Recent advances in the biomedical sciences have led to an enormous increase in the amount of research literature being published, most of it in electronic form; researchers are finding it difficult to keep up-to-date on all of the new developments in their fields. As a result there is a need to develop automated Text Mining tools to filter and organize data in a way which is useful to researchers. Human-annotated data are often used as the 'gold standard' to train such systems via machine learning methods.
This thesis reports on a project where three annotators applied two Models of rhetoric (argument) to a corpus of on-line biomedical research texts. How authors structure their argumentation and which rhetorical strategies they employ are key to how researchers present their experimental results; thus rhetorical analysis of a text could allow for the extraction of information which is pertinent for a particular researcher's purpose. The first Model stems from previous work in Computational Linguistics; it focuses on differentiating 'new' from 'old' information, and results from analysis of results. The second Model is based on Toulmin's argument structure (1958/2003); its main focus is to identify 'Claims' being made by the authors, but it also differentiates between internal and external evidence, as well as categories of explanation and implications of the current experiment.
In order to properly train automated systems, and as a gauge of the shared understanding of the argument scheme being applied, inter-annotator agreement should be relatively high. The results of this study show complete (three-way) inter-annotator agreement on an average of 60.5% of the 400 sentences in the final corpus under Model 1, and 39.3% under Model 2. Analyses of the inter-annotator variation are done in order to examine in detail all of the factors involved; these include particular Model categories, individual annotator preferences, errors, and the corpus data itself. In order to reduce this inter-annotator variation, revisions to both Models are suggested; also it is recommended that in the future biomedical domain experts, possibly in tandem with experts in rhetoric, be used as annotators.
KEY WORDS: annotation, argument, biomedical text, computational linguistics, information extraction, rhetoric, text mining


Mother Angeles Sorazu (1873-1921), Franciscan Conceptionist of Valladolid in Spain and one of the most outstanding mystics of our century. The mystery of the word made man and the life of Mary constitute the foundations of her mystical experience and of her spirituality which is both instructive and stimulating on the eve of the Third Millennium. The pre-existence of the incarnate Word and the presence of Mary in that decision of the divine plan is the aspect of her doctrine that is studied here, as an invitation to theologians to deepen their understanding of her teaching. Theological reflection and mystical experience ought to interpenetrate one another.


Eric Aubanel Faculty of Computer Science University of New Brunswick Fredericton, New Brunswick Canada, E3B 5A3 email@example.com Abstract Parallel programming keeps growing in importance, driven both by changes in hardware and the increasing size of data sets. Hundreds of parallel languages have been proposed, but very few have taken hold beyond the language developers themselves. One reason for this is usability that is the degree of ease with which one can develop and maintain parallel programs that are both correct and reach the desired level of performance. The few studies of parallel language usability have not been informed by a theoretical framework. Existing theoretical models of program comprehension need to be extended to parallel programming to help address the challenges of developing new languages, programming frameworks, development tools, and pedagogy. The contribution of this article is to motivate research on parallel program comprehension, and to suggest a way forward by expanding the two-level program/situation model of program comprehension to include a model of program execution and by applying the extensive work on human reasoning by Johnson-Laird to understand how people reason about parallel programs.


Background: Tumors of the hand are usually benign in nature, and therefore, treatment is usually nonessential. Indications for the surgical treatment are cosmetic concern and potential for malignancy. Since malignant hand tumors are seen very rarely, suspicious findings should be assessed thoroughly, and the diagnosis should be established as well. The purpose of this article is to evaluate those lesions that commonly arise in the hand region including lipomas, ganglion cysts, and glomus tumors as well as malignant tumors such as soft-tissue sarcomas and squamous cell carcinomas. Material and Methods: A retrospective review of all 528 surgically removed primary skin and soft-tissue tumors of the hand at our department between 1996 and 2016 was performed. Results: A total of 528 patients were evaluated in this study. The most common benign tumor of the hand was pyogenic granuloma (24%), and the most common malign tumor of the hand was squamous cell carcinoma (65.2%). Malignant tumors incidence was higher in males, whereas benign tumors incidence was higher in females. Conclusions: A careful history and physical examination performed by a specialist can narrow down the possibilities regarding the type of tumor. The vast majority of hand tumors tend to be benign. In contrast to skin cancers in general, those occurring on the hand frequently have a worse prognosis, with a greater propensity for recurrence, metastatic spread, and functional deficit.


This paper approaches Eduard Hanslick's polemics against feelings in music. Hanslick's musical formalism can be considered as a reaction against the so called aesthetics of the effect and the conception of music as expression of feelings. Against these theories, Hanslick tries to establish an autonomy of music not in its effect upon the subject, but in the object of art itself. He does not accept the conception which considers that the aim of music is the arising of feelings, nor the one that considers the feelings as the content represented by music in its works. According to him, the beautiful in music must hold in itself its significance and the effect of music upon feelings cannot be considered as the aesthetic principle of music.
Keywords: Hanslick; feelings; aesthetics.


Learning-based approaches for image super-resolution (SR) have attracted the attention from researchers in the past few years. We present a novel self-learning approach with multiple kernel learning for adaptive kernel selection for SR. The Multiple Kernel Learning is theoretically and technically very attractive, because it learns the kernel weights and the classifier simultaneously based on the margin criterion. With theoretical supports of kernel matching search method and Optimization approach (Gradient) are proposed in SR framework learns and selects the optimal Kernel ridge regression model when producing an SR image, which results in the minimum SR reconstruction error. Evaluate this method on a variety of images, and obtain very promising SR results. In most cases, this method quantitatively and qualitatively outperforms bi-cubic interpolation and state-of-the-art learning based SR approaches. Keywords—Self-learning,Super-resolution, Sparse Representation, Kernel ridge regression, Multiple kernel learning.


A semi-empirical effective interionic potential model has been parameterized to investigate UO2 by molecular dynamics simulation technique. The simulations were performed in the constant pressure–temperature ensemble between 300 K–3200 K at 100 K intervals. The pair distribution functions and coordination numbers signal the onset of structural changes at temperatures in accord with the Bredig transition and melting. The oxygen ion diffusion coefficients calculated from the mean square displacements markedly increase the liquid like value at T > 2100 K. The transition to the superionic state and melting are well reproduced within the limitations of a rigid ion potential.


Journal bearing plays a critical role in carrying the extensive transient hydrodynamic loads to prevent adhesive wear of crankshaft of a high-torque low-speed diesel engine. The nominal clearance between the shaft-pin and the bearing journal invites viscous shearing of the lubricant on the initiation of rotation at the time of low speed engine start up. Shear heating adversely affects the load carrying ability of the bearing by reducing its viscosity as a function of time. It invites physical contact and wear of bearing and the crankshaft compromising their designed life. In this work the 2-D Reynolds equation is used to model hydrodynamic lubrication phenomenon of crankshaft covering the steady state wedging and transient squeeze which are modeled under the lubricant flooding conditions. The viscous shear heating is modeled by solving energy equation encompassing 2-D convection and 1-D conduction phenomena. The lateral displacements are incorporated in the lubrication model to analyze the effects of secondary dynamics of crankshaft on viscous shearing and friction. The relationships between temperature, viscosity and density are defined to ascertain their effects on bearing lubrication at low engine speed. The numerical simulation results are analyzed for the complete 720-degree 4-stroke engine cycle at a low operating speed. The results show that viscous heating adversely affects the lubrication of journal bearing by significantly reducing the viscosity of lubricant film at low transient loads and speed. The study determines hydrodynamic pressures, temperature, density, viscosity and thermal conductivity of lubricant suitable to minimize the possibility of rupture and adhesive wear due to shear heating under the flooding conditions at a low initial engine speed. It will facilitate towards enhancing the life of crankshaft of a heavy-duty diesel engine.


In this paper, we present a Smart Transducer Interface Module (STIM) for distributed optical fibre smart sensors. The STIM is a general purpose interface that has been designed to be used with intensiometric optical fibre sensors. The interface is made up of 2 optical fibre PIN receivers, a differential amplifier and a digital signal processor. The two received signals are differentially amplified to increase sensitivity and the signal-to-noise ratio. A DSP evaluation board is used as the intelligence of the STIM, which has onboard ADC. The STIM was successfully used as an embedded system monitoring both temperature and strain, and to simply switch on the onboard LED when these measurands exceeded a predetermined threshold value. The sensing system, without the DSP, was also used to successfully detect dynamic strain signals. We also present the future directions for work on distributed optical fibre smart sensors.


"Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity remains a towering monument...Morgan can never be ignored by the student of kinship."--Robert Lowie. Modern anthropology would be radically different without this book. Published in 1871, this first major study of kinship, inventive and wide-ranging, created a new field of inquiry in anthropology. Drawing partly upon his own fieldwork among American Indians, anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan examined the kinship systems of over one hundred cultures, probing for similarities and differences in their organization. In his attempt to discover particular types of marriage and descent systems across the globe, Morgan demonstrated the centrality of kinship relations in many cultures. Kinship, it was revealed, was an important key for understanding cultures and could be studied through systematic, scientific means. Anthropologists continue to wrestle with the premises, methodology, and conclusions of Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity. Scholars such as W. H. R. Rivers, Robert Lowie, Meyer Fortes, Fred Eggan, and Claude Levi-Strauss have acknowledged their intellectual debt to this study; those less sympathetic to Morgan's treatment of kinship nonetheless do not question its historical significance and impact on the development of modern anthropology. Elisabeth Tooker is professor emerita at Temple University. She is the author of numerous studies, including Lewis H. Morgan on Iroquois Material Culture and The Iroquois Ceremonial of Midwinter.


