement with experimental data. A weakness of the approach is however found in the overestimation of the fluctuations of the excitonic parameters of the pigments along the MD trajectory. An explanation for such a finding in terms of the limits of the force fields commonly used for protein cofactors is presented and discussed.


About 12,000 years ago, on Santa Rosa Island off the coast of California, a group of prehistoric hunters bagged geese, cormorants, and albatross, perhaps using crescent-shaped stone points to stun the birds. They also caught an array of fish, including surfperch and rockfish, probably spearing them with barbed stone points also used to hunt seals. These sea goers must have crossed 10 kilometers of open water from the coast near what is now Santa Barbara to reach the island, and they also visited nearby San Miguel Island, where they raked in bountiful amounts of red abalone, mussels, snails, and crabs. On page [1181][1] of this week's issue of Science , archaeologists detail the remains of these ancient hunts: thousands of bird, fish, and sea-mammal bones, as well as shells and the characteristic stone points.

 [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6021/1181.summary


41 lichens new to Lombardy were found in the Adamello Natural Park (Val Camonica). Acarospora intricata H. Magn., Caloplaca xanthostigmoidea (Rasanen) Zahlbr. and Gyalidea fritzei (Stein) Vezda are new to Italy. The lichen flora of Lombardy now consists of 1137 species, with an increase of 3.8%. 32% of these species are exclusive of the Alps in Italy.


This paper summarizes and assesses the growing body of empirical research in transaction cost economics (TCE). Originally an explanation for the scale and scope of the firm, TCE is now used to study a variety of economic relationships, ranging from vertical and lateral integration to transfer pricing, corporate finance, marketing, the organization of work, long-term commercial contracting, franchising, regulation, the multinational corporation, company towns, and many other contractual relationships. The main insights and predictions of TCE-in particular, the importance of governing transactions-are becoming increasingly accepted. The empirical support for these claims, however, is much less known. We believe the empirical literature, on the whole, is remarkably consistent with the predictions of TCE-more so than is typically the case in economics. After presenting an overview of the theory and a discussion of some theoretical and methodological preliminaries, we summarize the major findings and discuss their implications, particularly the potential applications to public policy. In an appendix we provide a more comprehensive list of articles, arranged by type of study, as a reference aid for researchers.


The financial crisis of 2007-8 sparked a variety of responses from elites and popular movements across the world. Its legacy also continues to shape capitalist societies through ongoing processes of regulatory reform, state restructuring, and financial innovation. While these processes are open-ended, they are increasingly subject to critical attention from a range of commentators. The usual suspects are out in force – academics, politicians, and pundits – but they are now joined by a wider array of theorists and activists, playwrights, novelists and artists. The financialisation of capitalism, it seems, has finally been met with a blooming of the financial imagination. Finance and Society will provide a space for the further development of this imagination, generating new insights into how money and finance organise social life.


Roger Kahn's first major league hit was a grand slam: "The Boys of Summer, his runaway bestseller that immortalised the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers. Now Kahn does the same for players whose moment in the sun has not yet arrived. "Good Enough to Dream" is the story of his year as owner of the Class A, very minor league Utica Blue Sox. Most of the Blue Sox will never make it to the majors, but they all share the dream that links the small child in the sandlot with the bonus baby who has just smacked one out of the stadium. It's a dream Kahn learned from his father and, in the course of a season, passes on to his daughter - hours of practice for a moment of poetry; a hard living but a touch of legend. "Good Enough to Dream" presents baseball unadorned, a game still sweet enough to lure grown men to leagues where first-class transportation is an old school bus and the infield is likely to be the consistency of thick soup. It is a funny and poignant story of one season and one special team that will make us hesitate before we ever call anything 'bush league' again. Roger Kahn has written a new afterword for this edition of "Good Enough to Dream". A journalist and magazine writer, he is the author of a number of baseball books, including "Season in the Sun", also available in a Bison Books edition.


This paper presents a methodology for evaluation of low-level image analysis methods, using binarization (two-level thresholding) as an example. Binarization of scanned gray scale images is the first step in most document image analysis systems. Selection of an appropriate binarization method for an input image domain is a difficult problem. Typically, a human expert evaluates the binarized images according to his/her visual criteria. However, to conduct an objective evaluation, one needs to investigate how well the subsequent image analysis steps will perform on the binarized image. We call this approach goal-directed evaluation, and it can be used to evaluate other low-level image processing methods as well. Our evaluation of binarization methods is in the context of digit recognition, so we define the performance of the character recognition module as the objective measure. Eleven different locally adaptive binarization methods were evaluated, and Niblack's method gave the best performance.


For many years we have heard the call for more design professionals and, importantly, more recognition and certification within the sector. However, the recent global financial crisis has had catastrophic effects on the availability of design resources. Typically, significant downsizing has occurred and design and development professionals have been the first to go. In an effort to save money many companies have adopted a strategy based on extending current product life cycles, as opposed to stimulating depressed markets with new products. Some commentators are suggesting that the downturn has gone as low as it will and the upturn is just around the corner. 'Just hold on for a few more weeks,' may be the message to businesses, but on the upturn, what will differentiate one organisation from the other? The simple answer, as always, is design, but critical questions are now being framed, because there is concern that many of the classical models of business, supply and availability of resource may not apply in the new world economy.


Classical learning theory suggests that the optimal generalization performance of a machine learning model should occur at an intermediate model complexity, with simpler models exhibiting high bias and more complex models exhibiting high variance of the predictive function. However, such a simple trade-off does not adequately describe deep learning models that simultaneously attain low bias and variance in the heavily overparameterized regime. A primary obstacle in explaining this behavior is that deep learning algorithms typically involve multiple sources of randomness whose individual contributions are not visible in the total variance. To enable fine-grained analysis, we describe an interpretable, symmetric decomposition of the variance into terms associated with the randomness from sampling, initialization, and the labels. Moreover, we compute the high-dimensional asymptotic behavior of this decomposition for random feature kernel regression, and analyze the strikingly rich phenomenology that arises. We find that the bias decreases monotonically with the network width, but the variance terms exhibit non-monotonic behavior and can diverge at the interpolation boundary, even in the absence of label noise. The divergence is caused by the \emph{interaction} between sampling and initialization and can therefore be eliminated by marginalizing over samples (i.e. bagging) \emph{or} over the initial parameters (i.e. ensemble learning).


SAP HANA has revolutionized the way we store data and architect reporting solutions. This book provides a step-by-step guide for moving an existing SAP BW system on any database to SAP HANA. Identify the differences between the database migration option (DMO) process and other options. Get sample staffing plans, tools for hardware sizing and planning, and budgeting tips for planning your migration project. Walk through the process for cleaning your SAP Business Warehouse (BW) system prior to migration and find out how doing so can reduce your SAP BW on HANA implementation costs. Walk through DMO process prerequisites and examine the SAP BW on HANA Migration Cockpit in detail. Get step-by-step instructions for executing a SAP BW on HANA migration using DMO and get tips based on lessons learned from the worlds largest DMO migration project. Walk away with best practices for monitoring the health of your SAP HANA implementation. Using practical examples, tips, and screenshots, the authors provide expert strategies to help your companys migration project succeed. - Proven techniques for planning and executing a successful migration - Building a solid migration business case - Sizing and optimization of SAP BW on SAP HANA - Step-by-step runbook for the migration process


