During and after the period of training in interpretation, Italian-speaking students face difficulties in listening and understanding the original text. In fact, the phonic continuum is always realized in a different way and depends not only on the speakers and the dimensions of the variation at diatopic, diastratic, diaphasic level, but also on a series of phenomena linked to the hypoarticulated speech of those who communicate with naturalness and spontaneity in their L1. For a native Italian speaker that is formed in interpretation from Portuguese into Italian, there are several phenomena that can make the perception, the recognition of segments of speech (vowel reduction, internal and external sandhi and others) and thus the reformulation into Italian very difficult. In this communication the use of Audacity software will be proposed to reflect on some aspects and overcome the relative difficulties of comprehension. In particular, we will highlight how, through the Audacity program, a trace of the original text can be retraced by isolating certain segments and specific passages, changing the speed of speech, so as to become more familiar with the spoken language and improve bottom-up understanding processes, obviously in relation to the ability of exploiting the context, previous knowledge and in general the top-down processes.


OBJECTIVE
To assess if the severity of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and mainly intermittent hypoxia is associated with increased peripheral leukocytes in overweight children and adolescents, controlling for adiposity and obesity-related metabolic abnormalities.

METHODS
Consecutive subjects were recruited at a pediatric obesity clinic. All subjects underwent polysomnography and a fasting blood sample.

RESULTS
In total, 95 subjects were included ( =11.1+/-2.6, 43 boys, body mass index, =2.3+/-0.5, 29 subjects were overweight and 66 obese). Total white blood cell count increased significantly by worsening of intermittent hypoxia. Total white blood cell count was correlated with the maximal degree of desaturation, independent of puberty, HOMA and HDL-cholesterol. Neutrophil levels were associated with the degree of desaturation, while controlling for puberty and HOMA.

CONCLUSION
This study supports the hypothesis of an independent interaction between intermittent hypoxia and nocturnal desaturation during sleep, and increased white blood cell and neutrophil levels in overweight and obese children and adolescents. This finding may contribute to the mechanisms linking SDB with increased cardiovascular morbidity.


In this study, the steady forced convection flow and heat transfer due to an impermeable stretching surface in a porous medium saturated with a nanofluid are investigated numerically. The Brinkman-Forchheimer model is used for the momentum equations (porous medium), whereas, Bongiorno's model is used for the nanofluid. Uniform temperature and nanofluid volume fraction are assumed at the surface. The boundary layer equations are transformed to ordinary differential equations in terms of the governing parameters including Prandtl and Lewis numbers, viscosity ratio, porous medium, Brownian motion and thermophoresis parameters. Numerical results for the velocity, temperature and concentration profiles, as well as for the reduced Nusselt and Sherwood numbers are obtained and presented graphically.


A dynamic time-wavelength division multiaccess protocol (DT-WDMA) is proposed for metropolitan-sized multichannel optical networks employing fixed wavelength transmitters and tunable optical receivers. Control information is sent over a dedicated signaling channel and data are sent over channels owned by the transmitters. Time is divided into slots on each channel and slots on the control channel are further split into mini-slots. Fixed time-division multiaccess (TDM) is used within each slot on the control channel. Transmitters indicate their intention to transmit a packet by transmitting the destination address during their appropriate mini-slot in the control channel and then transmit their packet in the next slot on their data channel. Receivers listen to the control channel and tune to the appropriate channel to receive packets addressed to them. A common but distributed arbitration algorithm is used to resolve conflicts when packets from many transmitters contend for the same receiver. Each receiver executes the same deterministic algorithm to choose one of the contending packets. Each transmitter uses the same algorithm to determine the success or failure of its packet. >


This paper presents a novel resonance based modulation strategy for a full-bridge current-fed isolated DC/ DC converter for high voltage applications. Output regulation is obtained using variable frequency modulation on the primary side to compensate for line and load variations. A two-step method is used for current commutation and usage of active clamp based snubbers are avoided. Circuit operation under different operating modes in steady state are described in detail. Closed form expression for the converter gain and other values of interest are derived using state plane concepts. The presence of a discontinuous conduction mode is discussed and the mode boundary is identified. Design steps for arriving at the component values of the converter based on set of specifications is discussed. Proposed concept, operation and derived closed form expressions are validated through simulation.


The substrate kinetic parameters of hexokinase (HK) and phosphofructokinase (PFK)—the key irreversible enzymes of glycolysis—in erythrocytes from type 2 diabetic subjects were examined in comparison with control subjects. It was observed that the kinetic parameters such as Km, Vmax, Apparent Kcat, Kcat/Km, and substrate (ATP) inhibition kinetic and substrate binding characteristics are significantly altered in the diabetic group. The observed changes are suggestive of compositional changes in the subunit makeup of HK and PFK. The implication of these findings in relation to energy status of the diabetic erythrocyte and its interrelationship with loss of cell deformability are discussed here.


Objective: The aim of the present study was to analyze the effects of the implementation of the Recovery-orientated psychiatric care concept "Weddinger Modell" on the incidence of forced medication, the total number of forced medication incidents per affected case, the maximum dose of a singular forced medication and the maximum voluntary daily drug dose of different psychotropic drugs administered during an inpatient stay. Methods: This retrospective case-control study included 234 patients. A pre/post-comparison of patients on two acute psychiatric wards before (control group, n = 112) and after (intervention group, n = 122) the implementation of the Weddinger Modell in 2010 was performed. Patient data was selected at two reporting periods before and at two reporting periods after 2010. Results: No significant differences were found in the incidence of forced medication and the total number of forced medications. A significant reduction of the maximum forced medication dose of haloperidol in the intervention group was seen. Furthermore, the analysis of the intervention group showed a significant reduction of the maximum voluntary daily drug doses of clozapine, haloperidol and risperidone. Discussion: The results indicate that the implementation of the Weddinger Modell had no effect on the incidence of forced medication, but it can help to improve the approach to psychotropic drugs. Despite the reduction of mechanical coercive measures by the model, as shown in a previous study, there is no increase in forced medications or administered drug doses. Focus on Recovery helps in reducing coercion in acute psychiatric care.


In July 2013, a National Security Agency (NSA) recruitment drive held in Wisconsin University was derailed by students, who took the two recruiters to task over lies told by the agency as revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden data leak. A few days later, an audio recording of this exchange was released by The Guardian newspaper. Recruitment Gone Wrong reenacts this exchange by animating each of its four main characters through the automation of four ventriloquists' half-masks. Unlike conventional ventriloquists' dummies, half-masks can be worn by an individual, transforming a person into a comical 'living' dummy, and so although each mask will be moving according to its assigned character even when suspended in the gallery space, a visitor or group of visitors can choose to wear any of them at prescribed times, thus channeling the words of the students and/or recruiters through their own (cyborg) bodies. We think of Recruitment Gone Wrong as an automated mechanical reenactment and a kind of karaoke, constantly re-breathing life into a covert audio recording that touches on issues of our human rights to freedom of information and privacy in our contemporary world –issues that we think comprise part of the critical framework surrounding the need for Open Data, Open source culture and net neutrality. For us, this exchange between students and recruiters highlights a burgeoning culture, where we are encouraged to accept ubiquitous invasions of privacy for commercial and political gain as a 'new normal.'


Novelty processing can transform short-term into long-term memory. We propose that this memory-reinforcing effect of novelty could be explained by mechanisms outlined in the "synaptic tagging hypothesis." Initial short-term memory is sustained by a transient plasticity change at activated synapses and sets synaptic tags. These tags are later able to capture and process the plasticity-related proteins (PRPs), which are required to transform a short-term synaptic change into a long-term one. Novelty is involved in inducing the synthesis of PRPs [Moncada D, et al. (2011) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 108:12937–12936], which are then captured by the tagged synapses, consolidating memory. In contrast to novelty, stress can impair learning, memory, and synaptic plasticity. Here, we address questions as to whether novelty-induced PRPs are able to prevent the loss of memory caused by stress and if the latter would not interact with the tag-setting process. We used water-maze (WM) training as a spatial learning paradigm to test our hypothesis. Stress was induced by a strong foot shock (FS; 5 × 1 mA, 2 s) applied 5 min after WM training. Our data show that FS reduced long-term but not short-term memory in the WM paradigm. This negative effect on memory consolidation was time- and training-dependent. Interestingly, novelty exposure prevented the stress-induced memory loss of the spatial task and increased BDNF and Arc expression. This rescuing effect was blocked by anisomycin, suggesting that WM-tagged synapses were not reset by FS and were thus able to capture the novelty-induced PRPs, re-establishing FS-impaired long-term memory.


An LPC vocoder which is compatible to the government standard algorithm LPC-10 can be implemented using three µPD 7720 Signal Peripheral Interfaces (SPI) from NEC, a microprocessor (CPU), and some other commercial integrated circuits. The main tasks, LPC analysis, pitch analysis, and synthesis, can be performed with one SPI each. Due to their large RAM storage requirements, the block-form LPC-10 algorithm is not well suited for such an implementation. Its components must be modified or even totally replaced by other algorithms which can be performed on a sample-by-sample basis and therefore require less RAM storage. In this paper some results of investigations on implementing various LPC algorithms are presented. The components of the LPC-10 algorithm are compatible with the components of the algorithms suggested in this paper, i. e. the analysis and synthesis components may be mixed with no audible degradation of speech.


