Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate governance on auditor quality choice by IPO companies in an emerging market setting. It seeks to identify whether efficiency or opportunism is the driving force behind the choice of auditors in Bangladeshi firms going public. We try to see whether ownership concentration in the hands of a owner-CEO wins over foreign shareholders in the contest of ensuring financial reporting quality. Design/methodology/approach - Multivariate analysis has been carried out on all IPOs made during 1990 to 2005 whose financial statements were available. Logistic regression tool has been used to identify client's corporate governance attributes affect their choice of auditors. In total, three corporate governance attributes – CEO-Chair duality, retained ownership, and foreign equity participation – were used to test the impact of ownership structure on auditor choice. Findings - Our findings from logistic regression suggest that CEO-Chair duality and the degree of foreign equity participation are significant determinants of auditor choice while proportion of board ownership is not. In addition, issuer size and whether the issuer is a green field operation also influence auditor choice while the length of a firm's operating history does not seem to matter. The findings support agency theory prediction that (at least one category of) principals (foreign shareholders in this case), are likely to trade-off higher monitoring costs (of hiring a higher quality auditor) with agency costs arising from asymmetric information, primarily borne by absentee owners. Originality/value - The work is based on empirical data directly from company financial statements. It uses audited financial statements and makes objective analysis of auditor choice dynamics in a frontier market that demonstrated significant growth of IPO activity in recent years.


In this paper, a model and an evaluation method are proposed expanding technology assessment model (TAM) to enable a comprehensive evaluation and selection of socio technical systems relevant in today's Internet environment. The proposed evaluation model called WOSP is practical and easy to integrate in decision support system tools for comparing IT software involving socio-technical factors.


The main objective of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems is to provide fast identification for tagged objects. The noteworthy advantage of RFID technology, is its capability to identify objects simultaneously. However, when radio frequency signals are emitted simultaneously, there is a probability of collision occurrence, and thereby resulting in a waste of resources. Collision is a time-consuming event that reduces the performance of RFID systems. Consequently, several anti-collision algorithms have been proposed in the literature, attempt to decrease the collision occurrence probability. In almost all the existing anti-collision algorithms, a prior knowledge of the number of tags has a significant role in the efficiency of the algorithms. Since the real number of tags is unknown, it needs to be estimated. Therefore, the more accurate estimation method results in more efficient identification process. Although, there are some proposed estimation methods in previous researches, almost all of them suffer from either the low accuracy level or high computational complexity. Moreover, most of the existing estimation methods assume the reader and tags communication channel as an error free channel. Hence, in the real communication environment, which is error-prone, their results are not trustworthy. In this presentation we will focus on a general introduction for Anti-Collision algorithms and tag estimation methods to present the advantages and disadvantages of existing methods.


Cell division cycle 7-related protein kinase (Cdc7) is a heterodimer of a kinase and its activator (Dbf4) and is essential for the activation of the minichromosome maintenance complex (MCM2–7), the helicase that unwinds the strands of DNA during replication. This kinase as well as its substrate have been shown to be overexpressed in many different tumors including the majority of both solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. For this reason, it represents a potential novel target for a cytotoxic chemotherapeutic agent. Previous work in our laboratory used a high throughput screen to identify compounds that inhibit Cdc7 kinase activity. MSK-747 and 3 of its naturally occurring derivatives, including MSK-777, were identified as lead compounds based on their potency, and MSK-777 was chosen as the lead compound for further preclinical and clinical development. While we are completing the FDA required studies needed to move MSK-777 to a Phase I clinical trial, we have begun work to determine an optimal Phase II regimen. Time course experiments have been performed to determine if synergy exists between known anti-leukemic chemotherapies such as etoposide, cytarabine, daunorubicin, or hydroxyurea and MSK-777. Cells were collected at time points for viable cell count, fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) for DNA content, Western blotting, and caspase-3 activation assay. Multiple drug titration experiments were performed using daunorubicin, etoposide, cytarabine, and hydroxyurea in order to determine the optimal dosing of the drugs. Experiments using daunorubicin and cytarabine were performed where the standard chemotherapies were given prior to, concurrent with, and following MSK-777. Based on FACS and cell viability, it did not appear that either daunorubicin or cytarabine were synergistic with MSK-777. Etoposide caused the cells to arrest in S phase, and this arrest persisted for at least 48 hours. Based on the mechanism of action of MSK-777, etoposide was administered as a 12 hour pulse and then the cells were released into MSK-777. On FACS, at 24 hours the cells that had been treated with this combination continued to demonstrate the presence of a G1 population that was not seen with either agent alone, but by 48 hours this population no longer existed as the cells began to undergo apoptotic cell death. By 60 hours, cell death was evident by both FACS analysis and cell viability. Significant caspase-3 activation was seen at 36 hours in the cells that had received the combination therapy as compared with the controls. Given that hydroxyurea interferes with the G1/S phase progression, it was hypothesized to potentially be a more synergistic combination. Hydroxyurea was also administered as a 12 hour pulse prior to exposing the cells to MSK-777. On FACS, G1/S phase arrest is evident at 24 hours. This arrest persists with significant cell death at 60 hours being evident by cell viability, FACS analysis, and caspase-3 activation assay. This regimen demonstrated the highest degree of potential synergy. We will present data on the mechanism of this synergy and its use in primary patient samples of leukemia. Based on these results, the combination of hydroxyurea and MSK-777 is a promising regimen to be explored in further pre-clinical experiments. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference: Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics; 2011 Nov 12-16; San Francisco, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2011;10(11 Suppl):Abstract nr A75.


Recent pharmacogenomic studies profiled large panels of cancer cell lines against hundreds of approved drugs and experimental chemical compounds. The overarching goal of these screens is to measure sensitivity of cell lines to chemical perturbation, correlate these measures to genomic features, and thereby develop novel predictors of drug response. However, leveraging this valuable data is challenging due to the lack of standards for annotating cell lines and chemical compounds, and quantifying drug response. Moreover, it has been recently shown that the complexity and complementarity of the experimental protocols used in the field result in high levels of technical and biological variation in the in vitro pharmacological profiles. There is therefore a need for new tools to facilitate rigorous comparison and integrative analysis of large-scale drug screening datasets. To address this issue, we have developed PharmacoDB (pharmacodb.pmgenomics.ca), a database integrating the largest pharmacogenomic studies published to date. Here, we describe how the curation of cell line and chemical compound identifiers maximizes the overlap between datasets and how users can leverage such data to compare and extract robust drug phenotypes. PharmacoDB provides a unique resource to mine a compendium of curated pharmacogenomic datasets that are otherwise disparate and difficult to integrate. Key points Curation of cell line and drug identifiers in the largest pharmacogenomic studies published to date Uniform processing of drug sensitivity data to reduce heterogeneity across studies Multiple drug response summary metrics enabling visual comparison and integrative analysis


Cross-domain Chinese Word Segmentation (CWS) remains a challenge despite recent progress in neural-based CWS. The limited amount of annotated data in the target domain has been the key obstacle to a satisfactory performance. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised word-based approach to improving cross-domain CWS given a baseline segmenter. Particularly, our model only deploys word embeddings trained on raw text in the target domain, discarding complex handcrafted features and domain-specific dictionaries. Innovative subsampling and negative sampling methods are proposed to derive word embeddings optimized for CWS. We conduct experiments on five datasets in special domains, covering domains in novels, medicine, and patent. Results show that our model can obviously improve cross-domain CWS, especially in the segmentation of domain-specific noun entities. The word F-measure increases by over 3.0% on four datasets, outperforming state-of-the-art semi-supervised and unsupervised cross-domain CWS approaches with a large margin. We make our code and data available on Github.


PANIC BEHIND THE MASK: THE SPANISH INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC OF 1918 IN NEW ORLEANS by Sarah Theresa Savage August 2012 As part of the most devastating influenza pandemic in modern history, the Spanish Influenza epidemic in New Orleans left the city emotionally and physically crippled as residents struggled to resume daily life after thousands succumbed to a bloody cough and painful death in October 1918. When New Orleans public health officials reacted to the explosion of Spanish Influenza cases on October 10, 1918, the virus had already traveled throughout the population. Unlike previous influenza outbreaks, the 1918 epidemic killed primarily young healthy adults, the backbones of the working force and families. In an attempt to quarantine the ill from the healthy, the New Orleans City Board of Health instituted a series of emergency regulations that closed schools, churches, places of leisure, restricted transportation, prohibited public funerals, and limited access to basic supplies such food and clean household goods. However, the regulations frustrated residents as the list of deaths increased daily despite closures. Martial law, even instituted late, could not save the city from an invisible force that puzzled both public health officials and physicians. This thesis explores New Orleans' experiences during the 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic as public health officials hesitated to take action, healthy residents struggled to conduct daily activities, and thousands of residents became the forgotten dead.


This study explores what teachers understand as good oracy (speaking and listening competence as well as body language) in and across subjects, and their perceptions of their own prerequisites in the work of cultivating and assessing students' oracy. The backdrop is the Norwegian curriculum, in which oracy as a key competence is supposed to be taught and assessed across subjects. However, the assessment plan for this key competence was not revised when the curriculum was, leaving the responsibility for assessment planning to each teacher. To uncover the reasoning and judgments behind the teachers' expressed conceptualization, teaching, and assessment of oracy, a rhetorical topoi analysis was performed on qualitative interviews with nine tenth-grade teachers at the lower secondary level. The findings indicate that teachers find their work related to oracy challenging because they lack education in how to teach and assess oracy. The teachers value oracy, which has subject-specific characteristics that simultaneously entail consistent features across disciplines. The results show that teachers are future oriented and foster students' abilities to make utterances in a safe environment, which is a stepping stone to empowerment through agency, life-mastery, critical thinking, democracy, and rhetorical citizenship.