Purpose – The purpose of this research is to find out the multi-dimensional ethical approach to accounting and reporting practices going on in India and abroad. What has been the shift in Reporting Practices by Indian companies? What drives the Indian companies to report on the non-financial matters? Design/methodology/approach – This paper mainly focuses on the inclusion of Non-Financial Matters in the Corporate Annual Reports. An Empirical Survey was carried out and the questionnaires were administered to 122 respondents comprising of 75 academicians and 47 chartered accountants. This paper compares the perceptions of academicians and accounting professionals on the ethical reporting practices of the Indian companies. Findings – The results were tested using the t-test analysis. The research suggests that more companies should report on their environmental, social, and corporate governance performance and find a way to express them in their Annual Reports and the reporting of data regarding the carbon emissions, energy use, pollution, impact on the local economy, etc., should be made mandatory for companies. Research limitations/implications – The research included respondents who are currently living in Delhi. For more generalized opinion nationwide survey can be carried out. Another important category of stakeholder for judging the usability of Corporate Annual Reports could be the Institutional Investors. Practical implications – The results of this study would help the policy makers in framing the guidelines for standardized annual reports, synergizing social and business interest needs on top priority. Corporate philanthropy needs to transform into the realm of core business and corporate social responsibility. Integrated reporting could pave the way for synthesizing financial and non-financial reporting into one form and give a holistic view of companies' strategies to its stakeholders incorporating new dimensions of IFRS. Social implications – More emphasis on Non-financial matters will certainly contribute in making the corporates more responsible to the society, environment, and to the future generations.


The quality of service (QoS) is a major concern in the design and management of Web service composition. Existing methods for QoS calculation either do not take the probability of path execution into consideration when QoSs are provided for different execution paths, or do not take different execution paths into consideration when a single integrated QoS is provided for the whole composition. In this paper, a comprehensive QoS analysis approach is proposed that calculates the QoS probability distribution by considering both the execution probability and execution conditions of each path in the service composition. Four types of basic composition patterns in the service composition are discussed: sequential, parallel, loop and conditional. In particular, a QoS solution is provided for all types of loop structured service composition.


Climate conditions, such as temperature or precipitation, averaged over several decades strongly affect species distributions, as evidenced by experimental results and a plethora of models demonstrating statistical relations between species occurrences and long-term climate averages. However, long-term averages can conceal climate changes that have occurred in recent decades and may not capture actual species occurrence well because the distributions of species, especially at the edges of their range, are typically dynamic and may respond strongly to short-term climate variability. Our goal here was to test whether bird occurrence models can be predicted by either covariates based on short-term climate variability or on long-term climate averages. We parameterized species distribution models (SDMs) based on either short-term variability or long-term average climate covariates for 320 bird species in the conterminous USA and tested whether any life-history trait-based guilds were particularly sensitive to short-term conditions. Models including short-term climate variability performed well based on their cross-validated area-under-the-curve AUC score (0.85), as did models based on long-term climate averages (0.84). Similarly, both models performed well compared to independent presence/absence data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey (independent AUC of 0.89 and 0.90, respectively). However, models based on short-term variability covariates more accurately classified true absences for most species (73% of true absences classified within the lowest quarter of environmental suitability vs. 68%). In addition, they have the advantage that they can reveal the dynamic relationship between species and their environment because they capture the spatial fluctuations of species potential breeding distributions. With this information, we can identify which species and guilds are sensitive to climate variability, identify sites of high conservation value where climate variability is low, and assess how species' potential distributions may have already shifted due recent climate change. However, long-term climate averages require less data and processing time and may be more readily available for some areas of interest. Where data on short-term climate variability are not available, long-term climate information is a sufficient predictor of species distributions in many cases. However, short-term climate variability data may provide information not captured with long-term climate data for use in SDMs.


Background: The development of vasculopathies in diabetes involves multifactorial processes including pathological activation of vascular cells. Release of microparticles by activated cells has been reported in diseases associated with thrombotic risk, but few data are available in diabetes. Diabetic retinopathy is associated with increased local activation or apoptosis of retinal, neural, and vascular `endothelial cells in the eye which indicate that microparticles (MPs) of different cellular origin might be locally generated in the eye of diabetic patients. Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the presence of endothelial, platelet, and retinal-derived microparticles both in the vitreous and in the plasma of diabetic patients compared with that of non diabetic ones. Subjects and methods: In a case-control study, this study included 45 patients: 25 diabetic patients with non proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR), and 20 diabetic patients with proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) compared with control group consists of non diabetic 10 subjects. Blood samples were analyzed by flow cytometry. Microparticles present in plasma and vitreous were analyzed according to their parameters of size and fluorescence. Results: As regard plasma samples, there was significant increase in CD144 and CD41 in groups II, III as compared with control group (p = 0.001). Peanut agglutinin PNA was not detected in plasma sample among all studied groups. Whereas, as regard to the vitreous sample, there was significant increase in CD144, CD41 and PNA in groups II,III as compared with control group (p= 0.048, 0.009, 0.048 ), (P = 0.001) respectively. Conclusion: microparticles appear as a new prognostic potential of type 2 diabetes in the early detection of vascular complications. Moreover significant increase of different types of microparticles in vitreous fluid of membrane in patients with PDR, may contribute to disease progression. [Samy A Khodeir, Y M Abd El Raouf, Gihan Farouk and Mohammed EL-Bradey Detection of Circulating Microparticles in Patients with Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy. Life Science Journal, 2012; 9(1): 204-209] (ISSN: 1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com. 29


The aim of this study was to identify strategies that general practice-based counsellors used when offering support to bereaved clients. Over the last decade, there has been a rapid growth in the provision of counselling services associated with British primary care services. A study was designed involving qualitative methods of data collection (semi-structured interviews) and analysis (a grounded theory approach). Counsellors were recruited from two cities in Southern Britain (Plymouth and Southampton). Twenty nine (76% response rate) counsellors agreed to participate (Southampton n = 15, Plymouth, n = 14). Semi-structured face-to-face audio-taped interviews elicited information about their perceptions of the appropriateness of general practitioner referrals, counselling strategies and models of bereavement. Analysis indicated that counsellors saw bereavement counselling within a broader agenda of work concerned with loss and relationship management. Many drew on eclectic approaches to bereavement counselling and specific strategies included: facilitating telling of the 'story' of the loss; engaging in active listening and valuing allowing people to talk; establishing a supportive relationship; and enabling the bereaved person to deal with unfinished business and to say 'goodbye'. Counsellors drew on implicit stage/phase models of grief that assumed levels of distress reduced over time. The value of these strategies requires more exploration.


OBJECTIVE
To explore inequalities in the need for hip/knee replacement surgery using a 2-stage cross-cohort approach.

METHODS
In the first stage, a small-area population-based survey, the Somerset and Avon Survey of Health, was used to provide a high-quality measure of need for hip/knee replacement using the New Zealand (NZ) score. Receiver operating characteristic curve analyses were used to validate a simplified NZ score, excluding information from clinical examination. In the second stage, a nationally representative population-based survey, the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, was used to explore inequalities in need for hip/knee replacement using the simplified NZ score. Multilevel Poisson regression modeling was used to estimate rates of need for surgery. Exposures considered were age, sex, social class, ethnicity, obesity, Index of Multiple Deprivation 2004 deprivation quintiles, rurality, and ethnic mix of area.