Paraphrase is an expression of a text with alternative words and orders to achieve a better clarity. Paraphrases have been found vital for augmenting training dataset, which aid to enhance performance of machine learning models that intended for various natural language processing (NLP) tasks. Thus, recently, automatic paraphrase generation has received increasing attention. However, evaluating quality of generated paraphrases is technically challenging. In the literature, the importance of generated paraphrases is tended to be determined by their impact on the performance of other NLP tasks. This kind of evaluation is referred as extrinsic evaluation, which requires high computational resources to train and test the models. So far, very little attention has been paid to the role of intrinsic evaluation in which quality of generated paraphrase is judged against predefined ground truth (reference paraphrases). In fact, it is also very challenging to find ideal and complete reference paraphrases. Therefore, in this study, we propose semantic or meaning oriented automatic evaluation metric that helps to evaluate quality of generated paraphrases against the original text, which is an intrinsic evaluation approach. Further, we evaluate quality of the paraphrases by assessing their impact on other NLP tasks, which is an extrinsic evaluation method. The goal is to explore the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic evaluation methods. To ensure the effectiveness of proposed evaluation methods, extensive experiments are done on different publicly available datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed intrinsic and extrinsic evaluation strategies are promising. The results further reveal that there is a significant correlation between intrinsic and extrinsic evaluation approaches.


The perceptual closure hypothesis says that priming will be optimum when just enough information is available in the prime to support closure. Across 5 experiments, a moderately complete fragmented image (Level 4) produced more priming than an almost complete (Level 7) or a very incomplete (Level 1) fragmented image. Only Level 4 priming was improved by increases in prime duration and by showing the prime again after Ss attempted to identify it. Explicit memory played little role in primed fragment completion except for Level 1 priming, in which specific fragment memory was responsible for the entire effect. In contrast, true perceptual learning was shown to be responsible for Level 4 and Level 7 priming. These priming effects cannot be accounted for by the transfer-appropriate procedures approach of Roediger and his colleagues because Level 1 priming produced less transfer to Level 1 identification at test than Level 4 priming did.


DNA carries an inherent polymorphism, which surfaces under various external conditions. While B-form remains predominant under normal physiological conditions for most of the DNA sequences, low humidity and increased ion concentration cause B- to A-form transition. Certain proteins and molecules also sometimes cause local deformation of the DNA to the specific A-form. Previous experimental and computational studies focused on the overall B- to A-form transition. Here for the first time we investigated thermodynamics and mechanism of B- to A-form transition in water for various DNA sequences at a local dinucleotide base pair level. We introduced a new reaction coordinate Zp', based on the unique order parameter Zp, to drive B- to A-form transition locally and thereby calculate free energy profiles for the same for all the ten different dinucleotide steps embedded in a twelve base pair DNA. Results show that the trend of "A" and "B" philicity observed in experiment is preserved even at this local dinucleotide level, indicating its localized origin. Higher free energy cost obtained here is attributed to the cost of creating B∕A junctions along with formation of B->A transition at dimer level. We find that while water energetically stabilizes A-form for all the ten different dinucleotide steps to various extents, entropy acts against it. Therefore, we find that the stability of B-form DNA in water is entropic in origin. Mechanism of the conversion appears to be triggered by Slide; however, backbone parameters change concertedly.


. LBL-12783 Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Physics, Computer Science & Mathematics Division To be presented at the Cryogenic Engineeriag Conference, San Diego, CA, August 11-14, 1981 GAS COOLED ELECTRICAL LEADS FOR USE ON FORCED COOLED SUPERCONDUCTING MAGNETS waft R.G. Smits, P.L. Andrews, W.A, Burns, C.T. Day, J.W. Gary, G.H. Gibson, M.A. Green, M. Pripstein, R.R. Ross, and J.D. Taylor August 1981 Prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract W-7405-ENQ-48 KSTMBIM O im mumii P mm


The article deals with the essence of the "political networks" phenomenon, the author's interpretation of this phenomenon is given, the original interpretation of modern political networks' specifics and architectonics is proposed.


In this paper we describe a Web search agent, called Global Search Agent (hereafter GSA for short). GSA integrates and enhances several search techniques in order to achieve significant improvements in the userdperceived quality of delivered information as compared to usual Web search engines. GSA features intelligent merging of relevant documents from different search engines, anticipated selective exploration and evaluation of links from the current result set, automated derivation of refined queries based on user relevance feedback. System architecture as well as experimental accounts are also illustrated.


The Aurora family of serine/threonine kinases is important for the regulation of centrosome maturation, chromosome segregation, and cytokinesis during mitosis. Overexpression of Aurora kinases in mammalian cells leads to genetic instability and transformation. Increased levels of Aurora kinases have also been linked to a broad range of human tumors. Here, we describe the properties of CCT129202, a representative of a structurally novel series of imidazopyridine small-molecule inhibitors of Aurora kinase activity. This compound showed high selectivity for the Aurora kinases over a panel of other kinases tested and inhibits proliferation in multiple cultured human tumor cell lines. CCT129202 causes the accumulation of human tumor cells with ≥4N DNA content, leading to apoptosis. CCT120202-treated human tumor cells showed a delay in mitosis, abrogation of nocodazole-induced mitotic arrest, and spindle defects. Growth of HCT116 xenografts in nude mice was inhibited after i.p. administration of CCT129202. We show that p21, the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor, is induced by CCT129202. Up-regulation of p21 by CCT129202 in HCT116 cells led to Rb hypophosphorylation and E2F inhibition, contributing to a decrease in thymidine kinase 1 transcription. This has facilitated the use of 3′-deoxy-3′[18F]fluorothymidine-positron emission tomography to measure noninvasively the biological activity of the Aurora kinase inhibitor CCT129202 in vivo. [Mol Cancer Ther 2007;6(12):3147–57]


Barbero's interesting and eye-opening article 1 reemphasizes the need for physicians to skillfully communicate with patients and parents. He mentions that several families were told of their child's (erroneous) diagnosis of cystic fibrosis via a telephone call. In the past 6 months, I have read and heard of the telephone's being used in deplorable and inhumane ways to deliver diagnoses. I offer these examples so that we may remind ourselves, our colleagues, and our students what is, and what is not, acceptable. Telephone calls: (1) A pediatrician telephoned a family to tell them "Your child has leukemia." Even worse, this was in the 1960s, when a diagnosis of leukemia was practically a death sentence (oral communication from a witness to the call). (2) A father was informed about his unborn child's diagnosis of Down syndrome by telephone. 2 Answering machine messages: (1) A family learned that their infant had congenital


UDP-glucuronosyltransferases (UGTs) are membrane-bound glycoproteins that are resident in the endoplasmic reticulum with a type I topology. The roles of the membrane-spanning and membrane-proximal cytoplasmic domains in UGT activity were investigated. Site-directed and deletional mutagenesis techniques were used to generate truncated forms of the enzyme, forms with altered residues, or forms with heterologous tails appended to the carboxyl terminus. The presence of the transmembrane domain was a critical requirement for UGT activity whereas the cytoplasmic domain seemed to be a modulator of activity but was not essential. Truncation of the protein did not appear to lead to scavenging and degradation, although appending long heterologous tails to the cytoplasmic domain did seem to trigger proteolysis. Analysis of enzyme kinetic parameters and enzyme latency allowed us to discount substrate binding or substrate transport defects as the cause of ameliorated UGT activity in the mutants.


The goal of this study was to quantify the contribution of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) to U(VI) immobilization by Shewanella sp. HRCR-1. Through comparison of U(VI) immobilization using cells with bound EPS (bEPS) and cells with minimal EPS, we show that (i) bEPS from Shewanella sp. HRCR-1 biofilms contribute significantly to U(VI) immobilization, especially at low initial U(VI) concentrations, through both sorption and reduction; (ii) bEPS can be considered a functional extension of the cells for U(VI) immobilization and they likely play more important roles at lower initial U(VI) concentrations; and (iii) the U(VI) reduction efficiency is dependent upon the initial U(VI) concentration and decreases at lower concentrations. To quantify the relative contributions of sorption and reduction to U(VI) immobilization by EPS fractions, we isolated loosely associated EPS (laEPS) and bEPS from Shewanella sp. HRCR-1 biofilms grown in a hollow fiber membrane biofilm reactor and tested their reactivity with U(VI). We found that, when reduced, the isolated cell-free EPS fractions could reduce U(VI). Polysaccharides in the EPS likely contributed to U(VI) sorption and dominated the reactivity of laEPS, while redox active components (e.g., outer membrane c-type cytochromes), especially in bEPS, possibly facilitated U(VI) reduction.


Recent changes in federal credit card laws will lead to higher prices for consumers and heftier profits for retailers especially in monopolistic markets. This is due to the way that the surcharges are usually levied which is as a percentage of the base price of the good or service. This paper explains how prices are formed by a profit maximizing firm under the assumption of a production function that is homogeneous of degree one. This paper also demonstrates the relationship between markups and the price elasticity of demand. An analysis of how the new credit card rules would impact relative prices in markets of varying levels of competition is then performed.


