This thesis investigates the possibility of using neural networks to determine the body location of medical ultrasound images. Neural networks were trained on several datasets of both synthetic and real ultrasound images, containing labels with the location of each image. Next, the networks predicted the location of unseen images, and the accuracy was measured. The first dataset consisted of images from three typical locations for ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia, where a classification accuracy of 85.3% was achieved. The second and third datasets consisted of synthetic ultrasound images, and neural networks were trained to predict coordinates for the images, using regression instead of classification. The networks predicted the coordinates with small errors, both in one and two dimensions. The fourth dataset consisted of real ultrasound recordings which covered a large area of the lower arm of nine test persons. Neural networks were trained to predict the 2-dimensional coordinates of the images by regression. In the best case, the average error of prediction was 1.66 cm. The final dataset consisted of images of the lower spine of three test persons. A neural network was trained to classify the images as sacrum, vertebra or intervertebral disc, and an average classification accuracy of 66.9% was achieved. The thesis shows that neural networks can be trained to predict locations of ultrasound images, both by classification and by regression, but more training data and further research is needed to increase the accuracy of the predictions. In addition, the thesis shows that pre-training on natural photographs can be applied to the ultrasound domain to help increase the accuracy of the neural networks.


This thesis investigates online communication in English on European university museums' websites. It explores the extent to which the production of institutional web texts in English is informed by an audience-oriented approach, and more specifically by the awareness of the need to address readers with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
A combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches provides the methodological framework for this research. First, a survey of English-version websites of European university museums is carried out to assess the extent to which the latter produce content in English on their websites. A corpus including a selection of web pages in English from European university museums' websites is analysed by focusing on two aspects: the extent to which texts comply with web writing guidelines, and the extent to which they establish a relationship with their intended readers through stance and engagement features. Finally, semi-structured interviews with staff from a subset of museums are conducted to shed light on the creation of museum web contents in English.
The results of the survey suggest that university museums in Europe tend to provide an English-version website. The text analysis shows that university museums in the UK seem to be more committed to an audience-oriented approach to communication than those in other countries. Finally, insights from the interviews reveal that the production of texts in English does not seem to be informed by the idea of a specific intended audience, and even less so a linguistically diverse audience.
These results contribute to current research on the conceptualisation of museum audiences, the processes underpinning museum communication and the use of English as an international language on institutional websites. The research stresses the need for an interdisciplinary exchange between museum and heritage studies on the one hand and linguistics and intercultural studies on the other hand.


Partly due to lack of test problems, the impact of the Pareto set (PS) shapes on the performance of evolutionary algorithms has not yet attracted much attention. This paper introduces a general class of continuous multiobjective optimization test instances with arbitrary prescribed PS shapes, which could be used for studying the ability of multiobjective evolutionary algorithms for dealing with complicated PS shapes. It also proposes a new version of MOEA/D based on differential evolution (DE), i.e., MOEA/D-DE, and compares the proposed algorithm with NSGA-II with the same reproduction operators on the test instances introduced in this paper. The experimental results indicate that MOEA/D could significantly outperform NSGA-II on these test instances. It suggests that decomposition based multiobjective evolutionary algorithms are very promising in dealing with complicated PS shapes.


In 1996 an eradication operation against two species of rats (Rattus norvegicus and R. exulans was conducted on Kapiti Island (1965 ha) and its small offshore islands. Trials with non-toxic baits had been carried out to help determine the risks to non-target species, and research was undertaken to collect baseline data for measuring the response of vegetation, invertebrates, reptiles and birds to the removal of rats. Talon 7-20 bait (containing 0.002% brodifacoum) was distributed over Kapiti Island in September and October by helicopter and by hand, while bait stations were used on the offshore islands. Impacts on birds and reef fish were investigated. Although there were non-target bird deaths as a result of the poisoning operation, posteradication monitoring indicated that the toxin had no deleterious effect on breeding and most losses would be rapidly made up by recruitment of new individuals into the breeding population. There was no evidence that reef fish were negatively affected. The successful removal of rats has apparently resulted in a significantly improved survival rate for stitchbirds (Notiomystis cincta) and saddlebacks (Philesturnus carunculatus). Benefits to other taxa are expected and will be documented as follow-up studies are completed. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Mongolia has about 3 times the land area of France, but less than 1% of France's population, 1 inhabitant per sq. km, and the lowest population density in the world. About half of the population is nomadic or semi-nomadic and lives in rural areas. This far-flung population over difficult terrain makes it difficult to find populations and provide children with the vaccinations they require. This inherent difficulty of carrying vaccines to the country's scattered mobile populations has been made even difficult in the current economic crisis being experienced as the country rids itself of a central planning system. Mongolia has an inadequate supply of logistic equipment, such as cars. Given Mongolia's sparse population and difficult terrain, the country's greatest need with regard to immunization is combination vaccines. Mongolia also needs to expand its laboratory capacity to provide the microbiological confirmation of atypical cases of infection and to conduct microbiological surveillance of wild poliovirus and serologic surveillance of the population's immune status. However, despite these many formidable obstacles, Mongolia has achieved 80-90% overall coverage with the vaccines of the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI), and only 4 cases of poliomyelitis, 4 cases of pertussis, and 2 cases of tetanus have been reported since 1987. Furthermore, the number of diphtheria cases dropped to zero in 1992, and hepatitis B vaccine has been provided together with the 6 EPI vaccines since 1991.


We present an algorithm to automatically extract skeletons for branched volumes by shape decomposition. First, a region growing strategy is adopted based on a distance transformation to decompose a volume into several meaningful components with simple topological structures. Then, the skeleton of each component is individually extracted. Finally, the skeletons of all the components are integrated and a structural skeleton of the volume data is obtained, where the structural skeleton is topologically equivalent to the volume. The contributions of the algorithm are: the elimination of the influence of different branches and the accurate skeleton extraction with topological structure of the model due to exact decomposition. Experiments show that this algorithm is applicable to shapes with complex topology.


A new quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (QVCO) topology is proposed where the back-gates of the core transistors are used as coupling terminals. The use of back-gates reduces the power dissipation and removes the additional noise contributions compare to the conventional coupling transistor based topology. The advantages of the proposed QVCO topology in comparison with prior works are exploited based on simulation. A QVCO based on the proposed topology with additional design ideas has been implemented using a 0.18-/spl mu/m triple-well technology for 1 GHz-band operation, and measurement shows the phase noise of -120 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset with output power of 2.5 dBm, while dissipating only 3 mA for the whole QVCO from 1.8-V supply.


This study aims at analyzing the impact of the European integration process on Kurdish nationalism in Turkey by focusing on the Democratic Society Party (Demokratik Toplum Partisi, DTP) as the major pro-Kurdish political party in Turkey between 2005 and 2009. It argues that the Europeanization process in Turkey, which accelerated in the post-Helsinki period, has brought about some important consequences concerning the recognition and expression of Kurdish identity. The study examines Europe's impact on the DTP through analysis of party documents and interviews with party representatives, in order to investigate the meaning and use of the European integration process in the DTP's sub-state nationalist ideology. This analysis shows that, although the Europeanization process in Turkey has somewhat broadened opportunity structures for Kurdish sub-state nationalist politics, overall the EU's impact on the DTP's nationalist politics has remained indirect and limited.


Purpose: The article presents the factors and their interrelationships that influence the development of communication skills of future managers. The main goal of the article is to develop a model explaining the development of communicativeness. Design/Methodology/Approach: The research was conducted in 2014-2015 on a group of 593 students. The survey method was used, and the validated self-assessment questionnaire was the research tool. The Mann-Whitney-Wilocxon test and the Kruskal-Wallis test were used to analyze the factors influencing the level of managerial competences. To examine the relationship between the selected competences, selected multivariate statistical techniques such as regression analysis and cluster analysis using the Ward method were used. Findings: The presented model of multiple regression showed that the studied social competences are strongly and positively correlated with communicativeness. Practical Implications: Knowing the factors that influence the development of future managers' communication skills can lead to accelerated skills acquisition. On the other hand, the developed model of improving communicativeness shows the relationship between these factors. Originality/Value: The main value of the article is the developed statistical model that reflects the stages of development of managers' communicativeness.


Neonatal lupus erythematosus (NLE) is a rare autoimmune disorder associated with transplacental migration of maternal autoantibodies against SS-A (Ro) or SS-B (La) antigens that results in cardiac, hepatic, cutaneous, and hematologic manifestations. Although NLE-associated neutropenia is considered transient and benign, neutropenia caused by severe congenital neutropenia (SCN) is life-threatening. Diagnosing a complicated picture of neonatal neutropenia can be challenging because there are many overlapping features between the acquired and inherited etiologies. This article highlights this diagnostic challenge with a case of delayed diagnosis of SCN due to an initial diagnosis of concurrent NLE. Secondary to SCN refractory to granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, our patient underwent a matched sibling cord blood transplant. Posttransplant, the patient developed recurrence of NLE symptoms, representing the first case of maternally transferred autoantibodies causing symptoms in a cord blood recipient. This novel finding prompted a review of the standards for collecting, processing, and storing of cord blood donations. This article also discusses the importance of physician familiarity with the differences and similarities between publicly and privately banked cord blood donations to adequately counsel expectant parents.