RESULTS
Rates of need for hip/knee replacement increase with age and are lower in men than in women (rate ratio [RR] 0.7, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 0.6-0.9 for hips; RR 0.8, 95% CI 0.7-1.0 for knees). Those of lowest social class have greater need. Need was greatest for people living in more deprived areas. Individual ethnic group did not predict the need for surgery. For hip replacement, there was no rurality effect; for knee replacement, those in town and fringe areas had greater need. Obesity was a strong predictor of need for surgery (RR 2.3, 95% CI 1.9-2.8 for hips; RR 2.4, 95% CI 2.0-2.8 for knees).

CONCLUSION
This study provides evidence of greater variations of inequalities in need for hip/knee replacement than previous studies. Further research should explore geographic variation and produce small-area estimates of need to inform local health planning. It is important to complement data on need with willingness to undergo surgery.


Purpose/Objective
To determine clinically relevant SBRT/stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) dose tolerance limits for RP based on statistical analysis of outcomes data.

Materials and Methods
Eighteen consecutive patients who were treated using volumetric modulated arc therapy (RapidArc) for lung tumors exceeding 80cc were assessed. Clinical outcomes have been published elsewhere, and here we present a normal tissue complication probability (NTCP) analysis. The dose volume histogram (DVH) reduction techniques of total lung V20Gy, V15Gy, V10Gy, V5Gy and mean lung dose (MLD) were each analyzed, as well as ipsilateral lung V5Gy and contralateral lung V5Gy, using the DVH Evaluator software tool. The framework of the Lyman Model was used except that each DVH reduction method was analyzed independently instead of using the power-law relationship for volume dependence. Model parameters were fitted using Maximum Likelihood.

Results
RP was reported in 5 patients (CTC Grade 2 in 3, and Grade 3 in 2). Total lung V5Gy and contralateral lung V5Gy were the best predictors of RP (p < 0.0001 for both). For V5Gy, the 10% risk level for Grade 2-3 RP was 27.9% for total lung and 21.8% for contralateral lung. For V20Gy, the 25% risk level is 10.5% of total lung.

Conclusions
Analysis of RP endpoints has identified total lung V5Gy and contralateral lung V5Gy as the best predictors of RP following SBRT when delivered with RapidArc. These findings are based on limited clinical data, and longer follow-up in larger patient cohorts is required in order to determine more accurate dose tolerance limits.


In patients with advanced (estimated glomerular filtration rate <25 mL/min/1.73 m) non-dialysis-dependent chronic kidney disease (CKD) the optimal transition of care to renal replacement therapy (RRT), i.e. dialysis or transplantation, is not known. Mortality and hospitalization risk are extremely high upon transition and in the first months following the transition to dialysis. Major knowledge gaps persist pertaining to differential or individualized transitions across different demographics and clinical measures during the 'prelude' period prior to the transition, particularly in several key areas: (i) the best timing for RRT transition; (ii) the optimal RRT type (dialysis versus transplant), and in the case of dialysis, the best modality (hemodialysis versus peritoneal dialysis), format (in-center versus home), frequency (infrequent versus thrice-weekly versus more frequent) and vascular access preparation; (iii) the postRRT impact of pre-RRT prelude conditions and events such as blood pressure and glycemic control, acute kidney injury episodes, andmanagement of CKD-specific conditions such as anemia and mineral disorders; and (iv) the impact of the above prelude conditions on end-of-life care and RRT decisionmaking versus conservative management of CKD. Given the enormous changes occurring in the global CKD healthcare landscape, as well as the high costs of transitioning to dialysis therapy with persistently poor outcomes, there is an urgent need to answer these important questions. This review describes the key concepts and questions related to the emerging field of 'Transition of Care in CKD', systematically defines six main categories of CKD transition, and reviews approaches to data linkage and novel prelude analyses along with clinical applications of these studies.


As deep neural networks (DNNs) achieve tremendous success across many application domains, researchers tried to explore in many aspects on why they generalize well. In this paper, we provide a novel perspective on these issues using the gradient signal to noise ratio (GSNR) of parameters during training process of DNNs. The GSNR of a parameter is simply defined as the ratio between its gradient's squared mean and variance, over the data distribution. Based on several approximations, we establish a quantitative relationship between model parameters' GSNR and the generalization gap. This relationship indicates that larger GSNR during training process leads to better generalization performance. Futher, we show that, different from that of shallow models (e.g. logistic regression, support vector machines), the gradient descent optimization dynamics of DNNs naturally produces large GSNR during training, which is probably the key to DNNs' remarkable generalization ability.


The dog is one of the few species to develop spontaneous prostate carcinoma (PCA) and is thus an attractive model for the study of the disease in humans. Many of the features of the disease in the dog are similar to its human counterpart, however a number of aspects of the pathogenesis, diagnosis and management of the disease are different between dogs and people. The first aim of the thesis was to investigate aspects of the pathogenesis of PCA in dogs. This thesis presents some similarities and some differences between dogs and humans in the pathogenesis of PCA. The expression of COX-2 is not related to inflammation or to the degree of differentiation in canine PCA as it is in humans. However, similar to human PCA, androgen ablation is associated with increased inflammation in the neoplastic tissue. Like humans, dogs with PCA have a shorter CAG-I repeat in the AR gene, but variations in length are much smaller than in humans. Differences in CAG repeat length and plasma androgens that may explain ethnic differences in the prevalence of PCA in humans cannot explain the predisposition of the Bouvier des Flandres to develop PCA. There is growing evidence of a potential protective effect of androgens in the development of PCA in dogs. The second aim of this thesis was to develop therapeutic tools for the management of PCA in dogs. Treatment of canine PCA remains palliative as it is effective in relieving clinical signs but cannot offer a cure. This thesis introduces an effective surgical technique for short-term management of PCA in dogs, provided there is no urethral obstruction. Photodynamic therapy is a promising treatment modality for cancer in general and prostate carcinoma in particular, however technical improvements to allow more efficient and even administration of light to prostatic tissue are necessary to make it useful in the management of clinical cases. Additional research needs to be performed to develop new techniques to remove canine PCA without recurrence or detrimental side effects. Total prostatectomy techniques, while preserving continence in the dog, partial prostatectomy with effective adjunctive radio-, chemo- or immunotherapy, or local minimally invasive interventional techniques can be mentioned as examples.


We report photometric detections of orbital and superorbital signals, and negative orbital sidebands, in the light curves of the nova-like cataclysmic variables AQ Mensae and IM Eridani. The frequencies of the orbital, superorbital, and sideband signals are 7.0686 (3), 0.263 (3), and 7.332 (3) cycles per day (c d -1 ) in AQ Mensae, and 6.870 (1), 0.354 (7), and 7.226 (1) c d -1 in IM Eridani. We also find a spectroscopic orbital frequency in IM Eridani of 6.86649 (2) c d -1 . These observations can be reproduced by invoking an accretion disc that is tilted with respect to the orbital plane. This model works well for X-ray binaries, in which irradiation by a primary neutron star can account for the disc's tilt. A likely tilt mechanism has yet to be identified in CVs, yet the growing collection of observational evidence indicates that the phenomenon of tilt is indeed at work in this class of object. The results presented in this paper bring the number of CVs known to display signals associated with retrograde disc precession to twelve. We also find AQ Men to be an eclipsing system. The eclipse depths are highly variable, which suggests that the eclipses are grazing. This finding raises the possibility of probing variations in disc tilt by studying systematic variations in the eclipse profile.


Botanical Latin is accepted by horticulturists and botanists everywhere as the medium for naming new plants, and botanical research is almost impossible without reference to the vast number of first descriptions in Latin-much information is available in no other language. For gardeners, too, a working knowledge of botanical Latin is essential for the accurate identification of plants in the garden. Now available in paperback, the fourth edition of this internationally renowned handbook summarizes the grammar and syntax of botanical Latin, and covers the origins of Latin and latinized geographical names, color terms, symbols and abbreviations, diagnoses and descriptions, the formation of names and epithets, and much more.


