Abstract Fifty faecal samples of patients suspected of having diarrhoea associated with Clostridium difficile were studied. Toxins of C. difficile were tested in vivo directly from the faecal sample using Toxin Detection Kits (Oxoid) to detect toxin A and primers for detection genes of Toxin A and B in a PCR test. The same samples were tested for B. fragilis enterotoxin gene directly from the faecal sample using special primers and a PCR test. Samples were inoculated onto selective media for C. difficile (CCCA) and B. fragilis (BBE) for isolation of bacteria.In vitro Toxin A of C. difficile in culture was tested using a C. difficile toxin A immunoassay (Oxoid, U.K. test and Toxin B of C. difficile was tested by using the McCoy cell line. C. difficile toxin A and B genes were determined in DNA of isolated strains using special primers and a PCR reaction. The enterotoxin production in B. fragilis strains was tested on the human carcinoma cell line HT29/C1. The presence of fragilysin gene was detected using a special pair of primers and a PCR reaction. Toxinogenic strains of C. difficile and enterotoxigenic Bacteroides fragilis (ETBF) strains were isolated from the same samples.


Combining theory with practical application, this collection of real-life, provocative case studies on social issues in sports provides students with the opportunity to make the call on ethical and professional dilemmas faced by a variety of sport and communication professionals. The case studies examine the successes and failures of communication in the corporate culture of sport intersecting with social issues including race, gender, religion, social media, mass media, public health, and LGBTQ+ issues. Topics include the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, sexual abuse scandals, domestic violence, cultural appropriation, and mental health. Each chapter contextualizes a specific issue, presents relevant theory and practical communication principles, and leads into discussion questions to prompt critical reflection. The book encourages students to view the evidence themselves, consider competing ethical and professional claims, and formulate practical responses. This collection serves as a scholarly text for courses in sport communication, business, intercultural communication, public relations, journalism, media studies, and sport management. © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Terry L. Rentner and David P. Burns. All rights reserved.


Author(s): Moffat, Amy | Advisor(s): Van Dyke, Nella | Abstract: Doulas are specialized caregivers who provide emotional support, information, comfort measures, and advocacy to women during their childbearing year, with a focus of continuous companionship during labour and delivery. This dissertation is a sociological study of the emergence of birth doulas as an occupation seeking legitimacy within maternity care. Findings are drawn from in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with twenty birth doulas from the same Midwestern metropolitan area in 2012-2013. Doulas in this sample, both volunteer and paid, ranged in certification status, birth experiences, and encounters with medical staff. An interview was also conducted in 2011 with two key informants from the largest doula membership organization. This study addresses a gap in the literature on professionalization to account for the expanding doula occupation seeking legitimacy. The findings demonstrate many ideological tensions and paradoxes of how doulas strive to establish themselves as professionals. I find that the demands of professionalization may contradict the very essence of doula work. This creates tension between pursuing legitimacy while still desiring autonomy and self-regulation. Another paradox is how doulas need support in order to give support. Inadequate theories of worker emotion management provide an opening to discuss doulas' needs for peer support. I find that although doula work is mostly solo and isolating, there persists a strong need for collegiality. Doulas especially find benefits to debriefing with other doulas or birth workers when they are no longer with a client. I expand Goffman's concept of teammates, who co-operate on stage in performance and gossip back stage, to include doulas need for such support when they are not working in order to be successful caregivers. Clinical research has found the presence of a doula is associated with more positive birth experiences and outcomes. However, very little is known about which types of social support that doulas provide contributes to improving health outcomes. I analyzed a sample of 198 clients who received one of 85 volunteer doulas in 2005-2007. I ran logistic regression to demonstrate that when volunteer doulas of similar training provide massage and visualization/relaxation, women have a significantly lower risk of having an unexpected c-section.


The aim of this paper is discussing about the relevance and
application of psychology to the science library. Library is
considered as a form of educational innovation. Educational
innovation itself is an innovation in the field of education or innovation to solve educational problems. Library function is as a source of learning and teaching, helping students clarify and expand knowledge in the field of study, develop interests, talents and reading habits, get children to look for information themselves
and expand student learning opportunities. With the presence of the library, is one of the steps to fend off the challenge of globalization and improve the quality of human resources. In developing the library, the need for support from other sciences, one of which is the
science of psychology. Psychology is the science which deals with the interaction of behavior and its relation to the environment.Therefore, the existence of the library as an information management unit is very important to support the effective communication in society.