The paper represents a distinctive attempt to trace the development of the preposition and the adverb 'on' as the initial and transposed categories. The study focuses on their evolution throughout 16 historical time spans – since 850 and up to the present time. The research is based on 7 954 Old English, 2 368 Middle English, 4 251 Early Modern English examples, which have been obtained from the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts and analyzed without applying any corpus software; 174 581 examples of Late Modern English from the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts, which have been processed by means of the Lancsbox software tool; and the statistical data on 7 118 454 examples of Present-Day English retrieved from the Corpus of Historical American English and the British National Corpus. The paper attests that 'on' is formed at the first stage (before 850) of the Old English period as the preposition and at the next stage (850–950) is transposed into the category of the adverb, which is characterized by a further slight increase in the statistics and stabilization of its correlation with the preposition 'on'. Correlation between the categories had remained stable up to the Early Modern English period, when the category of the adverb has started its sustainable growth, which is currently being observed in the English language. The paper proves that in Early Modern English the process of functional transposition is superseded by an utterly new stage of lexicalization which leads to formation of phrasal verbs.


Thank you for downloading economics learning and instruction. As you may know, people have look hundreds times for their chosen books like this economics learning and instruction, but end up in malicious downloads. Rather than enjoying a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they are facing with some infectious virus inside their computer. economics learning and instruction is available in our digital library an online access to it is set as public so you can get it instantly. Our books collection spans in multiple countries, allowing you to get the most less latency time to download any of our books like this one. Merely said, the economics learning and instruction is universally compatible with any devices to read.


We investigate nonlinear optical propagation of continuous-wave (CW) beams in bulk nematic liquid crystals. We thoroughly analyze the competing roles of reorientational and thermal nonlinearity with reference to self-focusing/defocusing and, eventually, the formation of nonlinear diffraction-free wavepackets, the so-called spatial optical solitons. To this extent we refer to dye-doped nematic liquid crystals in planar cells excited by a single CW beam in the highly nonlocal limit. To adjust the relative weight between the two nonlinear responses, we employ two distinct wavelengths, inside and outside the absorption band of the dye, respectively. Different concentrations of the dye are considered in order to enhance the thermal effect. The theoretical analysis is complemented by numerical simulations in the highly nonlocal approximation based on a semi-analytic approach. Theoretical results are finally compared to experimental results in the Nematic Liquid Crystals (NLC) 4-trans-4'-n-hexylcyclohexylisothiocyanatobenzene (6CHBT) doped with Sudan Blue dye.


From the 1960s onwards, the Old Red Sandstone of both borders of the Atlantic Ocean has acted as a test-bed for the development of new ideas on the interpretation of fluvial, lacustrine and aeolian sedimentary rocks, and the investigation of tectonically-active basins. Much of the earlier reconnaissance work is now being reviewed in the light of further detailed field study, along with new developments in the understanding of the biostratigraphy, palaeobiology, geochronology, pedogenesis and tectonics.

Three general papers review recent work on the stratigraphical and chronological analysis of the Late Silurian, Devonian and Early Carboniferous strata, and summarize present understanding of the tectonics of the basins. These are then followed by twenty-seven contributions covering new work in Eastern USA, Canada, Ireland, Britain, Norway, Greenland and Spitsbergen.


It is known that linear codes are sufficient to solve the multicast network coding problem when each out-edge of a network node carries its own specific function of the in-edges of the node, i.e. operating in "point-to-point-mode." Alternatively, in "broadcast-mode," a network has the property that for each node, every out-edge of the node carries the same function of the in-edges of the node. Only one transmission is required in order to send the same function on all of the out-edges of a node. The edge functions in broadcast-mode can vary from node to node and each edge can carry an arbitrary number of transmissions, with at most one per time unit. We prove that linear codes are sufficient, in terms of total number of transmissions, for multicast networks in broadcast-mode. That is, we show that for any broadcast-mode solution to a multicast network, there exists a linear broadcast-mode solution over some finite field which does not increase the total number of network transmissions


Abstract: This paper empirically tests the extent to which public universities in the United States are potentially mismanaged. The focus rests with university managerial employment decisions regarding the continuing substitution of less costly non-tenure track teaching faculty for tenured and tenure track faculty and the extent to which those decisions affect student graduation success. Panel data covering ten academic years, 2004-05 through 2013-14 are employed using ordinary least squares and stochastic frontier analysis specifications. The latter provides tests of the inefficiency effects of managerial employment decisions and academic year estimates of technical efficiency. In both cases, the results provide statistically strong evidence that tenured faculty lead to increased student graduation success while increases in non-tenured faculty have negative effects on student graduation rates. The stochastic results provide strong evidence of efficiency gains due to tenured faculty and increased inefficiency arising from non-tenure track faculty employment. While universities appear to have managed efficiency gains as a possible result of the Great Recession, those gains quickly evaporated in both 2012 and 2013. Separate estimates for research vs. lower level comprehensive universities, indicate that the former maintain greater operating efficiencies. Given that public universities are being subject to new funding models that tie funding to the production of student success rates, the continuing non-tenure track employment substitution suggests that universities are potentially mismanaged in generating funding support for faculty employment and student success.
Keywords: Tenure, non-tenure, faculty employment, stochastic frontier, university efficiency


26 patients with affective and schizoaffective psychoses either therapeutically resistant to lithium salts or with intolerance to them were treated. Control period of preventive therapy (lithium carbonate in average doses O.6-O.9 g daily) and experimental period (nifedipine, average doses 30-40 mg daily) were equal in duration, 2 years exactly. Preventive effect of nifedipine exceeded the same effect of lithium carbonate in 65.4% of patients. The total duration of affective attacks in the experimental period was reduced on 46.8% and their frequency-on 31.7% in comparison with the control period. A number of hospital admissions decreased (on 52.2%) with a simultaneous tendency to transition of a disease to a more light level (a number of attacks of cyclothymic level increased on 17.3%). The data gives ground for the perspectives of application of nifedipine in the cases of insufficient prophylactic effect or intolerance to lithium salts.


This study examines whether corporate tax planning and financial reporting of income taxes vary systematically with CEO tenure. Using a CEO-firm fixed effects design, we find that the GAAP effective tax rate (ETR) is higher in the early years of the CEOs' tenure and lowest in the last year of the CEOs' tenure. In contrast, we find no difference in the cash ETR over the CEO's tenure. These results suggest that the financial reporting of income taxes exhibits more variation over the CEO's tenure than the underlying corporate tax planning and are consistent with managers being cautious in the financial reporting of income taxes early in their tenure. Further analysis shows that CEOs achieve these financial reporting outcomes in part by designating earnings as permanently reinvested and by using discretion in the reserve for uncertain tax benefits. These findings should be of interest to compensation committees and boards of directors, responsible for incentivizing and evaluating CEOs.


Objective Despite the many benefits of paediatric Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy (OPAT) programmes, there are risks associated with delivering inpatient-level care outside of hospital. There is a paucity of evidence defining how best to mitigate these risks. We examined the impact of introducing a dedicated medical team to OPAT, to define the role of increased medical oversight in improving patient outcomes in this cohort. Design A prospective 24-month pre–post observational cohort study. Setting The Hospital in the Home (HiTH) programme at Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) for Children, Western Australia. Patients All OPAT admissions to HiTH, excluding haematology/oncology patients. Interventions PMH introduced a dedicated OPAT medical support team in July 2015 to improve adherence to best-practice guidelines for patient monitoring and review. Main outcome measures Duration of OPAT, adherence to monitoring guidelines, drug-related and line-related adverse events and readmission to hospital. Results There were a total of 502 OPAT episodes over 24 months, with 407 episodes included in analyses. Following the introduction of the OPAT medical team, adherence to monitoring guidelines improved (OR 4.90, 95% CI 2.48 to 9.66); significantly fewer patients required readmission to hospital (OR 0.45, 95% CI 0.24 to 0.86) and there was a significant reduction in the proportion of patients receiving prolonged (≥7 days) OPAT (OR 0.67, 95% CI 0.45 to 0.99). Conclusion The introduction of a formal medical team to HiTH demonstrated a positive clinical impact on OPAT patients' outcomes. These findings support the ongoing utility of medical governance in a nurse-led HiTH service.


Presented in this paper is an approach to fault diagnosis based on a unifying review of linear Gaussian models. The unifying review draws together different algorithms such as PCA, factor analysis, hidden Markov models, Gaussian mixture models and linear dynamical systems as simple variations of a single linear Gaussian model. The focus in this work is on PCA, factor analysis and linear dynamical systems in order to compare static and dynamic data models. One of the advantages of using a unified framework for these already well known models is the quantification of uncertainty, and the ability to evaluate the probability of a dataset given a model. To highlight the applicability of such an approach to a fault diagnosis application and to establish in some way its robustness to environmental variability, a set of data collected from the suspension system of a ground vehicle is used.


A decision model is presented that compares lighting systems for a plant growth scenario and chooses the most appropriate system from a given set of possible choices. The model utilizes a Multiple Attribute Utility Theory approach, and incorporates expert input and performance simulations to calculate a utility value for each lighting system being considered. The system with the highest utility is deemed the most appropriate system. The model was applied to a greenhouse scenario, and analyses were conducted to test the model's output for validity. Parameter variation indicates that the model performed as expected. Analysis of model output indicates that differences in utility among the candidate lighting systems were sufficiently large to give confidence that the model's order of selection was valid.