Arbutus unedo ( A. unedo ) is a medicinal plant commonly used to treat hypertension and diabetes in Oriental Morocco. Our previous studies showed that A. unedo has a vascular, diuretic, natriuretic, antiagregant and antidiabetic properties. Our goal was to show the vascular action of two groups of flavonoids (free and heterosidic flavonoids) extracted from the leaves of A. unedo on the isolated aorta of rat. A. unedo leaves were collected from Tazekka Mountain (Morocco). Two flavonoids-enriched (Genins and Heterosids) and a third final aqueous fractions were obtained using the soxhlet refluxing apparatus and tested in vitro on a phenylephrine-precontracted aorta. Thin layer chromatography analysis of both flavonoids-enriched fractions was performed with silica gel on an aluminum support. The determination of total polyphenolic was achieved using Folin-Ciocalteu method and the total content of flavonoids was determined by aluminum chloride method. The genins-enriched fraction induced a moderate contraction of aorta while the aqueous fraction caused an opposite effect. The heterosids-enriched fraction induced two distinct effects, a relaxation followed by a contraction of the same amplitude. All these effects are endotheliumdependent but not depending on each another. Moreover, the determination of total polyphenolic and flavonoid contents and thin layer chromatography analysis confirmed the abundance of these compounds in the studied fractions of A. unedo leaves. In conclusion, the vasorelaxant property of aqueous and heterosidic fractions are partly attributed to the presence of the flavonoids compounds. These results confirm the validity of the traditional use of A. unedo in hypertension treatment


Programstate-space exploration is central to software security, testing, and verification. In this paper, we propose a novel technique for state-space exploration of software that maintains an ongoing interaction with its environment. Our technique uses a combination of symbolic and concrete execution to build an abstract model of the analyzed application, in the form of a finite-state automaton, and uses the model to guide further state-space exploration. Through exploration, MACE further refines the abstract model. Using the abstract model as a scaffold, our technique wields more control over the search process. In particular: (1) shifting search to different parts of the search-space becomes easier, resulting in higher code coverage, and (2) the search is less likely to get stuck in small local state-subspaces (e.g., loops) irrelevant to the application's interaction with the environment. Preliminary experimental results show significant increases in the code coverage and exploration depth. Further, our approach found a number of new deep vulnerabilities.


The NASA Langley 8-Foot High Temperature Tunnel produces true enthalpy environments simulating flight from Mach 4 to Mach 7, primarily for airbreathing propulsion and aerothermal/thermo-structural testing. Flow conditions are achieved through a methane-air heater and nozzles producing aerodynamic Mach numbers of 4, 5 or 7 and have exit diameters of 8 feet or 4.5 feet. The 12-ft long free-jet test section, housed inside a 26-ft vacuum sphere, accommodates large test articles. Recently, the facility underwent significant upgrades to support hydrocarbon fueled scramjet engine testing and to expand flight simulation capability. The upgrades were required to meet engine system development and flight clearance verification requirements originally defined by the joint NASA-Air Force X-43C Hypersonic Flight Demonstrator Project and now the Air Force X-51A Program. Enhancements to the 8-Ft. HTT were made in four areas: 1) hydrocarbon fuel delivery; 2) flight simulation capability; 3) controls and communication; and 4) data acquisition/processing. The upgrades include the addition of systems to supply ethylene and liquid JP-7 to test articles; a Mach 5 nozzle with dynamic pressure simulation capability up to 3200 psf, the addition of a real-time model angle-of-attack system; a new programmable logic controller sub-system to improve process controls and communication with model controls; the addition of MIL-STD-1553B and high speed data acquisition systems and a classified data processing environment. These additions represent a significant increase to the already unique test capability and flexibility of the facility, and complement the existing array of test support hardware such as a model injection system, radiant heaters, six-component force measurement system, and optical flow field visualization hardware. The new systems support complex test programs that require sophisticated test sequences and precise management of process fluids. Furthermore, the new systems, such as the real-time angle of attack system and the new programmable logic controller enhance the test efficiency of the facility. The motivation for the upgrades and the expanded capabilities is described here.


Physical and electronic asymmetry plays a crucial role in rectifiers and other devices with a directionally variant current-voltage (I-V) ratio. Several strategies for practically creating asymmetry in nanoscale components have been demonstrated, but complex fabrication procedures, high cost, and incomplete mechanistic understanding have significantly limited large-scale applications of these components. In this work, we present density functional theory calculations which demonstrate asymmetric electronic properties in a metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) interface composed of stacked van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures. Janus MoSSe has an intrinsic dipole due to its asymmetric structure and, consequently, can act as either an n-type or p-type diode depending on the face at the interior of the stacked structure (SeMoS-SMoS vs. SMoSe-SMoS). In each configuration, vdW forces dominate the interfacial interactions, and thus, Fermi level pinning is largely suppressed. Our transport calculations show that not only does the intrinsic dipole cause asymmetric I-V characteristics in the MSM structure but also that different transmission mechanisms are involved across the S-S (direct tunneling) and S-Se interface (thermionic excitation). This work illustrates a simple and practical method to introduce asymmetric Schottky barriers into an MSM structure and provides a conceptual framework which can be extended to other 2D Janus semiconductors.


Simple and rapid determination method for butylated hydroxyanisole [2(3)-tert-butyl-4-hydroxyanisole)] (BHA) (CAS no. 25013-16-5) is developed. BHA was extracted from oily foods with hexane and from hexane layer to acetonitrile. The acetonitrile layer was either directly or after concentration injected to high-performance liquid chromatograph (HPLC) equipped with a fluorescence detector. As the internal standard for determination, tert-butyl-p-cresol was used. The conditions for HPLC were as follows. Column; Shim-pack CLC-ODS (6 mm i.d. x 15 cm): Mobile phase; 75% methanol: Excitation wave length for the fluorescence detector 298 nm; Emission wave length 332 nm. The recoveries of BHA from salad oil, margarine, and butter added 10 micrograms/g or 200 ng/g of BHA were satisfactory.


In recent years, capillary electrophoresis (CE) has become an analytical technique with many applications in the study of food proteins and peptides. This review describes the existing CE methods of analysis of milk, egg, meat and fish proteins and peptides. The major developments in the application of CE to solve different problems in food technology, such as the assessment of technological processes, quality, and authenticity control of animal foods, are considered. A section dealing with future directions on the analysis of food proteins by CE is also included.


ABSTRACT Airglow emissions which originate from the mesospheric and thermospheric altitudes have been routinely being monitored at Kolhapur (16.8° N, 74.2° E), Maharashtra, India, using ground base remote sensing imagers. We note that the observable amplitudes of very small-scale waves during April 2020 were significantly smaller than the regular observations. We investigate the reason for these low observable amplitudes. It is noted that drastic improvement in the quality of images was due to better contrast, which is attributed to significant reduction in greenhouse gases and aerosol loading in the atmosphere by the complete shutdown of local man-made emissions. Results suggest that lockdown had an important repercussion on the visibility through the improved air quality and thus better viewing conditions, which were reflected in the remotely sensed observations made with airglow imager.


The population biology of the fiddler crab Uca mordax (Smith, 1870) was investigated in an estuarinemangrove from the southeastern coast of Brazil. Samplings were monthly performed by 2 collectors for30 min. using the technique of capture per unit effort during low tide periods. The allometric techniquewas used to determine crab size at sexual maturity (males and females). Thus, specimens were classified into juveniles and adults according to their size at sexual maturity for each sex. The specimens weredistributed into size classes. Recruitment was based on the juvenile frequency and the reproduction peakin ovigerous females. The median size of males was 15.9 ± 2.7 mm carapace width (CW) (n = 557) andthat of females, 14.6 ± 2.8 mm CW (n = 528). At sexual maturity, size of crabs was 11.9 mm CW formales and 11.5 mm CW for females. Juveniles were found throughout the year but more frequently inthe winter and autumn. Sex ratio did not differ among seasons, except during the summer (p < 0.05).As regards sex ratio per size class, females predominated in the fi rst size classes. Reproduction peakwas observed in the summer. In short, the population biology of U. mordax was similar to that of mostbroad-front fi ddler crab species.


This study was conducted to evaluate production and carcass characteristics of confined lambs born from Santa Ines ewes, which were supplemented in different stages of pregnancy. Forty-eight Santa Ines ewes averaging 40 kg of body weight were randomly assigned to one of four treatments as follows: control, animals received pasture of Panicum maximum Jacq cv. Tanzania and residue of cassava bagasse while in the remaining treatments animals were fed the same as in the control but also a supplement (corn and soybean meal) from day 1 to day 50 (treatment 2), from day 51 to day 100 (treatment 3), or from day 101 to calving (treatment 4). Proportions of corn and soybean meal in the supplement varied from 90:10 (initial and mid gestation) to 10:90 (end of gestation). After weaning, lambs received a pelleted diet containing 75% TDN and 20% CP and were finished in drylot. Lambs were slaughtered when they reached 30 kg of body weight. Supplementation of ewes with corn and soybean meal during different stages of pregnancy did not affect any of the studied variables. Therefore, residue of cassava bagasse can be fed to ewes at all gestational stages.


Expression of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) accessory protein HBx is a requirement for viral replication. In this thesis, we investigated how HBx supports HBV replication, and we performed studies to identify its function. In chapter 2 we show that the overlap of reading frames in the HBV genome restricts viral evolution and affects the mutation rate. The mutation rate varied and correlated negatively with viral load. Because no crystallography-based tertiary structure of HBx is available, we have predicted the tertiary structure by ab initio computer modelling in chapter 3. Our model shows that HBx seems to have significant structural homology with the human thymine DNA glycosylase (TDG). In chapter 4 we show that HBx inhibits TDG-initiated DNA repair. Amongst the HBx interacting proteins described in the literature are various epigenetic modulators. The data we present in chapter 5 show that an important class of these proteins, the histone deacetylases, indeed suppress HBV replication, but that their activity is not affected by HBx. Therefore we applied subtractive mass spectrometry to systematically identify relevant HBx interacting proteins. As described in chapter 6, we identified one HBx interacting protein, talin-1, which was targeted for proteasomal degradation by HBx. Subsequent analysis revealed that talin-1 is a viral restriction factor, and that HBV replication critically depends on HBx-mediated talin-1 degradation. In chapter 7, we explored the possibility to target HBV transcription in HBx dependent- and independent ways. By screening 640 FDA approved drugs, we identified compounds that suppressed HBV replication by targeting HBV RNA transcription.