The metallic interface between two oxide insulators, such as LaAlO3/SrTiO3 (LAO/STO), provides new opportunities for electronics and spintronics. However, due to the presence of multiple orbital populations, tailoring the interfacial properties such as the ground state and metal‐insulator transitions remains challenging. Here, an unforeseen tunability of the phase diagram of LAO/STO is reported by alloying LAO with a ferromagnetic LaMnO3 insulator without forming lattice disorder and at the same time without changing the polarity of the system. By increasing the Mn‐doping level, x, of LaAl1−xMnxO3/STO (0 ≤ x ≤ 1), the interface undergoes a Lifshitz transition at x = 0.225 across a critical carrier density of nc = 2.8 × 1013 cm−2, where a peak TSC ≈255 mK of superconducting transition temperature is observed. Moreover, the LaAl1−xMnxO3 turns ferromagnetic at x ≥ 0.25. Remarkably, at x = 0.3, where the metallic interface is populated by only dxy electrons and just before it becomes insulating, a same device with both signatures of superconductivity and clear anomalous Hall effect (7.6 × 1012 cm−2 < ns ≤ 1.1 × 1013 cm−2) is achieved reproducibly. This provides a unique and effective way to tailor oxide interfaces for designing on‐demand electronic and spintronic devices.


In the vision of the Internet of Things (IoT), an increasing number of embedded devices of all sorts (e.g., sensors, mobile phones, cameras, smart meters, smart cars, traffic lights, smart home appliances, etc.) are now capable of communicating and sharing data over the Internet. Although the concept of using embedded systems to control devices, tools and appliances has been proposed for almost decades now, with every new generation, the ever-increasing capabilities of computation and communication pose new opportunities, but also new challenges. As IoT becomes an active research area, different methods from various points of view have been explored to promote the development and popularity of IoT. One trend is viewing IoT as Web of Things (WoT) where the open Web standards are supported for information sharing and device interoperation. By penetrating smart things into existing Web, the conventional web services are enriched with physical world services. This WoT vision enables a new way of narrowing the barrier between virtual and physical worlds. In this paper, we elaborate the architecture and some key enabling technologies of WoT. Some pioneer open platforms and prototypes are also illustrated. The most recent research results are carefully summarized. Furthermore, many systematic comparisons are made to provide the insight in the evolution and future of WoT. Finally, we point out some open challenging issues that shall be faced and tackled by research community.


A movement long identified with the notion that "love makes a family" today flirts dangerously with the dogma that "blood is thicker than water." Biogeneticism, an ideology that favors biological modes of kinship and genetic conceptions of identity, informs many LGBT individuals' choices about why and how to have children. In turn this ideology marks two troubling features of political efforts to facilitate LGBT parenthood: first, the markedly different understandings of equality — full versus formal, lived versus legal — that guide movement approaches to assisted procreation and adoption, respectively; and second, invocations of a fundamental "right to procreate" that valorize reproduction, idealize a biological model of parenthood, and threaten to entrench biogenetic bias in family law and constitutional doctrine.


ABSTRACT Paediatricians are often asked to see children and adolescents with behavioural disorders which include an element of violence directed at peers, family members or teachers. Inevitably this group of children poses a considerable management challenge, irrespective of the multiple aetiological contributions to the behaviours. This paper renews some of the evidence for a neurophysiological contribution to violent behaviour, provides a rationale for pharmalogical treatment and outlines a suggested management plan based on extensive clinical experience. The results of this regimen have been highly successful. This regimen is inexpensive, successful and empowers both patient and family through the development of positive interpersonal interactions.


This paper evaluates the ability to predict COVID-19 caseloads in local areas using the text of geographically specific subreddits, in conjunction with other features. The problem is constructed as a binary classification task on whether the caseload change exceeds a threshold or not. We find that including Reddit features, alongside other informative resources, improves the models' performance in predicting COVID-19 cases. On top of this, we show that exclusive use of Reddit features can act as a strong alternative data source for predicting a short-term rise in caseload due to its strong performance and the fact that it is readily available and updates instantaneously. © 2021 for this paper by its authors.