Background:Objectives: To determine the Adult incidence of IIM in the Kingdom of Fife, Scotland. The Fife population is 370,000 and constitutes 6.8% of the Scottish Population (5,425,000). 98% of the Fife population is Caucasian. We also sought to characterise the incident IIM cases in terms of subtype and autoantibody profile. Methods: All newly diagnosed Adult cases ( (cid:1) 18 years) of IIM between 01.03.17 and 30.11.18 were recorded (11.75 year period). The cases were identified by a search of the Fife Rheumatic Diseases Unit Database using IIM-specific ICD-10 codes. These were cross-referenced with a prospective personal database of IIM cases established by the Lead Author (JMcL) on 26.02.17. In addition a search of all Fife patients enrolled in the UKMYO-NET study was also performed. All patients with ' definite ' or ' probable ' IIM by the Bohan & Peter 1977 criteria; Clinically defined Inclusion Body Myo-sitis (IBM) by the ENMC 2011 criteria; or other specific criteria in the case of Clinically Amyopathic Dermatomyositis (CADM) and Immune-mediated Necrotising myopathy (IMNM) were included. Results: 53 newly diagnosed Adult IIM cases were identified. 11 Derma-tomyositis (DM) (3 NXP2; 2 Jo-1; 2 TIF1-G; 1 Mi-2; 3 Myositis-specific antibody (MSA) not tested). 4 Polymositis (PM) (1 Jo-1; 1 MDA5; 1 MSA/Myosits-associated antibody (MAA) negative; 1 MSA not tested). 12 Anti-synthetase syndrome (8 Jo-1; 3 PL7; 1 PL12) and 3 patients with Jo-1 isolated Interstitial lung disease (ILD). 5 Overlap Connective tissue disease (CTD) : 2 Systemic Lupus Erythematosus; 2 Systemic sclerosis


The functionally graded thermal barrier coating (TBC) serves in high temperature and/or high temperature gradient environment for a long time. According to the experimental and theoretical research, in the metal substrate and the metal-rich interlayer creep deformation will appear under high temperature environment. In order to design and optimize the compositional distribution of FGM, it is necessary to analyze the stress and strain responses taking into account the creep phenomenon of the materials. In this article, the thermo-mechanical responses of ceramic/metal functionally graded TBC in work environment are analyzed by a finite element method. The creep phenomenon of the metal and the interlayers are taken into account. The numerical results indicate that the creep behavior of all interlayers, even for the ceramic-rich interlayer, cannot be neglected in analysis. It is suggested that the creep phenomenon of the material is important in the functionally graded TBC systems.


The stratified squamous epithelium is a model system in which to define molecular mechanisms underlying the switch from proliferation to differentiation. This can be achieved through the functional dissection of keratin gene promoters. Having previously established the importance of keratin 4 in maintaining the differentiated phenotype in corneal epithelial cells, we investigated the role of Sp1-mediated transactivation of the keratin 4 promoter given the role of Sp1 in differentiation and cell cycle progression. Sp1 transactivation of the keratin 4 promoter was diminished in cyclin D1-overexpressing cells, which may be mediated through a newly described direct interaction between Sp1 and cyclin D1 and opposed by a complex between Sp1 and pRB.


The invention of Computed Tomography (CT) has long been used for medical applications and material inspection. X-Ray Computed Tomography is a powerful imaging technique for viewing the interior of an object as if it had been sliced open along the image plane for viewing. The application of CT techniques has increasingly broadened in various industries i.e. aerospace, geoscience and archaeology. Malaysian Nuclear Agency has designed and developed an Industrial X-Ray CT system. The system consists of a 160 kV X-ray machine, a motorised linear rotary table, and X-scan linear array detector. 2-D CT image was acquired through the fan beam imaging modality. However, an X-ray CT does not provide information on the accuracy of the samples dimension and defects in terms of SI units. Another problems related to CT imaging is the alignment of X-ray fan beam with linear array detector (LAD) and formation of ring artifacts. In this work, methods for reducing ring artifacts are investigated like recalibrating the CT devices and ring filter application from CT reconstruction software. The alignment of X-ray fan beam with LAD by using dark films and VISI-X are described. Then, the dimension of CT sample can be estimated by calculating the geometrical magnification. The accuracy of geometrical magnification in estimating the size of CT sample is investigated by making a comparison with the measured magnification with varying position from X-ray source. Magnification is calculated by dividing the size of reconstructed CT sample with the measured size of actual CT sample.


In this chapter a modern approach to e-teaching scenarios at the university level is introduced that focuses on the teacher. This approach covers content-related and communicational components of an e-education scenario. Content creation and delivery via Internet, as well as teacher-learner communication is shown from the point of view of the teacher. The content related part of an eteaching scenario uses the well-known variety of computer-assisted training applications. The communication part refers to all aspects of teacherlearner and learner-learner communication within e-teaching scenarios. Based on elementary communication patterns and an easy-to-use technical infrastructure a set of reference communication processes for e-education is created and carried out depending on the chosen teaching method. To prove the technical feasibility of the concept the whole e-teaching process is supported by prototypic software solutions. INTRODUCTION


All aircraft whatever they are; are regularly audited. These controls are mainly visual and external; other controls such as "major inspection" or "general revisions" are more extensive and require the dismantling of certain parts of the aircraft. Some parts of the aircraft remain inaccessible and are therefore more difficult to inspect (compressor, combustion chamber, and turbine). The means of detection must ensure controls either during initial construction, or at the time of exploitation of all the parts. The Non destructive testing (NDT) gathers the most widespread methods for detecting defects of a part or review the integrity of a structure. The aim of this work is to present the different (NDT) techniques and to explore their limits, taking into account the difficulties presented at the level of the hot part of a turbojet, in order to propose one or more effective means, non subjective and less expensive for the detection and the control of cracks in the hot section of a turbojet. To achieve our goal, we followed the following steps: - Acquire technical, scientific and practical basis of magnetic fields, electrical and electromagnetic, related to industrial applications primarily to electromagnetic NDT techniques. - Apply a scientific approach integrating fundamental knowledge of synthetic and pragmatic manner so as to control the implementation of NDT techniques to establish a synthesis in order to comparing between the use of different methods. - To review recent developments concerning the standard techniques and their foreseeable development: eddy current, ultrasonic guided waves ..., and the possibility of the implication of new techniques.


Serious mental illness (SMI) represents a major risk for repeated incarceration, yet recidivism studies often do not specifically focus on persons with SMI as compared to non-SMI offenders. The study reported here systematically identified Utah State prisoners released from 1998 to 2002 (N = 9,245) who meet criteria for SMI and compared SMI and non-SMI offenders on length of time to prison return. Findings indicate that 23% of the sample met criteria for SMI (n = 2,112). Moreover, survival analyses demonstrated a significant difference in return rates and community tenure for offenders with SMI compared to non-SMI offenders when controlling for demographics, condition of release, offense type, and condition of return (parole violation vs. new commitment). The median time for all SMI offenders to return to prison was 385 days versus 743 days for all non-SMI offenders, 358 days sooner (p < .001). Implications of these findings are discussed.


This paper presents a multiscale phasor measurement unit (PMU) data-compression method based on clustering analysis of wide-area power systems. PMU data collected from wide-area power systems involve local characteristics that are significant risk factors when applying dimensionality-reduction-based data compression. Therefore, density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) is proposed for the preconditioning of PMU data, except for bad data and the automatic segmentation of correlated local datasets. Clustered PMU datasets of a local area are then compressed using multiscale principal component analysis (MSPCA). When applying MSPCA, each PMU signal is decomposed into frequency sub-bands using wavelet decomposition, approximation matrix, and detail matrices. The detail matrices in high-frequency sub-bands are compressed by using a PCA-based linear-dimensionality reduction process. The effectiveness of DBSCAN for data compression is verified by application of the proposed technique to the real-world PMU voltage and frequency data. In addition, comparisons are made with existing compression techniques in wide-area power systems.


Under the umbrella of physics educational research, scholars are looking at teaching physics using different methods: philosophy of science, epistemology, or hermeneutics. In each approach it is found that it is essential to create a constructive teaching and learning environment for students to learn actively. When students' ways of acquiring knowledge change from being conveyed by authority to constructing their own understanding, their role changes from being a passive acceptor to being a more active constructor.
Research shows that only helping students to change from their personal views of concepts to scientific conceptions is not enough and does not contribute much to students' science learning. To develop a scientific mindset in science courses also requires a change in attitude from a view that study in science is a matter of solving problems using an independent set of tools, classified according to problem type, to a view that a science subject consists of a web of interconnected concepts. Elby pointed out that students' epistemological beliefs in physics will affect how they approach physics courses. This means that we need a more holistic theory to focus not only on subject content, but also on students' scientific reasoning and epistemological beliefs.
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In this dissertation, a set of activities is applied in Physics gateway courses to create a constructive environment. Through these activities we hope to help students to gradually become aware of a constructive procedure of learning. The effectiveness of these activities is examined in terms of helping students change their ways of learning and epistemological beliefs.