Distributed storage and pre‐processing of biomass feedstock at satellite storage locations (storage depots) has been proposed in literature to reduce costs and improve efficiency of the supply system. The performance of such a system, however, has not yet been rigorously quantified and compared with conventional alternatives. This work presents such an analysis using the BioFeed optimization model. BioFeed is a system‐level model that optimizes the important feedstock production activities and determines the optimal system configuration on a regional basis. The BioFeed model was first modified to enable modeling of mechanical pre‐processing, such as pelletization and grinding, at the input or the output of storage facilities, which can be mandatory or optional. The model was used to study different Miscanthus production scenarios in southern Illinois. The results showed that making storage pre‐processing mandatory increased the total cost by up to 16–53% as compared to the base case. However, it reduced the farmers' share of the total cost by up to 13–39%. The exact values depended on the particular pre‐processing technology and scenario modeled. The most cost‐effective system consisted of a combination of pre‐processing on the farms as well as at the storage facilities. The study recommended that biomass output from a hammer mill should be the biorefinery delivery specification; the hammer mills should be installed at the input of the storage facilities, but pre‐processing at the storage facility should be optional. This led to the minimum total cost of 46.4 $ Mg‐1. © 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd


System security as it is practiced today is a losing battle. In this paper, we outline a possible comprehensive solution for binary-based attacks, using virtual machines, machine descriptions, and randomization to achieve broad heterogeneity at the machine level. This heterogeneity increases the "cost" of broad-based binary attacks to a sufficiently high level that they cease to become feasible. The convergence of several recent technologies appears to make our approach achievable at a reasonable cost, with only moderate run-time overhead.


Use-after-free vulnerabilities remain difficult to detect and mitigate, making them a popular source of exploitation. Existing solutions incur impractical performance/memory overhead, require specialized hardware, and/or guarantee only protection, but not detection. In this paper, we propose DangZero, a new solution to detect use-after-free vulnerabilities as they occur. DangZero builds on a traditional page protection and aliasing scheme, where objects are made inaccessible after a free, and subsequent accesses are immediately detected. In contrast to prior solutions using alias-based detection, DangZero relies on direct page table access in ring 0 to provide a much more efficient implementation. The key idea is that, by giving the program's allocator direct access to the page tables, we can efficiently manage and invalidate vulnerable objects. To safely implement this, we build upon a unikernel-like design, where virtualization provides ring-0 (guest-mode) access, isolation, as well as compatibility with existing Linux programs. Moreover, we show direct page table access serves as an efficient building block for garbage collection-style alias reclaiming. Doing so provides the ability to safely reuse freed areas and address the scalability issues plaguing state-of-the-art alias-based solutions. Our experimental results confirm that DangZero provides accurate detection guarantees with significantly lower overhead than competing state-of-the-art solutions (e.g., 18% saturated throughput degradation on long-running programs such as the Nginx web server).


ABSTRACT.
 In many bird species, survival can vary with the age of the nest, with the date a nest was initiated, or among years within the same nesting area. A literature review showed that patterns of survival vary in relation to nest age and date and are often contradictory. Inconsistencies could be a result of temporal variation in the environment or life-history differences among species. We examined patterns of nest survival in relation to nest age, date, and year for several duck and passerine species nesting at a single location in North Dakota during 1998–2003. We predicted that if environment shaped nest survival patterns, then temporal patterns in survival might be similar among three species of upland nesting ducks, and also among three species of grassland passerines nesting at the same site. We expected that survival patterns would differ between ducks and passerines because of relatively disparate life histories and differences in predators that prey on their nests. Nest survival was rarely constant among years, seasonally, or with age of the nest for species that we studied. As predicted, the pattern of survival was similar among duck species, driven mainly by differences in nest survival associated with nest initiation date. The pattern of survival also was similar among passerine species, but nest survival was more influenced by nest age than by date. Our findings suggest that some but not all variation in temporal patterns of nest survival in grassland birds reported in the literature can be explained on the basis of temporal environmental variation. Because patterns of survival were dissimilar among ducks and passerines, it is likely that mechanisms such as predation or brood parasitism have variable influences on productivity of ducks and passerines nesting in the same area. Our results indicate that biologists and managers should not assume that temporal environmental variations, especially factors that affect nest survival, act similarly on all grassland birds.


The political, social and cultural histories of Wales before 1282, which focus on
themes associated with the evolution of nationhood — namely conquest, coexistence
and change — are incomplete because treatments of a collective
Welsh identity fail to address women's experiences. This thesis examines the
sources largely associated with Wales during the Age of Princes, analysing how
married women are identified and what types of agency are associated with them.
An investigation into the uxorial lifecycle helps to highlight the gendered cultural
and social expectations that women faced more generally. Comparing and
contrasting conventional gender constructs found in medieval Welsh sources
with evidence of women's employment of agency highlights the status of
women in society and provides a more balanced assessment of Wales before
1282.
Chapter 1 discusses Welsh native sources and traditions. It examines the
complexities of analysis concerning the dissemination of gender ideals found in
sources composed largely during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, many of
which were influenced by oral tradition. Chapter 2 looks at the development of
uxorial identity. It investigates the lifecycle of the wife defined in native law,
including discussions on the commodification of gender and the practice of
concubinage. An examination of how the uxorial lifecycle is constructed in the
Welsh chronicles and the identification of the most idealized uxorial traits found
across the sources is also discussed. Chapter 3 considers the concept of native
Welsh queenship and the status of wives as queens. Three key issues are
explored: to what extent there was an ideal of queenship in native Wales; the core
ideologies and expectations of the office of the queen; and how the use of titles
and other designations denotes status. Chapter 4 reviews evidence of Welsh
queenship in practice by looking at the political agency rulers' wives exercised.
Chapter 5 examines charter evidence concerning female land ownership and
women's involvement within their family lordships, localities and against a
wider political backdrop.


Introduction: With the emergence of chemo-resistance and vast cancer types, quest to design novel and potent anticancer molecules is always a priority to enrich the armamentarium of medicinal chemists. The antiapoptotic Bcl-2 proteins are significantly over expressed in several tumor types and are striking targets for therapeutic intervention. This is because once the recalcitrant Bcl-2 proteins are inhibited, the cell follows the regular pathway of apoptosis, that significantly halts tumor progression.

Method: Virtually designed molecules were subjected to rigorous in silico screening (docking and ADMET studies). The intuition verified by computation was confirmed by wet bench experiments. Here several thiazole based scaffolds were designed in 3 steps and in vitro evaluated against Bcl-2-Jurkat, A-431 and ARPE-19 cell lines.

Results: Among them molecules 32, 50, 53, 57 are 59 showed potent activities against Bcl-2 Jurkat cell line at concentrations ranging from 32-46 µM respectively. One of the ligands 32 emerged as most potent and was subjected to molecular dynamics (MD) simulation with death defying anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 proteins (4IEH). It was shown that 32 interacted with protein majorly via hydrophobic interactions and few electrostatic interactions were also observed. During the MD simulation conformational changes in Bcl-2 protein were observed that facilitates the movement of ligand inside the cavity of protein (majorly involving α3, α4, α5, helices) Flow cytometry analysis of compound 32 suggested that cell undergoes 87.66% Annexin A5 positive.

Discussion: This confirmed our hypothesis that rationally designed molecules validated by computational means can significantly target tumor cells and hits developed can be effectively converted into leads by downstream modifications.


Galerkin's moment method allows a fast and efficient calculation of the resistance of grounding grids. Ten years ago, El Sherbiny [1] extended Chow [2] technique and calculated the mutual resistance between two perpendicular conductors. The resulted integral does not yield a closed form and then a numerical technique has to be used to solve it. Anyway, grounding systems have complex shapes and very often their segments are neither perpendicular nor parallel to each other. This work presents the extension of El Sherbiny formulas to non parallel nor perpendicular segments; also in this case, the calculated integral has not a closed form


The heritability of nicotine dependence based on family studies is substantial. Nevertheless, knowledge of the underlying genetic architecture remains meager. Our aim was to identify novel genetic variants responsible for interindividual differences in smoking behavior. We performed a genome‐wide association study on 1715 ever smokers ascertained from the population‐based Finnish Twin Cohort enriched for heavy smoking. Data imputation used the 1000 Genomes Phase I reference panel together with a whole genome sequence‐based Finnish reference panel. We analyzed three measures of nicotine addiction—smoking quantity, nicotine dependence and nicotine withdrawal. We annotated all genome‐wide significant SNPs for their functional potential. First, we detected genome‐wide significant association on 16p12 with smoking quantity (P = 8.5 × 10−9), near CLEC19A. The lead‐SNP stands 22 kb from a binding site for NF‐κB transcription factors, which play a role in the neurotrophin signaling pathway. However, the signal was not replicated in an independent Finnish population‐based sample, FINRISK (n = 6763). Second, nicotine withdrawal showed association on 2q21 in an intron of TMEM163 (P = 2.1 × 10−9), and on 11p15 (P = 6.6 × 10−8) in an intron of AP2A2, and P = 4.2 × 10−7 for a missense variant in MUC6, both involved in the neurotrophin signaling pathway). Third, association was detected on 3p22.3 for maximum number of cigarettes smoked per day (P = 3.1 × 10−8) near STAC. Associating CLEC19A and TMEM163 SNPs were annotated to influence gene expression or methylation. The neurotrophin signaling pathway has previously been associated with smoking behavior. Our findings further support the role in nicotine addiction.