Service-learning integrates community service into a credit-earning course to enrich the learning experience and pair practice with theory in some content area. Linguistics courses offer tremendous potential for service-learning because there are a variety of ways in which language-related theory can be put into practice. This paper outlines the development of a service-learning curriculum for linguistics courses. While examples come from a project where students tutored adult second language learners of English, the activities in this paper extend well to other linguistics courses. Reflection is essential to service-learning, so necessary background and examples of it as a structured learning tool appear here. A second assessment tool, an anonymous online survey taken before and after tutoring, was used to explore any impact on language and diversity attitudes. More generally, service-learning has the potential to positively affect career development, to generate a sense of civic engagement, to facilitate greater understanding of other cultures and races and to make a difference in local communities.


The customs, culture and traditions of the people of a country are representative of the history, faith, language and environment of that country. Similarly, the cultural patterns of Pakistan speak of its rich cultural heritage and traditions. Pakistan's popular culture is not only the likeness of the present but also heavily depends on the past. Pakistan's Mughal architecture, cuisine, textiles, television programs, music etc. are some forms that make up its pop culture. The growth and increased range of available local and foreign media content has raised numerous questions as to the impact and effects it brings towards Pakistani culture. As a mature International industry and rapidly growing local one, animation films have taken a role in introducing the cultural characteristics of various nations and backgrounds. Animation offers a contested site for identity formation through story-telling, which provides wide audiences with the resources for narrative-creation and imagined communities that can foster collective identities. This article attempts to illuminate how the medium of animation articulates the Cultural Identity of Pakistan, through the national history. For this purpose, it analyzes two local animations: Unicorn Black's Burka Avenger and Teen Bahadur by Waadi Animation and SOC Films. These works are examined, particularly by looking at the gendered, outfitted, linguistic and racial representations. This research intends to dive deeper into designing of characters i-e protagonist, antagonist and supporting characters. The way pre-conceived notions of cultural identities have been represented in the animations. This study will aid in better understanding the complexities of cultural identity reflected in popular media.


After the corporate scandals at the begin- ning of the new millennium, corporate governance codes were drafted and implemented in national laws and regu- lations. Unfortunately, due to an ongoing supply of new financial scandals and societal deceptions, our society increasingly distrusts executive directors, non-executive directors and supervisory board members, as they often appeared to play a significant role in these scandals. Non- executive directors (NEDs) and supervisory directors (SDs) are often accused of having overlooked the important issues in their supervising role or having failed to intervene in company decision making. Previous research has shown that many NEDs and SDs operate on the basis of their own unwritten rules, which may very well be different from those of their colleagues. In this article we examine whether and how a code of conduct or code of ethics might help to further clarify how NEDs/SDs should act. We also inves- tigated the views of NEDs/SDs themselves. It appears that current corporate governance codes are not sufficient to guide directors on behavioral aspects of their supervisory role. This article shows that a code of conduct could provide this guidance to NEDs/SDs on several issues. First, a code of conduct would compel the Supervisory Board to reflect on its own values. Second, it would compel NEDs/SDs to verbalize their unwritten rules. The results may be applied internationally and could have relevance to the experience of executive directors in addition. This article may serve as a discussion document for other jurisdictions in addition.


The soliton technique is applied to the 5D static Einstein-Maxwell equations, and an infinite number of solutions are explicitly obtained. We study the rod structure of 2-soliton solutions and we show that the 5D Reissner-Nordstrom solution and the 5D Majumdar-Papapetrou solution are included as the 2-soliton solutions.


The underlying paper describes a framework for the systematic and strategic planning of mobile broadband services, providing an industrial application and an impulse for further and future research on adoption and diffusion studies in the field of mobile broadband technology. Elaborated conditions and characteristics of innovations, keyfindings of basic theoretical approaches on adoption and diffusion studies and the critical review of advanced and recently developed modelling approaches are combined with the special characteristics of the telecommunication industry, to a two-level based framework describing factors of influence on adoption and diffusion of mobile broadband services. The framework strength is in its detailed state-of-the-art description of current industrial mobile broadband situation and the two-level- micro- and macro-level-approach on adoption and diffusion research. The novelty of the framework is its potential exemplary appliance on Germany, Finland or other countries, extraction of key-patterns in this highly competitive business field, highly consumer-oriented approach and its advanced scopes and recommendations for mobile broadband service development units.


We review charge transport across molecular monolayers, which is central to molecular electronics (MolEl), using large-area junctions (NmJ). We strive to provide a wide conceptual overview of three main subtopics. First, a broad introduction places NmJ in perspective to related fields of research and to single-molecule junctions (1mJ) in addition to a brief historical account. As charge transport presents an ultrasensitive probe for the electronic perfection of interfaces, in the second part ways to form both the monolayer and the contacts are described to construct reliable, defect-free interfaces. The last part is dedicated to understanding and analyses of current-voltage (I-V) traces across molecular junctions. Notwithstanding the original motivation of MolEl, I-V traces are often not very sensitive to molecular details and then provide a poor probe for chemical information. Instead, we focus on how to analyze the net electrical performance of molecular junctions, from a functional device perspective. Finally, we point to creation of a built-in electric field as a key to achieve functionality, including nonlinear current-voltage characteristics that originate in the molecules or their contacts to the electrodes. This review is complemented by a another review that covers metal-molecule-semiconductor junctions and their unique hybrid effects.


The effects of transient coronary occlusion upon segment length and intramyocardial pressure were studied in seven open-chest dogs. The subendocardial and subepicardial layers in the territory of the left anterior descending coronary artery were instrumented with pairs of ultrasonic crystals and miniature pressure probes. During coronary occlusion, systolic subendocardial pressure decreased from 194 +/- 11 to 141 +/- 12 mmHg (p 0.001) and systolic subepicardial pressure from 82 +/- 7 to 62 +/- 12(p 0.05). Systolic shortening was abolished in both layers. During reperfusion, systolic subendocardial pressure reached 242 +/- 22 mmHg (p 0.05) and systolic subepicardial pressure 100 +/- 10 mmHg (p 0.05). Early during reperfusion a transient overshooting was also observed in subendocardial and subepicardial systolic shortening. The observations of this study are consistent with the hypothesis that unrestricted reperfusion is associated with an overshooting in regional myocardial contractile performance.


CDMA techniques are widely used in 3G mobile radio systems, and this can be also expected for the fourth generation of mobile radio communications. CDMA offers the advantages of frequency diversity, interferer diversity and flexibility. Unfortunately, these advantages go along with the problem of signal separation typical of CDMA, which hampers spectral efficiency and capacity. In the paper some possibilities to mitigate this problem and to thus enhance CDMA performance are shown. These possibilities include CDMA signal separation based on the turbo principle, the application of multi-element antennas at the base stations in combination with nonlinear signal processing, and an alternative to conventional cellular structures exploiting the spatial separation of the mobile terminals.


This article offers a case study of an officially sponsored arts programme that culminated in two exhibitions staged in 2010 which sought to offer a cultural 'exchange' between the cities of Paramaribo (Suriname) and Rotterdam (the Netherlands). Discussion focuses on individual artists and works of art, in order to examine the significance of taste for understanding dynamics of power in the various forms of transnational geographical movement that the programme entailed. In recent decades, attention to processes of global change has occupied a central place in academic writing about contemporary art. While this scholarship has taken a largely progressive form, beyond the academy in the sphere of public art exhibitions, adoption of such conceptual vocabulary has often brought rather more mixed outcomes which this article explores critically.


A total of 2466 fish were sampled from Serayu River in Banjarnegara, Central Java. The aims of study are to assess the relationships among length weight, growth, condition factors and sex ratio of of the brek fish (Barbonymus balleroides) with fragmented habitat. The study started from June 2012 to May 2013 using survey mehods. The study sites consist of six stations which were into three segments based on the reservoir position, i.e lower segment (St.1-St.2), middle segment (St.3-St.4), and upper segment (St.5-St.6). The results show length weight relationship were W= W= 7.10 -7*L3.084 (r2= 0.97) for all specimens, W = 8.10-6 *L3.061 (r2= 0.96) for males, and W= 7.10-7*L3.089 (r2= 0.98) for females; growth pattern were allometric over all condition factor were almost the both males and females, i.e. 1.0234 and 1.0275 respectively. Based on the segment, males were the highest in March at the middle segment i.e 1.2105 (n= 49) and the lowest at was the upper segment i.e. 0.8952 (n = 29). In females, the highest was also in March at the upper i.e. 1.1895 (n = 19) and the lowest in April at the lower segment i.e. 0.9478 (n= 35); sex ratio consists of 1073 males and 1393 females or 1: 1.29. Key words: growth, length-weight relationship, condition factor, and sex ratio


This paper explores music education viewed through lenses of cultural identity and the formation of personal identity in contemporary, multicultural Victoria, Australia. The people of this state come from more than 280 countries, speak more than 240 languages and follow more than 120 faiths. Our population diversity is constantly changing which challenges music educators to respond to classroom demographics and as tertiary educators we prepare our pre-service students to become culturally responsive teachers. As music educators, we occupy and are situated in multiple identities that shape the ways in which we experience and understand music and its transmission. As Australian tertiary music educators, we explore pre-service teacher cultural identity, attitudes and values about the inclusion of multicultural music in the classroom where cultural dialogue provides a platform for the construction of meaning. While marginalization and diversity occurs within multifaceted forms, we question: What music do we present in contemporary Victorian schools? Why do we make these choices? How do we present this music? This consideration, contextualized within the curricular framework, addresses issues of access, equity and community engagement. The making of meaning in shared cultural experiences contributes to the formation of identity which is a fluid and multilayered construct.