ABSTRACT With the current rising need for sustainability education, understanding the interconnected political, economic, ecological, and social systems that motivate (system level) change, can be uniquely addressed through immersive multiplayer games. Immersion through a mixed reality experience, face to face interactions, and game mechanics that push players to play with and against their co-learners enhances the familiar benefits of participatory simulations – where learners engage in developing parts of a complex system, and then respond to the consequences of their own decisions through interpersonal negotiation and changing strategies. Here we present City Settlers, a city management (immersive multiplayer) game that supports such learning and elicits different kinds of collaborations. We present these different collaborations as evidence for a range of complex systems understandings. We call these socially performed representations of new learning – procedural collaborations. Using a sequence of vignettes, we present cases of how game and interaction design can foster different procedural collaborations, and how City Settlers enables these procedural collaborations to represent developing understandings of a complex systems perspective on sustainable development. Through our work, we highlight the unique affordances of social immersive simulations in creating space to perform and understand concepts hard to find in many simulation and game-based learning environments.


Abstract. This paper discusses the application of forensic cartography in a civil arbitration case. This arbitration case stemmed from a hijacking of a freight of cigarettes on the 9th of May 2012. Forensic cartography in the form of a report was used to illustrate that the driver of a third-party logistics company was complicit with the crime syndicate that committed the hijacking. Cell phone data was used to map the communication between the various suspects and the driver. The time period of interest was between 15 December 2011 and 9 May 2012. The cellular base stations were used to map these communications in time and space. Based on the evidence provided it was clear that the driver of the third-party logistics company was complicit in committing the crime which led to the arbitration proceedings to be settled by the third-party logistics company in favour of the cigarette manufacturer. Further, it was concluded that the cartographic representation selection for forensic purposes is dictated by the specific case being investigated.


alternative opioids had been used to replace papaveretum, of which morphine sulphate was the most common. A second postal questionnaire to 15 district hospital pharmacies in the Wessex region confirmed this. The recommendations have received almost uniform acceptance, as befits guidelines from a national body regulating drug safety. As the guidelines have necessitated a change in clinical practice, however, many anaesthetists considered that wider dissemination of the evidence that had been valuated was needed. J P WARWICK M J SPITTAL


The data analyzed has been collected in the framework of the HuMet study via different metabolomics approaches to assess normal metabolic variation within 15 healthy young men selected to be as homogenous as possible. After comprehensive phenotyping (clinical chemistry, DEXA-scanning, indirect calorimetry) all volunteers underwent four distinct nutritional challenges (with intermittent fasting) over a time period of 4 days in a controlled environment. For the present analysis, metabolites within blood samples collected at 0, 15, 30, 45, 60, 90, and 120 minutes following a 75 g oral glucose tolerance test, were identified and quantified using liquid chromatography tandem-mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) as performed by Metabolon, Inc. Time-series metabolomics data, though rare, is often plagued by the 'curse of dimensionality'. Low observation occurrence coupled with high variable number has restricted the applicability of many temporal analytic methods and increased reliance on feature selection to cope. Non-correlated metabolites naturally are the first to fall victim to aggressive dimension-reducing techniques despite an unexplored translational potential. Interestingly, when utilizing temporal alignment algorithms to correct for lag asynchrony between uncorrelated metabolite series, significant latent trend-shape similarities are uncovered. Within this present project, dynamic time warping (DTW), a temporal alignment measure popular within automated speech recognition, was used to establish a metabolite alignment dissimilarity index with glucose monotonicity. The index was used to evaluate the shape-dependent temporal relationships of 189 metabolites as possible glucose-response variables within a 2 lag parameter. Metabolites with high initial correlation coefficients to glucose (rs > 0.50) were removed, and the remaining indexed metabolites scoring above the median were classified into various combinations to assess their capability to produce subject clusters with high correlation to subject clusters predicated by glucose alone (cophenetic coefficient: c >0.60). The results identified promising targets, as 3-metabolite and 4-metabolite combinations, all with an average rs ≈ -0.10, displayed pronounced efficacy at replicating subject clusters of the glucose-response curves (c ≈ 0.70). This new approach thus defines novel metabolites and clusters in the multi-metabolite dynamics of the glucose response. Acknowledgements :  Metabolon, Inc.


Background: Restless legs syndrome (RLS) may be associated with increased morbidity and mortality among end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients; however, it is a disorder that is neglected in dialysis centers. Objectives: The goal of this study was to investigate the clinical factors associated with RLS among ESRD patients. Patients and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on ESRD patients undergoing maintenance hemodialysis (HD) in three HD centers in Ahvaz city in Southwest Iran. Blood samples were obtained prior to a dialysis session to check the routine laboratory test results and assess the adequacy of dialysis. The presence of RLS was assessed by using the international RLS study group (IRLSSG) diagnostic criteria. The IRLSSG rating scale was also used to evaluate the severity of the RLS symptoms. Results: Of the 139 HD patients enrolled in this study, 60 were female (43.2%) and 79 were male (56.8%), with a mean age of 51.82 ± 13.31 years. The prevalence of RLS was 15.8% (22 patients), with 50% of them (11 patients) having severe or very severe symptoms. There was a significant relationship between RLS and longer durations of dialysis (P < 0.001). The mean level of serum ferritin was lower in patients without RLS, but it was not significant (P = 0.065). No significant differences were found according to age, gender, dialysis shifts, and hemoglobin (Hb) level among patients with and without RLS. Conclusions: We conclude that a significant percentage of ESRD patients undergoing maintenance HD have severe or very severe RLS symptoms. The presence of RLS is associated to longer durations of dialysis.


This work concerns the separation of a mixture of bi-dispersed spherical micro-particles by lateral migration at moderate Reynolds numbers. The expected differential focalization on annular rings of particles flowing in a circular micro-channel according to their size could be of interest for separation processes of poly-dispersed bio-particles suspensions. We propose an original and simple experimental method to study fluorescent particle migration at the microscale which is based on an indirect visualization of their position in a micro-channel. The particles are harvested on a plane filtration membrane put perpendicularly at the outlet of the channel. Their distribution on the membrane is then observed by fluorescent microscopy. A numerical simulation (COMSOL Multiphysics®) was developed to study the influence of membrane permeability and channel/membrane relative positions on the flow streamlines and on the subsequent size of the annular ring formed on the membrane by the focused particles. First experiments have been performed with suspensions of 1 and 4.8 μm diameter particles in order to correlate their positions to experimental conditions.


The current study explores the role of stories in organizational sensemaking processes. Rather than positioning stories as one among many different sensemaking mechanisms, it is argued that stories allow a particular kind of sensemaking that is inherently openended, distinguishing it from theoretical and propositional explanations for organizational phenomena. Drawing on previous Foucaultian discussions of epistemes, I introduce the notions of epistemic impasse and epistemic spillover, arguing that cross-functional interaction can cause tensions between incompatible epistemic bases, and that stories can act as a mechanism to overcome such tensions. I illustrate this mechanism in an ethnographic, participant-observer study of a university student-support center, showing how storytelling led to an increasingly open although ultimately totalizing tendency within the center, thus demonstrating both the potentials and limits of using stories within organizations.


The thesis combines D.N. Rodowick's concept of the figural, denoting the complex nature of filmic signification; Roland Barthes' distinctions between the readerly and the writerly, which are different methods of engaging with a text; and Thierry Kuntzel's concept of semiotic constellations, the reading of recurring yet fragmented motifs that occur throughout the film. Here reintroduced through the concept of eddies—discursive fields within the film which displace the connection between the signifier and signified (the flow of signification), instead distinguished by signifiers engendering new signifiers (the swirl of signification)—to unlock a new method of reading a film. This method focuses on interpreting the latent meanings of the plural of the text; the residual signs in the film which hold little to no bearing on its narrative, but through their deconstruction and later reassembly they may guide to viewer to new meanings. By first delineating the method proposed for this type of reading, the thesis then applies this method to the reading of one such eddy in the art-film Out 1: Noli me tangere from 1970, which is connected to the discursive field of Prometheus Bound, a play rehearsed within the film by a group of six actors who engage in various exercises, which at first glance seem to be entirely unconnected to the play. In this case, the method reveals through the figural activity of the film that the exercises of the group are engaged in dialogue with themes touched upon in the play.


Most studies on flexible MOFs which suggest good separation properties of the framework are solely based on single component isotherms and conclusions drawn from these. However, many factors are not considered, particularly the change of the pore space after the opening of the framework can have a distinct effect on the adsorption of a second gas present in a real separation problem that does not induce the phase transition of the material. Within this study, we focus on a series of flexible pillared-layered MOFs of the type [Zn2(fu-bdc)2(dabco)]n bearing flexible side chains and analyze the gas adsorption behavior when the material is exposed to mixtures of CO2 with other adsorptives, including N2, CH4, C2H6 and C3H8, to evaluate the influence of the co-adsorbate on the sorption selectivity and phase transition under these conditions.


From the late colonial period through the Civil War, slavery developed as the most powerful obstacle to the triumph of liberal values in America. In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the ambiguities of the revolutionary generation's accomodation of slavery gave way to a direct and violent conflict between northern liberalism and southern slavery. The character of the antislavery movement - its relationship to broader discussions of morality, law, political economy, and mass politics - and the expectations it raised for the postemancipation South are central themes of this work. In the past, historians of antislavery reform have distinguished between moral reform and political reform, between the uncompromising zeal of antislavery radicals and temporizing character of mass politics in the mid-nineteenth century. Louis Gerteis focuses on the evolution in antislavery reform of a liberal vision of progress and explores the manner in which moral sentiments against slavery advanced the utilitarian values of American capitalism. Originally published in 1987. A UNC Press Enduring Edition - UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.