This paper describes a study of daily personal travel time in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota metropolitan area and how and why it changed between 1990 and 2001. This has two major components. The first is the relationship between commute and non- commute travel time. The second is the relationship between mode choice, total daily travel time, and automobile travel time. Both of these are analyzed in terms of how they vary geographically within the region as well as how they changed during the decade. The study is based on the Twin Cities Travel Behavior Inventory (TBI), which included about 10,000 households in 1990 and about 5,000 in 2001. These large samples make it possible to study geographic variations within the region. This is supplemented with information on commute durations from the Census Transportation Planning Package. Average Twin Cities one-way commute durations increased by about two minutes during the 1990s, while total daily travel time increased by about five minutes for workers and two minutes for non-workers. This supports an earlier finding that variations in total daily travel time within the region were primarily due to differences in average commute durations rather than non-work travel. The findings here also support the theory that time spent in non-auto modes reduces the amount of time spent in auto travel, although the reduction is not one-for-one.


ABSTRACT Migration from the Global South to Global North is a major feature of contemporary population movements, and provides a lived experiment of the implications of moving from less resource-intensive modes of living towards more resource-intensive ones. Pre-migration practices come together in complex ways post-migration with established norms and infrastructures in destination countries. Here we examine the barriers to and enablers of sustainable practices, synthesising in-depth research from nine different studies in south-eastern Australia in relation to household water use, food growing and transport. The total sample includes 323 migrants from 33 countries. The main barriers include infrastructure and broader patterns of work and society. The main enablers are cultural norms of frugality and preferences for public transport. Barriers and enablers interact in diverse ways. We show that migrants are important contributors to inadvertent sustainabilities, but their contributions may be weakened by infrastructural, structural and cultural barriers. Addressing the diverse capacities of migrants would enhance system change for everyone.


Fetal or intrauterine growth restriction (FGR or IUGR) is a concerning health issue not only due to its implications in mortality and morbidity of neonates but also because of its long-term consequences on health and disease risk of the individuals. Its main cause is an insufficient supply of nutrients and oxygen by maternal (malnutrition or hypobaric hypoxia) or placental factors (placental insufficiency) during late gestation, when the requirements of fetus are higher. The availability of reliable animal models would be highly useful for the future development of diagnostic, preventive and therapeutic strategies. Most of the studies using animal models have been performed in rodents, while the use of large animals (sheep and swine) has been scarce. The objective of the current review is to offer an overview on the possibilities of using large animals for conducting translational research on IUGR related to inadequate maternal conditions and/or placental dysfunction.


A series of dynamic compaction studies were performed on yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) and graphene composites using uniaxial flyer plate impact experiments. Studies aimed to characterize variation in dynamic behavior with respect to morphological differences for eight powdered YSZ and graphene compositions. Parameters of interest included YSZ particle size (nanometer or micrometer) and added graphene content (graphene weight percentage: 0%, 1%, 3%, 5%). Experiments were performed over impact velocities ranging between 315 and 586 m/s, resulting in pressures between 0.8 and 2.8 GPa. Hugoniot states measured appear to exhibit dependence on particle size and graphene content. Shock velocities tended to increase with graphene content and were generally larger in magnitude for the micrometer particle size YSZ. Compacted densities tended to increase as graphene content was increased and were generally larger in magnitude for the micrometer particle size YSZ samples. Resulting Hugoniot curves are compared and summarized to convey the dynamic behavior of the specimens.


Hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) and progenitors are commonly used to replace the hematopoietic system in patients with hematopoietic malignancies, or patients undergoing high dose chemotherapy. Committed progenitors are responsible for the initial hematopoietic recovery, whereas the long-term repopulating HSC is responsible for establishing life-long multilineage hematopoiesis (1). Although hematopoietic cell transplantations have been used for several decades, it is still not fully understood what governs the different steps required for re-establishing hematopoiesis. HSCs must gain access to the bone marrow (BM) in a process termed homing, take up residence in the BM, undergo self-renewing cell divisions to produce a larger pool of HSCs, and differentiate to generate more committed progenitors (Figure (Figure1).1). This is shown most dramatically when single mouse HSCs are transplanted in lethally irradiated recipients. Multilineage hematopoiesis can be reconstituted following transplantation of a single HSC, and BM from these primary recipients can be transferred to multiple secondary recipients, demonstrating the impressive ability of the BM microenvironment to induce HSC expansion as well as differentiation (2). Poor engraftment can result from failure of HSCs to home to the BM, to survive within the BM, or to proliferate and differentiate in the BM.

Figure 1

Several factors appear to play a role in the engraftment of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in the bone marrow (BM). HSC (blue nuclei and cytoplasm) must gain access to the bone marrow through the vasculature (red) in a process termed homing, take up ...

Under steady state conditions, HSCs reside in the BM among other hematopoietic cells and non-hematopoietic, mesenchymal cells present in the BM, as well as with more transient neighbors, such as lymphocytes. The concerted action of cell-cell interactions and soluble factors secreted locally or at a distance regulate HSCs and their progeny. However, the exact signals that govern in particular the self-renewal of HSCs are still not fully understood.

Despite numerous studies testing the effect of cytokines on HSCs in vitro and some insights from mouse genetics, little is known of HSC self-renewal factors. Several cytokines have now been identified that, at least in the whole animal, contribute to HSC expansion, self-renewal, and maintenance. The first is the c-Kit–ligand (KL), also termed stem cell factor (SCF) (3). Most HSCs express c-Kit, and in vitro KL affects proliferation and differentiation of primitive progenitors. Spontaneous mutations of both c-Kit (Steel locus, or Sl) and KL (white spotted locus, or W) exist in mice. Homozygous loss of either Sl or W is embryonic lethal, although some alleles of Sl, such as Sld, or of W (see refs. 3 and 4) cause significant defects in erythropoiesis and mast cell generation but are compatible with life. In both mutant animals, careful enumeration of the HSC pool demonstrates that the number of long-term repopulating HSCs is decreased (5). However, presence of fetal liver hematopoiesis in Sl homozygous mutant mice, and persistence of HSC, albeit at reduced levels, in Sl/Sld and viable KL mutant mice suggests that KL is not the sole cytokine responsible for HSC proliferation and maintenance.

The second cytokine cloned with effects on HSC is the ligand for fetal liver tyrosine kinase-3 (FL). As with KL, FL affects proliferation and differentiation of primitive progenitors in vitro. Animals with a homozygous deletion of the genes for either FL or its receptor (Flt3-R) are viable, and only the B-lymphoid lineage appears affected (6, 7) by the low population of HSCs. Crossing the Flt3R mutation into the Sl/Sld genetic background yields mice with a severe decrease in blood counts and HSCs, leading to early death from hematopoietic failure. Thus, KL and FL appear to act in a synergistic manner on HSC proliferation and maintenance (6). However, the existence of residual hematopoiesis in these animals indicates that other factors must support HSC proliferation and differentiation.

One such factor may be thrombopoietin (TPO). TPO, the ligand for Mpl, was cloned now almost a decade ago as the long-elusive cytokine responsible for the regulation of megakaryocyte proliferation and differentiation (8). In vitro, TPO increases megakaryocyte proliferation and differentiation (8). Animals in which TPO or Mpl is deleted are viable, but have significantly decreased platelet as well as megakaryocyte levels (9). Surprisingly, other committed progenitors that do not express Mpl are also decreased as a result of significant loss of HSCs (9). Consistent with the notion that TPO affects HSCs is the finding that HSCs are almost exclusively Mpl+, and that TPO induces proliferation of primitive progenitors in vitro and has therefore become an important factor in ex vivo HSC expansion schemes (10). Mimicking what is seen in knock-out animals, congenital amegakaryocytosis — a human disease arising from mutation of the Mpl receptor and characterized by a significant decrease in platelets and megakaryocytes — is also associated with the development of aplastic anemia (11). Thus, along with KL and FL, TPO is important for HSC maintenance or expansion in vivo. Whether TPO is responsible for the remaining hematopoiesis in animals in which both Flt3-R and c-Kit are mutated has not yet been tested.

In this issue of the JCI, Fox et al. tested the role of TPO in HSC engraftment (12). They found that 4-fold more BM cells were needed to re-establish hematopoiesis in Tpo–/– than in wild-type mice. Moreover, HSCs expanded 20-fold less in Tpo–/– mice than in wild-type controls, when evaluated by transplanting BM from primary Tpo–/– or wild-type recipients into secondary recipients. Significantly, this loss of HSC expansion in vivo could be substantially reversed when Tpo–/– mice were supplemented with physiologically relevant amounts of TPO. Thus, like SCF (5), TPO is one of the cytokines responsible for in vivo HSC expansion, possibly by enhancing both HSC proliferation (10) or HSC survival (13).

The only cytokine commonly used to date to hasten neutrophil recovery following transplantation is granulocyte–colony stimulating factor (G-CSF). However, G-CSF does not affect HSC proliferation and therefore does not influence long-term hematopoietic reconstitution. A similar scenario might now be envisaged for TPO: Administration of TPO may enhance both short-term and long-term hematopoietic engraftment in patients who receive limiting numbers of HSCs, such as in adult recipients of cord blood grafts, or in patients who undergo autologous transplantation. However, this question still needs to be addressed directly, as transplants done in the present study did not use limiting numbers of HSC. In addition, since the experiments reported here employed animals with no circulating TPO — unlike thrombocytopenic patients, who usually have high levels of circulating TPO (14) — the effects of TPO supplementation on HSC expansion are difficult to extrapolate from the mouse study. However, systemic administration of G-CSF affects neutrophil recovery despite the high levels of G-CSF levels in myeloablated patients (15). By analogy, it is possible that TPO administration even in patients with high TPO levels will enhance HSC proliferation or survival and lead to higher levels of HSC engraftment. Finally, because of immune mediated complications of TPO administration, TPO is currently not used therapeutically (16). If further studies confirm that TPO can allow transplantation of sub-therapeutic doses of HSC in lethally irradiated wild-type recipients, a clinically suitable source of TPO will need to be identified for this therapy to become practically applicable.