Bernadette Dubos takes a closer look at the main fungal diseases of grapevines to repond to one of the crucial needs of all winegrowers: a quick and efficient method for identifying a disease in order to prevent it from spreading.

 The presentation is simple and practical, each chapter dealing with a specific disease - powdery mildew, downy mildew, grey-rot, excoriose, black rot; and others - and constructed according to the same repeated plan:

 - recognizing symptoms and identifying the disease.

 - description of noxiousness

 - identification of fungus involved

 - definition of the fungus biological cycle (epidemiology) so as to pinpoint its vulnerable points

 - devising and implementing a strategy to effectively eradicate the pathogen

 This book is of great educational value: with a few key terms, principles and drawings, it sheds new light on and opens the reader's mind to the world and classification of parasitic fungi ; the abundant photographic color plates and diagrams help to visualize the characteristics of each disease.

 This comprehensive handbook, covering all aspects of fungal diseases, from identification to treatment implementation, should be the indispensable bible not only of all winegrowers and vineyard managers but also of œnologists, teachers and students.


Motivated by recent findings from cognitive neural science, we advocate the use of a dual-level model for concept representations: the embodied level consists of concept-oriented feature representations, and the symbolic level consists of concept graphs. Embodied concept representations are modality specific and exist in the form of feature vectors in a feature space. Symbolic concept representations, on the other hand, are amodal and language specific, and exist in the form of word / knowledge-graph embeddings in a concept / knowledge space. The human conceptual system comprises both embodied representations and symbolic representations, which typically interact to drive conceptual processing. As such, we further advocate the use of dual embodied-symbolic concept representations for deep learning. To demonstrate their usage and value, we discuss two important use cases: embodied-symbolic knowledge distillation for few-shot class incremental learning, and embodied-symbolic fused representation for image-text matching. Dual embodied-symbolic concept representations are the foundation for deep learning and symbolic AI integration. We discuss two important examples of such integration: scene graph generation with knowledge graph bridging, and multimodal knowledge graphs.


This paper highlights the author's research into teaching leadership for productivity in the construction industry. The paper commences by synthesising the concept of leadership. Then case studies expounding increased productivity are examined to determine the nature and level of leadership. An analysis is made of the interrelationship between leadership and productivity. The paper then considers methods of teaching leadership. The conclusions stress that productivity can be increased through leadership and that leadership can be taught. This teaching process is seen to extend beyond case studies and games to particularised coaching of existing and potential leaders.


It has been pointed out that gaze alternation by infants, which is the behavior of alternately gazing at a caregiver and at particular objects, is related to the process of the development of intentional agency. Intentional agency is defined as acting with a desired goal and means. In this paper, we adopt a theoretical hypothesis that the infants understand others' intentions based on intentional agency, and we consider how to construct a computational model of intentional agency. We designed a model of an infant agent which acquires gaze alternation through interaction with caregivers based on a reflex behavior and an emotional behavior. First, the agent learns the visual orientation of gazing at a target in the center of the visual field as the reflex behavior. Based on the visual orientation, the agent learns to gaze in the same direction as the caregiver's focus. The learning is implemented with an association module which is serially connected with the visual orientation module. In the model, the agent associates the caregiver's focus with an object, and orients the agent's eye to gaze at the object. This behavior uses visual orientation as a means to attain the agent's goal of gazing at the same object. The internal states composed of goals and means are considered to be intentional agency. Second, we add two emotional states, ease and anxiety, to relate an emotional behavior to the serial architecture acquiring intentional agency. The agent looks back at the caregiver when the agent comes to the anxiety state. The emotional behavior provides opportunities of interaction with caregivers to the infant agent. Finally, we discuss how intentional agency functions as a basis of understanding others' intentions. Through this discussion, we propose that a nested structure of intentional agency between self and other is a primitive mechanism of understanding others' intentions and shared intentionality.


The availability of electricity supply in all areas of life has become a critical need. In the industrial arena, costs due to the loss of electrical power and resulting process interruption can usually be quantified into hard dollars. Many larger industrials, however, contain significant co-generation capability that produce both electricity and waste heat for steam production utilized in the plant processes. At any instant in time, the available generation may be able to supply the needs of the plant if islanded; at other times and conditions, a sizable portion of the plant load must be shed in order for the load to match the available generation. In all cases, the goal is to maintain as much of the plant process as possible during an external disturbance or island condition in order to minimize environmental impact, production loss, and potential equipment damage. This paper presents the design and implementation details of a control system that detects an island condition in an industrial facility, creates the island if needed, and executes a multi-tier load shed based on the load-generation balance that existed prior to the creation of the island. System operation in island mode and performance metrics obtained from dynamic tests are presented.


BACKGROUND AND AIM OF THE STUDY
Despite a dismal natural history of severe aortic stenosis (AS) in patients with symptoms, there is a high non-surgical rate. The study aim was to analyze in detail the decision-making process for aortic valve replacement (AVR) that follows the diagnosis of severe AS with Class I indications, in order to identify the barriers to surgery.

METHODS
A total of 187 consecutive patients (105 men, 82 women; mean age 74 +/- 14 years) with severe AS, defined as aortic valve area (AVA) <1.0 cm2, was evaluated. Detailed reviews were performed for patient symptoms, and actions by physicians. The sources and reasons for non-surgical management were analyzed.

RESULTS
The mean AVA was 0.72 +/- 0.19 cm2 and the left ventricular ejection fraction 54 +/- 21%. A Class I indication for AVR was present in 174 patients (93%), of whom 125 (72%) were referred for AVR, which was performed in 93 cases (53%). The reasons for no AVR (n = 81) were patient refusal in 29 cases (36%), comorbidities in 28 (35%), while in 19 patients (23%) the AS was considered as 'not severe', despite being categorized as severe by ACC/AHA guidelines. The predominant factors in making the non-surgical decision were the patient or family (36%), the cardiologist (33%), and the surgeon (21%).

CONCLUSION
Class I indications for AVR are present in most patients with severe AS referred for echocardiography to a tertiary care center. Despite a Class I indication, the non-surgical rate remains high and attributable to patient reluctance, comorbidities and physician reluctance to offer AVR. It is speculated that patient discussions of the dismal natural history of severe AS and the major benefit of AVR, preferably conducted within a specialized valve clinic set-up, may help to improve the surgical rates.


With the evolution of network threat, identifying threat from internal is getting more and more difficult. To detect malicious insiders, we move forward a step and propose a novel attribute classification insider threat detection method based on long short term memory recurrent neural networks (LSTM-RNNs). To achieve high detection rate, event aggregator, feature extractor, several attribute classifiers and anomaly calculator are seamlessly integrated into an end-to-end detection framework. Using the CERT insider threat dataset v6.2 and threat detection recall as our performance metric, experimental results validate that the proposed threat detection method greatly outperforms k-Nearest Neighbor, Isolation Forest, Support Vector Machine and Principal Component Analysis based threat detection methods.


A 100 days experiment was conducted to determine the effect of feeding blood meal (BM) as a replacement of fish meal (FM), as the main source of animal protein, on growth rate and economic performance of Nile tilapia in fertilized pond. Three isonitrogenous diets (35% crude protein) were formulated using either FM as the main source of animal protein (Diet 1); 50% replacement of FM with blood meal (Diet 2); or 100% replacement of FM with BM (Diet 3). Three hundred Nile tilapia fingerlings (12±3 g) were randomly distributed into three groups of four replicates of 25 fingerlings per cage. The groups were randomly assigned the 3 diets which were fed at 2% of their biomass at 10 am and 4 pm every day. Percentage daily weight gain (DWG), relative growth rate (RGR), specific growth rate (SGR), survival rate and feed utilisation efficiency were measured. Fish fed diet 1 were larger (50.69 g) (P < 0.05) than those fed diet 2 (48.47 g) and 3 (40.37 g). Replacement of FM with 50% and 100% BM reduced the incidence cost (45.55, 37.83 and 31.88, respectively). The profit index was highest with 100% (9.42) replacement of FM, compared to 50% (7.95) and 0% (6.69). Although replacing FM with BM was associated with reduced growth, the economic return was better (P < 0.05). Based on the present results, it was economical to use BM as a major protein source instead of FM in formulating fish feed.


PURPOSE OF REVIEW
To summarize recent developments in the diagnosis and management of patients with anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC).

RECENT FINDINGS
An updated edition of the Classification of Endocrine and Neuroendocrine Tumors was released by the World Health Organization (WHO), in which squamous cell carcinoma of the thyroid are now a subtype of ATC. Broader access to next generation sequencing has allowed better understanding of the molecular mechanisms driving ATC and improved prognostication. BRAF-targeted therapies revolutionized the treatment of advanced/metastatic BRAFV600E-mutated ATC, offering significant clinical benefit and allowing better locoregional control of disease through the neoadjuvant approach. However, inevitable development of resistance mechanisms represents a major challenge. Addition of immunotherapy to BRAF/MEK inhibition has shown very promising results and significant improvement in survival outcomes.