Waste plastic material, e.g. bottles, baskets, and bags, is one of urgent issues which cause environmental pollution these days around the world, especially in Vietnam. Waste plastic including Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) - a type from plastic bottles in normal life can be used in asphalt mixture for enhancing the properties of mixture in terms of asphalt concrete performance in addition to solving disposal problem. In this study, waste plastic from mineral bottles is cleaned and cut into small dimensions by shredding machine before adding to hot mix asphalt concrete at high temperature. The hot mix asphalt concrete with and without PET are conducted through many experiments such as Marshall stability, indirect tensile strength, Cantabro abrasion loss test for strength evaluation of asphalt concrete. Many contents of PET also are evaluated in the study. Some results of Styrene-Butadiene-Styrene modified asphalt concrete are also included in order to show that PET from waste plastic bottle can be a promising additive or a thermoplastic polymer for hot mix asphalt concrete in aspects of strength performance in this study.


Open lifewide learning is critical in a world where knowledge, professions and practices are continually changing. It bridges all areas of life including education, work or general interest. Examples are becoming commonplace and are not always recognised as learning: Reviewing new concepts in an open course, building fresh ideas at work through reading and commenting on a blog, or coding an algorithm within an open source community. A commonality across these examples is that the learner, rather than a teacher or instructor, is the active agent.
While there is evidence that society is moving towards open lifewide learning, this chapter provides a vision of its potential over the coming decade, rather than examining current practice. It is suited to a world that has seen a radical change in cultural perceptions of learner agency and learner-teacher roles, associated with changes in technology. Learners are autonomous and able to make choices about their own learning. After completing compulsory education, the focus of each learner ideally moves from learning pre-defined knowledge to filling gaps between areas of knowledge, integrating different areas of expertise, as well as learning new knowledge. People do not turn automatically to formal institutions for large blocks of learning. Instead they consider it natural to make use of open learning resources and open courses, making their own decisions about what to learn, when and how. Learners naturally employ open learning practices, creating new knowledge for future learners to benefit from. They expect to contribute to the learning of others as well as learning themselves, viewing themselves as the experts in their own situation. In some cases they may elect to take a short formal course, but this is always for a specific reason rather than as a cultural norm. Rather than managing multiple identities in the different groups/communities to which they belong, they see their unique identity as a unifying factor that integrates their activities in various groups, including work and leisure groups, that they move easily between. In doing so they accrue new knowledge, integrating it with their current understanding, such that their expertise changes dynamically to match their current needs.


Preparation for the decommissioning of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant involves multiple problems. Personnel radiation safety during the performance of dismantling activities is one of them. In order to assess the optimal personnel radiation safety, the modelling is performed for large components by the means of computer code "VISIPLAN 3D ALARA Planning tool" developed by SCK CEN (Belgium).Modelling results of radiation doses during the dismantling of the pressurized tank from the emergency core cooling system (ECCS PT) of RBMK-1500 reactor are presented in this paper. The mass of one ECCS PT is approximately 47.6 tons. The radiological surveys indicate that the inner surface of the ECCS PT is contaminated with radioactive products of corrosion and sediments due to the radioactive water.The assessment of workers exposure was performed to comply with ALARA. The effective doses to the workers were modeled for different strategies of ECCS PT dismantling. The impact of dismantling tools and shielding types and extract ventilation flow rate during the dismantling of ECCS PT on effective doses were analyzed. The total effective personnel doses were obtained by summarizing the effective personnel doses from various sources of exposure, i. e., direct radiation from radioactive equipment, internal radiation due to inhalation of radioactive aerosols, and direct radiation from radioactive aerosols arising during hot cutting in premises.Copyright © 2013 by ASME


ABSTRACT It is not known how diverse bacteria regulate chromosome replication. Based on Escherichia coli studies, DnaA initiates replication and the homolog of DnaA (Hda) inactivates DnaA using the RIDA (regulatory inactivation of DnaA) mechanism that thereby prevents extra chromosome replication cycles. RIDA may be widespread, because the distantly related Caulobacter crescentus homolog HdaA also prevents extra chromosome replication (J. Collier and L. Shapiro, J Bacteriol 191:5706–5715, 2009, http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/JB.00525-09). To further study the HdaA/RIDA mechanism, we created a C. crescentus strain that shuts off hdaA transcription and rapidly clears HdaA protein. We confirm that HdaA prevents extra replication, since cells lacking HdaA accumulate extra chromosome DNA. DnaA binds nucleotides ATP and ADP, and our results are consistent with the established E. coli mechanism whereby Hda converts active DnaA-ATP to inactive DnaA-ADP. However, unlike E. coli DnaA, C. crescentus DnaA is also regulated by selective proteolysis. C. crescentus cells lacking HdaA reduce DnaA proteolysis in logarithmically growing cells, thereby implicating HdaA in this selective DnaA turnover mechanism. Also, wild-type C. crescentus cells remove all DnaA protein when they enter stationary phase. However, cells lacking HdaA retain stable DnaA protein even when they stop growing in nutrient-depleted medium that induces complete DnaA proteolysis in wild-type cells. Additional experiments argue for a distinct HdaA-dependent mechanism that selectively removes DnaA prior to stationary phase. Related freshwater Caulobacter species also remove DnaA during entry to stationary phase, implying a wider role for HdaA as a novel component of programed proteolysis. IMPORTANCE Bacteria must regulate chromosome replication, and yet the mechanisms are not completely understood and not fully exploited for antibiotic development. Based on Escherichia coli studies, DnaA initiates replication, and the homolog of DnaA (Hda) inactivates DnaA to prevent extra replication. The distantly related Caulobacter crescentus homolog HdaA also regulates chromosome replication. Here we unexpectedly discovered that unlike the E. coli Hda, the C. crescentus HdaA also regulates DnaA proteolysis. Furthermore, this HdaA proteolysis acts in logarithmically growing and in stationary-phase cells and therefore in two very different physiological states. We argue that HdaA acts to help time chromosome replications in logarithmically growing cells and that it is an unexpected component of the programed entry into stationary phase.


Scaling is central to ecology and Earth system sciences. However, the importance of scale (i.e. resolution and extent) for understanding carbon dynamics across scales is poorly understood and quantified. We simulated carbon dynamics under a wide range of combinations of resolution (nine spatial resolutions of 250 m, 500 m, 1 km, 2 km, 5 km, 10 km, 20 km, 50 km, and 100 km) and extent (57 geospatial extents ranging from 108 to 1 247 034 km2) in the southeastern United States to explore the existence of scale dependence of the simulated regional carbon balance. Results clearly show the existence of a critical threshold resolution for estimating carbon sequestration within a given extent and an error limit. Furthermore, an invariant power law scaling relationship was found between the critical resolution and the spatial extent as the critical resolution is proportional to An (n is a constant, and A is the extent). Scale criticality and the power law relationship might be driven by the power law probability distributions of land surface and ecological quantities including disturbances at landscape to regional scales. The current overwhelming practices without considering scale criticality might have largely contributed to difficulties in balancing carbon budgets at regional and global scales.


Significance of the production of textiles and its consumption are unceasingly reflected on a global front; and continue to play a key role in today's economic and social settings. Beyond its utilitarian value and throughout various countries, it is considered as a major component of material culture, often highlighting artisanship and symbolic interactions. The study of traditional textiles and their uses further provide detailed chronology of specific religious, political, economic and social conditions of those who use them. Safeguarding the cultural heritage of textiles is therefore a key substance to fostering a sense of identity. Cultural heritage is specifically crucial to developing countries and war zone regions such as the Middle East. For Palestine, it preserves history, restores identity, promotes traditional skills, artisanship and the general wellbeing of Palestinians. Palestinian traditional costumes contain historical data that document centuries of textile art and craft development in its region; showcasing richness and uniqueness. It demonstrates the antiquity of the Palestinian existence and their original roots; and remains as a sign of pride, resistance and national identity within regions and in diaspora. This study contributes to understanding by providing a rich insight into the aesthetics, craft and composition of Palestinian traditional textiles from which native costumes are constructed. The study's narrative and visual context provide a scope and an understanding of the structure applied to the processes of development. It demonstrates a range of textile choices, embroidery styles, motifs, patterns and the meaningful symbols and colours underpinning the designs. Understanding applied textiles from various perspectives play an important role in evolving and promoting cultural heritage. It presents a stimulus for traditional preservation embedded within innovation. By capturing and appreciating traditional Palestinian textiles and their uses, the true significance of its historical, economic and social value becomes firmly established. Keywords: Cultural heritage; costume development; symbolic textile designs; embroidery; motifs


This account demonstrates the key challenges faced in producing engaging educational content for information and communication technologies (ICT) deployed in rural India. The 'Stills in Sync' (SIS) project aims to enhance literacy through the revival and proliferation of popular regional folksongs with social awareness themes in rural India. This product entails the use of the Same Language Subtitling (SLS) karaoke feature that won the Worldbank Development Marketplace award in 2002 and the 'Tech Laureate' honor from the Technology Museum of Innovation in 2003. This case study highlights the struggles faced in the production process as we sought to negotiate localism with scalability. The paper is meant to stimulate discussion and further research on the process of digitalizing cultural and educational content in muliple languages for literacy gains and empowerment. I attempt to give three‐dimensionality to current buzzwords in education content creation using ICT: localism, relevance and engagement.