New nonparametric methods that identify and estimate counterfactuals for individuals, when each is characterized by a vector of unobserved characteristics, are developed and applied to estimate systems of individual consumer demand and welfare measures. The unobserved characteristics are allowed to enter in unrestricted ways. Identification is delivered through two fundamental assumptions: First, the system is invertible in the vector of unobserved heterogeneity. Second, there exist external, individual-specific, covariates that are related to the unobserved heterogeneity and do not enter directly into the system of interest. The observed external variables can be either discrete or continuously distributed. Estimators based on the identifying restrictions are developed and their asymptotic properties derived. Using UK micro data on consumer demand, we apply the methods to estimate individual demand counterfactuals subject to revealed preference inequalities.


The naturally occurring, nonradioactive, stable isotopes, 2H, 15N, 18O, and in particular, 13C, are valuable tracers in studies of pediatric nutrition and gas-troenterology. Techniques using these isotopes have been developed for the measurement of digestion, absorption, utilization, and excretion of nutrients in premature and term infants, as well as in young children. Compounds labeled with 13C enable quantitative measurements of nutrient oxidation rates and percent nutrient malabsorption. Illustrations of these applications are presented in studies of simple and complex carbohydrate metabolism, of medium- and long-chain triglyceride absorption and malabsorption, and of bile salt conservation and loss in the neonate. Modular protocols for the determination of nutrient absorption, oxidation, and loss now can be applied in longitudinal studies which involve comparisons of diet or which monitor recovery following malnutrition or disease. Instrumentation to be available in the future will simplify isotope ratio determinations and create ready access to the methodologies described.


Based on a recent report from the United Nations, more than 50% of the world's population currently lives in cities. This percentage is projected to increase to 70% by the year 2050 [1]. As massive amounts of people move to urban areas there is a need for cities to be run more efficiently, while at the same time improving the quality of life of their dwellers. Nevertheless, the exact same force that sets the above requirement, i.e., the proliferation of urbanization levels, makes this task much harder and challenging, especially in megacities. Despite the aforementioned conflicting dynamics, many city management operations can be facilitated by appropriate exploitation of the unprecedented amount of data that can be made available to authorities from a variety of sources. In the era of big data and ubiquitous and pervasive mobile computing, different types of sensors such as parking meters, weather sensors, traffic sensors, pipe sensors, public transportation ticket readers and even human sensors (e.g., through web technologies, social media or cell phone usage data) can assist in these efforts. Furthermore, civic applications can exploit web and mobile technologies to deliver a livable, sustainable and resilient environment to the citizens. Harnessing these information streams and technologies presents many challenges that are in the epicenter of this tutorial. In this tutorial we will present the current practices and methods in the emerging field of urban informatics as well as the open challenges. The topics to be covered in this tutorial are structured in three sessions: (i) introduction to urban studies and urban informatics, (ii) civic data and technologies for urban sensing and (iii) analytical techniques used for urban data analysis. Finally, we will also provide concrete examples of urban informatics applications.


Abstract β- d -Galactosidase from Escherichia coli is one of the largest tetrameric enzymes known at present. Although its physiological importance, the regulation of its synthesis, its enzymatic properties and its structure are well established, little is known about the stability and the folding pathway of this enzyme. Here we show that the overall folding mechanism of chemically denatured β-galactosidase consists of three stages: (i) formation of elements of secondary structure; (ii) collapse to subdomains and structured monomers; (iii) association to the native quaternary structure via dimeric intermediates. The first rate-limiting step is the association of structured monomers to form dimers in a bi-molecular reaction, with a rate constant of 4.3×10 3 M −1 s −1 at 20°C. The second rate-limiting uni-molecular folding step leads to dimers which are competent for further association, with a rate constant of 0.5×10 −3 s −1 at 20°C. Tetramers form from these dimers in a fast reaction. By determining a similar mechanism for α-complementation of β-galactosidase fragments it could be confirmed that β-galactosidase follows a consecutive bi-uni-molecular mechanism of folding and association.


Due to the poor conditions of wastewater networks, there is an increasing need in the capital investments allocated for enhancing their condition. As per the Canadian Infrastructures Report Card, one third of the total lengths of sewer pipes in Canada is in fair to very poor condition (Canadian Infrastructures Report Card, 2016). As such, there is an urgent need for inspection planning tools, with which decision makers could assess the condition of pipelines and identify pipes with higher risk of failure. These tools are potentially of service in prioritizing and optimizing inspection activities that lead to decisions regarding appropriate courses of action, especially in cases of limited resources and funding.
The goal of this research is to develop an optimization model for scheduling the inspection of sewer pipelines by performing defect-based risk assessment. The risk of failure is determined to identify critical pipe sections; by combining likelihood and consequence of failure values using
the Sugeno Fuzzy Inference System. The developed optimization model determines the inspection sequence of pipeline sections in addition to optimizing the utilization of inspection crews by minimizing both time and cost of inspections. The risk assessment model is divided into two sub
models: likelihood and consequences of failure. Structural and operational defects and pipeline characteristics in an existing sewage network are used to develop the likelihood model that
determines the structural, operational and overall condition ratings of pipelines.
Method-wise, Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) is used to develop a static condition assessment model using probabilities of occurrences and conditional probabilities. Moreover, time dimension is introduced to the developed BBN model using logistic regression as temporal links
which are required to convert BBN into Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN). The accuracy of the model's prediction is examined through referencing of actual data, where the Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) for the BBN model are 0.67, 1.06, 0.56 and 1.05, 1.60, 0.95 for structural, operational and overall conditions, respectively. The second sub-model representing the consequences of failure is developed to determine the impact of sewer pipelines' failure using Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA). Developing this sub model involves identifying and analyzing costs of failure and benefits resulting from avoiding such failures. In order to validate the CBA model, actual costs from a real failure incident are compared
with the proposed model's outputs. During the implementation of the CBA model, it is found that the indirect costs resulting from sewer pipelines' failure represent a significant portion of the total failure costs.
The proposed risk assessment model is validated using actual data derived from inspected sewer pipelines. Cost savings of around 67% could be achieved if the risk assessment model is applied and deployed over ongoing inspection practices followed by municipalities. A Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model is developed to optimize scheduling of inspection activities by including sewer sections, time and cost of inspections. This model is developed using GAMS and solved using CPLEX to maximize the number of sections and minimize time and cost.
The output from the MILP model is compared to the results of another model solved using the Genetic Algorithm (GA) approach. It is found that the MILP model could perform better than the GA model in terms of optimal solutions. Additionally, a resulting inspection cost reduction of approximately 38% could be achieved when utilizing the MILP model. It is expected that the proposed inspection scheduling model could help decision makers
better assess the condition of sewer pipelines and improve their decision-making on proactive or reactive measures. The proposed model could help allocate budgets more efficiently in addition, to being an enabler for better inspection programs, particularly in cases of limited funds and task forces.


In this Paper are described the indirect induction heated boiler and induction heated hot air producer using the voltage-fed series resonant high-frequency inverter which can operate in the frequency range from 20 kHz to 50 kHz A specially designed induction heater, which is composed of laminated stainless assembly with many tiny holes and interconnected spot welding points between stainless plates, is inserted into the ceramic type vessel with external working coil This working coil is connected to the inverter and turbulence fluid through this induction heater to moving fluid generates fn the vessel The operating performances of this unique appliance in next generation and its effectiveness are evaluated and discussed from a practical point of view.


Tridentate Schiff's base ligand, H2L (1-(1-hydroxynaphthalen-2-yl)ethanone-2-chlorobenzoylhydrazone) and their metal complexes with Ti (III), Cr (III) and Mn (III) ions have been synthesized and characterized by elemental analysis, 1H NMR, IR, electronic spectroscopy, magnetic susceptibility and molar conductance. From analytical and spectral data, the stiochiometry of complexes has been found to be (1:1) (metal:ligand). The physicochemical data suggest octahedral geometry for Ti (III), Cr (III) complexs and square pyramidal geometry for Mn (III) complex. Thermal stabilities of the complexes have been studied by thermogravimetric analysis.


Self-propagating High-temperature Synthesis (SHS) was used to prepare complex oxide La0.7Sr0.3MnO3, which is used as the cathode in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). Experiments show that La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 can be prepared via SHS under moderate conditions from a mixture of La2O3-SrO2-Mn-NaClO4-KMnO4,using NaClO4-KMnO4 as dual oxidants. The proper addition of the second phase oxidant KMnO4 makes the combustion wave movement stable. The product powders have an average particle size of 1-2μm and the particles are small aggregate. Pellets were sintered at 900 °C, 30 MPa for 10 min by spark plasma sinter (SPS). The electrical conductivity of sintered sample was 170 S•cm-1 at 1000 °C in air.