Heating water for domestic purpose is a simple and effective way of utilizing solar energy. Initial cost of solar water heating system is high. But we get zero green energy cost. This paper discuss improving the performance of a flat plate solar energy collector by changing the design parameters of the number of riser tubes and the arrangement of riser tubes in zig-zag pattern from the existing flat plat collector system. Experiments were conducted using copper tube in header and riser with different dimensions. The performance shows that the efficiency is 59.09% when increasing the number of riser tubes and its 62.90% in the zig-zag arrangement (Z- Configuration) of the riser tube. Now-a-days this system produces higher efficiency than the existing conventional flat plate collector.


Detecting outliers in high dimensional datasets is quite a difficult data mining task. Mining outliers in subspaces seems to be a promising solution, because outliers may be embedded in some interesting subspaces. Due to the existence of many irrelevant dimensions in high dimensional datasets, it is of great importance to eliminate the irrelevant or unimportant dimensions and identify outliers in interesting subspaces with strong correlation. Normally, the correlation among dimensions can be determined by traditional feature selection techniques and subspace-based clustering methods. The dimension-growth subspace clustering techniques find interesting subspaces in relatively lower possible dimension space, while dimension-growth approaches intend to find the maximum cliques in high dimensional datasets. This paper presents a novel approach by identifying outliers in correlated subspaces. The degree of correlation among dimensions is measured in terms of the mean squared residue. In doing so, we employ the frequent pattern algorithms to find the correlated subspaces. Based on the correlated subspaces obtained, outliers are distinguished from the projected subspaces by using classical outlier detection techniques. Empirical studies show that the proposed approach can identify outliers effectively in high dimensional datasets.


This paper reports a numerical method for modelling the elastic wave propagation in plates. The method is based on the partition of unity approach, in which the approximate spectral properties of the infinite dimensional system are embedded within the space of a conventional finite element method through a consistent technique of waveform enrichment. The technique is general, such that it can be applied to the Lagrangian family of finite elements with specific waveform enrichment schemes, depending on the dominant modes of wave propagation in the physical system. A four‐noded element for the Reissner–Mindlin plate is derived in this paper, which is free of shear locking. Such a locking‐free property is achieved by removing the transverse displacement degrees of freedom from the element nodal variables and by recovering the same through a line integral and a weak constraint in the frequency domain. As a result, the frequency‐dependent stiffness matrix and the mass matrix are obtained, which capture the higher frequency response with even coarse meshes, accurately. The steps involved in the numerical implementation of such element are discussed in details. Numerical studies on the performance of the proposed element are reported by considering a number of cases, which show very good accuracy and low computational cost. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


In the search for immunoreagents appropriate for the histopathologic diagnosis of malignant B-cell lymphomas in routinely processed paraffin sections, a new monoclonal antibody, Ki-B5, was generated using a high- grade B-cell lymphoma as the immunogene. Ki-B5 is a mouse IgG1/kappa that recognizes five protein fractions of about 84, 82, 55, 48, and 27 Kd after biosynthetic radiolabeling and immunoprecipitation. Protein fractions with the molecular weights of approximately 84 and 82 Kd were expressed on the cell surface and show that Ki-B5 is probably unrelated to CD45. It was possible through electron microscopy to visualize the membrane-bound portion of Ki-B5. Extensive immunohistologic studies on normal human tissue and various neoplasias demonstrated the high specificity of Ki-B5 to normal human B cells and a minor subgroup of plasma cells. Except for ML-2, which is a myelomonocytic human cell line, Ki-B5 exclusively recognized the B-cell lineage, including EB-3, BALL-1, and NALM-1. All carcinomas, sarcomas, and malignant melanomas tested with Ki-B5 were negative. Although normal granulocytes and monocytes were constantly negative, three of eight myelomonocytic leukemias coreacted with this antibody. Eight of the 57 T-cell lymphomas studied were positive to Ki-B5. Five were classified as lymphoblastic, two represented T8-CLL, and one was classified as immunoblastic T-cell lymphoma. Only 3 of 126 cases of B-cell lymphoma, including rare types not considered in the current classifications, were negative to Ki-B5. Plasmacytomas were also negative, except for one case. Irrespective of the cases of lymphoblastic lymphoma and plasmacytoma, Ki-B5 represents a new monoclonal antibody appropriate for the diagnosis and immunophenotyping of malignant lymphomas in routinely processed paraffin sections.


Morphogenesis of cell division was investigated in Diophrys scutum, D. oligothrix, and D. appendiculata utilizing both light microscopy of living and stained specimens and SEM of preserved specimens. The cortical morphogenetic pattern of Diophrys is similar to that of other members of the family Euplotidae. The opisthe oral primordium, which develops in a subsurface pouch, forms posterior to the parental buccal cavity. The proter inherits the parental adoral zone of membranelles (AZM) apparently unchanged. The endoral membrane forms to the right of the posterior end of the AZM in the proter, in association with the developing AZM in the opisthe. The paroral cirrus and membrane develop from a single streak that first appears along the right edge of the buccal cavity in the proter to the right of the developing buccal structures of the opisthe. Frontal and transverse cirri develop in both proter and opisthe from five separate cirral primordia that form to the right of the buccal cavity. Left marginal cirri do not develop in association with the corresponding parental structures. Kinetosomes formed within the opisthe oral primordium, or kinetosomes that were part of any parental ciliary structure, do not appear to become part of any developing paroral structures, frontal, transverse, or left marginal cirri. Speciation within the genus Diophrys and evolution of the family Euplotidae as they relate to the morphogenesis of cortical structure are discussed.


BACKGROUND
Identifying factors related to risky sexual behaviour may contribute to preventive and interventional approaches to reduce negative mental health outcomes among young women. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between psychological distress and risky sexual behaviours in females aged 16-25 years in Victoria, Australia.

METHODS
Data were extracted from the Young Female Health Initiative (YFHI), a study in which participants were recruited via advertisements on Facebook. Logistic regression was used to assess associations between psychological distress, as measured by the Kessler 10 (K10) Psychological Distress Scale, and risky sexual behaviours.

RESULTS
Data were available from 200 sexually active participants and 40 non-sexually active participants. We found that the K10 score was independently associated with sex while under the influence of alcohol or drugs (odds ratio: 1.7; 95% confidence intervals: 1.2, 2.7; P = 0.006).

DISCUSSION
Although data were collected from a small sample of young women, we found that those with underlying psychological distress may adopt risky sexual behaviours, especially if concomitantly drinking alcohol or taking drugs.


In the TMD approach, the average transverse momentum of the unpolarised TMD PDFs and FFs is crucial not only to reproduce unpolarised cross sections and hadron multiplicities, but also for the understanding of azimuthal and spin asymmetries. Information on these transverse momenta is nowadays obtained mainly by fitting multiplicities data for SIDIS, where the intrinsic motion in the initial parton distributions and in the hadronisation process are strongly correlated and difficult to estimate separately without ambiguities. In this contribution we discuss the consequences of this correlation effects on the predictions for the Sivers and Collins asymmetries measured in SIDIS and $e^+e^-$ annihilations, and under active investigation for Drell-Yan processes at RHIC and at CERN by the COMPASS experiment. We show that these effects may be relevant and can sensibly modify the size of the predicted asymmetries. Therefore, they must be taken into careful account when investigating other aspects of TMDs, like the evolution properties of the Sivers and Collins functions and the expected process dependence of the Sivers function.


Existing supervisors, as well as the new institutions that the Dodd-Frank Act created, collect and aggregate an unprecedented amount of commercially sensitive financial information. Although financial institutions and their supervisors are increasingly transparent in the post financial crisis era, some information that financial institutions provide regulators should be protected from disclosure. Untimely public disclosure of sensitive and competitive information- through FOIA requests, third-party subpoenas, or Congress- could undermine the goals of the Dodd-Frank Act by upsetting markets and making financial institutions reluctant to disclose data to the government voluntarily. The article argues that when it passed the Dodd-Frank Act, Congress, out of an understandable desire to promote transparency in the financial system, created an intolerable level of uncertainty as to whether information that regulators gather will be kept confidential. The article argues that regulators and Congress should act to strike a proper balance between transparency and confidentiality rather than allowing courts to determine the legally required level of disclosure in an unpredictable and ad hoc fashion.


It is well known that depression occurs more often in women than in men. It is the most commonly encountered mental health problem among women and ranks overall as one of the most important women's health problems. Researchers have studied depression a great deal, yet women's depression has rarely been the primary focus. The contexts of women's lives which might contribute to their depression are not often addressed by the mental health establishment, which tends to focus on biological factors. Situating Sadness sheds light on the influence of sociocultural factors, such as economic distress, child-bearing or child-care difficulties, or feelings of powerlessness which may play a significant role, and points to the importance of context for understanding women's depression. Situating Sadness draws on research in the United States and other parts of the world to look at depression through the eyes of women, exploring what being depressed is like in diverse social and cultural circumstances. It demonstrates that understanding depression requires close attention to the social context in which women become depressed.


Analytic philosophers are generally advised to steer clear of the substantive use of literary tropes whose 'semantic content outstrips their propositional content' (Rea, 2009: 6). But this poses a problem for analytic theologians whose primary texts are beset by such literary devices. Can such material be usefully marshalled, or should it be left to one side, to remain unemployed by analytic theologians? In The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture Yoram Hazony offers what I take to be the most convincing argument to date that the entire biblical narrative (literary tropes and all) ought both to be read as philosophy and that the philosophical content contained in the biblical narrative can be marshalled into non-narrative propositional arguments. In this paper I will address three areas of concern for his project, and by extension, what I take to be concerns for other analytic theologians who might follow his lead.