This thesis proposes a design providing code protection of a low-cost digital audio processor having external memory to store program code. Code protection is provided by using encryption but in order to reduce cost in terms of area some compromises have been made to obtain the right trade-offbetween level of security and cost. The basic concepts of cryptography are explained and several well-known symmetric key algorithms are discussed and their respective level of security for practical applications is weighted against the cost they introduce to the design. The DES algorithm has been chosen for this application but can relatively easy be replaced by another and more secure algorithm should that ever be necessary which of course has the consequence of requiring more area. The code protection scheme is based on a decryption module controlled by an integrated 8051 microcontroller. The decryption module first and foremost performs decryption of 64-bit blocks of data received via I2C from either a an external E2PROM or system controller but it also generates a MAC (Message Authentication Code) in order to ensure data integrity, both in CBC-mode (Cipher Block Chaining). Because non-volatile memory is not available in the device, a large number of secret keys must be stored in the device; however, instead of storing keys in a ROM they are generated before decryption is initiated. This is also done using the DES algorithm; hence it solves three different problems and in this way minimizes area. Furthermore, several protection mechanisms have been built in, in order to provide the necessary access control. The final solution is a ne balanced trade-off between security and cost, and the final design, consisting of decryption module and a modified ESFR (External Special Function Register) for interfacing the 8051, increases area approximately 3% relative to the TAS3108 platform.


Abstract Dynamic rupture calculations using heterogeneous stress drop that is random and self-similar with a power-law spatial spectrum have great promise of producing realistic ground-motion predictions. We present procedures to specify initial stress for random events with a target rupture length and target magnitude. The stress function is modified in the depth dimension to account for the brittle-ductile transition at the base of the seismogenic zone. Self-similar fluctuations in stress drop are tied in this work to the long-wavelength stress variation that determines rupture length. Heterogeneous stress is related to friction levels in order to relate the model to physical concepts. In a variant of the model, there are high-stress asperities with low background stress. This procedure has a number of advantages: (1) rupture stops naturally, not at artificial barriers; (2) the amplitude of short-wavelength fluctuations of stress drop is not arbitrary: the spectrum is fixed to the long-wavelength fluctuation that determines rupture length; and (3) large stress drop can be confined to asperities occupying a small fraction of the total rupture area, producing slip distributions with enhanced peaks.


This paper was based on a bridge project in Chongqing. Finite element software was applied to analyzed the influence of the annual temperature on the pier of continuous rigid-frame bridge with the height parameter change of the pier by analyzing the computing results, this paper summarized the temperature effect on low pier of continuous rigid-frame bridge. It was concluded that the height of the pier was the major factor of the temperature effect on the pier internal forces of the rigid-frame bridge. The lower the pier was, the more obvious the effect of temperature, to some extent, the temperature effect on the pier even exceeded the self-weight effect.


Development of die technology for holder and barrel dies is necessary according to minimization of lens assembly, image sensor, and connectors. In these cases, there are two technical problems arising from die design. One is determination of knock-out pin location in die set. Minimization of lens assembly size make it difficult to obtain ejecting space. The other is whether or not high-precision die technology is possible to reduce torque variation when holer and barrel products is assembled. In this study, multi-cavity die set was developed taking advantage of gear-driven ejecting method. In the developed technology, die manufacturing technology was guaranteed with a high-precision level.


Diesel engines are major source of nitrogen oxides (NOx). NOx, primarily nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), are formed at high temperatures during diesel fuel combustion. While neither NO nor NO2 are desirable, NO2 is the more reactive gas associated with health problems. Both US Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA) and California Air Resources Board (CARB) initiated rulings for diesel emissions retrofit technologies to limit NO2 emissions increase "slip" to 20% over the engine baseline emissions. In this paper, an active diesel particulate filter that reduces NO2 emissions is presented. The active diesel particulate filter utilizes a porous sintered metal filter medium, which is divided into pleated filter strips. These filter strips are regenerated (cleaned) by applying direct electric heating to burn off accumulated soot. Exhaust emissions measurements show that a degreened active diesel particulate filter reduces NO2 by 42% from the diesel engine exhaust. The data also show that the efficiency of NO2 emissions reduction improves with aging. Following a break-in or "aging" period, the active diesel particulate filter achieved 96% NO2 reductions. This far exceeds latest US-EPA and CARB verification standards on NO2.