Background
Diabetes Mellitus is a chronic disorder having major economic burden. Its progression and complication increase the medical cost. Diabetes Mellitus is a group of metabolic disorder characterized by high blood glucose levels result from defect in insulin secretion or action, or both. Accordingly, there are two types and treatment varieties according to the cause [1]. Globally diabetes mellitus is an emerging common chronic illness with an estimated number of 220 million people in 2010.Of these approximately 12.1 million were living in Africa. In Sub Saharan Africa type 2 diabetes accounts for over 90% of diabetes [2]. In Ethiopia, the estimated prevalence of diabetes mellitus in adult population was 1.9% [3] and the total diabetic cases were estimated to be 2.6 million by the year 2025 [4].
Diabetes imposes a large economic burden on the health care system and health spending on diabetes accounted 11.6% of total health expenditure worldwide in 2015 [5,6]. In Latin America and the Caribbean countries the annual estimated number of deaths was 339,035 accounted a loss of 757,096 and United States Dollar (USD) 3 billion discounted years of productive life and cost among persons younger than 65 years respectively in 2000 [7].
The medical cost of diabetes depends on its prevalence, types of drug used, and presence of co-morbidity, compliance of patient and development as well as progression of complication [8]. Diabetes costs approximately USD 10.43 billion direct costs and USD 14.79 billion indirect costs in United Kingdom in 2010/2011 and cost is estimated to be USD 17.98 billion direct USD 24.36 billion in indirect costs in 2035/2036 [9]. Type 2 diabetes mellitus in Iran also costs USD 2.0460.28 billion direct and USD 1.73 million indirect costs with USD 842.66102 and USD 864.8 average cost per capita respectively in 2009 [10].
Unhealthy diet and insufficient physical activity due to non-adherence, poor attitude and poor management by the health care professionals and patients were common cause of diabetic complication [11]. Permanent disability caused a loss of 12,699,087 years and over $50 billion, and temporary disability caused a loss of 136,701 years in the working population and over $763 million in Latin America and the Caribbean countries [7]. In Iran, complications also accounted 48.9% of direct cost [10].
In most African countries, diabetic patients' lives with many complications incurring higher average monthly out of pocket expenses due to long term treatment duration [12], as complications require more laboratory investigations, hospitalization and multiple therapies [13], In Ethiopia this problems are increasing for the last two to three decades and becoming a major economic factor as this made diabetes patients to be dropped out of treatment [3]. Access to care may also contribute for poor prognosis for people with diabetes

Objective
To assess the direct cost of illness of diabetic mellitus treatment in Dessie Referral Hospital.
Method
Cross-sectional study was conducted on 217 participants from November 30, 2016 to December 31, 2017, and data were extracted from patients registries and analyzed using SPSS version 20. Linear regression was used to assess the statistically significant difference in the cost of treatment of diabetes. The study calculated direct medical and non- medical costs by multiplying the quantity of each service by their respective unit costs. The present study only assessed the direct cost such as cost of drugs, transportation, laboratory test, personnel cost and cost of glucose meter. Costs were obtained from the pharmacy department of the hospital and the cost per defined daily dose were calculated taking duration of therapy into consideration to obtain total cost of drugs and the laboratory test costs also obtained from the laboratory of hospital. Service fee for transportation was obtained from South Wollo zone transport authority and transportation cost was determined by multiplying the number of trip by the respective cost. Personal and accommodation costs were based on patient report. The total medical cost includes direct cost incurred for hospitalization, outpatient visit and out of pocket expenditures.
The data were entered and analyzed using statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 20 and Microsoft Excel 2007 and the results were presented in the form of tables and graphs. Linear regression was used to assess the statistically significant difference in the cost of treatment of diabetes and variable with p-value < 0.05 were taken as statistically significant. The study calculated direct medical costs and non-medical by multiplying the quantity of each service by their respective unit costs.
Results
The total direct medical and non-medical costs per year were 12721.5 USD where 86.5% was direct medical cost and 13.5% was direct non-medical cost. Total cost of oral anti-hyperglycemic agents was 1934.68 USD while the cost of illness of diabetic patients on insulin and syringes was 2962.6 USD and 751.16 USD respectively. Age, complication and comorbidity had a statistically significant (p < 0.05) effect on cost of illness.
Conclusion
Diabetes mellitus was an expensive illness and the direct medical costs constituted major segment in the treatment of illness, and treatment with insulin costs 1.5 times higher as compared with oral hypoglycemic agents. Diabetes mellitus cost burden has been accelerated due to its complications by 1.6. In view of the increasing global prevalence of diabetes, information from cost-of-illness studies should be used to increase awareness and for allocation of resources. Awareness of economic burden drives the urgent need for increased investments in the prevention and management of diabetes.


This paper summarizes a multiphase analytical and experimental study on evaluating the propensity for small delaminations in fiber-reinforced-plastic (FRP) composite panels to propagate under both static and cyclic (wind) loads. Finite-element modeling, employing orthotropic plane strain/stress elements, was used with the crack closure method to determine the energy stored at the crack tips. Crack propagation tests were conducted to obtain energy release rates at crack tips. The results of these test were compared with the calculated energy demands to evaluate the propensity of interlaminar flaws to propagate under service loads. Retention of static strength after fatigue load was determined by prototype tests with load magnitudes and cycles approximating the full service life of the panels. Finally, available design procedures for fatigue strength were evaluated in light of test findings. Results of the study indicated that small interlaminar flaws in the FRP composite panels have low probability of propagating under design loads. Fatigue testing and available design formulations confirmed the structural safety of the panels under long-term cyclic wind loads.


An eddy current survey of the copper evaporator (chiller) tubes in an absorption air-conditioning unit revealed two tubes in the evaporator bundle with indications typical of longitudinal cracks. Significant necking down and grain distortion at the fracture surfaces was revealed by metallographic examination. The fracture features were found to be characteristic of an overload failure in a ductile material. The ruptured tubes were concluded as a result of examination to have failed as a result of excessive internal pressure. The source of the excessive internal pressure was assumed to be a freeze-up of the tube side water that occurred during interruption of the tube side flow or misoperation of the unit.


One of the major shortcomings of widely used scientometric indicators is that different disciplines cannot be compared with each other. The issue of cross-disciplinary normalization has been long discussed, but even the classification of publications into scientific domains poses problems. Structural properties of citation networks offer new possibilities, however, the large size and constant growth of these networks asks for precaution. Here we present a new tool that in order to perform cross-field normalization of scientometric indicators of individual publications relays on the structural properties of citation networks. Due to the large size of the networks, a systematic procedure for identifying scientific domains based on a local community detection algorithm is proposed. The algorithm is tested with different benchmark and real-world networks. Then, by the use of this algorithm, the mechanism of the scientometric indicator normalization process is shown for a few indicators like the citation number, P-index and a local version of the PageRank indicator. The fat-tail trend of the article indicator distribution enables us to successfully perform the indicator normalization process. Keywords—Citation networks, scientometric indicator, cross-field normalization, local cluster detection.


Background: The Department of Research Methodology, Measurement, and Data-Analysis in the Behavioral Sciences faculty of University of Twente, is currently developing a Computer Adaptive Test (CAT) to assess health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients with Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
This CAT will be based on of 3 generic item banks (derived from PROMIS) and one COPD- specific item bank (COPD-SIB). While the generic PROMIS item banks were already validated, the COPD-SIB was developed recently and its psychometric properties have yet to be evaluated. In order to contribute to the development of the CAT, this thesis aims to evaluate the psychometric properties of the COPD-SIB and (if necessary) formulate suggestions for improvement of such, so that it can be included in the final CAT item bank without worries.
Methods: The item bank was analyzed using a latent variable model. This was done in two complementary steps. Firstly, an exploratory (factor) analysis was performed to determine the number of latent variables. Secondly, a confirmatory analysis (IRT) was performed in order to assess item quality and measurement precision as a function of the latent trait.
Results: Exploratory factory analysis revealed that the item bank is reasonably unidimensional. IRT analysis showed that half of the items were sufficient discriminative. However, in 52 out of 66 items one of the categories was superfluous, or categories were not logically ordered. Test measurement was most precise around Ɵ ≈ 0.
Conclusion: Though the item bank is sufficiently unidimensional, items that were striking in exploratory as well as in confirmatory analysis should be either excluded or adjusted before being used in the CAT. Items that showed low discrimination should be rephrased. Additionally, response categories should be merged.


We propose and analyze an optimized Lambertian order (OLO) of light-emitting diode for both indoor cellular optical wireless communication and positioning systems. We carry out analysis for the system consisting of a Lambertian source and a tilted optical receiver, and develop an expression for OLO for four-, six-, and nine-cell configurations. We investigate the channel characteristics including the optical path loss, impulse response, transmission bandwidth, and positioning accuracy for the proposed systems with and without OLO, showing that there is a significant improvement in the transmission bandwidth as well as the positioning accuracy when employing OLO. For example, for a four-cell configuration with the optimum Lambertian order, 99% of cumulative distribution function of the estimation errors is within the Cramer–Rao bound (CRB) accuracy of 6.7 to 26.7 cm, compared to the CRB accuracy of 12.8 to 29.7 cm for the Lambertian order of m =1.


This study focused on phytoplankton changes in polluted waters of Lake Manzala and the assessment of heavy metal bioaccumulation capacity during the 15-day laboratory experiment. Phytoplankton samples were analyzed every day and the concentration of zinc, iron and lead in water, in phytoplankton and in ltrate – every fth day of the experiment. Signi cantly higher phytoplankton abundance was recorded in water from the El-Boom station (basin I) compared to the New Bahr El-Baqar drain (basin II), followed by distinct di erences in its composition and chlorophyll content. However, the most abundant species were the same in both basins, i.e. Chroococcus minor, Microcystis aeruginosa, Actinoptychus octonarius, Aulacoseira granulata, Pantocsekiella ocellata, Kirchneriella obesa and Nephrocytium limneticum. Water in basin I was more polluted with heavy metals compared to basin II. Basin I was characterized by the dominance of cyanobacteria and high relative abundance of chlorophytes compared to basin II, where either cyanobacteria and/or diatoms dominated in the phytoplankton. In the former basin, the highest uptake factors (UFs) were recorded for iron and zinc and the lowest UF for lead. In basin II, the highest UF was determined for zinc, but relatively high UFs were recorded also for iron and lead. The presented results suggest that phytoplankton can contribute to natural biosorbents of heavy metals in Egyptian lakes.