This is a concise book of 62 pages that attempts to give an informative and readable account of the history of Ceylon. This book is a series of articles that were published in the "Ceylon National Review" in 1906. The book has 2 maps of Ceylon (Ancient & Modern) and 2 lists of the dynasties of the Mahavamsa (BC 543 to AD 304) and the Culavamsa (AD 304 to AD 1037) and further from AD 1037 to 1815. The book has 6 illustrations.


AIM: The aim of this study was to evaluate the validity of Pauwels' classification of femoral neck fractures. METHOD: A study of literature was performed. RESULTS: It has never been proven that the inclination of the fracture plane has a prognostic relevance. A number of papers prove the contrary, there are no publications where Pauwels' classification has been used successfully in selecting treatment modalities. Pauwels' theory of fracture inclination angle has not been transferred into clinical practice. This discrepancy probably goes back to the fact that the angle cannot be determined preoperatively, that in the majority of femoral neck fractures the angle is within the range of 40 to 60 degrees, that the theoretical angle variations do practically not exist, and that the shearing forces are reduced to an unknown amount by friction resistance due to the uneven fracture plane. The mechanical laws of the pseudarthrosis of the femoral neck cannot be extrapolated to acute fractures. CONCLUSION: The theory of Pauwels has apparently no clinical relevance for the majority of acute fractures, except for the rare transcervical fractures, and should not be considered any longer as a classification of acute femoral neck fractures due to the lack of prognostic and therapeutic relevance.


Systems development methodologies continue to be a central area of research in software engineering. As the nature of applications and systems usage move in- creasingly towards open networked environments, not only are new methodologies required, but new ways for evaluating methodologies for these new environments are also required. The agent-oriented approach to software engineering introduces concepts such as pro-activeness and autonomy to achieve more flexible and robust systems for complex applications environments. A number of AOSE methodologies have been proposed. In order to evaluate and compare these methods in depth, we pro- posed the use of a common exemplar - a detailed applica- tion setting within which each of the methodologies will be worked out. The evaluation method emphasizes a requirements engineering perspective. In this paper we show how to apply this exemplar to evaluate three agent- oriented methodologies.


Nonlocal metasurface for perfect anomalous reflection demonstrates a new possibility for controlling electromagnetic energy flow. The use of the generalized Snell's law opens wide possibilities for the manipulation of transmitted and reflected wavefronts. However, known structures designed to shape reflection wavefronts suffer from significant parasitic reflections in undesired directions. We explore the limitations of the existing solutions for the design of passive planar reflectors and demonstrate that strongly nonlocal response is required for perfect performance. A new paradigm for the design of perfect reflectors based on energy surface channeling is introduced. We realize and experimentally verify a perfect design of an anomalously reflective surface using an array of rectangular metal patches backed by a metallic plate. This conceptually new mechanism for wavefront manipulation allows the design of thin perfect reflectors, offering a versatile design method applicable to other scenarios, such as focusing reflectors, surface wave manipulations, or metasurface holograms, extendable to other frequencies.


Purpose
The paper aims to estimate the capacity of supreme audit institutions' (SAIs) audits to deter potentially wasteful year-end procurement spending. It also studies heterogeneous responses to SAIs' audits depending on whether agencies' top managers are appointed through a competitive procedure or not.

Design/methodology/approach
A letter signed by the head of Chile's SAI was sent to a hundred randomly chosen agencies two weeks before the end of the fiscal year, with instructions on year-end spending accounting and an audit threat. In addition, a hundred agencies that did not receive the letter were used as a control group.

Findings
Agencies that received the letter reduced year-end aggregate procurement spending by 33% relative to controls. Purchases of office supplies, safety equipment, personal care products and paper products experienced the most considerable reductions. The decrease in year-end spending was smaller for agencies with at least one top manager appointed through a competitive procedure.

Research limitations/implications
A SAI's audit threat significantly reduced year-end procurement spending. Larger reductions in agencies headed by political appointees and across categories of goods that have been flagged as likely to be purchased to exhaust the budget suggest the avoided expenditures would have been wasteful. Further research is needed to determine if the net social value of year-end procurement spending deterred by SAIs audits is negative as suggested.

Social implications
This paper has implications for the institutional support of SAIs audits and civil service.

Originality/value
This paper provides novel experimental evidence of SAIs' audits' deterrence power on public agencies' year-end procurement spending.


Abstract In the paper there are presented and evaluated for effectiveness three methods of accuracy increase of fractional order derivatives and integrals computations for application with the Riemann-Liouville/Caputo formulas. They are based on the ideas of either transforming difficult integrand in the formulas to high-accuracy computations requirements of a applied method of numerical integration or adapting a numerical method of integration to handle with high-accuracy a difficult feature in the integrand. Additional accuracy gain is obtained by incorporating increased precision into computations. The actual accuracy improvement by applying presented methods is compared with the capabilities of wide range of available methods of integration.


Regional weather forecasting demands fast simulation over fine-grained grids, resulting in extremely memory- bottlenecked computation, a difficult problem on conventional supercomputers. Early work on accelerating mainstream weather code WRF using GPUs with their high memory performance, however, resulted in only minor speedup due to partial GPU porting of the huge code. Our full CUDA porting of the high- resolution weather prediction model ASUCA is the first such one we know to date; ASUCA is a next-generation, production weather code developed by the Japan Meteorological Agency, similar to WRF in the underlying physics (non-hydrostatic model). Benchmark on the 528 (NVIDIA GT200 Tesla) GPU TSUBAME Supercomputer at the Tokyo Institute of Technology demonstrated over 80-fold speedup and good weak scaling achieving 15.0 TFlops in single precision for 6956 x 6052 x 48 mesh. Further benchmarks on TSUBAME 2.0, which will embody over 4000 NVIDIA Fermi GPUs and deployed in October 2010, will be presented.


Background/Context The main goal for vocational education at the secondary level has historically been the preparation of youth for the world of work. As a result, research, policy, and practice in this area have mostly focused on how to smooth this transition, address high costs, and ensure that there are positive economic returns to the individual and society. The focus on these goals, although important, has meant that other vital areas have not been addressed: namely, how to ensure that vocational education promotes a sense of empowerment, fosters a stronger sense of community, and seeks to protect the natural environment. Purpose and Focus of the Study This article stresses the importance of imbuing the theory and practice of vocational education with social justice and concern for environmental degradation at the local level. The approach to vocational education presented here proposes the use of productive learning as a foundation for a well-rounded education that breaks down the nefarious dualisms of contemporary education (i.e., the separation of mind from body, theory from practice, individuals from collectivity, and school from community) while exposing students to a critical pedagogy of work and to its potential for social and environmental renewal. Setting To illustrate the theoretical insights provided in the first two sections of this article, the author explores a public secondary school in northern Colombia that, under difficult social and material conditions, has developed a noteworthy vocational program. Research Design This analytic essay illustrates its main points with examples derived from a case study in which field observations, extensive in-person interviews, document analysis, and telephone conversations were conducted between 1997 and 2000. Findings and Conclusions The school helps to illustrate what a long series of writers from the late 18th century onward have stated: that productive work ought to be an intrinsic component of any responsible form of education. Moreover, it makes clear the importance of contextualizing learning in authentic settings. Although some important inroads have been made in connecting vocational education to critical pedagogy, the connections with environmental sustainability are still in their infancy. Despite calls from international organizations such as the International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, a branch of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO-UNEVOC) to link vocational education and training to sustainable development, much work still needs to be done in the areas of theory, policy, and practice.


This guide will pinpoint resources that are used specifically in this field. There are also links to individual course guides which provides specific resources available to that course.


Objective: To document the impact on patient-reported outcomes and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of treatment with imiquimod cream in patients with actinic keratosis (AK) and superficial basal cell carcinoma (sBCC). Methods: This open-label, multicenter study included AK and sBCC patients eligible for treatment with imiquimod 5% cream. HRQoL was measured by the Skindex-17 and the Skin Cancer Index (SCI) and treatment satisfaction by the Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire for Medication. Results: 118 AK patients and 84 patients with sBCC were included. Low baseline HRQoL impairment was found on both questionnaires, which remained low after treatment, except for a small dip at the end of the application period. Conclusion: Imiquimod 5% cream treatment has no clinically relevant HRQoL impact in AK and sBCC patients according to the Skindex-17 and SCI. The effect of imiquimod treatment on HRQoL may be limited or these questionnaires do not fully capture relevant issues, such as fear of recurrence.


I explore patterns in regard to community based Research and Development in the Water Supply and Sanitation sector. I set a bibliometric analysis, covering the 1998–2008 period, by means of applying a framework based on three factors: productivity, collaboration, and research topics, which are analyzed at global and country level. Results show: a) Northern countries are the most productive ones; b) though not significant as it should, North-South collaboration is increasing; and c) Southern concerns do not represent a major share of Northern R&D, though an upward is noted.