Increasingly, researchers and developers of knowledge based systems (KBS) have
been attempting to incorporate the notion of context. For instance, Repertory Grids,
Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) and Ripple-Down Rules (RDR) all integrate either
implicit or explicit contextual information. However, these methodologies treat
context as a static entity, neglecting many connectionists' work in learning hidden
and dynamic contexts. This thesis argues that the omission of these higher forms of
context, which allow connectionist systems to generalise effectively, is one of the
fundamental problems in the application and interpretation of symbolic knowledge.
This thesis tackles the problems of KBSs by addressing these contextual
inadequacies over a three stage approach: philosophically, methodologically and
through the application of prudence analysis. Firstly, it challenges existing notions
of knowledge by introducing a new philosophical view referred to as Intermediate
Situation Cognition. This new position builds on the existing SC premise, that
knowledge and memory is re-constructed at the moment required, by allowing for
the inclusion of hidden and dynamic contexts in symbolic reasoning.
This philosophical position has been incorporated into the development of a
hybridised methodology, combining Multiple Classification Ripple-Down Rules
(MCRDR) with a function-fitting technique. This approach, referred to as Rated
MCRDR (RM), retains a symbolic core acting as a contextually static memory,
while using a connection based approach to learn a deeper understanding of the
knowledge captured. This analysis of the knowledge map is performed dynamically,
providing constant online information. Results indicate that the method developed
can learn the information that experts have difficulty providing. This supplies the
information required to allow for generalisation of the knowledge captured.
In order to show that hidden and dynamic contextual information can improve the
robustness of a KBS, RM must reduce brittleness. Brittleness, which is widely
recognised as the primary impediment in KBS performance, is caused by a system's
inability to realise when its knowledge base is inadequate for a particular situation.
RM partly addresses this through providing better generalisation; however,
brittleness can be more directly addressed by detecting when such inadequacies
occur. This process is commonly referred to as prudence analysis. The final part of
this thesis proves the methods philosophical and methodological approach by
illustrating how RM's use of hidden and dynamic contextual information, allows
the system to perform this analysis. Results show how experts can confidently leave
the verification of cases when not warned, reducing brittleness and the knowledge
acquisition effort.
This thesis shows that the idea of incorporating higher forms of context in symbolic
reasoning domains is both possible and highly effective, vastly improving the
robustness of the KBS approach. Not only does this facilitate improved
classification through better generalisation, but also reduces the KA effort required
by experts. Additionally, the methodology developed has further potential for many
possible applications across numerous domains, such as Information Filtering, Data
Mining, incremental induction and even reinforcement learning.


Intracellular cargo transport involves the movement of critical cellular components (e.g. vesicles, organelles, mRNA, chromosomes) along cytoskeletal tracks by tiny molecular motors. Myosin Va motors have been demonstrated to play a vital role in the transport of cargos destined for the cell membrane by navigating their cargos through the three-dimensional actin networks of the cell. Transport of cargo through these networks presents many challenges, including directional and physical obstacles which teams of myosin Va-bound to a single cargo must overcome. Specifically, myosin Va motors are presented with numerous actin-actin intersections and dense networks of filaments which can act as a physical barrier to transport. Due to the complexities of studying myosin Va cargo transport in cells, much effort has been focused on the in vitro observation and analysis of myosin Va transport along single actin filaments or simple actin cytoskeletal models. However, these model systems often rely on non-physiological cargos (e.g. beads, quantum dots) and two-dimensional arrangements of actin attached to glass surfaces. Interestingly, a disconnect exists between the transport of cargo on these simple model systems and studies of myosin Va transport on suspended 3D actin arrangements or cellular networks which show longer run lengths, increased velocities, and straighter, more directed trajectories. One solution to this discrepancy is that the cell may use the fluidity of the cargo surface, the recruitment of myosin Va motor teams, and the 3D geometry of the actin, to finely tune the transport of intracellular cargo depending on cellular need. To understand how myosin Va motors transport their cargo through 3D networks of actin, we investigated myosin Va motor ensembles transporting fluorescent 350 nm lipid-bilayer cargo through arrangements of suspended 3D actin filaments. This was accomplished using single molecule fluorescent imaging, three-dimensional super resolution Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM), optical tweezers, and in silico modeling. We found that when moving along 3D actin filaments, myosin motors could be recruited from across the fluid lipid cargo's surface to the filaments which enabled dynamic teams to be formed and explore the full actin filaments binding landscape. When navigating 3D actin-actin intersections these teams capable of maneuvering their cargo through the intersection in a way that encouraged the vesicles to continue straight rather than switch filaments and turn at the intersection. We hypothesized that this finding may be the source of the relatively straight directed runs by myosin Va-bound cargo observed in living cells. To test this, we designed 3D actin networks where the vesicles interacted with 2-6 actin filaments simultaneously. Actin forms polarized filaments, which, in cells, generally have their plus-ends facing the exterior of the cell; the same direction in which myosin Va walks. We found that to maintain straight directed trajectories and not become stationary within the network, vesicles needed to move along filaments with a bias in their polarity. This allows for cargo-bound motors to align their motion along the polarized networks and produced productive motion despite physical and directional obstacles. Together this work demonstrates the physical properties of the cargo, the geometric arrangement of the actin, and the mechanical properties of the motor are all critical aspects of a robust myosin Va transport system. ii CITATION Material from this dissertation has been published in the following form: Lombardo, A. T., Nelson, S. R., Ali, M. Y., Kennedy, G. G., Trybus, K. M., Walcott, S., & Warshaw, D. M.. (2017). Myosin Va molecular motors manoeuvre liposome cargo through suspended actin filament intersections in vitro. Nature Communications, 8, 15692.


Several laser-based techniques are being developed to provide in situ determinations of size, velocity, and elemental composition for individual particulates in combustion environments. Emphasis is placed on composition measurements using laser spark spectroscopy, and data for particulates entrained in gaseous flows are presented. Size and velocity of individual particles are determined by a colinear two-color laser scattering technique. Laser sparks (high-temperature plasmas) are produced from single particles with the use of a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser, and time-resolved emission spectra are observed. Results indicate a high sensitivity of the technique to mineral matter in coal particles. The detection of numerous constituent species is demonstrated, and trends observed in elemental distribution are in agreement with x-ray fluorescence measurements. Initial semi-quantitative results are compared with standard chemical analyses of the bulk material.


In recent years, the productivity of cotton in Brazil has been progressively decreasing, often the result of the reniform nematode Rotylenchulus reniformis. This species can reduce crop productivity by up to 40%. Nematodes can be controlled by nematicides but, because of expense and toxicity, application of nematicides to large crop areas may be undesirable. In this work, a methodology using geostatistics for quantifying the risk of nematicide application to small crop areas is proposed. This risk, in economic terms, can be compared to nematicide cost to develop an optimal strategy for Precision Farming. Soil (300 cm(3)) was sampled in a regular network from a R. reniformis-infested area that was a cotton monoculture for 20 years. The number of nematodes in each sample was counted. The nematode number per volume of soil was characterized using geostatistics, and 100 conditional simulations were conducted. Based on the simulations, risk maps were plotted showing the areas where nematicide should be applied in a Precision Farming context. The methodology developed can be applied to farming in countries that are highly dependent on agriculture, with useful economic implications.