SUMMARY
Major advancements took place in the characterization and management of ATC in recent years, especially in patients with a BRAF V600E mutation. Still, no curative treatment is available, and options are limited once resistance to currently available BRAF-targeted therapies develops. Additionally, there is still a need for more effective treatments for patients without a BRAF mutation.


The focus of this paper is on crafting a new visual language for attribute grammars (AGs), and on the development of the associated programming environment. We present a solution for rapid development of VisualLISA editor using DEViL. DEViL uses traditional attribute grammars, to specify the language's syntax and semantics, extended by visual representations to be associated with grammar symbols. From these specifications a visual programming environment is automatically generated. In our case, the environment allows us to edit a visual description of an AG that is automatically translated into textual notations, including an XML-based representation for attribute grammars (XAGra), and is intended to be helpful for beginners and rapid development of small AGs. XAGra allows us to use VisualLISA with other compiler-compiler tools.


This dissertation examines the intersection of theatre and society of post-Emergency Ireland through a methodological assessment of social, performative and archival memory. It identifies a group of new Irish plays and practitioners of the period which have been neglected within Irish theatre historiography and foregrounds their importance to the critical understanding of modern Irish theatre in performance and production. These works challenged the boundaries and authorities of both traditional Irish society and also theatre production. Key figures addressed include John Murphy, Carolyn Swift, J.P. Donleavy, Phyllis Ryan, Mary Manning, Edna O'Brien and Hugh Leonard.

Through theoretical examination of newly released and digitised archival sources and evidence, such as the Abbey Theatre Digital Archive and theatre collections of NUI Galway, the Pike Theatre papers of Trinity College Dublin, the Brian Friel papers, among others at the National Library of Ireland, Dublin, the evidence assessed constitutes an alternative dramatic narrative. Privately held papers, such as of J.P. Donleavy and of Carolyn Swift, expand our knowledge of central events and practitioners which cumulatively account for a recovery of modern Irish theatre and performance and of its archival memory.

By drawing on theorists in interdisciplinary fields, traversing debates of sociology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, memory studies, and theatre and performance studies, this dissertation address the dichotomy between memory and absence and examines reasons as to why and how these works were excluded from wider theatrical historical narratives. The plays and practitioners here studied questioned and documented a movement towards establishing a radical and modern dramatic expression of Ireland.%%%%2021-09-26


Software effort modeling is one of the fields in which machine learning techniques have proved effective. In this paper, attempt has been made to establish a relation between program development time with respect to its dependence on various program and personnel attributes. A neural network model has been developed to predict the development time of various software programs. The model is a three layer feed forward network with 17 neurons in the hidden layer. The model has 5 inputs and 1 output.


BACKGROUND
Coffee (Coffea arabica L.) is one of the main commodities produced in Brazil. Insecticides like the (systemic) neonicotinoid thiamethoxam are widely used to suppress pest populations during coffee production, in particular the Neotropical leaf miner (Leucoptera coffeella Guérin-Mèneville & Perrottet, 1842) (Lepidoptera: Lyonetiidae). In addition to its efficacy against this pest species, thiamethoxam is also thought to be a bioactivator of plant metabolism, but not yet tested for such activity. Thus, the objectives of the present study were (1) to assess the concentration-response effects of thiamethoxam on the vegetative vigor of coffee seedlings (C. arabica "Catuaí 144" cultivar) at different concentrations (2, 20, 40, 80 and 200 mg active ingredient (a.i.)/Kg) applied via soil drenching; and (2) to evaluate if the plant response interferes with the effectiveness of thiamethoxam in controlling leaf miner populations. The morphophysiological traits of the coffee seedlings were evaluated 20, 40, 60 and 80 days after application, and leaf miner infestations were recorded starting 20 days after the insecticide application with the releasing of adults, and every 20 days afterwards.

RESULTS
The results indicated that thiamethoxam has a deleterious effect on the morphophysiological traits of the plants compromising their development with increase in concentrations. However, leaf area exhibited a different pattern with a peak at 50 mg a.i./Kg consistent with thiamethoxam-induced hormesis (i.e., biphasic response with stimulatory effect at sublethal range of a toxic substance at the higher concentration). Nonetheless, such bioactivator effect did not affect thiamethoxan effectiveness against the leaf miner even at the lowest concentration tested.

CONCLUSION
Thiamethoxan exhibited bioactivation effect on leaf at low concentration, but without compromising efficacy against leaf miner populations. Therefore, its proposed metabolism-boosting properties may encourage the unnecessary use of this insecticide, potentially leading to higher selection for insecticide resistance and an eventual decline in its effectiveness against the Neotropical leaf miner. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.


Xanthones are secondary metabolites which have drawn considerable interest over the last decades due to their antimicrobial properties, among others. A great number of this kind of compounds has been therefore reported, but there is a limited amount of studies on screening for biological activity. Thus, as part of our research on antimicrobial agents of natural origin, a set of 272 xanthones were submitted to molecular docking (MD) calculations with a group of seven fungal and two viral enzymes. The results indicated that prenylated xanthones are important hits for inhibition of the analyzed enzymes. The MD scores were also analyzed by multivariate statistics. Important structural details were found to be crucial for the inhibition of the tested enzymes by the xanthones. In addition, the classification of active xanthones can be achieved by statistical analysis on molecular docking scores by an affinity-antifungal activity relationship approach. The obtained results therefore are a suitable starting point for the development of antifungal and antiviral agents based on xanthones.


: The author presents his priority of the polar concept in leprosy, and briefly reviews what he calls the history of an idea. The polar concept was first presented in February-May 1938, and was to receive full recognition from the Havana's Committee on Nomeclature and published in the Annals of the 5th International Congress of Leprosy (April 1948). In recent years many points brought by immunopathology focused the humoral immunity at the level of the immuno-negative L pole, in clear-cut opposition to the cell-mediated immunity present in the immuno-positif T pole. Polar concept thus receiving a remarkable physio-pathological support to the views once expressed by the author.


Acquired von Willebrand (AvWD) disease is a relatively rare bleeding disorder and since the initial description, fewer than 300 cases of AvWD have been reported. The most frequently observed association is with dysproteinemias such as monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) and plasma cell proliferative disorders such as Waldenstroem macroglobulinemia and multiple myeloma. Other hematological diseases associated with AvWD have been reported including lymphoproliferative and myeloproliferative disorders. We report the case of a 59 year old male patient with an AvWD associated with a chronic lymphocytic leukemia. In November 2000 this patient was diagnosed with a B cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Because of an initial Binet-Stage A no specific therapy was initiated. In October 2003 the CLL progressed to Binet-Stage B and molecular examinations revealed an unfavorable risk profile with a 11q22.3-q23.1 deletion and an unmutated IgVH gene status. Because of the presence of an HLA-identical brother the patient was enrolled into a pilot study of allogeneic stem cell transplantation following conditioning with fludarabine and cyclophosphamid in patients with high-risk chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Four cycles of fludarabine and cyclophosphamide were given prior to allogeneic stem cell transplantation and induced a partial remission. Since 2000 the patient reported a new clinical bleeding tendency, presenting mainly as frequent epistaxis. Further laboratory investigations showed a prolonged activated partial thromboplastin time (50 sec.) and a reduced plasma von Willebrand factor (vWF) antigen and vWF activity of 6% and 2%, respectively. This was accompanied by a reduced Factor VIII activity of 14% (factor IX-, XI-, XII- activity > 100%, respectively; lupus anticoagulant assay negative; immunofixation negativ). A vWF multimer analysis showed selective decrease in the high-molecular-weight multimers as seen in type II congenital vWD. The reduced intensity conditioning (RIC) regimens consisted the following combination: Fludarabine 30mg/m² /d (=150mg/m² total dose) and Cyclophosphamide 500mg/m² /d (=2500mg/m² total dose) (day -7 through day -3), GVHD prophylaxis with Cyclosporin A (CsA) and mycophenolate mofetil (MMF). A therapeutic trial of desmopressin (DDAVP) was insufficient and therefore a continuous infusion of the factor VIII/vWF concentrate (Haemate® P; Aventis Behring) was administered from the start of conditioning until platelet recovery. Under this regimen no bleeding complication was observed, neither spontaneously nor during intensive procedures. In accordance with previous reports of replacement therapy in AvWD we observed a shortened half-life of the vWF. On day 30 after allogenic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation we observed for the first time a normalization of the activated partial thromboplastin time followed by a gradual increase of the vWF antigen and activity. On day 60 we were able to document the normalization of both the vWF antigen and activity and the vWF multimer analysis. This nomalisation was coincident with the establishment of a complete donor chimerism for the first time. We therefore believe that this case shows a form of AvWD associated with chronic lymphocytic leukemia and its reversal by treatment of the underlying disease by allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.


A framework for delivery of Internet content includes a subscriber server network; and at least one domain name server constructed and adapted to provide policy-based domain name service, wherein, in response to a request to resolve a hostname, the domain name server resolves the hostname to at least one address corresponding a server in the subscriber server network based on at least one policy consideration. The framework may include a content delivery network, distinct from the subscriber server network, wherein, in response to a request to resolve a hostname, the domain name server provides at least one addresses of a server in the content delivery network based at least on the location of the requestor and other policy considerations. An address returned by the domain name server is selected based on one or more of: (a) geographic policies; (b) load share policies; (c) overflow policies; and (d) network aware policies.