Abstract Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia in the general population, while HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder is the most common neurological comorbidity in those infected with HIV and affects between 40 and 70% of this population. Both conditions are associated with cognitive impairment and have been associated with aberrant functioning in sensory cortices, but far less is known about their disparate effects on neural activity. Identifying such disparate effects is important because it may provide critical data on the similarities and differences in the neuropathology underlying cognitive decline in each condition. In the current study, we utilized magnetoencephalography, extensive neuropsychological testing and a paired-pulse somatosensory gating paradigm to probe differences in somatosensory processing in participants from two ongoing magnetoencephalography studies. The resulting participant groups included 27 cognitively normal controls, 26 participants with HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder and 21 amyloid biomarker-confirmed patients with Alzheimer's disease. The data were imaged using a beamformer and voxel time series were extracted to identify the oscillatory dynamics serving somatosensory processing, as well as the amplitude of spontaneous cortical activity preceding stimulation onset. Our findings indicated that people with Alzheimer's disease and HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder exhibit normal somatosensory gating but have distinct aberrations in other elements of somatosensory cortical function. Essentially, those with Alzheimer's disease exhibited accentuated neural responses to somatosensory stimulation, along with spontaneous gamma activity preceding stimulus onset. In contrast, those with HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder exhibited normal responses to somatosensory stimulation but had sharply elevated spontaneous gamma activity prior to stimulus onset. These distinct aberrations may reflect the impact of different neuropathological mechanisms underlying each condition. Further, given the differential pattern of deficits in somatosensory cortical function, these measures may function as unique biomarkers in each condition and be useful in identifying persons with HIV who may go on to develop Alzheimer's disease.


The relationships between industrial cities and industrial companies have undergone important changes with the major economic shifts in French society. Transfers of production have largely disrupted the French industrial landscape, and the textile industry is an emblematic example of this disruption, with a slump in jobs and the offshoring of plants. The aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of this transformation. Severely challenged by basic goods produced in low-cost countries, the French textile industry seeks a solution through increased research, development, and quality control. The solution would appear to come from niche markets that are less accessible and that have higher added values. The rise of emerging markets is an opportunity for these niche players. A perennial existence would appear to be at stake rather than cost reduction at any price. JEL Codes : L6, L60


The study aimed at evaluating the hypolipidemic effects of Ipomoea aquatica Forsk (MEIA) and investigating the potential mechanisms by which MEIA modulated lipid profiles in hyperlipidemic rats. Hypolipidemic effects of the single, daily oral dosing of 200 and 400 mg/kg of methanol leaf extract of Ipomoea aquatica Forsk (MEIA) in Swiss albino rats for 30 days. On day 30, blood samples from the rats were collected for the estimation of total cholesterol, total lipid, free fatty acid, phospholipids, and triglycerides. The concentrations of plasma total cholesterol, total lipid, free fatty acid, phospholipid, and triglycerides in rats treated with MEIA at 200 and 400mg /kg were significantly decreased ( P < 0.05), accompanied with significantly decreased concentrations of liver, kidney and heart total cholesterol and triglyceride ( P < 0.05). These results indicated that MEIA largely improved the lipid profiles in the hyperlipidemic rats


A numerical study of model-based methods for derivative-free optimization is presented. These methods typically include a geometry phase whose goal is to ensure the adequacy of the interpolation set. The paper studies the performance of an algorithm that dispenses with the geometry phase altogether (and therefore does not attempt to control the position of the interpolation set). Data are presented describing the evolution of the condition number of the interpolation matrix and the accuracy of the gradient estimate. The experiments are performed on smooth unconstrained optimization problems with dimensions ranging between 2 and 15.


Ecological validity is a major concern in usable security studies with developers. Many studies are conducted with computer science (CS) students out of convenience, since recruiting professional software developers in sufficient numbers is very challenging. In a password-storage study, Naiakshina et al. (CHI'19) showed that CS students behave similarly to freelance developers recruited online. While this is a promising result for conducting developer studies with students, an open question remains: Do professional developers employed in companies behave similarly as well? To provide more insight into the ecological validity of recruiting students for security developer studies, we replicated the study of Naiakshina et al. with developers from diverse companies in Germany. We found that developers employed in companies performed better than students and freelancers in a direct comparison. However, treatment effects were found to be significant in all groups; the treatment effects on CS students also held for company developers.


The integration phase of real-time COTS-based systems is often problematic because when multiple tasks run concurrently, the interference at the bus level between cache fetching activities and I/O peripheral transactions is significant and causes unpredictable behaviors: experimentally, tasks can have computation time variance up to 50%. In this work, we present a theoretical framework able to model the interaction between CPU and peripherals contending for shared main memory through the front side bus (FSB). We first show how to compute worst case execution times for a task given a trace of its cache activity and given an upper bound function that models peripheral activities; then, we introduce the novel idea of "hardware server" as a means of controlling the unpredictable behavior of COTS peripheral components.


The relative desorption energies of CO and N2 are key to interpretations of observed interstellar CO and N2 abundance patterns, including the well-documented CO and N2H+ anti-correlations in disks, protostars, and molecular cloud cores. Based on laboratory experiments on pure CO and N2 ice desorption, the difference between CO and N2 desorption energies is small; the N2-to-CO desorption energy ratio is 0.93 ± 0.03. Interstellar ices are not pure, however, and in this study we explore the effect of water ice on the desorption energy ratio of the two molecules. We present temperature programmed desorption experiments of different coverages of 13CO and 15N2 on porous and compact amorphous water ices and, for reference, of pure ices. In all experiments, 15N2 desorption begins a few degrees before the onset of 13CO desorption. The 15N2 and 13CO energy barriers are 770 and 866 K for the pure ices, 1034–1143 K and 1155–1298 K for different submonolayer coverages on compact water ice, and 1435 and 1575 K for ∼1 ML of ice on top of porous water ice. For all equivalent experiments, the N2-to-CO desorption energy ratio is consistently 0.9. Whenever CO and N2 ice reside in similar ice environments (e.g., experience a similar degree of interaction with water ice) their desorption temperatures should thus be within a few degrees of one another. A smaller N2-to-CO desorption energy ratio may be present in interstellar and circumstellar environments if the average CO ice molecules interacts more with water ice compared to the average N2 molecules.


A statistical screening methodology is presented to address uncertainty related to main geological assumptions in green field modeling. The goals are the identification of the entire range of uncertainty on production, learning which are the most impacting geological uncertain inputs and understanding the relationships between geological scenarios and classes of dynamic behavior.
 The paper presents the methodology and an example application to a green field case study. The method is applied on an ensemble of reservoir models created by combining geological parameters across their range of uncertainty. The ensemble of models is then simulated with a selected development strategy and dynamic responses are grouped in classes of outcome through clustering algorithms. Ensemble responses are visualized on a multidimensional stacking plot, as a function of the geological input, and the most influential parameters are identified by axes sorting on the plot. Geological scenarios are then classified on dynamic responses through classification tree algorithms. Finally, a representative set of models is selected from the geological scenarios.
 The example study application shows a final oil recovery uncertainty range of 4:1, which is reasonable for a green field in lack of data. Such high range of uncertainty could hardly be found by common risk assessment based on fixed geological assumptions, which often tend to underestimate uncertainty on forecasts. Ensemble outcomes are grouped in four classes by oil recovery, plateau strength, produced water, and breakthrough time. The adoption of such clustering features gives a broad understanding of the reservoir dynamic response. The most influential geological inputs among the examined structural and sedimentological parameters in the example application result to be the fault orientation and channel fraction. This screening result highlights the main drivers of geological uncertainty and is useful for the following scenario classification phase. Classification of the geological scenarios leads to five classes of geological parameter sets, each linked to a main class of dynamic behavior, and finally to five representative models. These five models constitute an effective sampling of the geological uncertainty space which also captures the different types of dynamic response.
 This paper will contribute to widen the engineering experience on the use of machine learning for risk analysis by presenting an application on a real field case study to explore the relationship between geological uncertainty and reservoir dynamic behavior.


This article selectively reports on a small-scale qualitative exploration of the experiences of families who had undergone recent conflict with special educational needs (SEN) professionals. The data were collected over the spring and summer terms of 2001 from 10 families in two local education authorities (LEAs) in the English midlands. The research aimed to examine the parents' perspectives on points of conflict or dissatisfaction between themselves and education professionals. It was concerned with the parents' points of view regarding their pursuit of desired outcomes for their children and the factors that helped or hindered their endeavours. The project found that the parents' negotiation of the SEN system was held by them to be exceptionally difficult and stressful compared to other troubling issues in their lives. The research suggests that dissatisfactions with SEN provision have important implications for the management of LEA Parent partnership Schemes (PPS) in ameliorating the differences between parental aspirations and governmental ambition.