comes of early tracheostomy should be taken into consideration. First, the authors showed that the patients in both groups received similar durations of respiratory support (mean difference, −1.7 days, P = .06). However, the early group received respiratory support through a tracheostomy for a mean of 12.9 days vs 16.1 days in the late group, and no statistical analysis was performed for the comparison. Moreover, the successful weaning rate for the early and late groups was not reported. We suggest that Dr Young and colleagues clarify whether there was a significant difference in the duration of ventilator support or weaning rate between early and late groups. Second, the patient's comfort is another consideration with early tracheostomy. Young et al did not report the use of pain medications. Moreover, quality of life between patients receiving early and late tracheostomy should be evaluated. Third, the authors demonstrated that the use of antibiotics did not differ for the 2 groups in the study; however, antibiotics can be used for many types of infections, such as catheter-related infections, in critically ill patients. Ventilator-associated pneumonia should be the major complication in patients receiving respiratory support. Whether there were any significant differences in the rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia between the early and late groups would be of interest.


Fat reserves influence the orientation of migrating songbirds at ecological barriers, such as expansive water crossings. Upon encountering a body of water, fat migrants usually cross the barrier exhibiting 'forward' migration in a seasonally appropriate direction. In contrast, lean birds often exhibit temporary 'reverse' orientation away from the water, possibly to lead them to suitable habitats for refueling. Most examples of reverse orientation are restricted to autumn migration and, in North America, are largely limited to transcontinental migrants prior to crossing the Gulf of Mexico. Little is known about the orientation of lean birds after crossing an ecological barrier or on the way to their breeding grounds. We examined the effect of fat stores on migratory orientation of both long- and short-distance migrants before and after a water crossing near their breeding grounds; Catharus thrushes (Swainson's and gray-cheeked thrushes, C. ustulatus and C. minimus) and white-throated sparrows Zonotrichia albicollis were tested for orientation at the south shore of Lake Ontario during spring and autumn. During both spring and autumn, fat birds oriented in a seasonally appropriate, forward direction. Lean thrushes showed a tendency for reverse orientation upon encountering water in the spring and axial, shoreline orientation after crossing water in the autumn. Lean sparrows were not consistently oriented in any direction during either season. The responses of lean birds may be attributable to their stopover ecology and seasonally-dependent habitat quality. (Less)


Many clinicians have recognized the unique possibilities of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the study of right ventricular (RV) anatomy. Especially for the assessment of the RV in pulmonary hypertension, MRI has been proven to be of clinical importance. It is, however, less well known that if MRI measures of volume and flow are combined with pressure measurements, accurate description of RV function in relation to its afterload is possible. Furthermore, nuclear imaging techniques offer the opportunity to study the altered RV metabolism and to elucidate the possible contribution of ischaemia to RV failure in pulmonary hypertension. Since RV failure in pulmonary hypertension is the result of the complex interaction between geometry, structure, function, perfusion, and metabolism, MRI and nuclear imaging are promising techniques to study these mechanisms and to evaluate the effects of therapy aimed at improving RV function in pulmonary hypertension.


Effective optical interconnect is a fundamental requisite to realize Internet-scale data centres due to the capabilities and benefits of optical devices. Optical interconnects are energy efficient and support massive bandwidths. The performance of optical interconnects is directly related to the type of optical switches and optical switching techniques used. Optical switches may be categorized into slow optical switches and fast optical switches. The optical switching techniques are Optical Circuit Switching (OCS), Optical Packet Switching (OPS) and Optical Burst Switching (OBS).

This thesis presents three novel optical interconnection schemes which are based on optical burst switching. These schemes are called Hybrid Optical Switch Architecture (HOSA), HOSA with Traffic Demand Scheduling (TDS) and Fast Optical Switch Architecture (FOSA). The first two schemes are based on a hybrid design that utilizes fast and slow optical switches while the third scheme is based on using only fast optical switches. The proposed schemes consider OBS with a two-way reservation protocol that ensures zero burst loss. In the two-way reservation protocol, the connection is established for each burst before transmission. To evaluate the performance of these schemes, network-level simulation is used.