OBJECTIVE: The aim of this laboratory study is to evaluate the influence of the shape and the length limitation of superelastic nickel-titanium (NiTi) archwires on lower incisors inclination during alignment and leveling. METHODS: Metal teeth mounted on a typodont articulator device were used to simulate a malocclusion of the mandibular arch (-3.5 mm model discrepancy). Three different shapes (Standard, Accuform and Ideal) of superelastic NiTi archwires (Sentalloy, GAC, USA) were tested. Specimens were divided in two groups: Group I, with no limitation of the archwire length; and Group II, with distal limitation. Each group had thirty specimens divided into three subgroups differentiated by the archwire shape. All groups used round wires with diameters of 0.014-in, 0.016-in, 0.018-in and 0.020-in. The recording of all intervals was accomplished using standardized digital photographs with orthogonal norm in relation to median sagittal plane. The buccolingual inclination of the incisor was registered using photographs and software CorelDraw. RESULTS: The results were obtained using ANOVA and Tukey's test at a significant level of 5%. The inclination of the lower incisor increased in both groups and subgroups. The shape of the archwire had statistically significant influence only in Group I - Standard (11.76o), Ideal (5.88o) and Accuform (1.93o). Analyzing the influence of the length limitation, despite the mean incisor tipping in Group II (3.91o) had been smaller than Group I (6.52o), no statistically significant difference was found, except for Standard, 3.89o with limitation and 11.76o without limitation. The greatest incisor tipping occurred with the 0.014-in archwires.


The purpose of this study is evaluation of geostatistical surface model for transformation of GPS derived ellipsoidal heights to orthometric heights. The model was handled as its accuracy for surveying applications. 1148 reference points were used covering an area of 115×112 km with GPS and leveling data from the "Izmir geodetic infrastructure for the production of 1/5000 scaled digital photogrammetric maps and orthophotos" project. As a basic data, the differences between ellipsoidal and orthometric heights for each benchmarks were modeled by geostatistical interpolation method namely kriging. ArcGIS 10.0 Geostatistical Analyst was used with optimized parameters for modeling. The quality of the model was analysed by Cross Validation, splitted data and external data validation. The model provide about ± 5 cm absolute, 1 ppm relative accuracy. Also the consistency of the model with several geoid models namely TG03 (Turkish Geoid 2003) and EGM08 (Earth Gravitational Model 2008) geoids was approximately ± 7-10 cm.


OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) on the release of collagen, and the production and expression of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) induced by the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin 1α (IL1α) in combination with oncostatin M (OSM) from bovine nasal cartilage and primary human articular chondrocytes. METHODS Human articular chondrocytes and bovine nasal cartilage were cultured with and without IGF1 in the presence of IL1α or IL1α + OSM. The release of collagen was measured by an assay for hydroxyproline. Collagenase activity was determined with the diffuse fibril assay using3H acetylated collagen. The expression of MMP-1, MMP-3, MMP-8, MMP-13, and tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase 1 (TIMP-1) mRNA was analysed by northern blot. RESULTS IGF1 can partially inhibit the release of collagen induced by IL1α or IL1α + OSM from bovine nasal cartilage. This was accompanied by a reduced secretion and activation of collagenase by bovine nasal cartilage. IGF1 can also down regulate IL1α or IL1α + OSM induced MMP-1, MMP-3, MMP-8, and MMP-13 mRNA expression in human articular chondrocytes and bovine chondrocytes. It had no significant effect on the production and expression of TIMP-1 mRNA in chondrocytes. CONCLUSION This study shows for the first time that IGF1 can partially block the release of collagen from cartilage and suggests that down regulation of collagenases by IGF1 may be an important mechanism in preventing cartilage resorption initiated by proinflammatory cytokines.


This study focuses upon UK professional coaches' experiences of equity training and the impact of the conceptualisation of equity as a matter of equal opportunities on this education and subsequent coaching practice. The research employs a critical feminist approach to connect the ideological framing of gender equity by sporting organisations to coaches' ability to understand, identify and manage issues of gender equity, equality and diversity. The discussions are based on interviews with four coaches, Jack, Peter, Charlotte and Tony, who had all recently undertaken equity training, and all of whom represented sports and different stages of the coaching pathway. The data highlights that seeing gender equity through an 'equal opportunities' lens results in a narrow conceptualisation of such issues by coaches, fails to challenge dominant and discriminative ideologies, and does not enable coaches to address equity within their practices. Consequently, coaches struggle to understand the importance of and manage such issues. The participants' experiences reveal that gender relations, intersected principally with religion and ethnicity, underpinned their everyday coaching practices. The findings illustrate the need for sporting organisations to redefine how they approach equality and equity and for a more sophisticated sociocultural educational programme for coaches.


The purpose of the article is an adaptation of the affective labor concept as a method for analyzing vandalism among young people. The article examines youth vandalism as a form of affective labor and identifies two types of effects. The first type deals with the experiences of the vandals themselves which cause the new subjectivity and collectivity; the second type refers to the effects experienced by the users of vandal-altered spaces: they begin to feel differently because the damage can seriously change the status, value, user qualities of the urban environment and the emotions it induces on inhabitants.
The paper analyzes youth vandalism as a strategy which not only transforms the urban space visually (physically) but also consciously constructs the affects transforming the subjectivity of young people, social positions and community forms of both the vandals themselves and the users of the city. This approach, reflecting the strategic nature of the young people's vandal activity, shows that vandal practice should be understood as the practice of space occupation, its appropriation, its de- and reconstruction and should be based on social topology and general ideas of actor-network theory. The socio-philosophical conclusions in the paper are illustrated by the results of interviews involving 17 participants from 7 youth communities conducted in summer and autumn 2017 in Yekaterinburg. The photographs of the damaged urban spaces in various city districts were also taken; the data were mapped, and the photo database was marked according to geographical location and types of damaged buildings. This helped to draw certain conclusions about the youth vandalism phenomenon. The article outlines the prospects for the use of the proposed methodology in the analysis of vandal damage and in urban vandalism prevention activities.
Acknowledgement. The research is funded by the Russian Science Foundation (project no. 17-18-01278).


Titanium alloys are excellent implant materials for orthopedic applications due to their desirable properties, such as good corrosion resistance, low elasticity modulus, and excellent biocompatibility. The presence of interstitial elements (such as oxygen and nitrogen) causes strong changes in the material's mechanical properties, mainly in its elastic properties. Study of the interaction among interstitial elements present in metals began with Snoek's postulate, that a stress-induced ordering of interstitials gives rise to a peak in the mechanical relaxation (internal friction) spectra. In the mechanical relaxation spectra, each species of interstitial solute atom gives rise to a distinct Snoek's peak, whose temperature and position depend on the measurement frequency. This effect is very interesting because its peculiar parameters are directly related to the diffusion coefficient (D) for the interstitial solute. This paper presents a study of diffusion of heavy interstitial elements in Ti-35Nb-7Zr-5Ta alloys using mechanical spectroscopy. Pre-exponential factors and activation energies are calculated for oxygen and nitrogen in theses alloys.


A case-control study was undertaken to assess the association between lung cancer and silicosis or silica dust exposure in white South African gold miners. Cases and controls were identified from deaths reported to the Gold Miners Provident Fund for the period January, 1979-October, 1983. Two controls were matched to each case by year of birth (+/- 2 years) and by smoking (+/- 5 cigarettes or equivalents per day) assessed 10 years (+/- 2 years) prior to death. One hundred thirty-three matched triplets were identified. The results showed no overall association between lung cancer and radiological silicosis (OR = 1.08, p = 0.92). Autopsy data indicated no overall associations between lung cancer and silicosis of the lung parenchyma (OR = 1.49, p = 0.11), the pleura (OR = 0.72, p = 0.30), or the hilar glands (OR = 0.85, p = 0.72). A trend toward increased severity of silicosis of the parenchyma was evident; however, this was not statistically significant (p = 0.08). Odds ratios for lung cancer and silicosis were higher at lower levels of cumulative silica dust exposure (ORs = 2.43, 1.72, 1.35 and 0.62 for lung cancer and autopsy silicosis of the parenchyma for the lowest, second, third, and highest quartiles of dust exposure, respectively; all p greater than 0.05). Cases did not differ from controls for total silica dust exposure, length of exposure, weighted average intensity of exposure, or number of shifts at high dust (all p greater than 0.20). The data do not support the hypothesis of a carcinogenic role for silica dust and no statistically significant associations were found between lung cancer and silicosis.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Background & objectives: Job stress can lead to burnout, job dissatisfaction and career change among nurses. Also, self-efficacy is one of the most important factors in the development of healthy social relationships that can enable people to confront better with long-term stresses. Dialectical behavior therapy with emphasis on the principle of change and acceptance provides groundwork for distress tolerance and effective interpersonal relationships. The aim of this study was to examine the effectiveness of dialectical behavior therapy on stress and self-efficacy of nurses. Methods: This study was a quasi-experimental with pretest-posttest and control group design. Among all nurses in hospitals of the city of Sanandaj during 2014, 30 nurses were selected using multi-stage cluster random sampling method, and randomly divided into two treatment and control groups. Firstly, both experimental and control groups were participated in pretest. Then the experimental group participated in 8 session dialectical-behavior therapy educational program. Each session lasted 2.5 hours. After completion of the training sessions, posttests were given to both groups. Job stress and General Self-Efficacy questionnaires were used to collect the data. Finally, the data were analyzed using SPSS-v.20 and descriptive and analysis of covariance. Results: The results showed that there were significant differences in job stress (F=49.83, p<0.002) and self-efficacy (F=185.91, p<0.002) of nurses in two experimental and control groups. Conclusions: Dialectical-behavior therapy is effective in reducing job stress and also increasing self-efficacy according to the results. Dialectical-behavior therapy with an emphasis on mindfulness and distress tolerance can reduce stress and increase self-efficacy as components of acceptance, as well emotional regulation and interpersonal self-efficacy as the principle of change, and also by strategies such as behavioral skill training, and replacement of maladaptive behaviors with logical and adaptive responses and identifying negative emotions.