Tetracyclines is one of the most widely used antibiotics in poultry farming for the control of bacterial pathologies such as Escherichia coli , responsible for colibacillosis, causing significant economic losses in poultry farming. Unfortunately, high rates of resistance of these bacteria to tetracycline are increasingly observed. Thus, the search for new effective molecules is proving to be an alternative. It is in this context that this study is carried out with the objective of proposing a medicinal plant as an alternative to the fight against bacteria resistant to Tetracycline. Phytochemical analysis revealed the presence of phenols, flavonoids, catechic tannins, saponosides, sterols, polyterpenes, alkaloids and quinonics. The bacterial strains were sensitive to the aqueous extract with inhibition diameters ranging from 13.3±0.3 and 18.3±0.6 mm at 200 mg/ml. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) of the extract ranged from 3.12 to 50 mg/ml and 6.25 to 100 mg/ml respectively with MBC/MIC ratios ≤ 2 for all bacterial strains. Thus, the extract has bactericidal potential on all the strains after 24 hours and 48 hours of incubation. The antibacterial potential of this extract highlighted in this study could make this plant a candidate for further investigations that may lead to the discovery of new antibacterial molecules.


In most study fields, a phenomenon may not be studied directly but it will be examined indirectly by phenomenon model. Making an accurate model of system, there is attained new information from modeled phenomenon without any charge, danger, etc… there have been developed more solutions for describing and analyzing the recent complicated systems but few of them have analyzed the performance in the range of system description. Petri nets are of limited solutions which may make such union. Petri nets are being applied in problems related to modeling and designing the systems. Theory of Petri nets allow a system to model mathematically by a Petri net and analyzing the Petri net can then determine main information of modeled system's structure and dynamic. This information can be used for assessing the performance of systems and suggesting corrections in the system. In this paper, beside the introduction of Petri nets, a real case study will be studied in order to show the application of generalized stochastic Petri nets in modeling a resource sharing production system and evaluating the efficiency of its machines and robots. The modeling tool used here is SHARP software which calculates specific indicators helping to make decision. Keywords—Flexible manufacturing system, generalized stochastic Petri nets, Markov chain, performance evaluation.


This study is aimed to synthesize alkyl esters gallate and determine its in vitro antimalarial activity against parasite Plasmodium falciparum. Fourteen compounds of alkyl esters gallate were synthesized by esterification of the carboxyl group of gallic acid with a series of alkyl alcohols, as well as methoxylation of the hydroxy groups on the aromatic ring of gallic acid. Antimalarial activity of the synthesized alkyl esters gallate were expressed by IC50 value, with gallic acid as an original compound and artemisin as a positive control. Compared to gallic acid, eleven synthesized compounds of alkyl esters gallate, have a greater antimalarial activity against Plasmodium falciparum. On the other hand, three compounds, that are propyl gallate, butyl gallate and trimethoxy methyl gallate, showed a lower antimalarial activity. Moreover, compared to gallic acid (IC50 : 194.86 mM) and artemisin (IC50 : 0.5 mM), two synthesized compounds of alkyl gallates, namely methyl gallate and hexyl gallate exhibited the stronger antimalarial activity against Plasmodium falciparum, with IC50 value of 0.03 mM and 0.11 mM, respectively. Our result clearly demonstrated that methyl gallate and hexyl gallate as a promising candidate for the new antimalarial agents.


Retinoic acid has marked effects on the growth, morphological features, and biological markers of a neoplastic human salivary intercalated duct cell clone in culture, whereas the cell clone was not affected by other retinoids such as retinol and retinal. A cell clone with ultrastructure and biological markers specific to the intercalated duct cells of human salivary glands was cultivated in the presence of retinoic acid. Major alterations, such as expression of tonofilaments, Mr 68,000 cytokeratin, and involucrin, were observed in those cells with a phenotype similar to that of keratinizing squamous cells. In addition, the coexpression of Mr 68,000 cytokeratin and carcinoembryonic antigen in these altered cells was found. Both the anchorage-independent and anchorage-dependent growths were markedly suppressed in the presence of retinoic acid. After the removal of retinoic acid from the culture, the treated cells returned rapidly to the phenotype of the untreated cells. These findings indicate that reversible differentiation into the keratinizing squamous cells of a neoplastic human salivary intercalated duct cell clone occurs in growth medium containing retinoic acid.


Of 37 patients who underwent successful renal revascularization for unilateral renovascular hypertension, 27 were cured and ten improved. The two most reliable selective criteria for operation were a renin ratio of 1.40 or greater and arteriographic demonstration of collateral channels circumventing the stenotic lesion. Twenty-five patients (68%) had collateral vessels documented arteriographically; 12 did not. Patients lacking collaterals had renin ratios of at least 1.4 with a mean ratio of 2.5. Individuals with collaterals had a mean ratio of 1.8. This suggests that as collaterals develop, ratios revert toward unity. Thirty patients had ratios of 1.4 or greater. Collaterals, indicating a hemodynamically significant lesion, were demonstrated inallseven patients who had ratios under 1.4. These seven patients would have been denied surgical benefit had renin ratios been the only selective criteria.


The quality of an individual's mental health has a significant impact on their quality of life, as well as on the cost to society. Regular access to mental health services can help mitigate the risk factors of developing mental illnesses. This paper examines barriers to accessing mental health services, using the community of Peterborough, Ontario, as an example. Social, economic, and cultural barriers impact help-seeking amongst immigrants, putting them at a higher risk of developing mental disorders. The social determinants of mental health can be useful when developing policies aimed at improving utilization of mental healthcare services. Policy makers need to first focus on collecting accurate information on the population, and then developing targeted solutions to eliminate barriers such as language and employment that prevent help-seeking in immigrants.


SUMMARY Bat flies are obligate ectoparasites of bats and it has been hypothesized that they may be involved in the transmission of Bartonella species between bats. A survey was conducted to identify whether Cyclopodia greefi greefi (Diptera: Nycteribiidae) collected from Ghana and 2 islands in the Gulf of Guinea harbour Bartonella. In total, 137 adult flies removed from Eidolon helvum, the straw-coloured fruit bat, were screened for the presence of Bartonella by culture and PCR analysis. Bartonella DNA was detected in 91 (66·4%) of the specimens examined and 1 strain of a Bartonella sp., initially identified in E. helvum blood from Kenya, was obtained from a bat fly collected in Ghana. This is the first study, to our knowledge, to report the identification and isolation of Bartonella in bat flies from western Africa.


The fractional Fourier transform (FrFT) provides an important extension to conventional Fourier theory for the analysis and synthesis of linear chirp signals. It is a parameterised transform which can be used to provide extremely compact representations. The representation is maximally compressed when the transform parameter, /spl alpha/, is matched to the chirp rate of the input signal. Existing proofs are extended to demonstrate that the fractional Fourier transform of the Gaussian function also has Gaussian support. Furthermore, expressions are developed which allow calculation of the spread of the signal representation for a Gaussian windowed linear chirp signal in any fractional domain. Both continuous and discrete cases are considered. The fractional domains exhibiting minimum and maximum support for a given signal define the limit on joint time-frequency resolution available under the FrFT. This is equated with a restatement of the uncertainty principle for linear chirp signals and the fractional Fourier domains. The calculated values for the fractional domain support are tested empirically through comparison with the discrete transform output for a synthetic signal with known parameters. It is shown that the same expressions are appropriate for predicting the support of the ordinary Fourier transform of a Gaussian windowed linear chirp signal.


Position control of a quad tilt-wing UAV via a nonlinear hierarchical adaptive control approach is presented. The hierarchy consists of two levels. In the upper level, a model reference adaptive controller creates virtual control commands so as to make the UAV follow a given desired trajectory. The virtual control inputs are then converted to desired attitude angle references which are fed to the lower level attitude controller. Lower level controller is a nonlinear adaptive controller. The overall controller is developed for the full nonlinear dynamics of the tilt-wing UAV and thus no linearization is required. In addition, since the approach is adaptive, uncertainties in the UAV dynamics can be handled. Performance of the controller is presented via simulation results.


On 1 December 1783, Edmund Burke delivered an impassioned speech in the House of Commons, urging Parliament to reform the East India Company, which Burke argued was ruling Bengal with venality, cruelty, and corruption. If Parliament failed to act, Burke cautioned, not only would Britain's Indian subjects suffer the consequences but so would Britain itself: "as English youth in India drink the intoxicating draught of authority and dominion before their heads are able to bear it . . . neither nature nor reason have any opportunity to exert themselves for remedy of the excesses of their premature power." Burke's fear that the imperial project was corrupting the moral pedagogy of young British men – "the boys we send to India" – illustrates the intricate links in the British imagination between empire and masculinity, a pairing that this dissertation explores in the context of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literature. As a range of writers with diverse social and political allegiances attempted to make sense of the unfolding imperial modernity, two questions appeared inseparable: what it meant to rule an increasingly vast, transoceanic empire and what it meant to become a man, specifically a gentleman. The enormous wealth sailing up the Thames from colonies abroad was radically transforming historical modes of gentlemanly authority, allowing boys and young men the alluring possibilities of radical self-transformation and social ascendancy as old paradigms of title and consanguinity slowly gave way to cunning, industry, and capital. Yet Burke's warning to the Commons hints at a darker obverse to these enticing prospects – the idea of imperial man becoming not a virtuous, right-feeling gentleman of the settled Whig order but a capricious tyrant who threatened the very foundations of that order.