The proposed architectures consider a single stage core topology that can be easily scaled up (in capacity) and scaled out (in the number of racks) without requiring major re-cabling and network reconfiguration. The proposed schemes feature separate data and control planes. The control plane comprises a centralized controller while the data plane contains an array of optical switches. A scalability analysis of the proposed topology is presented and shows that this topology is scalable to hundreds of thousands of servers. This thesis also presents a trade-off between cost and power consumption of the proposed designs by comparing them with conventional interconnects using analytical modelling.

In HOSA, the key idea is to route high volume traffic through a fast optical switch during the reconfiguration of a slow optical switch. The traffic is moved to the slow optical switch once it is reconfigured. The aggregated traffic should be large enough so that it can bypass the slow optical switch during its reconfiguration phase. This technique hides the reconfiguration time of slow optical switch but the latency introduced due to burst aggregation is still high. In HOSA with TDS, small bursts are considered to reduce the latency of burst aggregation. The controller in HOSA with TDS technique maintains a traffic demand matrix which updates traffic demand on periodic intervals and assigns slow paths for the high traffic volume. A resource allocation algorithm is proposed that allocates paths of fast and slow optical switches efficiently.

In HOSA with TDS, the control plane can only support applications that have high traffic stability. So for dynamically changing communication patterns, this thesis presents a new design called FOSA. The FOSA is based on only fast optical switches and it also uses OBS with the two-way reservation i.e. there is no additional burden on the control plane for maintaining traffic demands as was done in HOSA with TDS. The proposed technique shows considerable improvement in terms of throughput and packet loss ratio as compared to the traditional methods of OBS while performance comparable in terms of delay with the traditional methods of OBS is also achieved. The proposed technique also demonstrates performance comparable to that of electrical data centre networks.

The performance of TCP over traditional OBS network is degraded by the bursts losses due to contention even at a low traffic load. In FOSA, the performance of the TCP is evaluated. Since in the proposed scheme, the burst loss is zero due to two way reservation, the results show significant improvement of TCP performance in terms of throughput, time and packets loss as compared to the traditional methods of OBS and the conventional electronic packet switching data centre networks for all types of workloads.


We are grateful to the judges and scholars who participated in this Symposium examining our book, The Law of Nations and the United States Constitution. One of our goals in writing this book was to reinvigorate and advance the debate over the role of customary international law in U.S. courts. The papers in this Symposium advance this debate by deepening understandings of how the Constitution interacts with customary international law. Our goal in this Article is to address two questions raised by this Symposium that go to the heart of the status of the law of nations under the Constitution. The first question is whether the Constitution adopted the law of nations (or some subset of it) as the supreme law of the land. This fundamental question has profound implications for the proper role and status of customary international law in the U.S. federal system. The second question is whether the Constitution's allocation of certain powers to the political branches of the federal government has any bearing on the power or obligation of federal courts to apply the law of nations. Resolution of this question is particularly important if one concludes, as we do, that the Constitution did not adopt the law of nations itself as supreme federal law.
Regarding the first question, Professors David Golove and Daniel Hulsebosch echo the modern position that the Constitution adopted the law of nations as supreme federal law and thus assigned primary responsibility to courts, rather than the political branches, to comply with the law of nations. Their evidence for this proposition, however, is unpersuasive. Although they present ample evidence that members of the founding generation understood the law of nations to form "part of the law of the land" or "part of the law of the United States," they present no evidence that the founders understood the Constitution to adopt the law of nations as the "supreme Law of the Land," enforceable by courts not only in preference to contrary state law, but also in preference to contrary executive action and possibly even acts of Congress. By design, the Supremacy Clause recognized only three sources of law as "the supreme Law of the Land" — the "Constitution," "Laws made in Pursuance thereof," and "Treaties." Under the Constitution, each of these sources of law can be adopted only with the participation and assent of the Senate (designed to represent the states) or the states themselves. This veto was the price of supremacy exacted by the states during the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. Professors Golove and Hulsebosch acknowledge that the Supremacy Clause did not make the law of nations the supreme law of the land, and they identify no other constitutional provision giving it that status.
Regarding the second question, whereas Professors Golove and Hulsebosch overstate the status of the law of nations as supreme federal law, they undervalue the relationship between the law of nations and the Constitution's allocation of powers. Specifically, they contend that the Constitution's allocation of power to the political branches to recognize foreign nations was historically irrelevant to the obligation of U.S. courts to uphold the rights of foreign nations under the law of nations. In the twentieth century, the Supreme Court has expressly relied on recognition to uphold the sovereign rights of foreign nations. Such reliance is largely consistent with historical understandings and practice. Because early federal courts applied the law of nations as general law, they had little need in most cases to spell out the precise relationship between judicial adherence to the law of nations and the exclusive powers of the political branches over war, foreign relations, and recognition. But background understandings of the law of nations suggest that the Constitution's exclusive allocation of these powers to the political branches required courts — in the absence of contrary instructions from the political branches — (1) to respect rights of recognized foreign nations under the law of nations and (2) to refrain from enforcing rights of the United States against other nations. Early Supreme Court opinions also suggest that the judiciary's failure to uphold the rights of foreign nations under the law of nations, and the judiciary's unilateral enforcement of U.S. rights against other countries, would usurp the exclusive constitutional powers of the political branches over these matters. In some early cases, when necessary to resolve the dispute at hand, the Court alluded to these points explicitly. The Court's increased reliance on the Constitution's allocation of foreign relations powers to justify these same practices in the modern era rests on a foundation established by early precedent in light of the Constitution's original design.