In multi-module power electronics systems, especially DC distributed power systems, the small-signal stability issues are often dealt with by employing Middlebrook's impedance criterion. However, for on-line system stability margin monitoring, directly measuring impedance of the source and load subsystems then making quantitative comparisons is too complicated and difficult. This paper proposes practical and simple methods, which involve applying current or voltage perturbation to the dc side of distributed power systems then only measuring the amplitude of two currents or voltages in order to monitor the stability margin. For both methods (current perturbation and voltage perturbation), an implementation approach that does not employ external voltage or current perturbation source is also presented. All these methods and approaches are equivalent to the impedance measuring and comparing method based on the impedance criterion with different forbidden regions. A comparative evaluation of each method and its corresponding implementation approach is provided.


Here you will find a guide to scholarly research methods; MLA/APA styles; avoiding plagiarism; assuring proper documentation; use of RefWorks; and use of library resources.
http://libraryguides.cnr.edu/WritingResearchPapers


MADAM: Dr Reddrop and Jeays Lilley of the medical department of Astra Pharmaceuticals Pty Ltd have rightly pointed out that the amide group of local anaesthetics contain methylparaben as a preservative. While it is possible to test for this methylparaben by patch testing using Hollister-Stier products, this only tells us whether the patient has a contact dermatitis to the product and not whether anaphylaxis may occur. Patch testing relies on Type IV allergic reactions and is mediated by lymphocytes, while anaphylaxis occurs in Type I allergic reactions and is IgE mediated. Allergy testing for any drug thought to be causing an extreme allergic response still remains very difficult.


The removal of nitrogen (N) in grain cereal and canola crops in Australia exceeds 0.3 million t N/year and is increasing with improvements in average crop yields. Although N fertiliser applications to cereals are also rising, N2-fixing legumes still play a pivotal role through inputs of biologically fixed N in crop and pasture systems. This review collates Australian data on the effects of grain legume N2 fixation, the net N balance of legume cropping, summarises trends in the soil N balance in grain legume–cereal rotations, and evaluates the direct contribution of grain legume stubble and root N to wheat production in southern Australia. The net effect of grain legume N2 fixation on the soil N balance, i.e. the difference between fixed N and N harvested in legume grain (Nadd) ranges widely, viz. lupin –29–247 kg N/ha (mean 80), pea –46–181 kg N/ha (mean 40), chickpea –67–102 kg N/ha (mean 6), and faba bean 8–271 kg N/ha (mean 113). Nadd is found to be related to the amount (Nfix) and proportion (Pfix) of crop N derived from N2 fixation, but not to legume grain yield (GY). When Nfix exceeded 30 (lupin), 39 (pea) and 49 (chickpea) kg N/ha the N balance was frequently positive, averaging 0.60 kg N/kg of N fixed. Since Nfix increased with shoot dry matter (SDM) (21 kg N fixed/t SDM; pea and lupin) and Pfix (pea, lupin and chickpea), increases in SDM and Pfix usually increased the legume's effect on soil N balance. Additive effects of SDM, Pfix and GY explained most (R2 = 0.87) of the variation in Nadd. Using crop-specific models based on these parameters the average effects of grain legumes on soil N balance across Australia were estimated to be 88 (lupin), 44 (pea) and 18 (chickpea) kg N/ha. Values of Nadd for the combined legumes were 47 kg N/ha in south-eastern Australia and 90 kg N/ha in south-western Australia. The average net N input from lupin crops was estimated to increase from 61 to 79 kg N/ha as annual rainfall rose from 445 to 627 mm across 3 shires in the south-east. The comparative average input from pea was 37 to 47 kg N/ha with least input in the higher rainfall shires. When the effects of legumes on soil N balance in south-eastern Australia were compared with average amounts of N removed in wheat grain, pea–wheat (1:1) sequences were considered less sustainable for N than lupin–wheat (1:1) sequences, while in south-western Australia the latter were considered sustainable. Nitrogen mineralised from lupin residues was estimated to contribute 40% of the N in the average grain yield of a following wheat crop, and that from pea residues, 15–30%; respectively, about 25 and 15 kg N/ha. Therefore, it was concluded that the majority of wheat N must be obtained from pre-existing soil sources. As the amounts above represented only 25–35% of the total N added to soil by grain legumes, the residual amount of N in legume residues is likely to be important in sustaining those pre-existing soil sources of N.


No text exists within a moral vacuum, and the considerable success of Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones comes with serious criticism of its perceived ethical messages. This is unsurprising, given the subject matter: Littell's first literary work is the story of Maximilien Aue, a fictional Nazi SS officer who escapes prosecution for participating in the mass murder of Jews, as well as for raping his sister and murdering his lover, his best friend and – as the novel implies – his mother and stepfather. Having taken a false French identity after the war and become a successful industrialist, Max narrates his memoirs as an older man, seemingly unrepentant for his participation in the Holocaust, which he puts into writing with over 900 pages of precise, disturbing detail. Written in French, American-born Littell's detailed descriptions of extreme violence and sex have been labelled by some critics as 'death porn', and have invited comparisons to Sade and Georges Bataille. Andrew Hussey has called these French authors 'controversial influences – it is possible to read both Bataille and Sade simply as advocates of extreme cruelty' (Hussey 2007). In this paper, it is my intention to analyse the ethical considerations in The Kindly Ones to show what I believe is an intentional resistance to the reduction of specific characters and stories, the latter resulting in generalising ethical messages. I will take Hannah Arendt's analysis of Adolf Eichmann as an example in order to investigate how The Kindly Ones simultaneously entertains and resists Arendt's concept of the banality of evil as a paradigm for perpetrators in general, which creates a type of ethical confusion, similar to Robert Eaglestone's interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas's term "interrupted discourse". I believe this constitutes Littell's critique ofhuman moral systems and will argue that the interrupted discourse of The Kindly Ones, far from being an unethical text, allows for the emergence of a universal ethical perspective beyond flawed human judgement.


A positive refractive index change associated to UV light irradiation has recently been observed in congruent LiNbO3, (LN) crystals and in annealed proton-exchanged (APE) and reverse proton exchanged (RPE) LN layers. Although the physical mechanisms underlying such phenomenon are still not completely clear, such an effect has already been exploited to fabricate channel waveguides at visible and infrared wavelengths [1,2]; In order to elucidate the structural changes associated to UV irradiation in congruent LN, APE:LN and RPE:LN, we carried out systematic micro-Raman analyses on UV-irradiated channels (lambda = 244 nm) written under various conditions (UV powers = 40-80 mW, writing speeds = 10-1000 mm/min). In the micro-Raman experiments, light from a He-Ne laser was focused by a microscopic objective x100 on the crystal. A back-scattering scheme was used to extract the light scattered from an extremely small region (width ~ 1.6 µm, depth ~ 3.5 µm) on the surface. The spectra of the UV-irradiated channels show: (1) Numerous extra lines for some intrinsic damaged areas of the channels; (2) significant decreases of Raman intensities and line broadenings for all the bands related to the LN phonon spectrum. In particular, the Raman spectra for channels exposed to higher UV powers (70 and 80 mW) exhibit typical features of amorphous LiNbO3 (reported previously for Kr+ and He+ irradiated LN). New extra lines specific tor the LiNb3O8 crystalline phase are apparent. They are reminiscent of the extra Raman lines observed in congruent LN crystals after thermally-induced decomposition [3]. This points out to the formation of micrograins of LiNb3O8 in the UV-irradiated areas due to lithium out-diffusion or/and inter-diffusion caused by a local sharp increase of the temperature. Current work is under way to estimate the electro-optical coefficients and the spontaneous polarization from the data on the phonon frequencies and Raman scattering efficiencies [4].


This report presents a rather unusual observation of skin eruptions in children treated with the renal tubule physiologic blocking agent probenecid (p-[dipropylsulfamyl]benzoic acid). This drug has the ability, when administered with penicillin, to produce a twofold to tenfold increase in the blood penicillin level. For this reason, it seemed to us that the drug might be an ideal agent for the treatment of β-hemolytic streptococcal infections and other infections amenable to penicillin therapy. We attempted to assay its value in these infections in children. This report will be limited, however, to a discussion of the skin eruptions observed. Our observations suggest that these apparently nonserious reactions are related to the duration of treatment and to individual idiosyncrasy rather than to the dosage on an age or weight basis. Method Our studies were made during the school year 1955-1956. We used two different combinations of penicillin and probenecid; a tablet


This paper presents the control strategy for varying the turn-on and turn-off angles of three-phase switched reluctance generators (SRGs) to maximize the efficiency as well as to reduce the dc-link ripple current resulting from the commutation of the phases at high speeds. The behavior of the commutation angles is analyzed first through the offline measurement of dc-link current and voltage, generator speed, and phase currents. The analysis of the collected data has shown that the commutation angles providing the minimum ripple on the dc-link current achieve the maximum generating efficiencies. A novel control technique, developed based on the finding, achieves the desired generating set point with maximum efficiency and minimum ripple on the charging current. The control algorithm actively searches the turn-off angles to reduce the amount of normalized ripple on the dc-link current, which also ensures the generation with the maximum efficiency. The turn-on angle is controlled through a proportional-integral controller to generate a desired power level. The algorithm is implemented successfully on a 1-kW three-phase SRG charging a NiMH battery pack.