Crop stripping technology has not been investigated in Lithuania until 2000 as there were no devices for this technology. The paper includes the scheme of a designed and manufactured experimental device (hereinafter 'stripper'), applied to crop ear stripping technology, and describes its operation principle. The results of operation and comparative tests are presented. Energetic indices of traditional and ear stripping technology were defined. It was determined that when the operating speed of the harvester with a stripper increased, the grain losses of wheat and barley stripping decreased. When stripping and threshing wheat, the operating speed of the harvester has no impact on grain threshing-separating losses. When stripping barley, it has a small impact: if the speed increases, the losses also increase insignificantly but do not exceed the permissible limit. When comparing ear stripping technology with the traditional crop harvesting one, the harvester output is twice as high as that in the first technology: 40% of fuel is saved.


ObjectiveThe Louisiana Early Event Detection System (LEEDS), Louisiana's syndromic surveillance system, was used to monitor uncharacteristically low temperatures during the 2017-2018 winter season and determine the impact of these temperatures on the number of weather related personal injuries in emergency departments throughout Louisiana.IntroductionThe Infectious Disease Epidemiology Section (IDEpi) in the Louisiana Office of Public Health (OPH) has several applications for syndromic surveillance including situational awareness during unusual and/or high profile events, such as the uncharacteristic winter weather Louisiana experienced during the 2017-2018 winter season. December 8th, 2017 saw freezing temperatures with some parts of the state experiencing snow, and January 16 – 18, 2018 saw record breaking freezing temperatures throughout the state. Both weather events led to many state office, school and business closures. The freezing temperatures from January 16th – 18th led to office closures that lasted longer than the freezing temperatures due to the infrastructure damage the freezing temperatures caused. For example, Orleans parish experienced low water pressure throughout its water systems due to broken pipes following the freeze, leading to boil water advisories. Many people throughout Louisiana had broken pipes at their homes, resulting in flooding and further contributing to low water pressure in some areas. IDEpi used syndromic surveillance to monitor the impacts of the severe winter weather and its aftermath on weather related personal injuries throughout the state.MethodsLEEDS was queried to obtain the number of cold weather related emergency department visits. This was done by querying for records that mentioned "cold exposure," "fell on ice," "freeze," "hypothermia," "ice," "slipped on ice," or "snow" in the chief complaint or admit reason. Records were excluded if they mentioned "antifreeze," "device," "jaundice," "lice," "notice," "office," "orifice," "police," "practice," "septicemia," "twice," or "voice" in the chief complaint or admit reason. A record review was done to determine if the returned visits were in fact cold weather related, and the number of visits were grouped by triage date. The daily cold weather related ED visit counts were plotted against weather data taken from ESSENCE, the National Syndromic Surveillance Program's syndromic surveillance application. The data obtained from ESSENCE was used to calculate the daily average minimum temperature throughout Louisiana from December 1, 2017 through February 29, 2018. This was done by selecting all of the fourteen Louisiana weather stations in ESSENCE and calculating the daily average minimum temperature across all stations. The number of cold weather related ED visits were then plotted against the daily minimum temperature in Louisiana. The initial active surveillance took place during the extreme cold weather that occurred from January 15, 2018 – January 20, 2018. Data starting on December 1, 2017 was pulled to provide a baseline. Additional data through February 28, 2018 was pulled retrospectively to analyze the overall trend of cold weather related ED visits throughout winter season.ResultsCold weather related ED visits and daily average minimum temperatures were analyzed for the time period of December 1, 2017 to February 28, 2018. The average number of cold weather ED visits for this time period was 1.8 visits with a standard deviation of +/- 4.4 visits, and the average minimum temperature was 40.9 °F. The number of cold weather related ED visits went above 6.1 visits on the following occasions: December 9th had 7 visits and an average minimum temperature of 25.9 °F and January 17th-18th had 37 and 18 visits, respectively, with respective average minimum temperatures of 12.5 °F and 16.1 °F. The 2017 - 2018 Winter Weather Surveillance in Louisiana graph also reflects these results. Of the cold weather related ED visits that took place on either December 9th or January 17th-18th, 81% indicated an ice or snow related personal injury, 14% indicated hypothermia, and 5% indicated cold exposure.ConclusionsThe three coldest days, January 16th -18th, corresponded with the largest spikes in cold weather related ED visits. The spike in visits on December 9, 2017 did not correspond to very low temperatures, but areas of Louisiana did experience snowfall on December 8th, which led to ice formation. A record review of all visits that fit the inclusion criteria of a cold weather related ED visit showed that many of the visits that took place from January 19th-21st were also personal injuries that had either just taken place from slipping on ice or had occurred several days prior and remained unresolved. Ultimately, syndromic surveillance was instrumental in maintaining situational awareness during the uncharacteristic winter weather experienced in Louisiana. The results of this winter weather surveillance were published in the Louisiana Morbidity Report. IDEpi will continue to use syndromic surveillance during periods of uncharacteristic winter weather to maintain situational awareness, which may be used in public safety messaging to reduce the number of cold weather related personal injuries in the population that is not accustomed to such conditions.


INTRODUCTION

It is, I believe, uncontentious to suggest that concepts of disease — both in general and with respect to particular ailments — have changed and developed historically in the long history of the Western medical tradition. And it is obvious, too, that diseases (taking that term in its widest sense, to embrace illnesses at large) were-and-are precisely the distinctive concern of medicine. On principle, therefore, we might expect that the history of disease-concepts plays a central part in the historiography of medicine, just as the histories of celestial, physical and vital concepts do in the historiographies of the respective natural sciences; yet paradoxically, this is far indeed from being the case. That strand of medical history which focuses on medicine's cognitive content has devoted far more attention to anatomical and physiological knowledge than to pathology; the history of medical practice is often written without reference to the disease-categories by which past practitioners apprehended the illnesses of their patients; and as we shall see, histories of actual diseases have tended to treat their objects as timeless entities, thereby blocking off the very possibility of considering disease-concepts historically.
This paper proposes that the history of disease-concepts deserves far more attention than it has traditionally been accorded, not least because this theme is relevant to the full range of medical history's existing concerns, from anatomy to medical practice. I shall proceed in three stages. Part 1 sketches the historiographic state of play with regard to disease-concepts. Part 2, which makes up the bulk of the paper, seeks to illustrate the possibility of treating such concepts historically by means of an example, namely the disease of "pleuritis" or "pleurisy"; I shall trace the shifting meanings of this term first amongst the ancients and then, on a very selective basis, in the early-modern period. Finally Part 3 will meditate briefly on the results of this case-study, returning to the general historiographic theme and suggesting some points of wider application.