The intensity of nucleic acids and protein synthesis in the cells of the thymus and the bursa of Fabricius was studied in chickens against the background of an immunodepression induced by administration of hydrocortisone and cyclophosphamide. It was found out that hydrocortisone causes in chicken a marked lowering of the intensity of inclusion of 3H-thymidine, 3H-uridine and 14C-glycine in thymic cells, and cyclophosphamide--in the cells of the bursa of Fabricius. Under the conditions of selective immunodepression the preparations on the basis of the peptides of the thymus (thymalin) and of the bursa of Fabricius (bursilin) regulate the processes of nucleic acids and protein synthesis chiefly in the cells of organs which produce them.


In this paper, we propose a novel method for matrix completion under general non-uniform missing structures. By controlling an upper bound of a novel balancing error, we construct weights that can actively adjust for the non-uniformity in the empirical risk without explicitly modeling the observation probabilities, and can be computed efficiently via convex optimization. The recovered matrix based on the proposed weighted empirical risk enjoys appealing theoretical guarantees. In particular, the proposed method achieves a stronger guarantee than existing work in terms of the scaling with respect to the observation probabilities, under asymptotically heterogeneous missing settings (where entry-wise observation probabilities can be of different orders). These settings can be regarded as a better theoretical model of missing patterns with highly varying probabilities. We also provide a new minimax lower bound under a class of heterogeneous settings. Numerical experiments are also provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


Following Israel's 'Operation Cast Lead', the UN called upon the Israeli and Palestinian authorities to conduct investigations and prosecutions of international crimes in accordance with international standards. The measures that the Israeli authorities undertook, when carefully examined, fall short of international standards. When examined under the lens of the admissibility criteria of the complementarity principle under Article 17 of the ICC Statute, this deficient practice emerges as part of a broader policy intended to shield perpetrators and maintain a climate of impunity for those committing international crimes. The need to find alternative avenues to provide victims with access to justice calls for an interrogation of the role of international criminal justice mechanisms, such as the ICC, in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This article examines recent developments concerning Israel's investigations under the criteria set out by the complementarity principle.


Agribusiness is shifting from 'produce, then sell' to meeting consumers' identified needs. New technologies – including precision agriculture, integrated information systems, and molecular biology - will feature prominently in delivering customised products. The focus on value creation and distribution, tangible and intangible, and away from commodities cements the end of statutory marketing mindsets, towards networks, alliances and different corporate interests, including health, leisure and customer services. The goal of sustainable resource management is an imperative; the challenge is achieving it. Economists will be important contributors to innovation processes through policy analysis, managing adjustment, building capacity, and positioning business in a dynamic environment.


This study estimates the average tariffs that the producers of each of the 27 EU countries could face when exporting to the UK in the event that a new Free Trade Agreement is not reached as part of the Brexit negotiation and that trade between the EU and the UK is conducted under WTO most-favoured-nation terms. The analysis is based on information from the WTO-IDB database and on bilateral trade flows at the product level published by UN Comtrade. The results show that average tariff costs would be different across EU countries, depending on the initial level of commercial relationships with the UK and on the sectoral composition of trade flows. Different tariff costs may potentially create a strong heterogeneity in the EU economies with regard to their stakes in the negotiations with the UK, and have an impact on the establishment of the EU position, to which each Member State contributes equally.


Studies suggest that trillions of microplastic particles are floating on the surface of the global oceans and that the total amount of plastic waste entering the ocean will increase by an order of magnitude by 2025. As such, this ever-increasing problem demands immediate mitigation and reduction. Diverse solutions have been proposed, ranging from source reduction to ocean-based cleanup. These solutions are most effective when guided by scientific evidence. A study published in Environmental Research Letters (Sherman and van Sebille 2016 Environ. Res. Lett. 11 014006) took a closer look at the potential effectiveness of ocean-based cleanup. They conclude that it will be most cost-effective and ecologically beneficial if clean-up efforts focus on the flux of microplastics from the coasts rather than in the center of the oceans where plastic accumulates in so called 'garbage patches'. If followed, this example may become one of a series of examples where science has informed a solution to the complex problem of plastic pollution.


Abstract Wedding organizer is a business that provides products or services related to wedding ceremony and arrange their customer wedding. Wedding organizer began use internet as a media to advertise and promote their products and services. Moreover, Indonesia people using internet to get the information about wedding organizer easier. In fact, when the customers find and choose wedding organizer, price is a high priority to considering. In addition to find wedding packages, the customers want to find the products and services except a package and proper to their budget. From that fact, this research will discuss on auction module development of siapsiapnikah.com website application. On develop a module, researcher will apply auction system as a solution to find suitable price on wedding products and services. To implement auction system in the website properly, researcher using crowdsourcing concept to get more price from more than one w edding organizer on a customer needs. Furthermore, researchers use Extreme Programming as a developing method and Codeigniter as a framework. The result of this research is a website application that has auction system to help customer finding suitable wedding organizer and price. The customers will get prices from many wedding organizer depends on customer needs. Keyword: crowdsourcing, codeigniter, extreme programming, online auction, wedding organizer.


Efficient use of the memory hierarchy is critical for achieving high performance in a multiprocessor system- on-chip. An external memory that is shared between processors is a bottleneck in current and future systems. Cache misses and a large cache miss penalty contribute to a low processor utilisation. In this paper, we describe a novel cache optimisation technique to reduce instruction and data cache misses for streaming applications. The instruction and data locality are improved by executing a task multiple times before moving to the next task. Furthermore, we introduce a dataflow model that is used to trade-off the number of cache misses against end-to-end latency and memory usage. For our industrial application, which is a Digital Radio Mondiale receiver, the number of cache misses is reduced with a factor 4.2.


Current accreditation practices require that teacher education institutions in the United States not only create programs that enact research-based best practices but that they also document their existence and efficacy in preparing teachers. "Tensions in Teacher Preparation: Accountability, Assessment, and Accreditation" addresses the challenges of meeting national accreditation requirements, including designing assessment instruments and making data-driven decisions. The process of establishing and implementing accountability creates tensions in faculty and institutions. Faculty must give up valued content and instructional styles in order to align course objectives and assessment instruments across the program. Institutions with multiple licensure programs must make adjustments in order to share data collection instruments and processes that will support data-driven decisions. The paradigm shifts required by the emphasis on accountability can be both frustrating and productive. This book explores and shares tensions created as teacher education programs experience changes because of accountability requirements related to the accreditation process.


The deformation under radial pressure of rectangular dies for metal powder compaction has been investigated by FEM. The explored variables have been: aspect ratio of die profile, ratio between diagonal of the profile and die height, insert and ring thickness, radius at die corners, interference, different insert materials, i. e. conventional HSS, HSS from powders, cemented carbide (10% Co). The analyses has ascertained the unwanted appearance of tensile normal stress on brittle materials, also "at rest", and even some dramatic changes of stress patterns as the die height increases with respect to the rectangular profile dimensions. Different materials behave differently, mainly due to difference of thermal expansion coefficients. Profile changes occur when the dies are heated up to the temperature required for warm compaction. The deformation patterns depend on compaction temperature and on thermal expansion coefficients.


High-resolution 29Si NMR was used to investigate the acid-catalyzed hydrolysis and esterification reactions of methyltrimethoxysilane (MTMS) in methanol. The INEPT experiment, adapted for spin systems with multiple heteronuclear coupling constants, was used to assign the closely spaced resonances of the MTMS hydrolysis products. Due to the rapid reaction rates, only the pseudoequilibrium concentration distribution for the resulting hydrolysis products could be determined. Models based on thermodynamically statistical distributions, irreversible hydrolysis reactions, and reversible hydrolysis reactions were nearly equally successful in accounting for the concentration distributions over a wide range of H2O/Si ratios (Rw) and temperatures. However, preparation of hydrolyzed MTMS in a nonpseudoequilibrium state unequivocally demonstrated the reversibility of hydrolysis reactions on a short time scale. By measuring the extent of reaction of MTMS systems at high water concentrations, the ratio of the hydrolysi...


While Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a sustainable approach of pest control, contributing to reduced use of pesticides and risks on human health and the environment, farmers have shown limited interest in practicing this method. The present study explored the levels of technical knowledge about integrated management of the olive fly (Bactrocera oleae) among olive growers in Roudbar County of Iran and factors underpinning olive farmers' technical knowledge of integrated management. Data were collected in a survey of olive farmers, on the basis of a structured questionnaire. Almost half of the farmers (48.4%) had good to excellent levels of technical knowledge of integrated management, while almost a third of the farmers (35.4%) had a moderate knowledge level. However, a noticeable portion of the farmers (15.9%) had poor knowledge of integrated management. Moreover, most farmers showed average knowledge of the adverse effects of pesticides on human health. While most farmers showed good levels of social participation, cooperation with institutes, and participation in extension activities, they showed low levels of community involvement (involvement in a group of people that have and share common interests with each other). Olive imports and the lack of a common action for olive fly control were perceived as the main barriers of IPM adoption among most farmers. Regression analysis revealed that increased community involvement, large area under olive farming, participation in education activities, and high farming experience promoted farmers' technical knowledge of integrated olive fly control. Strengthening growers' technical knowledge of IPM through community involvement and extension services among inexperienced small-scale olive farmers is recommended for reducing possible unnecessary insecticide sprays in olive production.