Summary 126I-labelled iodochloroxyquinoline (125ICOQ, Vioform®, CIBA) was given orally in tracer doses to 3 euthyroid and 3 hyperthyroid subjects. Samples of plasma, urine and faeces were closely analysed. The formation of 3 metabolites was demonstrated: a) a glucosiduronate (125ICOQ-gluc), b) a sulphate ester (125ICOQ-sulph) and c) an unidentified compound (125ICOQ-X) which may possibly be a dihydroxy compound. The main compound in urine was 125ICOQ-gluc. The proportion of this compound increased with time, while that of 125ICOQ and 125ICOQ-X decreased. The percentage 125ICOQ-sulph remained unchanged. The conjugates were also found in plasma but the radioactivity was mainly distributed between 125ICOQ and 125ICOQ-X. The protein-bound radioactivity in the plasma was located to albumin. More than 90 per cent of the plasma radioactivity could be removed with 3 butanol extractions. A small decrease in butanol extractability with time was noted. Comparison of the ratio between water-soluble and butanol soluble compounds in the plasma dialysate and in the corresponding urine revealed a similar ratio, indicating a similar renal clearance for all the substances. The decrease of 125ICOQ and 125ICOQ-X in the urine with time may partly be due to a firmer binding of these compounds to the plasma proteins. The spontaneous increase in the excretion of radioactivity in the urine (9) is probably due to an adaptation of the liver enzymes for forming conjugates. Faeces contained only minute amounts of the conjugates which, however, indicated the existence of an enterohepatic circulation for 125ICOQ. The main faecal metabolites were original 125ICOQ and 125ICOQ-X. The site of formation of 125ICOQ-X is assumed to be the liver or gastrointestinal tract. In none of the chromatograms of plasma, urine or faeces could any radioactive iodide or thyroidal hormones be demonstrated.


The process of individual identity formation is still an enigma, as is the capacity of public bodies to intervene in it. This thesis is the first to take a step in this direction. Using individual data from the World Value Survey, the second chapter presents several findings on the relationship between national sentiment and ethnic diversity. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find no evidence of a lower intensity of national sentiment in more ethnically fragmented countries or in minority groups. National feelings in a minority can be higher or lower than in a majority, depending on the degree of ethnic diversity of a country. On the one hand, in countries with high ethnic polarization, minorities have weaker national sentiments than majorities; on the other hand, in countries with low ethnic polarization, the reverse is true. We then develop a model of national identity formation that is consistent with the facts presented in the empirical section. As a second step, using survey data from Catalonia, we estimate the impact on identity of the 1983 educational reform, by which the education system became bilingual, and Catalan, together with Spanish, was taught in schools. Using within and between cohort variation in exposure to the Catalan language at school, the results show that individuals who have experienced greater exposure to teaching in Catalan are more likely to say that they feel more Catalan than Spanish. In the subsequent chapter, we study the effect of the Catalan reform on political behaviour. We find that the change in the educational system stimulated turnout and changed the political choices of the agents.


Background Hospitals have been one of the major targets for phishing attacks. Despite efforts to improve information security compliance, hospitals still significantly suffer from such attacks, impacting the quality of care and the safety of patients. Objective This study aimed to investigate why hospital employees decide to click on phishing emails by analyzing actual clicking data. Methods We first gauged the factors that influence clicking behavior using the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and integrating trust theories. We then conducted a survey in hospitals and used structural equation modeling to investigate the components of compliance intention. We matched employees' survey results with their actual clicking data from phishing campaigns. Results Our analysis (N=397) reveals that TPB factors (attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control), as well as collective felt trust and trust in information security technology, are positively related to compliance intention. However, compliance intention is not significantly related to compliance behavior. Only the level of employees' workload is positively associated with the likelihood of employees clicking on a phishing link. Conclusions This is one of the few studies in information security and decision making that observed compliance behavior by analyzing clicking data rather than using self-reported data. We show that, in the context of phishing emails, intention and compliance might not be as strongly linked as previously assumed; hence, hospitals must remain vigilant with vulnerabilities that cannot be easily managed. Importantly, given the significant association between workload and noncompliance behavior (ie, clicking on phishing links), hospitals should better manage employees' workload to increase information security. Our findings can help health care organizations augment employees' compliance with their cybersecurity policies and reduce the likelihood of clicking on phishing links.


Here we report the unparalleled performance of a novel acid hydrotrope, p-toluenesulfonic acid (p-TsOH), for the rapid and nearly-complete dissolution of wood lignin below the boiling temperature of water. Up to 85% of birch wood lignin can be solubilized at 80 °C for 20 min. Similar degrees of delignification can only be achieved at 150 °C or higher for over 10 hours using known hydrotropes such as aromatic salts, or for 2 hours using alkaline wood pulping. We fractionated mechanically produced birch wood fibers into a carbohydrate-rich water insoluble solid (WIS) fraction and a spent acid liquor containing mainly dissolved lignin. Dialysis of the fractionated WIS resulted in a small amount of lignin-containing crystalline cellulose nanofibrils (LCCNFs) and a majority of the partially hydrolyzed lignocellulosic solid residue (LCSR) that was subsequently fibrillated into dispersible uniform lignocellulosic nanofibrils (LCNFs). The dissolved lignin can be easily separated through precipitation as dispersible lignin nanoparticles (LNPs) by simply diluting the spent acid liquor to below the minimal hydrotrope concentration (MHC) of p-TsOH of approximately 10%. The physical and chemical properties of the LCNF and LNP can be tailored by adjusting the p-TsOH fractionation severity as well as the intensity of mechanical fibrillation. The lowest severity experiment, in which approximately 62% birch wood lignin was dissolved, resulted in a thicker (51 nm average height) and more hydrophobic LCNF (water contact angle of 82°) as well as LNP with a larger molecular weight of approximately 7200. The low solubility of p-TsOH at ambient temperature can facilitate efficient recovery using commercially proven crystallization technology simply by cooling the re-concentrated spent acid liquor after lignin precipitation. This study presented a promising and green pathway in achieving low-cost and sustainable production of wood based nanomaterials such as LCNF and LNP for developing a biobased economy.


Complex NLP applications, such as machine translation systems, utilize various kinds of resources namely lexical, multiword, domain dictionaries, maps and rules etc. Similarly, translators working on Computer Aided Translation workbenches, also require help from various kinds of resources - glossaries, terminologies, concordances and translation memory in the workbenches in order to increase their productivity. Additionally, translators have to look away from the workbenches for linguistic resources like Named Entities, Multiwords, lexical and lexeme dictionaries in order to get help, as the available resources like concordances, terminologies and glossaries are often not enough. In this paper we present Kunji, a resource management system for translation workbenches and MT modules. This system can be easily integrated in translation workbenches and can also be used as a management tool for resources for MT systems. The described resource management system has been integrated in a translation workbench Transzaar. We also study the impact of providing this resource management system along with linguistic resources on the productivity of translators for English-Hindi language pair. When the linguistic resources like lexeme, NER and MWE dictionaries were made available to translators in addition to their regular translation memories, concordances and terminologies, their productivity increased by 15.61%.


Introduction: Adaptive designs (ADs) are underused, particularly in publicly funded confirmatory trials, despite their promising benefits and methodological prominence given in the statistical literature.
Research Question: This thesis investigates why ADs are underused in the publicly funded setting, explores facilitators, and proposes recommendations to improve their appropriate use.

Methods: Confirmatory ADs are reviewed from a statistical and practical perspective. Cross-disciplinary key stakeholders are then interviewed to explore roadblocks to the use of ADs. Based on the interview findings, follow-up quantitative surveys are undertaken to explore wider perceptions on barriers, concerns, and facilitators aimed to generalise the findings. The surveys targeted CTUs (Clinical Trials Units), private sector organisations, and Public Funders in the UK. In view of some of the findings, case studies of applied confirmatory ADs are reviewed to highlight their scope and characteristic, and to investigate the state of reporting of the most common AD. The design and implementation of selected ADs is demonstrated using retrospective and prospective planned case studies. Lessons learned are highlighted to enhance the design of future trials of similar characteristics.

Results: The main barriers to the use of ADs include the lack of funding support accessible to UK CTUs to aid their design; limited practical knowledge; preference for traditional mainstream designs; difficulties in marketing ADs to key stakeholders; limited time to support ADs relative to other competing priorities; lack of applied training; and insufficient access to case studies of undertaken ADs, which would facilitate practical learning and successful implementation. Researchers' inadequate description of AD-related aspects (such as rationale, scope, and decision-making criteria to guide the planned AD) in grant proposals was viewed among the major obstacles by Public Funders. Suboptimal reporting of the design and conduct of undertaken ADs appears to influence concerns about their robustness in decision-making and credibility to change practice.

Conclusions: Most obstacles appear connected to a lack of practical implementation knowledge and applied training, and limited access to adequately reported case studies to facilitate practical learning. Assurance of scientific rigour through transparent adequate reporting is paramount to the credibility of findings from adaptive trials. There is a need for a consensus guidance document on ADs and an AD-tailored CONSORT statement to enhance their reporting and conduct. This thesis provides detailed recommendations to improve the appropriate use of ADs and areas for future related research.


Black widow venom in the concentration 1--10 mkg/ml added on one side of the bilayer of common bovine brain phospholipids induces the formation of conductivity channels with high cation-anion selectivity with the number of cation transfer for K+, Ca2+, Sr2+, Mg2+, Na+, Cs+, Li+ equaling 0.98, 0.97, 0.96, 0.94. 0.88. 0.82, 0.82 correspondingly (at pH = 7.5). At pH less than 3.5 the channels are slightly selective for anions (the number of cation transfer 0.4). Potential-dependence of the channels is found, which is explained by microstructural reconstruction of their protein complex.