The bioeconomy transition is routed in new opportunities with high potential of replication at EU level. To this end, it is important to identify which measures could potentially have a high impact on the biobased economy. Theoretically, several measures have been agreed to support stable and appealing markets for biobased products, such as fossil carbon tax, a CO2 tax, quotas, tax credits, removal of fossil subsidies and, mandates and bans. Nevertheless, there are also other actions, namely "soft measures" which could also be very fruitful in the development of sustainable activities towards long-term bioeconomy initiatives in the field of increasing public awareness. These "soft" measures are regarded as easy to implement in the current political climate. Among others, the adoption of bio-based products can answer the call from the public and politicians for concrete measures from the EU and its Member States for more climate-friendly products. An enhanced bio-based economy has an important role to play in meeting the ambition of the 2015 Paris Agreement and in delivering the European Green Deal. The POWER4BIO project counts on learning from experiences. Examples and references might speed up the decision made at national and regional level, which will enable a stronger commitment towards solutions under the concept of bioeconomy. To this end, policy makers urge to gain access to reliable reference sources of information to use these sources in their internal procedures. Furthermore, the detailed description of existing cases is an instrumental key to learn and inspire new initiatives. The regions oversee the state of the art and point out the value of being informed of initiatives which are successful with new business model. As a matter of fact, the POWER4BIO regions have arisen the need of a catalogue of technologies in real production cases (Deliverable D3.3) but in some specific cases, more technical information is required to foster and boost regional bioeconomy actions. This is the aim of this deliverable D3.4, were a thorough analysis, selection and description of the best practices of biorefineries worldwide is included. In the context of the POWER4BIO project, best practices are industrial production sites, which use specific biomass sources to produce biobased products. This deliverable pays special attention to two elements: rural application of the selected biorefineries and their competitivity. Furthermore, aligned with deliverables D3.3 and D4.1 of the project, the solutions are classified in 4 categories, in view to its application, such as, bioenergy, biochemicals, feed&food and biomaterials. This classification allows for an easy to understand and use of the cases detailed depicted in this document. In total, 12 EU best practices, 3 of each of the 4 categories are included in this report. The information per best practices include the minimum information to illustrate the cases. They provide the reader with information to consider its potential for replicability. Lastly, all the cases have been harmonised content-wise so as to facilitate the understanding and comparison of examples. POWER4BIO project (818351) Page 6 of 62 Deliverable 3.4: Best practice examples Version 1.0, 27/03/2020 POWER4BIO www.power4bio.eu) collaborates with the Horizon 2020 project BE-Rural, which also assesses technology options and business models for regional and local bio-based economies. A joint guidance document will summarise the relevant outputs of the two projects and provide concrete recommendations for policy-makers regarding the application of bio-based technology options and business models in specific regional contexts. The present report will contribute to this joint output. For further complementary information from the BE-Rural project, we encourage the reader to visit: https://be-rural/results/


Verification and validation (V&V) are two components of the software engineering process that are critical to achieve reliability that can account for up to 50% of the cost of software development [24]. Numerous techniques ranging from formal proofs to testing methods exist to verify whether programs conform to their specifications. Recently, constraint programming techniques for V&V have emerged [18, 24]: they use the idea of proof by contradiction. They typically aim at proving that the code is inconsistent with the negation of the specification, which means that the software conforms to its specifications. Although the framework seems straightforward, the number of generated constraints can be high and the solving process tedious. In this work, we propose ideas for improvement based on symbolic manipulation of the constraints to be solved. Our approach differs from the current approach in its way to determine the compliance of the code with respect to its specification. Instead of using numeric solvers, we designed symbolic techniques to check compliance between the code and its specification. We analyzed how much practical the approach is if the program is correct and if the program is incorrect: can we make the verification process faster by applying our rules? CPBPV: a Constraint-Programming Framework for Bounded Program Verification [25], the work done by H. Collavizza, M. Rueher, and P. Hentenryck is the inspiration for our work. We established that our approach is feasible, and our experimental results prove that our proposed method is a promising addition to the existing framework to eliminate some of the basic challenges associated with constraint-based software verification.


Revolution broke out in the Russian Empire in early 1905 and quickly encompassed both the Russian core and the national minority areas along the empire's borders. Strategically located on Russia's most western flank, the Kingdom of Poland witnessed intense revolutionary activity-- in the cities and in the countryside. The outlines of urban events in Russian Poland in the Revolution of 1905 are quite well-known, those of the rural areas less so. The purpose of this essay is to discover what was revolutionary about events in the Polish countryside in the years 1905-1906--· and what was not.


In this chapter we shall discuss the use of both optimal control theory and age-structured epidemic models in mathematical epidemiology. We use a very broad definition of optimal control, for example mathematical models for control by vaccination, as well as applications of optimal control theory. This is a wide area and we have had to be selective. In terms of applications a lot of the models which we present are applicable to the spread of common childhood diseases as that is an area in which age-structured models have been shown to fit data well and are most commonly applied in practice. This is because vaccination programs are often age-dependent targeting children of a given age and so they need age-structured models. The first section of this chapter discusses age-structured epidemic models including the question of optimal vaccination in them. 2 Then we move on to the optimal control in "stage-structured" (rather than age-structured) epidemic models, in which the individuals are grouped into susceptible, infected, and so on, depending on their relation to the epidemic. This gives a survey of how the ideas of optimal control theory, in particular the Maximum Principle and dynamic programming have been applied in the past to determine optimal control strategies for an epidemic, for example by immunization or removal of infected individuals. We finish this section with a few papers which apply optimal control theory to drug epidemics. We next survey some articles which give applications of optimal control to age-structured epidemic models. Much of this work concerns the existence and structure of optimal age-dependent vaccination strategies for common childhood diseases but we cover some other applications too. This is followed by a short section on spatial models used to determine optimal epidemic control policies. A brief summary and discussion conclude.