Background: Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), ulcerative colitis (UC), and Crohn's disease (CD), represent systematic chronic conditions with a deficient intestinal absorption. We first attempt to investigate the serum bile acids (sBAs) profile in a large cohort of IBD patients to evaluate changes under anti-TNF alpha treatment. Methods: Forty CD and 40 UC patients were enrolled and BAs were quantified by high-pressure liquid chromatography-electrospray-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-ES-MS/MS). Up to 15 different sBAs concentrations and clinical biomarkers where added to a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to discriminate IBD from healthy conditions and treatment. Results: PCA allowed a separation into two clusters within CD (biologic-free patients and patients treated with anti-TNF alpha drugs and healthy subjects) but not UC. The first included CD. CD patients receiving anti-TNF alpha have an increase in total sBAs (4.11 ± 1.23 μM) compared to patients not exposed. Secondary BAs significantly increase after anti-TNF alpha treatment (1.54 ± 0.83 μM). Furthermore, multivariate analysis based on sBA concentration highlighted a different qualitative sBAs profile for UC and CD patients treated with conventional therapy. Conclusion: According to our results, anti-TNF alpha in CD restores the sBA profile by re-establishing the physiological levels. These findings indicate that, secondary BAs might serve as an indirect biomarker of the healing process.


There is a legal separation in Jordan between Sharia' (Islamic) Law and Civil Law. Both types of law come together to create criminal law that has a negative effect on women's rights. Laws in Jordan are evolving in the right direction but are not going far enough to protect women from violence. This study explores the issues of violence against women in Jordan through a study the Jordanian legal system and the experience of women who suffer violence. The working of the Jordanian justice system is presented by analysing the responses of state and non-state institutions dealing with violence against women. Included in the research is an analysis of feminist concerns with the law and the position of women in society. My concern is with the way in which women's inferior position impacts on their experience of violence and their ability to obtain redress and access protection. The methods used to complete this study included qualitative data collections such as field observations, and semi-structured participant interviews. It also extended to archival work in which I studied official reports and public policies on VAW. My study attempts to explain the structure of gender relations and women's experiences of violence in the context of Jordanian society by using feminist theory. The empirical work conducted in Jordan considered the effectiveness of law in serving victims. Further analysis considers how the Jordanian socio-economic and legal environment influences women's decisions on whether to seek help. The research found that there is a need to introduce better-developed law accompanied by additional policy measures to affect an essential change in attitudes. This requires changing some laws and policy programmes to increase awareness of legal rights. Additionally, I will suggest that applying Islamic law to women's rights can also give women more freedom and provide them with additional opportunities to access protection. The research identified a need for coherence between Civil and Sharia' (Islamic) Law in developing civil and criminal remedies which would align Jordan's domestic law to its international obligations.


campaign system is precisely that of dependence upon a leader, that once a leader is chosen it is customary to acknowledge his right to conduct the type of campaign that befits his own style, and that the obsession with the way in which McCarthy conducted his campaign represents a need to rationalize failure. The good political worker limits his concern with such matters and goes out and rings doorbells. Since the authors argue for the importance of subjectivity in a theory of political action, it is only fair to agree with them and to contend that they strongly disagreed with Sen. McCarthy's tactics and felt that the McCarthyites should have rallied behind Hubert Humphrey, and that they are engaged in a hatchet job on all those whose responses differed. May I suggest that a psychological analysis of political behavior demands categories that carry no opprobrium, rather than an attempt, conscious or unconscious, to divide into devils and angels or healthy and sick. WILLIAM A. BAKER Loop College, City Colleges o) Chicago


An increasing number of papers have appeared in recent years on decoherence in quantum gravity at the Planck energy. We discuss the meaning of decoherence in quantum gravity starting from the common notion that quantum gravity is a theory for the microscopic structures of spacetime, and invoking some generic features of quantum decoherence from the open systems viewpoint. We dwell on a range of issues bearing on this process including the relation between statistical and quantum, noise from effective field theory, the meaning of stochasticity, the origin of non-unitarity and the nature of nonlocality in this and related contexts. To expound these issues we critique on two representative theories: One claims that decoherence in quantum gravity scale leads to the violation of CPT symmetry at sub-Planckian energy which is used to explain today's particle phenomenology. The other uses this process in place with the Brownian motion model to prove that spacetime foam behaves like a thermal bath. A companion paper will deal with intrinsic and fundamental decoherence which also bear on issues in classical and quantum gravity.


The rapid growth of web pages available on the Internet recently, searching relevant and up-to-date information has become a crucial issue. Information retrieval is one of the most crucial components in search engines and their optimization would have a great effect on improving the searching efficiency due to dynamic nature of web it becomes harder to find relevant and recent information. That's why more and more people begin to use focused crawler to get information in their special fields today. Conventional search engines use heuristics to determine which web pages are the best match for a given keyword. Earlier results are obtained from a database that is located at their local server to provide fast searching. However, to search for the relevant and related information needed is still difficult and tedious. This paper presents a model of hybrid Genetic Algorithm -Particle Swarm Optimization (HGAPSO) for Web Information Retrieval. Here HGAPSO expands the keywords to produce the new keywords that are related to the user search.


Purpose
This study has dealt with the gap in the literature, by probing the influence of innovation capability on business performance. This paper aims to test the moderation role of technological turbulence (TT) and market turbulence (MT) on the relationship between innovation capability (IC) and business performance (BP).

Design/methodology/approach
The study used a quantitative survey and a sample size of 579 departmental heads. Branch managers and permanent staff from the Greater Accra, Ashanti and Western Region in the Ghana telecommunication sector. The obtained data was analysed through the STATA 15.0 and AMOS statistical software package.

Findings
The empirical results from multiple linear regressions revealed that product/service innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation and administrative innovation had positive effects on business performance. The outcome of the moderation analysis further shown that technological turbulence positively moderates the relationship that existed between the various constructs of innovation capability and business performance indicating that technological turbulence significantly strengthens the relationship between these variables. On the contrary, market turbulence significantly weakens the relationship between the various innovation capability constructs and business performance.

Research limitations/implications
Although this research has made significant contributions to both theory and practice, there are certainly some limitations and future research directions that need to be considered to appropriately position the study findings. Firstly, because of the limited sample size (579), further testing of these constructs needs to be carried out in future research using alternative data. Related to this, it would be prudent if the instruments and models developed in this research were tested in different industry contexts. Also, because the Ghana telecommunication sector is made up of foreign companies, comparative research could be conducted to compare the IC and performance of Ghana and the other countries where these companies operate. Indeed, analyses of IC and BP associated with the same companies in different countries may prove to be very beneficial in the global context. Secondly, this research used only TT and MT to test the moderating effect of ET on the association of IC with BP. Future research can include competition intensity which may change or confirm the outcome of these studies. Thirdly, only qualitative data were used for the measurement of IC and the level of BP. Therefore, future research could use quantitative or both qualitative and quantitative data to confirm if there will be significant differences in the results obtained.

Practical implications
Literature has examined the moderation effect of ET on different variables and relationships in different organizational settings. This study has tried to analyse the moderating effect of ET on the relationship of IC with BP. The outcomes of this study are similar to the previous research studies mentioned above, however, limited studies have been conducted on IC and its relationship with BP in the context of ET especially in the most vibrant sector of Ghana's economy. These findings are very innovative and contribute enormously to literature and knowledge by indicating which moderating ET positively and significantly strengthens and the type which weakens the existing relationship between IC and BP within the Ghanaian telecommunication sector which no researcher has conducted. These findings will go a long way by aiding the players in this sector to tauten their IC wings to achieve resilient performance around the globe.

Social implications
This will also contribute to the growth of Ghana's economy as sources of revenue and employment. Additionally, the results obtained from this study will prompt managers to make more informed and effective decisions regarding innovation activities and the environments in which they operate.

Originality/value
This paper adds knowledge and literature to the existing ones. It is a new development in the research field of Ghana. This is the first journal this study has been submitted.


Mid-Pliocene sediments from Ocean Drilling Program Hole 964A (Ionian Basin) and from Punta Piccola outcrop (Sicily, Italy) consist of light-colored carbonate-rich marls (decimeter to meter thick) alternating with dark-colored, carbonate-poor, organic matter‐rich beds (1‐25 cm thick). These sediments show cyclic variations in their mineralogical content, especially in the clay mineral relative percentages. Palygorskite and kaolinite are abundant in carbonated intervals, whereas smectite and chlorite dominate in dark ones. As palygorskite is known to originate from Africa, through wind transportation, we interpret these cyclic variations to be a result of the alternation of dry periods, with dominant eolian sedimentary input from the south , and humid periods, with dominant fluvial supply.


A model for the energy-loss function of a medium that is based on optical data ( approximately zero momentum transfer) and a quadratic extension into the momentum-transfer plane is used to evaluate the stopping power of the medium for protons and antiprotons. Energies less than approximately 40 MeV are considered for which radiative energy losses and density-effect corrections are negligible. 'Higher-order' corrections to the stopping power proportional to the incident particle charge to the third power, Barkas effect, and to the fourth power, Bloch correction, are included. Calculations are presented for aluminium, carbon, copper and polystyrene. Comparisons with experimental data indicate that the optical-data model, plus higher-order corrections, provides an excellent description of energy loss for proton energies from approximately 100 keV to several tens of MeV.