Brands are one of marketing's main foci. But while the American Marketing Association's official marketing definition continues to evolve, its brand definition has remained stagnant for nearly 80 years. This article argues that the AMA's simplistic trademark conceptualization of brands is increasingly out of touch with marketing theory and practice. Integrating the consumer culture, marketing semiotics, and General Systems Theory literatures, we re-conceptualize brands as semiotic marketing systems. This follows marketing systems being core to macromarketing. It also obeys marketing systems needing to contemplate their meaning infrastructures given today's progressively symbolic markets. The antecedents, operation and benefits of this new systems approach to brands are discussed. Brands are re-defined as complex multidimensional constructs with varying degrees of meaning, independence, co-creation and scope. Brands are semiotic marketing systems that generate value for direct and indirect participants, society, and the broader environment, through the exchange of co-created meaning.


It is known that cooling rate from the liquid state is an important factor for producing the bulk metallic glasses. However, almost no other factors such as electric and/or magnetic fields were investigated. The present authors have reported that a new method for producing Mg-Cu-Y bulk metallic glasses by using electromagnetic vibrations is effective in forming the metallic glass phase. However, effects of the electromagnetic vibrations on glass-forming ability in other alloy systems are not investigated. Thus, this study aims to investigate effects of the electromagnetic vibrations on glass-forming ability in Fe-Co-B-Si-Nb bulk metallic glasses. As a result, it was found that glass-forming ability of Fe-Co-B-Si-Nb alloys also enhances with increasing the electromagnetic vibration force. Moreover, the electromagnetic vibrations were found to affect the increase of the cooling rate and the decrease in the number of crystal nuclei directly, but not to affect the crystal growing rate.


The article deals with the application of Data Envelopment Analysis on research and development (R&D) effectiveness assessment of Czech manufacturing industry. The aim of this paper is to analyze effectiveness of resources spent in R&D, i.e. how effectively are resources transformed into marketable outputs of R&D. As variables are used R&D personnel, R&D expenditure and Sales of products of R&D to another entity. Data envelopment analysis is based on assessing the quantity of consumed inputs by the produced outputs and estimation of production possibility frontier by techniques of linear programming. Two models are calculated: an input oriented model with variable returns to scale and an input oriented model with constant returns to scale. Described approach to evaluation of R&D effectiveness can also be used in other sectors of economy as well as other countries. It was found that the most effective sector of Czech manufacturing industry is a manufacture of wood and paper while automotive industry is the least effective.


Antiplatelet drug resistance is a multifactorial phenomenon that affects a large number of cardiovascular patients with symptomatic coronary artery disease. Although unique definitions for aspirin and clopidogrel resistance are missing, there is growing evidence for a clinical importance of response to antiplatelet therapy. The prevalence for aspirin and clopidogrel resistance has been reported to be between 5 and 30% in literature. Moreover, recent data suggest a high rate of dual antiplatelet drug resistance. Although there are convincing data about an association of aspirin resistance and clinical outcome, little is known about the clinical relevance of clopidogrel hyporesponsiveness. This article reviews the evidence for the clinical impact of antiplatelet drug resistance, with particular attention on the clinical outcome of clopidogrel low response according to current clinical data. Additional systematic studies are needed to evaluate the effects of alternative antiplatelet therapies in patients identified as low responders.


The purpose of this communication is (1) to discuss the errors introduced during the colorimetrie determination of phenolsulphonephthalein in the urine when the color of the dye is obscured by the bile pigments, and (2) to offer a method which permits of fairly accurate estimation of renal function, as expressed by the rate of excretion of phenolsulphonephthalein even though marked jaundice is present. Rowntree and Geraghty 1 noted in their paper, in 1910, that urinary and biliary pigments may be removed from urine by basic lead acetate. No details of the use of this substance were discussed. In 1921 a method was reported by Burwell and Jones, 2 in which it was proposed that the use of a saturated alcoholic solution of zinc acetate precipitated both bile and blood pigments. The following paragraph is a quotation from the paper suggesting the use of zinc acetate. Phenolsulphonephthalein is injected in the usual manner,


Re-alignment of a 6km section of the A830 road in Arisaig (NGR: NM 6714 9054) provided an opportunity to investigate the archaeology of this poorly understood area of the West Highlands. A combination of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental techniques were used to investigate the road corridor. Archaeological survey, followed up by selected excavations, identified a previously unrecorded Bronze Age kerb cairn and two areas of shieling huts. Investigation of the shielings obtained evidence for repeated reuse of sites and reconstruction of structures through the medieval and post-medieval periods. In both cases, Bronze Age deposits were also recorded at the base of the medieval sequence. Analysis of a long peat core from a basin close to one of the shielings revealed a history of continuous but gradual decline in woodland, starting in about 3200 BC and continuing to the present day. Collation of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data from the present project and previous investigations in the area have allowed the creation of a tentative model of landscape evolution for Arisaig.


Crystalline structures and lattice water
molecules are believed to strongly influence the ability of metal oxides to
reversibly and rapidly insert protons in aqueous batteries. In the present
work, we performed a systematic analysis of the electrochemical charge storage
properties of nanostructured TiO2 electrodes composed of either
anatase or amorphous TiO2 in a mild buffered aqueous electrolyte. We
demonstrate that both materials allow reversible bulk proton insertion up to a maximal
reversible gravimetric capacity of ~150
mA·h·g-1. We also
show that the TiO2 crystallinity governs the energetics of the
charge storage process, with a phase transition for anatase, while having little
effect on either the interfacial charge-transfer kinetics or the apparent rate
of proton diffusivity within the metal oxide. Finally, with both TiO2
electrodes, reversible proton insertion leads to gravimetric capacities as high
as 95 mA·h·g-1 at 75
C. We also reveal two competitive reactions decreasing the Coulombic efficiency
at low rates, i.e. hydrogen evolution
and a non-faradaic self-discharge reaction. Overall, this work provides a
comprehensive overview of the proton-coupled electrochemical reactivity of TiO2
and highlights the key issues to be solved in order to truly benefit from the
unique properties of protons as fast charge carriers in metal oxides.


ABSTRACT The present study was designed to evaluate the use of variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) and IS6110-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analyses in combination as a two-step strategy for discrimination (as measured by the Hunter-Gaston Discrimination Index [HGDI]) of both high- and low-copy-number IS6110 Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates compared to IS6110-RFLP alone with an unselected collection of isolates. Individually, IS6110-RFLP fingerprinting produced six clusters that accounted for 69% of the low-copy-number IS6110 isolates (five clusters) and 5% of the high-copy-number IS6110 isolates (one cluster). A total of 39% of all the isolates were clustered (HGDI = 0.97). VNTR analysis generated a total of 35 different VNTR allele profile sets from 93 isolates (HGDI = 0.938). Combining IS6110-RFLP analysis with VNTR analysis reduced the overall percentage of clustered isolates to 29% (HGDI = 0.988) and discriminated a further 27% of low-copy-number isolates that would have been clustered by IS6110-RFLP alone. The use of VNTR analysis as an initial typing strategy facilitates further analysis by IS6110-RFLP, and more importantly, VNTR analysis subdivides some IS6110-RFLP-defined clusters containing low- and single-copy IS6110 isolates.


Rapid deforestation remains a pressing problem in much of the global South and has severe environmental and socioeconomic consequences. Policies aimed at addressing this problem have historically focused on 'land sparing': prohibiting some or all extractive activities in specified locations, such as protected areas. An alternative approach is 'land sharing': improving supervision and management of extractive activities. Timber extraction can be managed in ways that significantly reduce forest loss, by, for example, relying on selection logging instead of clearcutting and extending logging rotations. Probably more important, forests that are well managed for extraction may discourage illegal logging and land-use change. Hence, in principle, forest concessions can reduce as well as encourage forest loss, and their net effect is an empirical question. Limited rigorous evidence is available to measure net effects. We use remotely sensed forest loss panel data, detailed information on hundreds of forestry concessions, and quasi-experimental methods (matched difference-in-differences) to measure the net effect of concessions on forest loss in Mexico. Results from an initial analysis indicate that although we test for a variety of temporal and subgroup effects, we are unable to reject the null hypothesis that concessions have no net effect on forest loss. It is important to emphasize that these results are preliminary and subject to revision.


This paper describes a set of experiments involving small helicopters landing automated landing at unusual attitudes. By leveraging the increased agility of small air vehicles, we show that it is possible to automatically land a small helicopter on surfaces pitched at angles up to 60 degrees. Such maneuvers require considerable agility from the vehicle and its avionics system, and they pose significant technical and safety challenges. Our work builds upon previous activities in human-inspired, high-agility flight for small rotorcraft. However, it was not possible to leverage manual flight test data to extract landing maneuvers due to stringent attitude and position control requirements. Availability of low-cost, local navigation systems requiring no on-board instrumentation has proven particularly important for these experiments to be successful.


Clustering is often done by minimizing an objective function of a clustering model. Several runs with different initializations or parameters yield multiple solutions. The best of these solutions is often selected by cluster validity measures. We analyze cluster objective and validity functions and show that they can be contradictory and therefore should be considered jointly in an integrated clustering approach. For this reason we define a Pareto fuzzy c-means clustering model that produces the Pareto optimal set of both objective and validity functions. In our experiments with the single outlier and the lung cancer data sets Pareto clustering considerably outperforms conventional clustering.