Food corps information system in Batu Bara Regency are still stored in books and/or files that are very limited in effectiveness. Computerized information delivery methods and internet networks are solutions that are worth to try to overcome the problems of information flow. Study was designed to produce systems that can help process the delivering, storing, and monitoring of data displayed in a web form. The systems were designed in a user oriented programming language PHP, and MySQL database web Apache webserver. This system could improve efficiency and effectiveness of information flow, especially food corps information. The results showed that the distribution and types of food corps commodities in each district in Batu Bara Regency was different . The spread and the kind depend on topographic, the price level and market demand in the area.


In recent years, a resonant snubber to minimize switching power losses and EMI noises have attracted special interest for the voltage-fed soft switching sinewave PWM inverters and active rectifiers. The authors have discussed the performance evaluations on lower noise and high efficiency for two switch auxiliary resonant DC link snubber assisted three-phase voltage-fed soft switching PWM inverter. It was proved that cost effective three phase soft switching inverter treated here is able to improve both efficiency and EMI noise. However, some practical problems to be improved have recognized for the soft-switching three phase PWM inverter treated here from a practical point of view. This three phase soft-switching inverter with two switch type auxiliary resonant DC link snubber has significant disadvantages of DC busline link voltage reduction for the existence of the zero voltage mode transition period as well as the larger size and physical volume of electrolytic capacitor incorporated into the resonant DC link snubber. The additional technology to minimize the busline DC link zero voltage period in order to overcome the practical problems mentioned above is newly proposed in this paper. From experimental and simulation viewpoints, the modified version of this soft-switching inverter is discussed and evaluated for the DC busline voltage utilization factor as compared with the previously developed one.


Abstract Objective: To know the incidence, etiology, risk factors, morbidity, and mortality of nosocomial diarrhea in adults. Design: Nested case-control study, matched by service, length of stay, date of admission, and presence of leukopenia and/or the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Cases were those who developed nosocomial diarrhea. Controls were those who did not develop nosocomial diarrhea during a comparative period nor during the next ten days. Stool samples were processed in search for parasites, yeasts, bacteria, and rotavirus. Setting: Third-level referral center, in Mexico City, Mexico, for general internal medicine and surgical problems. Patients: Eligible subjects were all new admissions to the hospital from November 1987 to September 1988. Reasons for exclusion were presence of chronic diarrheal disease or melena. There were 115 cases and 111 controls. Results: Overall risk of acquiring nosocomial diarrhea was 5.5%, or 1.8 episodes per 100 patient-weeks. A potential pathogen was found in 59%. Yeasts and Entamoeba histolytica were the most frequently isolated pathogens. Mortality in cases was 18%, as compared with 5% in controls (p<.01). Multivariate analysis showed enteral feeding, recent enemas, presence of Candida species, use of antacids/Hz-blockers, and presence of nasogastric tubes as significant risk factors for nosocomial diarrhea. Conclusions: Diarrhea is a common complication in hospitalized patients. It occurs more often than previously suspected and is linked with a substantial mortality, The spectrum of etiologic agents is different from that reported in pediatric hospitals. Given that nosocomial diarrhea may constitute, at least, a marker of severity of illness, it should receive more attention in general hospitals.


The safety problem in multi-vehicle systems seeks to establish collision-free and live vehicle motion, and it is a prominent problem for many configurations of these environments. Past work studying this problem in the context of free-range vehicular systems through abstractions based on Resource Allocation System (RAS) theory, has implicitly assumed that its resolution through maximally permissive supervision is NP-hard, and therefore, it has typically pursued suboptimal (i.e., more restrictive) solutions. The work presented in this paper offers formal proof to this implicit assumption, closing the apparent gap in the existing literature.


In this paper we argue that a combination of a social actor model, Institutional theory, and a model of unobtrusive power can constitute a theoretical framework for understanding how the business client is able to exercise control and subsequent subjugation of developers in the systems development process. Specifically, the paper develops a 3-level theoretical framework grounded in institutional theory that integrates elements of Lamb and Kling's social actor model and Scott's 3-pillars framework concentrating on the relationships among systems developers, the business client, the SDM, and the context surrounding its use. The framework is strengthened through the application of a third level – Hardy's multi-dimensional model of power, offering explanations of political inactivity by developers. In this paper we discuss how all three theory can be combined in a framework for analyzing the power relations between developers and the business client. We apply this theoretical framework in a case study of the deployment of a mandated in-house developed systems development methodology in a large IT department of a major Australian bank Here we will show how, from the perspective of developers, the business client exercise both overt and unobtrusive power over the development process.


ABSTRACT We undertook a prospective study to evaluate the accuracy of PCR of serum (aimed at the pneumococcal pneumolysin gene) at detecting pneumococcal infections in infants and children. The assay was positive for all blood and cerebrospinal fluid culture-positive samples and for 38 and 44% of patients with lobar pneumonia and acute otitis media, respectively. It was positive for 17% of healthy controls. There was a marked effect of age on the rate of positivity among healthy controls, with the highest rate (33%) being in 2-year-old children, the age group with the highest rate of nasopharyngeal (NP) carriage; the lowest rate was found among infants <2 months of age (13%) and adults ages 18 to 50 years (0%), age groups with the lowest NP pneumococcal carriage rates. Carriers of pneumococci in the nasopharynges had a higher rate of positivity than noncarriers of pneumococci in the nasopharynges for all groups. Our results suggest that although PCR of serum is a sensitive test for the detection of Streptococcus pneumoniae in sterile fluids, its high rate of positivity for healthy controls, related to NP pneumococcal carriage, might exclude it from being useful in detecting deep-seated pneumococcal infections.


The polysilicon nanofilms have significant piezoresistive characteristics. In this paper, an analysis of tunneling piezoresistive effect of p-type polysilicon nanofilms is presented based on the experimental data. The analysis results show that the tunneling piezoresistive effect is much remarkable than piezoresistive effect of neutral region, and the former is about 1.3 to 1.5 times of the latter. The higher is doping concentration, the more remarkable tunneling piezoresistive effect is. This advantage can be utilized to improve the temperature characteristics of polysilicon piezoresistive sensor.


We propose procedures for autoconfiguration of multihop wireless ad-hoc networks based on DHCP protocol. The proposed mechanism provides automatic address and radio parameters set-up for nodes with multiple radio interfaces, allowing to fully automatically form and to start a wireless mesh network and to route packets. The autoconfiguration schema was implemented and tested on OpenWRT platform. The demonstration shows how multiple Mikrotik routerboard with three 802.11g interfaces can fully automatically create a multihop wireless network, assign IP addresses, radio channels. It will also include the automatic visualization of network topology by network management software.


It is seen that in recent days, our country has been mobilized in the name of agriculture, in order to support the farmers, in order to attract the villagers in a livelyway. The place of people we call peasants in our literature is also a curiosity for us. In this context, we thought that we should question the place of the Turkish peasantry in our literature and we wanted to examine the reflections of the Turkish peasantry, which is the subject of a subject on the agenda, between 1940-1970 as a semantic/thematically evaluation of Turkish poetry. We tried to examine the manner in which our poets approached the Turkish peasants through poetry and how they chose the Turkish peasant as the subject of literature. We think that some authors who received village and peasant-centered poetry in the name of socialist realism should question whether the styles of approach to the subject between 1940-1970 reached their aims and purposes. Today our state (Republic of Turkey) investment policies between the villages involved and the peasant from 1940 to 1970 between the years by detecting traces it has left in our collective memory through poetry, a genre of literature villages and villagers in the future, if it will be the subject of a literary work, everyone is questioning the fate of a problem we need to.


This paper presents results from a multidisciplinary study of a negotiation process between farmers and wildlife authorities which led to an agricultural subsidy scheme to alleviate conflicts between agriculture and geese in Norway. The Svalbard-breeding population of pink-footed geese Anser brachyrhynchus has increased considerably over the last decades and conflicts with farmers have escalated, especially at stopover sites in spring when geese feed on newly sprouted pasture grass. In Vesterålen, an important stopover site for geese in North Norway, farmers deployed scaring of geese at varying intensity dependent on the level of conflict during 1988–2012. We assessed the efficiency of a subsidy scheme established in 2006, in terms of its conflict mitigation, reflected in a near discontinuation of scaring activities. The presence of pink-footed geese was analysed in relation to scaring intensity, the total goose population size and the increasing occurrence of another goose species, the barnacle goose Branta leucopsis. Scaring significantly affected the number of geese staging in Vesterålen, both in absolute and relative terms (controlling for total population size). The geese responded immediately to an increased, and reduced, level of scaring. Despite the establishment of the subsidy scheme, the number of pink-footed geese has recently declined which is probably caused by the increasing number of barnacle geese. For the farmers, the subsidy scheme provides funding that reduces the economic costs caused by the geese. Sustaining a low level of conflict will require close monitoring, dialogue and adaptation of the subsidy scheme to cater for changes in goose population dynamics.


ABSTRACT
 This paper addresses mental health and wellbeing among security operatives in the UK using a mixed-methods approach of survey questionnaire and interviews. The survey questionnaires were designed using three hybrid surveys: Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale; The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C); and CAGE-AID as a screen for substance misuse. The survey questionnaires were distributed with the support of the Security Industry Authority and the GMB Union and 754 completed surveys were returned and 15 interviews conducted. Results from the completed survey questionnaires show that 39.3% of the respondents were showing symptoms of PTSD and that many of the security operatives suffered varying degrees of verbal abuse and threats of physical violence with a number reporting acts of violence to themselves and other security operatives during the course of their employment. A key finding was the lack of provision of mental health and wellbeing services provided by the security companies to their employees and managers in general unable or unwilling to accept that some employees were suffering from poor mental health and wellbeing.