With the continuous growth in the XML data, the ability to search in massive collections of XML data becomes important. In this paper, we present efficient techniques that are able to employ bloom-filtering to decrease computation complexity that is used to filter irrelevant XML paths. After filtering, a kind of semantic measure is used to compute similarity between the query and the relevant XML documents, which is used to rank retrieval results. Experiment results show that the retrieval prototype system based on bloom-filtering runs faster than ever under the almost same average precise.


The effect of surface-bond saturation on the luminescence of Si nanocrystals is studied by the tight-binding cluster model. It is found that the energy gaps increase when the diameter decreases, in accordance with the quantum confinement effect. The energy gap becomes smaller in the case of incomplete saturation of surface bonds, which are closer to the experimental results. The lifetimes decrease simultaneously one or two orders of magnitude, which explains the high luminescence efficiency of porous Si and Si nanocrystals. The lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) $A1$ state turns into a surface state as the surface saturation strength is weakened, while the highest occupied molecular orbital $T2$ state changes little. The lowest LUMO state may be the $A1$ or $T2$ state, depending on the cluster shape. The energy difference between the two states is several or several tenths of a meV, which may explain the high luminescence efficiency of porous Si at room temperature. It seems that our theory can qualitatively unify the quantum confinement model and the surface-localized-state model for the luminescence mechanism.


In this article, I analyze the encounter between the Field Museum of Natural History and Amazonian Ecuador's Cofan people to question the concept of "environmentality": the idea that environmentalist programs and movements operate as forms of governmentality in Michel Foucault's sense. I argue that, although the Field Museum's community conservation projects constitute a regulatory rationale and technique, they do not transform Cofan subjectivity according to plan. By exploring Cofan people's critical consciousness of environmentalist interventions, I aim to cast doubt on the governmentality paradigm's utility for analyzing the complexities of cultural difference, intercultural encounter, and directed change.


Algorithmic parameterization and hardware architectures can ensure secure transmission of multimedia data in resource-constrained environments such as wireless video surveillance networks, telemedicine frameworks for distant health care support in rural areas, and Internet video streaming. Joint multimedia compression and encryption techniques can significantly reduce the computational requirements of video processing systems. The authors present an approach to reduce the computational cost of multimedia encryption while also preserving the properties of compressed video. A hardware-amenable design of the proposed algorithms makes them suitable for real-time embedded multimedia systems. This approach alleviates the need for additional hardware for encryption in resource-constrained scenarios and can be otherwise used to augment existing encryption methods used for content delivery on the Internet or in other applications. This work shows how two compression blocks for video coding--a modified frequency transform (called a secure wavelet transform or SWT) and a modified entropy coding scheme (called a chaotic arithmetic coding or CAC)--can be used for video encryption. Experimental results are shown for selective encryption using the proposed schemes.