Contemporary culture can be defined as ocularcentric (Rose, 2016), for we are surrounded by visual and multimodal materials in our everyday lives that both represent and create our understandings of social worlds. Consequently, the field of visual studies is continually expanding, and it has much to say about the use of images and creative artefacts in research, whether these are found images, researcher initiated materials or participatory productions (Pauwels, 2011). While there is significant attention to the construction and analysis of visual images, arguably there is less interest in dissemination. Where the sharing of images is considered, this is often in relation to ethical debates around whether to reveal or conceal the identities of participants in photographic data (see Clark, 20XX (this volume)), or the conventions of publishing visual data in academic articles (see Newbury, 20XX (this volume) and visual essays (see Heng, 20XX (this volume). This chapter moves beyond discussions of presenting visual data, and instead explores the possibilities for revisualization, that is transforming research data, visual or otherwise, into new multimodal creative outputs that can attend to the requirements of participant confidentiality, where necessary, and promote engagement, wider impact and a potentiality for change, beyond the academic article. For Becker (2007: 285), 'there is no best way to tell a story about society… the world gives us possibilities among which we choose'. However, strategies of dissemination often follow a traditional path. Typically research project completion involves the writing-up of the findings and recommendations in a final report, which may be restricted to a 'small audience who are closely associated with the research project' (Timmins, 2015, p. 35). The publication of a report is often followed by related peer reviewed journal articles and other scholarly publications; but the audiencing of these standard outputs is necessarily restricted to academia (Barnes at al., 2003). The narrowness of this dissemination strategy may mean that the implications of research studies often have little impact on practice, policy or communities, limiting opportunities for change and improvement (Finfgeld, 2003; Troman, 2001). As Keen and Todre (2007: n.p.) contend, 'research, done well, is worth disseminating', so why do we routinely follow pathways of dissemination that are restricted, standardised and often inaccessible? The commonality of the report to academic article procedure suggests that Becker's notion of 'choice', is not a straightforward one. In academia, it may be more useful to consider 'obligatory choices' (Bennett et al., 2009), where ideas of personal agency are constrained and 'choice' is essentially rationalised and accepted in relation to wider circumstances. Researchers are generally concentrated within the sociocultural and political context of institutes of higher education, which have increasingly moved to a mathematical model where the number of publications credited to an academic become a measure of their competency. Reflecting on this quantification of competency, Rawat and Meena (2014) argue that the immense pressure to publish, mean that the phrase 'publish or perish' [1] has become a harsh reality for researchers; despite the fact that the majority of academic journal publications are uncited and underused. The institutional structure, cultural technologies of intellectual activity and external market contingencies continue to stress the business case for research output (Mannay and Morgan, 2014). Therefore, researchers are expected to write and to publish at speed to keep their accounts relevant before they become obsolete and void of economic value. Of course, it is important to publish but there needs be less rigidity, as Vale and Karataglidis (2016: n.p.) caution 'research and publishing is the oxygen of academic life. But the regimes of control that surround contemporary approaches to publishing are choking creativity and, with it, the profession itself'. In addition to the pressures to publish frequently in conventional ways, the conventions of the journal article itself can be problematic for researchers hoping to creatively engage wide and diverse audiences. There is a dense, dry, flat prose that forms a 'linguistic armour' in much academic writing (Lerum, 2001), which can stifle the affective elements of research findings, and distance the reader from the voices of participants (see also Wilson, 2018). Images have the capacity to move us and by including these in publications there may be an opportunity to better communicate research findings to the reader/viewer, and engage them in participants' worlds. However, restrictions of publishing in many journals, and ethical issues around revealing participants' identities (Clark, 2013), mean that often researchers need to publish about their visual research without the pictures. Visual researchers have made attempts to achieve ethical, impactful dissemination that can communicate the depth of identifying visual images when these are at risk of being silenced by their absence. For example, Carroll (2015) has employed the epistolary genre to communicate observations and conversations, which were recorded in textual and visual forms, including video recordings, as part of her the fieldwork on human milk donation and the use of donated breast milk for hospitalised, preterm infants. Carroll created a series of letters from a donating mother and the recipient mother. Although these were constructed by Carroll, they acted as a representation of the intimate thoughts, affective sentiments, and labours that surround the provision and use of donor milk. Similarly, in my own work with women utilising photoeliciation, mapping and collage, I have drawn on found poems (excerpts from interviews reframed as poetry) to represent their accounts of domestic violence and abuse (Mannay, 2013). In the same way, researchers in health studies have translated the accounts of women with breast cancer into poems, arguing that these accounts can be understood more intensely and profoundly through poetry, offering a richer, more meaningful, and potent evocation of themes than traditional written forms (Reilly et al., 2018). These approaches have attempted to negotiate the tension between concealing identity and giving participants a voice; and also to engage audiences at an affective level and achieve impact. However, these forms of dissemination are still bound by text, and published in journal articles that may stipulate fees to view, making them inaccessible to a wide audience base, and the language of the wider articles themselves that surround this more creative presentation, may still make these outputs unattractive to audiences outside of academia. Despite the centrality of traditional academic publications, there have been shifts that have opened up opportunities to disseminate research findings in different modes. For example, there has also been a growing emphasis on the potential for research to 'change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia' (REF, 2011). This imperative for impact can be seen as another pressure for researchers, and 'we are increasingly subject to a range of administrative processes that demand that we can demonstrate that the research that we carry out, and the outputs that result from it, possess some utility to non-academics and that they possess causal powers to influence the world in some way or another' (Knowles and Burrows, 2014: 242). On the one hand, there is an argument that these demands for impact can put pressure on academic staff, contributing to an audit culture where researchers are already continually measured and evaluated is an important one (Strathern, 2000). However, on the other hand, as academics we are often personally invested in contributing to positive changes in the areas that we study, and the impact agenda does offer opportunities and funding for creative projects of engagement that can include revisualization. The following sections will explore the ways in which revisualization can be useful for researchers for two reasons. Firstly, in terms of retaining anonymity where this is essential to the project, and secondly as a tool of engagement with diverse audiences. Researchers regularly have to negotiate decisions about what is 'the unsayable and the unspeakable'; 'who to represent and how' and 'what to omit and what to include' (Ryan-Flood and Gill, 2010: 3); and the examples presented will illustrate how revisualization can provide an alternative option for representing sensitive accounts. They will also demonstrate how researchers can draw on visual and creative outputs to increase the impact of their work, and attend to the question 'what impact does voice have if no one is listening?' (Alexandra, 2015:43). Revisualization will be examined in relation to multimodal visual and creative approaches including theatre, film, music and artwork.


Interactive rendering with dynamic natural lighting and changing view is a long-standing goal in computer graphics. Recently, precomputation-based methods for all-frequency relighting have made substantial progress in this direction. Many of the most successful algorithms are based on a factorization of the BRDF into incident and outgoing directions, enabling each term to be precomputed independent of viewing direction, and re-combined at run-time. However, there has so far been no theoretical understanding of the accuracy of this factorization, nor the number of terms needed. In this paper, we conduct a theoretical and empirical analysis of the BRDF in-out factorization. For Phong BRDFs, we obtain analytic results, showing that the number of terms needed grows linearly with the Phong exponent, while the factors correspond closely to spherical harmonic basis functions. More generally, the number of terms is quadratic in the frequency content of the BRDF along the reflected or half-angle direction. This analysis gives clear practical guidance on the number of factors needed for a given material. Different objects in a scene can each be represented with the correct number of terms needed for that particular BRDF, enabling both accuracy and interactivity.


The sediments stored in the large, deep proglacial lakes of south-central Alaska are largely unstudied. We analyzed sediments in 20 cores, up to 160 cm long, from Eklutna, Kenai, and Skilak Lakes, using a combination of repeated lamination counting, radionuclide dating, event stratigraphy, and tephrochronology. We show that the characteristically rhythmic layers were deposited annually. Most of these glacial varves consist of one coarse-grained base and a fine-grained top, but varves composed of multiple coarse-grained turbidite pulses are common too. They are likely related to successive episodes of high sediment discharge during flooding, and they become more frequent in all three lakes, along with increased sedimentation rates, during the nineteenth century late phase of the Little Ice Age. These flood turbidites were generated by rain events and intense melting of snow and ice. Other (mega) turbidites are a result of earthquake-triggered slope collapses (e.g., A.D. 1964). Some event layers are present in all three lakes. In addition, the annual time series of varve thickness (normalized annual sedimentation rate) are significantly correlated among the three lakes (p > 0.27; p < 0.001). Differences between the varve thickness records can be attributed partly to the dam construction at Eklutna Lake and outbursts from an ice-dammed lake at Skilak Lake. Geomorphologic differences among the catchments result in further differences in sedimentation patterns in the three lakes.


Chlorinated and brominated forms of salicylic acid (SA) have recently been identified as a new class of disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in drinking water. Herein, we report the inherent reactivity of several aqueous halogenating agents toward hydrogen salicylate, the predominant species of salicylic acid under environmental conditions. Using synthetic waters, halogenation rates associated with the formation of 3-chloro, 5-chloro, 3-bromo, and 5-bromosalicylate were measured as a function of pH, [Cl−], [Br−], free chlorine dose, and the initial concentration of SA. Halogenating-agent specific second-order rate constants were determined and decrease in the order: BrCl > BrOCl > Br2 > Br2O > Cl2 > Cl2O > HOBr > HOCl. Chloride is capable of enhancing rates of bromination and chlorination, ostensibly by promoting the formation of BrCl and Cl2, both of which are several orders of magnitude more inherently reactive than HOBr and HOCl, respectively. Kinetic data also support the participation of salicyloyl hypochlorite as a chlorination intermediate capable of influencing chlorination rates at pH >8. Experiments in which buffer concentrations were varied indicate that phosphate buffers can enhance rates of SA bromination but not chlorination; carbonate and borate buffers did not appreciably influence rates of bromination or chlorination. Under conditions representative of chlorinated drinking water, rates of SA bromination will generally exceed rates of SA chlorination. The results discussed herein demonstrate the importance of considering halogenating agents beyond HOBr and HOCl when developing kinetic models to describe and predict halogenation rates and selectivity in waters containing free chlorine.