Although I take as my object of inquiry the eighteenth-century gentleman – that allegedly hegemonic masculine typology – my work develops, as well as contests, recent accounts by critics such as Nancy Armstrong, Felicity Nussbaum, and Srinivas Aravamudan. These studies have greatly expanded our understanding of the central role of women, members of the non-propertied classes, and colonial subjects in the ideologies and historical-political struggles of the age. By renewing attention upon the British gentleman, I argue that even within the most idealized, authorized versions of masculine identity, the ambivalences and upheavals brought about by imperial modernity roil just below the surface. While Erin Mackie has compellingly written that the British gentleman of the latter half of the eighteenth century worked to revise "patriarchal power as paternalistic benevolence," I demonstrate that producing a coherent account of authority in a beneficent modernity while perpetually referring backwards to premodern, absolutist patriarchy was a balancing act always already on the verge of collapse. The heroes of empire that my chapters explore do not succeed in assuaging the trauma and anxieties of the imperial world so much as they do in registering the weight of those tensions.
The arc of the dissertation encompasses four masculine types, emblematic of the period, to assess how the interplay between representations of masculinity and imperial ideology transformed over the century. But I also assess striking commonalities that illuminate the evolving set of discourses these figures sought to reconcile. My first chapter treats Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), a novel generally understood as oriented emphatically around a Whig view of commerce and empire but riddled with Crusoe's repeated assertions of absolutist patriarchalism (an ideology anathema to Defoe as a political writer). I focus on these frequently overlooked and easily dismissed moments to uncover the serious moral and ethical dilemmas colonialism raised even at this early period. This chapter argues that Defoe sets these assertions against the novel's Whig and proto-capitalist ethos to suggest the creeping tyranny that could develop in young men abroad, laboring far from the civilizing constraints of British society. At one level, Defoe's novel presents the colony as a potentially liberating location (for Europeans), where the man of industry and capital could rethink and rearticulate his social and political identity. However, Robinson Crusoe also presents the colony as a profound threat to classical-liberal modernity – a wild and ominous space where the Old World's despotic political demons threaten to reemerge in European colonists. Masculinity in Defoe's novel is thus a site of possibility and a lens through which to critique the drives and desires that made empire so alluring. The anxieties that grow out of this opposition are present throughout the texts my subsequent chapters take up, although the ways in which these anxieties manifest shift with changing historical circumstance and location.
Chapter Two reads Tobias Smollett's Roderick Random (1748) alongside Henry Fielding's magnum opus, Tom Jones (1749), as it works toward a theory of how the eighteenth-century novel reenvisioned squirearchy. I contend that Smollett and Fielding both conceive gentlemanliness as a social performance and that, especially for Smollett, this performativity at once allows for a liberating self-fashioning and throws into question the nature of masculine agency itself. The two novels explore a moral and behavioral pedagogy that ostensibly enables the modern would-be gentleman to persuasively inhabit his social position and gain control over his economic destiny by mastering a gendered performance; but these novels are also subtended by a fear that gentlemanly authority so founded becomes show without substance. The retention and revision of a premodern, patriarchalist identity symbolized by the English squire or Scottish laird serves as a means of defending an upper-class masculinity conceived as traditional and more concretely agential even as the conceptual underpinnings of this patriarchalism are put under tremendous pressure. In Smollett, the telos of the gentleman ensconced in his country seat and removed from the sphere of imperial commerce reads as the reward for successful participation in the imperial project, which also promises to confer British-gentlemanly status on young men of the Celtic periphery. In Fielding, inheriting Squire Allworthy's estate appears as the pledge of Tom's learned virtue and demonstrated capacity for beneficent authority. However, both texts are dominated by the fear that this revised squirearchy will fail; the anxieties of modernity are soothed only by recourse to a patriarchalist figure dangerously proximate to tyrannical absolutism – and whose coherence in imperial modernity is highly suspect. Thus, this chapter treats the insufficiency of an historic symbol of gentlemanliness alongside the failure to fully conceive a stable, alternate possibility.
The second half of my dissertation tracks how the concerns that troubled Burke interrupted efforts to put iconic gentlemanly identities to the work of empire. Chapter Three discusses James Grainger's 1764 georgic, The Sugar-Cane, which follows the English squire to sea, recasting the Caribbean planter as of a type with historic modes of masculinity in a bid for cultural relevance and to establish command over an alien, hostile place. Taking up the deep imbrication of Whig ideologies of property with planter prerogative in Grainger's poem, I argue that The Sugar-Cane attempts to produce an almost boundless authority out of Lockean property right. The micro-focus on the colonial estate seeks to yield a British dominion that could span the globe, rendering the Caribbean gentleman as a foundational figure for a newly imperial subjectivity that Grainger works to establish. However, colonial inscrutability, metropolitan misapprehension and derision, and the inescapable horror of transatlantic slavery press the planter-as-squire conceit to its conceptual breaking point. I then analyze Samuel Foote's 1772 farce, The Nabob, which explores the deleterious consequences for Britain itself if one vision of corrupted power and agency were to supplant enervated forms of gentlemanliness. Foote's text, I argue, reverses Grainger's concepts of imperial authority, envisioning wealth produced in the colony as the means for projecting power from the periphery back toward the metropole with vitiating malevolence. Finally, Chapter Four assesses the role of the country gentleman in early nineteenth-century national tales and historical novels. I contend that Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy (1817), Maria Edgeworth's The Absentee (1812), and Sydney Owenson's The Wild Irish Girl (1806) all deploy reformulated patriarchs in ultimately ambivalent attempts to anchor their vision of Union. In these three texts, all of which work through the place of the near-colony in the burgeoning empire, the reiterated squire is at once a stabilizing force of reconciliation and benevolent governance and a figure of tyranny and caprice who is paradoxically teetering on the verge of obsolescence. Throughout, the dissertation explores a dialectic of the residual and the emergent within masculine typologies that fail to reconcile received mythologies with unfolding imperial realities. By exploring the instabilities inherent in supposedly dominant gentlemanly typologies, and the ways that those instabilities are registered and mediated in literature, I aim to complicate received accounts of the ideological turmoil at the heart of empire in the long eighteenth century and to produce a more complete understanding of this turmoil's continued reverberations.


Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical theories may be helpful to the analysis of literary works since the contribution of psychoanalysis to literature provides useful interpretative insights. Reading novels, poems and other compositions through the lens of psychoanalysis gives the opportunity to analyse and evaluate these works in their genesis and functioning. The Gothic novel provides many elements such as fear, duplicity, abuse of power and seduction that can be explained according to a Freudian model of literary criticism. In this paper, the personality of Ambrosio, the main character of the Gothic novel The Monk , is investigated with reference to Freud theories concerning the structural or tripartite structure of the mind which conceives the psyche as divided into three parts: Id, Ego and Super-ego. For this purpose, a critical analysis of the text of the novel has been made so to identify all those elements (behaviour, attitudes, emotional reactions, thoughts and utterances) connected to Ambrosio which may illustrate the hidden aspects of his personality and, moreover, explain the reasons of his moral decline.


Due to the requirement to demonstrate financial feasibility of policy proposals and scheme-specific planning obligations, development viability and development appraisal have become core themes in the UK planning system. Whilst there is an array of variations of the residual model that can be used to undertake financial appraisals of real estate development opportunities, development appraisal models and techniques have received little attention from the academic community. Most real estate development textbooks focussing on commercial property development outline and illustrate these conventional techniques. This, in turn, underpins their dominance in pedagogy, professional practice and commercial software. A critique of development appraisal models has evolved focussing on their oversimplified representation of reality and intrinsic theoretical weaknesses. However, there has been little critical analysis of the extent to which models are being applied in the context of the UK planning system. It is therefore timely to review the theory and practice of development appraisal in its emerging role at the centre of planning negotiations. The first section of this paper describes conventional development appraisal models and this is followed by a critique and a review of textbook applications of approaches to development financial appraisal and, drawing upon the corporate finance literature, the ways in which they violate the mainstream project appraisal. There is then an examination of practice followed by a discussion of the practical problems of using conventional approaches to development valuation to planning viability studies. Finally, conclusions are drawn.


Abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) is a problem that is increasingly of concern. Various United Nations General Assembly resolutions now provide a mandate for, and indeed require, action to reduce ALDFG and marine debris in general. Consequently, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) entered into an agreement to carry out a study in relation to ALDFG in order to raise awareness of the extent of the problem and to recommend action to mitigate the problem of ALDFG by flag states, regional fisheries management bodies and organizations, and international organizations, such as UNEP, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and FAO. This report reviews the magnitude and composition of ALDFG, and while noting that information is not comprehensive and does not allow for any global estimates, suggests that gillnets and fishing traps/pots may be the most common type of ALDFG, although netting fragments may also be common in some locations. The impacts of ALDFG are also considered and include: continued catching of target and non-target species (such as turtles, seabirds and marine mammals); alterations to the benthic environment; navigational hazards; beach debris/litter; introduction of synthetic material into the marine food web; introduction of alien species transported by ALDFG; and a variety of costs related to clean-up operations and impacts on business activities. In general, gillnets and pots/traps are most likely to "ghost fish" while other gear, such as trawls and longlines, are more likely to cause entanglement of marine organisms, including protected species, and habitat damage. The factors which cause fishing gear to be abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded are numerous and include: adverse weather; operational fishing factors including the cost of gear retrieval; gear conflicts; illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing; vandalism/theft; and access to and cost and availability of shoreside collection facilities. Weather, operational fishing factors and gear conflicts are probably the most significant factors, but the causes of ALDFG accumulation are poorly documented and not well understood. A detailed understanding of why gear is abandoned, lost or discarded is needed when designing and tailoring effective measures to reduce ALDFG in particular locations. A variety of measures are currently in place to reduce ALDFG, and these are profiled in this report. They include those which are preventative or ex-ante, and those which are curative or ex-post. Evidence suggests that while both are important, much of the emphasis to date has been placed on curative measures such as gear retrieval programmes and clean-up of beach litter, while preventative measures may generally be more cost-effective in reducing ALDFG debris and its impacts. This report concludes with a number of recommendations for future action to reduce ALDFG debris, be it on a mandatory or voluntary basis. It also considers at what scale and which stakeholders (e.g. international organizations, national government, the private sector, research institutions) might be best placed to address the wide range of possible measures to reduce the amount of ALDFG debris. Macfadyen, G.; Huntington, T.; Cappell, R. Abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear. UNEP Regional Seas Reports and Studies, No. 185; FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper, No. 523. Rome, UNEP/FAO. 2009. 115p.