This paper will review the science and technology of superconducting magnets and the possibility of their application in large m.h.d. generators. The newly exploited hard superconductors offer, in principle, the most economic means of providing magnetic fields of several tens of kilo-oersteds over large volumes. Unfortunately these materials have exhibited certain peculiarities of behaviour when wound into coils ('training' and 'degradation') which, until recently, had made it im possible to realize their full potential or to design larger coils with any confidence. The reasons for this are now fairly well understood and are seen to be fundamental to hard superconductors. A number of techniques have been developed to reduce these effects, the most recent, involving the intimate combination of the superconductor with a metal of low resistivity together with the provision of adequate cooling, circumvents the problem completely. A further problem with large superconducting magnets is to protect the windings, in the event of a coolant failure, against destruction by the release of the stored magnetic energy, 10 10 J in the case of a large m.h.d. generator magnet. It will be shown that this also dictates the use of composite conductors in which the superconductor is the minor component. Although a number of detailed problems of cryogenic engineering remain to be solved, it is now possible to design windings for large superconducting magnets that will operate predictably, safely and at the full potential of the superconductor.


In this study, we manipulated gain/loss framing context during a simulated negotiation between a human user and a virtual agent. Task instructions placed users either in a loss or gain framed context, such that those in the loss frame had to minimize expenses whereas those in the gain frame had to maximize profits. The virtual agent displayed facial emotions so that we could also test how interpersonal emotions interact with framing. Results suggest that individuals are more motivated to minimize their losses than maximizing their gains. The loss frame caused individuals to demand more during the negotiation, hence to minimize expenses. Neurophysiological results suggest that cardiovascular patterns of challenge (i.e., positive motivations) were present in the loss frame condition, most strongly when the virtual human smiled. We discuss these results in regards to Prospect Theory. This work also has implications for designing and rigorously evaluating humanlike virtual agents.


Recently, in the treatment of diseases such as cancer, noninvasive or low-invasive modality, such as high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), has been put into practice as an alternative to open surgery. HIFU induces thermal ablation of the target tissue to be treated. To improve the efficiency of HIFU, we have proposed a "triggered-HIFU" technique, which uses the combination of a short-duration, high-voltage transmission and a long-duration, medium-voltage transmission. In this method, the transmission device must endure high peak voltage for the former and the high time-average power for the latter. The triggered-HIFU sequence requires electronic scanning of the HIFU focus to maximize its thermal efficiency. Therefore, the transmission device must drive an array transducer with the number of elements on the order of a hundred or more, which requires that each part of the device that drives each element must be compact. The purpose of this work is to propose and construct such a transmission device by improving the staircase drive circuit, which we previously proposed. The main point of improvement is that both N and P MOSFETs are provided for each staircase voltage level instead of only one of them. Compared with the previous ultrasonic transmission circuit, high-voltage spikes were significantly reduced, the power consumption was decreased by 26.7%, and the transmission circuit temperature rise was decreased by 14.5 °C in the triggered-HIFU heating mode.


ABSTRACT Graphene is one of the most attractive two-dimensional nanomaterials widely used as saturable absorber for pulsing laser, owing to its unique non-linear optical responses. However, fabrication and integration of graphene saturable absorber into a laser cavity involves complex processes and procedures. Mass production of graphene-based saturable absorbers requires simplification of the fabrication process with minimum material wastage. Reduced graphene oxide, a functionalized graphene, is found to have saturable absorption property as well. Comparatively, it is easier and more cost-effective to produce. On the other hand, optical deposition is a saturable absorber deposition technique that maximizes material utilization. In this work, commercially available reduced graphene oxide in N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone was used to fabricate a saturable absorber device via optical deposition, due to its simplicity and high efficacy. Optical pulse generation via Q-switching were successfully demonstrated with the optically deposited rGO-SA incorporated into a ring erbium-doped fiber laser. Pulse repetition rate of up to ~85.0 kHz and pulse durations as short as ~2.0 μs were achieved. Its performance as a saturable absorber in a Q-switched fiber laser is then compared with previous works. Comparatively, optically deposited rGO has a much lower Q-switched threshold and holds huge potential for mass production with maximum material utilization.