Philippe Boula de Mareüil, Albert Rilliard, Fanny Ivent, Varvara Kozhevina LIMSI-CNRS, Orsay, França __________________________________________________________________________ Abstract In the south of France, the French language has developed in contact with Occitan in Provence and Languedoc, in contact with Catalan in Roussillon. This study reports on a first analysis of data collected in these regions, during a field survey carried out among speakers of Occitan and Catalan, in addition to French. In particular, we compared the prosody of yes/no questions ending in a word stressed on the penultimate syllable (e.g caserna 'barracks' in Occitan or Catalan, caserne with a pronounced final schwa in southern French). On the last two syllables of questions, it turns out that the rising-rising pitch pattern is the most common and, according to a perception experiment using prosody modification/resynthesis, that it is preferred to a falling-rising pattern by southern French listeners (without significant differences between Provence and Languedoc). A falling-rising pattern was also observed in Roussillon, possibly resulting from a prosodic transfer from Catalan to French. It was not associated with that region by southern French listeners who took part in a second perceptual experiment. Yet, the intonation patterns found may have different functions: the rising-rising pattern, especially, is most often interpreted as a confirmation query.


Significance Inherited mutations in the tumor suppressor genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 predispose to very high risks of breast and ovarian cancer. For carriers of these mutations, risk-reducing surgery significantly reduces morbidity and mortality. General population screening for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations in young adult women could be feasible if accurate estimates of cancer risk for mutation carriers could be obtained. We determined that risks of breast and ovarian cancer for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers ascertained from the general population are as high as for mutation carriers ascertained through personal or family history of cancer. General screening of BRCA1 and BRCA2 would identify many carriers who are currently not evaluated and could serve as a model for population screening for genetic predisposition to cancer. In the Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) population of Israel, 11% of breast cancer and 40% of ovarian cancer are due to three inherited founder mutations in the cancer predisposition genes BRCA1 and BRCA2. For carriers of these mutations, risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy significantly reduces morbidity and mortality. Population screening for these mutations among AJ women may be justifiable if accurate estimates of cancer risk for mutation carriers can be obtained. We therefore undertook to determine risks of breast and ovarian cancer for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers ascertained irrespective of personal or family history of cancer. Families harboring mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 were ascertained by identifying mutation carriers among healthy AJ males recruited from health screening centers and outpatient clinics. Female relatives of the carriers were then enrolled and genotyped. Among the female relatives with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations, cumulative risk of developing either breast or ovarian cancer by age 60 and 80, respectively, were 0.60 (± 0.07) and 0.83 (± 0.07) for BRCA1 carriers and 0.33 (± 0.09) and 0.76 (± 0.13) for BRCA2 carriers. Risks were higher in recent vs. earlier birth cohorts (P = 0.006). High cancer risks in BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation carriers identified through healthy males provide an evidence base for initiating a general screening program in the AJ population. General screening would identify many carriers who are not evaluated by genetic testing based on family history criteria. Such a program could serve as a model to investigate implementation and outcomes of population screening for genetic predisposition to cancer in other populations.


Plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum is a single cell visible by unaided eye, which spans sources of nutrients with its protoplasmic network. In a very simple experimental setup we recorded electric potential of the propagating plasmodium. We discovered a complex interplay of short range oscillatory behavior combined with long range, low frequency oscillations which serve to communicate information between different parts of the plasmodium. The plasmodium's response to changing environmental conditions forms basis patterns of electric activity, which are unique indicators of the following events: plasmodium occupies a site, plasmodium functions normally, plasmodium becomes "agitated" due to drying substrate, plasmodium departs a site, and plasmodium forms sclerotium. Using a collective particle approximation of Physarum polycephalum we found matching correlates of electrical potential in computational simulations by measuring local population flux at the node positions, generating trains of high and low frequency oscillatory behavior. Motifs present in these measurements matched the response "grammar" of the plasmodium when encountering new nodes, simulated consumption of nutrients, exposure to simulated hazardous illumination and sclerotium formation. The distributed computation of the particle collective was able to calculate beneficial network structures and sclerotium position by shifting the active growth zone of the simulated plasmodium. The results show future promise for the non-invasive study of the complex dynamical behavior within — and health status of — living systems.


There is something special about teaching children. Jayne Moon's academic rigour and classroom experience inform every page of this book - but what shines through is a sense of the privilege it is to participate in someone's learning at this age in their lives. This is a practical handbook with lots of teaching suggestions - but it is also a source of inspiration. Children Learning English was highly commended in the Duke of Edinburgh English Language Competition in 2000.


I number myself among those who were disappointed with the negative treatment given by The Economist, in a special supplement in a section labeled "Capitalism and Ethics" (January 20, 2005), to the "good company" theme that is the focus of this conference. I happened to be teaching a course on Corporate Social Responsibility when that unexpected but not unwelcome challenge to what I was doing appeared in the pages of The Economist, a journal that I respect and admire. It was unexpected because I judged both the tone and the content of the critique to fall short of The Economist's normally high standards. It was not, however, unwelcome because I was able to introduce the article for classroom discussion with my Loyola MBA students that semester. My students were MBA "fellows"—mid-level, full-time managers with business experience, who were, in terms of executive responsibility, a cut below the Executive MBA level, but more experienced in the business world than the typical full-time MBA student.


Abstract 1427 Introduction: Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) is a syndrome characterized by thrombocytopenia and microangiopathic hemolytic anemia (MAHA) without an alternative explanation, caused by systemic platelet thrombi. Although TTP may be secondary to underlying diseases or drugs, it is often idiopathic. The latter is associated with severe deficiency (defined as ≤10% activity) of the plasma protease ADAMTS13. Low ADAMTS13 is caused by autoantibodies and allows for the accumulation of unusually large multimers of von Willebrand factor in the circulation, which causes spontaneous platelet aggregates and microvascular thrombosis. Therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE) decreases TTP mortality from 90% to 10%. Unfortunately, approximately 30% of treated patients will experience a relapse and require TPE again. The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Hospital is a referral center for TTP patients from throughout the state. The Oklahoma TTP-Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS) Registry is a population-based inception cohort of all consecutive patients treated for TTP in central-western Oklahoma since 1989. The aim of this collaboration between the two centers was to characterize the first symptoms experienced by patients with idiopathic TTP preceding their first episode and the timing of these symptoms in relation to the diagnosis (defined as the day TPE was started). Methods: We conducted a retrospective chart review of patients seen at the two centers from January 1, 2007 to June 30, 2010. Using apheresis and electronic medical records, we completed a data collection form with demographic information, clinical presentation, pre-existing risk factors, and clinical course. Results: At UAB, 31 patients were treated for idiopathic TTP; 26 had their first episode during the study window and were included in the analysis. At Oklahoma, 28 patients were identified and 23 fulfilled criteria for inclusion. Of the combined 49 patients, 35 (71%) were female and 14 (29%) were male (gender distribution almost identical between the two centers). The average age of the group was 46 years old (median: 44). At UAB, most patients were African-Americans (77%), followed by Caucasians (19%) and Asians (4%). In Oklahoma, 74% of patients were Caucasian, 18% were African-Americans, and 4% each were American-Indian or Other. These 49 patients reported 27 different first symptoms, with the most common in order of frequency being: abdominal pain (n = 9; 18%), nausea (n = 5; 10%), headache (n = 4; 8%), vomiting (n = 4; 8%), severe neurologic symptoms such as coma, seizures, aphasia (n = 3; 6%), and weakness (n = 3; 6%). Overall, 20 patients (41%) initially noted neurologic symptoms, 13 patients (26.5%) localized their symptoms to the gastrointestinal tract, and 5 patients (10%) reported hematologic symptoms such as mucocutaneous bleeding or signs of hemolysis. The median time to treatment from the onset of symptoms was 5 days (range: 0–132 days), while 82% of patients reported symptoms for 10 days or less. Of 45 patients in whom ADAMTS13 activity was measured, the median result was 4% (range: 4–100%), and 34 of them (75.5%) had an activity of ≤10%, which defines severe deficiency. Two patients (4%) died and the other 47 had resolution of their hematologic abnormalities. Conclusions: Our data confirm the heterogeneity of presentation and nonspecific nature of signs and symptoms of TTP. Thus, physician education and vigilance is necessary to suspect TTP and refer patients for TPE. While many patients were likely to have TTP for several days prior to the diagnosis, TPE must begin promptly once the findings of thrombocytopenia and microangiopathic hemolytic anemia without an alternative diagnosis are noted, in order to avoid a fatal outcome. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


The regulatory radar has long been attuned to the challenges and opportunities of technological development. New technologies and their high-tech derivatives present regulators with a host of difficult, though not always unfamiliar, questions. The first of these usually centres on whether to regulate, proceeding to questions of how regulation ought to develop if intervention of some kind is deemed appropriate.


In this article, based on a systematic analysis of modern methods for analyzing the risk of emergency situations, methods are proposed for assessing the socio-economic significance of measures aimed at improving the protection of the population and territories from emergencies. New approaches to the selection of measures aimed at improving the protection of the population and territories from emergency situations using target indicators for assessing their effectiveness are considered.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to model blockchain-based smart contracts specifically for the insurance industry. The authors introduce the concept of smart contracts and further discuss the implementation of a decentralized insurance marketplace, namely Etherisc, using smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain platform.

Design/methodology/approach
The authors employ three methods in this paper. The first one is a design illustration of a live application, namely, Etherisc. The second one is an economic model using demand–supply and equilibrium economics. The third one is an illustration using principal–agent modeling using constrained optimization.

Findings
The findings illustrate the following: in the design discussion, the authors demonstrate the architecture of a live Ethereum-based smart contract system. In the economic model, the authors illustrate how decentralized smart contract systems can increase social welfare by shifting demand and supply by reducing transactional costs. In the principal–agent model, the authors show how both the principal and agent are positively benefited by various mechanisms.

Originality/value
The paper is an original contribution and can be used as a reference model to study insurance or other similar marketplaces and the underlying economic transformations happening therein.