Kumaun Himalaya of Uttarakhand State is characterized by a rich diversity of ethnomedicinal plants as well as a rich heritage of traditional medicine system. The present study reveals the status of ethno-medicinal flora and their importance preserved by the local population in Kumaun region. During the study it was observed that 102 species of ethno-medicinal plants belonging to 48 families are being used in the folk-medicine system by the indigenous people of this region. For the present study, an intensive and extensive survey was made for four selected districts of Uttarakhand, viz. Almora, Champawat, Bageshwar and Pithoragarh. The neighboring villages of the study areas were also visited for identification of plant species and to explore the traditional knowledge about the use of indigenous medicinal plants. Therefore, the ethnobiological knowledge of people and listing of plants of particular region are important tools that may help in understanding human environment interactions. (Nature and Science. 2010;8(5):66- 78). (ISSN: 1545-0740).


Most of the high-order aberrations of the eye are not circularly symmetric. Hence, while it is well known that human vision is subject to cortically based orientation preference in cell tuning, the optics of the eye might also introduce some orientational anisotropy. We tested this idea by measuring contrast sensitivity at different orientations of sine-wave gratings when viewing through a closed-loop adaptive optics phoropter. Under aberration-corrected conditions, mean contrast sensitivity improved for all observers by a factor of 1.8× to 5×. The detectability of some orientations improved more than others. As expected, this orientation-specific effect varied between individuals. The sensitivity benefits were accurately predicted from MTF model simulations, demonstrating that the observed effects reflected the individual's pattern of high-order aberrations. In one observer, the orientation-specific effects were substantial: an improvement of 8× at one orientation and 2× in another orientation. The experiments confirm that, for conditions that are not diffraction limited, the optics of the eye introduce rotational asymmetry to the luminance distribution on the retina and that this impacts vision, inducing orientational anisotropy. These results suggest that the traditional view of meridional anisotropy having an entirely neural origin may be true for diffraction-limited pupils but that viewing through larger pupils introduces an additional orientation-specific optical component to this phenomenon.


Rhizobia secrete nodulation (Nod) factors, which set in motion the formation of nitrogen-fixing root nodules on legume host plants. Nod factors induce several cellular responses in root hair cells within minutes, but also are essential for the formation of infection threads by which rhizobia enter the root. Based on studies using bacterial mutants, a two-receptor model was proposed, a signaling receptor that induces early responses with low requirements toward Nod factor structure and an entry receptor that controls infection with more stringent demands. Recently, putative Nod factor receptors were shown to be LysM domain receptor kinases. However, mutants in these receptors, in both Lotus japonicus (nfr1 and nfr5) and Medicago truncatula (Medicago; nfp), do not support the two-receptor model because they lack all Nod factor-induced responses. LYK3, the putative Medicago ortholog of NFR1, has only been studied by RNA interference, showing a role in infection thread formation. Medicago hair curling (hcl) mutants are unable to form curled root hairs, a step preceding infection thread formation. We identified the weak hcl-4 allele that is blocked during infection thread growth. We show that HCL encodes LYK3 and, thus, that this receptor, besides infection, also controls root hair curling. By using rhizobial mutants, we also show that HCL controls infection thread formation in a Nod factor structure-dependent manner. Therefore, LYK3 functions as the proposed entry receptor, specifically controlling infection. Finally, we show that LYK3, which regulates a subset of Nod factor-induced genes, is not required for the induction of NODULE INCEPTION.


This paper deals with the experimental works on the strength of concrete cube specimens with cement replacement by various percentages (0%, 5%, 7.5%, and 10%) of silica fume in concrete mixtures. The use of supplementary cementitious material is gaining much attention owing to its high pozzolanic property and a further improvement in strength properties. Silica-fume is one among the widely used pozzolanic material which exhibits high cementing efficiency due to high silica content. The physical properties of cement with and without silica fume replacement are tested according to ASTM. Mix design calculations for concrete mixtures with 0%, 5%, 7.5% and 10% silica fume content with constant watercement ratio 0.4 are calculated for concrete mixtures according to ACI. The target strength is 34.5 MPa. Three concrete cube specimens for each mix are prepared. After 7 days and 28 days, compressive strengths of the mortar and concrete cubes are tested. According to the test results, the concrete mix with 10% silica fume has the highest compressive strength. Overall, the strength of concrete with various replacement of silica fume enhances greater strength than the normal mix with 0% replacement.


This article advances understanding of the structural and agentic factors which influence how migrants in low-paid work reflexively acquire the dominant language of destination countries. Bourdieu's theories on the symbolic power of language and habitus, and theories of reflexivity by Archer and others underpin our analysis of how migrants acquire English in the UK. Analysis of data generated from in-depth qualitative interviews with thirty-one migrants from EU and non-EU countries in low-paid work reveals that the agency of migrants in increasing proficiency in the language is shaped by access to resources, conscious and unconscious reflexive processes, aspects of embodiment and perceptions of identity by the self and others. We argue that closer attention to the social, political and economic context in which migrants acquire the dominant language of destination countries is needed, as well as greater awareness of the multi-dimensional nature of reflexivity and the constraints on agency.


A ferritin particle consists of 24 ferritin proteins (FTH1 and FTL) and stores iron ions within it. During iron deficiency, ferritin particles are transported to lysosomes to release iron ions. Two transport pathways have been reported: macroautophagy and ESCRT-dependent endosomal microautophagy. Although the membrane dynamics of these pathways differ, both require NCOA4, which is thought to be an autophagy receptor for ferritin. However, the exact function of NCOA4 remains elusive. Here, we found that ferritin particles form liquid-like condensates in a NCOA4-dependent manner. Homodimerization of NCOA4 and interaction between FTH1 and NCOA4 (i.e., multivalent interactions between ferritin particles and NCOA4) were required for the formation of ferritin condensates. Disruption of these interactions impaired ferritin degradation. Time-lapse imaging and three-dimensional correlative light and electron microscopy revealed that these ferritin–NCOA4 condensates were directly engulfed by autophagosomes and endosomes. In contrast, TAX1BP1 was not required for the formation of ferritin–NCOA4 condensates but was required for their incorporation into autophagosomes and endosomes. These results suggest that NCOA4 acts not only as a canonical autophagy receptor but also as a driver to form ferritin condensates to facilitate the degradation of these condensates by macroautophagy (i.e., macroferritinophagy) and endosomal microautophagy (i.e., microferritinophagy).


Exploiting synthetic data to learn deep models has attracted increasing attention in recent years. However, the intrinsic domain difference between synthetic and real images usually causes a significant performance drop when applying the learned model to real world scenarios. This is mainly due to two reasons: 1) the model overfits to synthetic images, making the convolutional filters incompetent to extract informative representation for real images; 2) there is a distribution difference between synthetic and real data, which is also known as the domain adaptation problem. To this end, we propose a new reality oriented adaptation approach for urban scene semantic segmentation by learning from synthetic data. First, we propose a target guided distillation approach to learn the real image style, which is achieved by training the segmentation model to imitate a pretrained real style model using real images. Second, we further take advantage of the intrinsic spatial structure presented in urban scene images, and propose a spatial-aware adaptation scheme to effectively align the distribution of two domains. These two modules can be readily integrated with existing state-of-the-art semantic segmentation networks to improve their generalizability when adapting from synthetic to real urban scenes. We evaluate the proposed method on Cityscapes dataset by adapting from GTAV and SYNTHIA datasets, where the results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.


This study aims to determine the existence of a significant difference between the level of tax receipts in the application of manually and the application of E-Billing at the Pratama Tax Office Bantul.
            The population in this study is the Tax Revenue report and the sample is a Tax Receipt report 30 days before the E-Billing payment is valid and 30 days after the E-Billing payment is applied. Data collection techniques are carried out by means of documentation and interviews. Data analysis techniques are carried out using descriptive statistical tests, normality tests and different tests Paired Sample T-Test using SPSS (Statistical Product and Services Solution) 16.0 for Windows.
            The results of the paired sample test different test results on the application of manual payment methods and E-Billing showed the value of Sig. (2-tailed) which is 0.003 smaller than the significance level of α 0.05 (0.003 <0.05) which means that there are significant differences in the Tax Revenue by applying manually and applying E-Billing at the Pratama Tax Service Office in Bantul.
Keywords: Manual methods, E-Billing and Tax Revenue methods.


Seasonal changes in Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera (EPT) community was studied at rivers in Gunung Jerai Forest Reserve, Kedah, Malaysia. The rivers were visited monthly from September 2007 to August 2008 to sample aquatic insects using D-pond nets. More EPT were found in the wet season (10664 individuals) compared with the dry season (6599 individuals). In all rivers, ephemeropteran populations was highest during the wet season (z=-2.465, p=0.014). Meanwhile, the plecopteran population was low and almost constant throughout seasons in all rivers (z=-2.280, p=0.023). Trichopterans exhibited the highest peak of abundance in the dry season (z=-6.096, p=0.00). Concomitantly, higher diversity was recorded in the dry season (29 taxa) compared with 25 taxa recorded in wet season from all rivers. Tupah River had the most diverse EPT assemblage during the dry season. In wet season, the abundance of ephemeropterans genera such as Baetis, Platybaetis, Campsoneuria and Thalerosphyrus increased tremendously especially in Teroi River.