Nanoelectronics comprises a variety of devices whose electrical properties are more complex as compared to CMOS, thus enabling new computational paradigms. The potentially large space for innovation has to be explored in the search for technologies that can support large-scale and high-performance circuit design. Within this space, we analyze a set of emerging technologies characterized by a similar computational abstraction at the design level, i.e., a binary comparator or a majority voter. We demonstrate that new logic synthesis techniques, natively supporting this abstraction, are the technology enablers. We describe models and data-structures for logic design using emerging technologies and we show results of applying new synthesis algorithms and tools. We conclude that new logic synthesis methods are required to both evaluate emerging technologies and to achieve the best results in terms of area, power and performance.


Previous studies have shown that transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-be ta) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) modulate type I collagen gene expression in fibroblasts. To fine-map the corresponding response elements in the human alpha2(I) collagen (COL1A2) promoter, we have generated a series of 5' deletion promoter/chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) reporter gene constructs. Transient cell transfection assays using human dermal fibroblasts and stable transfection experiments using NIH 3T3 fibroblasts identified the region located between residues -265 and -241, as critical for TGF-beta response. Specifically, we demonstrate that this 25-base pair region mediates the up-regulatory effect of TGF-beta on COL1A2 promoter activity and allows antagonistic activity of TNF-alpha on the TGF-beta effect. Gel mobility shift assays indicate that nuclear factor binding to this 25-base pair region of COL1A2 promoter is competed by AP-1, but not NF-1 or NF-kappaB, oligonucleotides. Transient cell transfection experiments with plasmid constructs in which the potential AP-1-binding site located within this short region of promoter was modified by site-directed mutagenesis indicated that this element plays a significant role in the basal activity of the promoter. Furthermore, this sequence is essential for TGF-beta response and does not require the presence of the three Sp-1-binding sites located further upstream, between nucleotides -273 and -304. In addition, overexpression of c-jun in co-transfection experiments with COL1A2 promoter/CAT constructs blocks the TGF- beta response, further implicating AP-1 in the regulation of COL1A2 gene expression. Our results clarify the molecular mechanisms involved in the regulation of type I collagen gene expression and further emphasize the importance of AP-1 in mediating some of the TGF-beta effects on gene transcription.


Recourse to mechanical ventilation may prove necessary in adult patients with cystic fibrosis who have reached the stage of severe respiratory insuffıciency. We report the experience of an intensive care service using non-invasive ventilation (NIV) as the first step in the management of acute respiratory failure in these patients. The records of 16 patients with cystic fibrosis presenting with acute respiratory failure and treated with NIV were analysed retrospectively. The characteristics of the group were: mean age 26.9± 9.5 years; mean FEV1 21.5 ± 10.4% predicted; mean body mass index 16.8± 2.1; mean Pa CO2 on admission 66± 15 mm Hg. The mean duration of NIV in the ICU was 10 ± 7 days. Eight patients (50%) died after having been intubated on account of failure of NIV. The eight survivors were discharged home with long-term NIV (mean duration 235 ± 158 days). Six of them have received a lung transplant. The mode of onset of respiratory failure was an important prognostic factor: a rapid onset ( < 7 days) was invariably associated with death, on the other hand a gradual deterioration ( > 7 days) was noted in the eight patients able to leave the ICU. In conclusion NIV may be regarded as the treatment of choice in patients with cystic fibrosis admitted to ICU with respiratory failure. In the case of persistent hypercapnia after the acute episode long-term NIV may keep them stable while awaiting lung transplantation.


A wide variety of mental disorders have been associated with resting-state functional network alterations, which are thought to contribute to the cognitive changes underlying mental illness. These observations have seemed to support various theories postulating large-scale disruptions of brain systems in mental illness. However, existing approaches isolate differences in network organization without putting those differences in broad, whole-brain perspective. Using a graph distance measure – connectome-wide correlation – we found that whole-brain resting-state functional network organization in humans is highly similar across a variety of mental diseases and healthy controls. This similarity was observed across autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and schizophrenia. Nonetheless, subtle differences in network graph distance were predictive of diagnosis, suggesting that while functional connectomes differ little across health and disease those differences are informative. Such small network alterations may reflect the fact that most psychiatric patients maintain overall cognitive abilities similar to those of healthy individuals (relative to, e.g., the most severe schizophrenia cases), such that whole-brain functional network organization is expected to differ only subtly even for mental diseases with devastating effects on everyday life. These results suggest a need to reevaluate neurocognitive theories of mental illness, with a role for subtle functional brain network changes in the production of an array of mental diseases.


Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse games and their generalizations have been quite successful in finite model theory and yield various inexpressibility results. However, for key problems such as P 6= NP or NP 6= co-NP no progress has been achieved using the games. We show that for these problems it is already hard to get the board for the corresponding Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse game. We obtain similar results for the so-called Ajtai-Fagin games and for a variant where the structures are obtained randomly.


Silicon biomineralization is a widespread mechanism found in several kingdoms that concerns both unicellular and multicellular organisms. As a result of genomic and molecular tools, diatoms have emerged as a good model for biomineralization studies and have provided most of the current knowledge on this process. However, the number of techniques available to study its dynamics at the cellular level is still rather limited. Here, new probes were developed specifically to label the pre-existing or the newly synthesized silica frustule of several diatoms species. It is shown that the LysoTracker Yellow HCK-123, which can be used to visualize silica frustules with common filter sets, presents an enhanced signal-to-noise ratio and allows details of the frustules to be imaged without of the use of ionophores. It is also demonstrated that methoxysilane derivatives can be coupled to fluorescein-5-isothiocyanate (FITC) to preferentially label the silica components of living cells. The coupling of labeling procedures might help to address the challenging question of the process of frustule exocytosis.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of lateral column lengthening in the treatment of flexible, planovalgus foot deformity of ambulatory children with spastic cerebral palsy (CP). Fifteen ambulatory children (23 feet) with spastic CP and flexible planovalgus foot deformities received lateral column lengthenings through the calcaneus or calcaneocuboid joint. At an average of 4.1 years of follow-up (minimum, 2.3 years), 17 (74%) feet had good, two (9%) had fair, and four (17%) had poor outcomes. Poor outcomes resulted from recurrence of deformity. Improvements in preoperative, postoperative, and follow-up radiographic measurements were found. However, these improvements are not related to the clinical outcomes. Calcaneal lengthening is a successful treatment for flexible planovalgus foot deformity in ambulatory children with spastic CP. The high failure rate is a significant limitation to the procedure. Further investigation of the objective measurement of planovalgus foot deformity is needed.


Increasing specialization, changes in the institutional incentives for publication, and a host of other reasons have brought about a marked trend towards co-authored articles among researchers. These changes have impacted Science and Technology (S&T) policies worldwide. Co-authorship is often considered to be a reliable proxy for assessing research collaborations at micro, meso, and macro levels. Although co-authorship in a scholarly publication brings numerous benefits to the participating authors, it has also given rise to issues of publication integrity, such as ghost authorships and honorary authorships. The code of conduct of bodies such as the American Psychological Association (APA) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) make it clear that only those who have significantly contributed to the study should be on the authorship list. Those who have contributed little have to be appropriately "acknowledged" in footnotes or in the acknowledgement section. However, these principles are sometimes transgressed, and a complete solution still remains elusive.


In many probabilistic planning scenarios, a system's behavior needs to not only maximize the expected utility but also obey certain restrictions. This paper presents Saturated Path-Constrained Markov Decision Processes (SPC MDPs), a new MDP type for planning under uncertainty with deterministic model-checking constraints, e.g., "state s must be visited befores s'", "the system must end up in s", or "the system must never enter s". We present a mathematical analysis of SPCMDPs, showing that although SPC MDPs generally have no optimal policies, every instance of this class has an epsilon-optimal randomized policy for any > 0. We propose a dynamic programming-based algorithm for finding such policies, and empirically demonstrate this algorithm to be orders of magnitude faster than its next-best alternative.


This study was conducted to detect the genetic variants (single nucleotide polymorphism) of kappa-casein locus (Asp148/Ala) in F1: Simmental ( Bos taurus ) x Ongole grade ( Bos indicus ), SIMPO. Genomic DNA was isolated from blood sample of 40 SIMPO (21 males and 19 females). A 780 bp specific fragment of kappa-casein gene spanning from the forth exon region (517 bp) to forth intron (263 bp) was successfully amplified. The result of the PCR-RFLP (Polymerase Chain Reaction - Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphisms) analysis using Hind III enzyme showed that two genotypes (AA and AB) were found at this locus in SIMPO. The frequencies of A and B alleles in SIMPO were 0.79 and 0.21, respectively. The frequency lies between B. taurus (Simmental) and B. indicus group.