Because cell shape and alignment, cell-matrix adhesion, and cell-cell contact can all affect growth, and because mechanical strains in vivo are multiaxial and anisotropic, we developed an in vitro system for engineering aligned, rod-shaped, neonatal cardiac myocyte cultures. Photolithographic and microfluidic techniques were used to micropattern extracellular matrices in parallel lines on deformable silicone elastomers. Confluent, elongated, aligned myocytes were produced by varying the micropattern line width and collagen density. An elliptical cell stretcher applied 2:1 anisotropic strain statically to the elastic substrate, with the axis of greatest stretch (10%) either parallel or transverse to the myofibrils. After 24 h, the principal strain parallel to myocytes did not significantly alter myofibril accumulation or expression of atrial natriuretic factor (ANF), connexin-43 (Cx-43), or N-cadherin (by indirect immunofluorescent antibody labeling and immunoblotting) compared with unstretched controls. In contrast, 10% transverse principal strain resulted in continuous staining of actin filaments (rhodamine phalloidin); increased immunofluorescent labeling of ANF, Cx-43, and N-cadherin; and upregulation of protein signal intensity by western blotting. By using microfabrication and microfluidics to control cell shape and alignment on an elastic substrate, we found greater effects for transverse than for longitudinal stretch in regulating sarcomere organization, hypertrophy, and cell-to-cell junctions.


HIV does not cause AIDS. The world was created in 4004 BCE. Smoking does not cause cancer. And if climate change is happening, it is nothing to do with man-made CO2 emissions. Few, if any, of the readers of this journal will believe any of these statements. Yet each can be found easily in the mass media.

The consequences of policies based on views such as these can be fatal. Thabo Mbeki's denial that that HIV caused AIDS prevented thousands of HIV positive mothers in South Africa receiving anti-retrovirals so that they, unnecessarily, transmitted the disease to their children.1 His health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, famously rejected evidence of the efficacy of these drugs, instead advocating treatment with garlic, beetroot and African potato. It was ironic that their departure from office coincided with the award of the Nobel Prize to Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi for their discovery that HIV is indeed the case of AIDS. The rejection of scientific evidence is also apparent in the popularity of creationism, with an estimated 45% of Americans in 2004 believing that God created man in his present form within the past 10 000 years.2 While successive judgements of the US Supreme Court have rejected the teaching of creationism as science, many American schools are cautious about discussing evolution. In the United Kingdom, some faith-based schools teach evolution and creationism as equally valid 'faith positions'. It remains unclear how they explain the emergence of antibiotic resistance.

Elsewhere, the hand of powerful corporate interests can be seen. It took many decades for the conclusions of authoritative reports by the US Surgeon General3 and the British Royal College of Physicians4 on the harmful effects of smoking to be accepted, while even now, despite clear evidence of rapid reductions in myocardial infarctions …


Practical, Real-World ITIL Configuration ManagementFrom Start to Finish The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) places the best practices in IT operations at your command. ITIL helps you make better technology choices, manages IT more effectively, and drives greater business value from all your IT investments. The core of ITIL is configuration management: the discipline of identifying, tracking, and controlling your IT environments diverse components to gain accurate and timely information for better decision-making. Now, theres a practical, start-to-finish guide to ITIL configuration management for every IT leader, manager, and practitioner. ITIL-certified architect and solutions provider Larry Klosterboer helps you establish a clear roadmap for success, customize standard processes to your unique needs, and avoid the pitfalls that stand in your way. Youll learn how to plan your implementation, deploy tools and processes, administer ongoing configuration management tasks, refine ITIL information, and leverage it for competitive advantage. Throughout, Klosterboer demystifies ITILs jargon, illuminates each technique with real-world advice and examples, and helps you focus on the specific techniques that offer maximum business value in your environment. Coverage includes Assessing your current configuration management maturity and setting goals for improvement Gathering and managing requirements to align ITIL with organizational needs Describing the schema of your configuration management database (CMDB) Identifying, capturing, and organizing configuration data Choosing the best tools for your requirements Integrating data and processes to create a unified logical CMDB and configuration management service Implementing pilot projects to demonstrate the value of configuration management and to test your planning Moving from a pilot to wide-scale enterprise deployment Defining roles for deployment and ongoing staffing Leveraging configuration management information: Reporting and beyond Measuring and improving CMDB data accuracy Covers ITIL version 3. Preface xvii Acknowledgments xxi About the Author xxiii Chapter 1: Overview of Configuration Management 1 Part I: Planning for Configuration Management 17 Chapter 2: Gathering and Analyzing Requirements 19 Chapter 3: Determining Scope, Span, and Granularity 37 Chapter 4: Customizing the Configuration Management Process 55 Chapter 5: Planning for Data Population 67 Chapter 6: Putting Together a Useful Project Plan 85 Part II: Implementing Configuration Management 97 Chapter 7: Choosing the Right Tools 99 Chapter 8: Implementing the Process 117 Chapter 9: Populating the Configuration Management Database 127 Chapter 10: Choosing and Running a Pilot Program 137 Chapter 11: Communication and Enterprise Roll Out 149 Part III: Running an Effective Configuration Management System 161 Chapter 12: Building a Configuration Management Team 163 Chapter 13: The Many Uses for Configuration Information 179 Chapter 14: Measuring and Improving CMDB Accuracy 193 Chapter 15: Improving the Business Value of Configuration Management 207 Index 217


The convergence of Services Computing and Web 2.0 gains a large space of opportunities to compose "situational" web applications from web-delivered services. However, the large number of services and the complexity of composition constraints make manual composition difficult to application developers, who might be non-professional programmers or even end-users. This paper presents a systematic data-driven approach to assisting situational application development. We first propose a technique to extract useful information from multiple sources to abstract service capabilities with a set tags. This supports intuitive expression of user's desired composition goals by simple queries, without having to know underlying technical details. A planning technique then exploits composition solutions which can constitute the desired goals, even with some potential new interesting composition opportunities. A browser-based tool facilitates visual and iterative refinement of composition solutions, to finally come up with the satisfying outputs. A series of experiments demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our approach.


During the interval from January 1989 to March 1990, signs and symptoms of anaphylaxis developed in six patients during barium enema examinations in our institution. In all six cases the symptoms of anaphylaxis began during the procedure, usually within 10 min of starting the examination. The principal manifestation of anaphylaxis was severe hypotension, usually accompanied by edema and urticaria. The symptoms were considered potentially life threatening in all patients, and one patient died despite prompt recognition of the anaphylactic nature of the reaction and resuscitative efforts. Serum samples were obtained within a few hours of the reaction in two patients and at autopsy in the fatal case: all three samples showed elevated concentrations of mast cell tryptase, demonstrating the systemic release of anaphylactic mediators. In vitro tests demonstrated the presence of immunoglobulin E antibodies specific for latex allergens in five of the six cases. Further in vitro inhibition tests confirmed the specificity of the antibodies for latex allergens and demonstrated that similar allergens were found in both raw latex, latex gloves, and catheter balloons. Only one patient was willing to undergo a skin test, and her skin test was positive for extracts of latex products. After considering multiple possibilities, we conclude that the reactions associated with barium enemas observed in these six patients are most probably the result of latex allergy.