Classic Indonesian exploitation films (originally produced, distributed, and exhibited in the New Order's Indonesia from 1979 to 1995) are commonly negligible in both national and transnational cinema contexts, in the discourses of film criticism, journalism, and studies. Nonetheless, in the 2000s, there has been a global interest in re-circulating and consuming this kind of films. The films are internationally considered as "cult movies" and celebrated by global fans.

This thesis will focus on the cultural traffic of the films, from late 1970s to early 2010s, from Indonesia to other countries. By analyzing the global flows of the films I will argue that despite the marginal status of the films, classic Indonesian exploitation films become the center of a taste battle among a variety of interest groups and agencies.

The process will include challenging the official history of Indonesian cinema by investigating the framework of cultural traffic as well as politics of taste, and highlighting the significance of exploitation and B-films, paving the way into some findings that recommend accommodating the movies in serious discourses on cinema, nationally and globally.

Furthermore, regarding the film traffic, the films became both the significant arenas and the objects of tensions arising from various politics of taste involving several agencies like the State and its cultural elites, local film producers, local film distributors/exhibitors, local audiences, transnational distributors, and global fans.
In the bigger picture, the thesis also analyzes how international dynamics of political, economic, social, and cultural transformation of trashy films have formed and impacted the ambience of national and global film cultures, including critically encountering the Western-centric concept of Cult cinema.

In establishing the arguments, with archival-led research and a critical historical approach, I will explore various fields of film studies, containing policy studies, distribution/exhibition culture, film reception and spectatorship, and global online fandom.


A complete image ontology can be obtained by formalising a top-down meta-language which must address all possibilities, from global message and composition to objects and local surface properties. In computer vision, where one general goal is image understanding, one starts with a bunch of pixels. The latter is a typical example of bottom-up processing, from pixels to objects to layout and gist. Both top-down and bottom-up approaches are possible, but can these be unified? As it turns out, the answer is yes, because our visual system does it all the time. This follows from our progress in developing models of the visual system, and using the models in re-creating an input image in the form of a painting.


A mechanism for inobtrusive sub‐bottom profiling in adverse ocean floor environments is being developed. Profiling of the ocean bottom has been accomplished using attenuation and relaxation time methods based on dispersion characteristics of chirp sonar pulse reflections developed by Precision Signal, Inc. [LeBlanc et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 91, 116–126 (1992)]. Sediment classification data, using a 20‐ms FM chirp sonar pulse in the frequency range of 2–10 kHz, were collected in Narragansett Bay, RI, and compared with core samples [LeBlanc et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 91, 107–115 (1992)]. Results indicate a high correlation between the core‐determined sediment properties and the estimates obtained from acoustic measurements to depths of 20 m. This sonar technique is to be implemented using converted torpedo sonar hardware adapted for use by Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Division Newport. The Ocean Bottom Profiler will consist of transmitters, receivers, data storage, and transmission systems of versatile...


Only a bold man would dare attempt a synthesis of the wide-ranging discussions of the last two days, let alone distil from them any general principles of biological recognition. The only sentiment which could command general assent is one of gratitude to the Society, the organizers and the contributors for putting before us such a fascinating collection of papers and letting us sharpen our wits on so much new knowledge. The following remarks will therefore be nothing more than personal footnotes; if they omit reference to much of the work which has been presented, and only mention a few of the issues that have been raised, that is a matter of sheer necessity, not of personal prejudice. In our first session we began by reviewing the physical chemistry of molecular interactions in terms of quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics. Professor Buckingham warned us against the temptation of regarding molecular association energies as made up of additive contributions from pairs of atoms or ions, and Professor Symons stressed the highly individual structure-forming habits of water, which make it so difficult to interpret its solvation properties in terms of simplified models which treat water as a uniform dielectric, or as a mixture of monomers and high polymers. Professor Truter then introduced us to the structures of the complexes formed by ferrichrome A, nonactin and other biological agents with metal ions of various kinds. She drew attention to the large conformational changes which often accompany complex formation, and suggested that some at least of these agents owe their specificity to their high flexibility. Presumably one should interpret this generalization in terms of an ability of the complexing agent to meet very precisely the stereochemical needs of one particular ion, coupled with an inability to meet the precise needs of other ions without a certain amount of mechanical strain. To take a single example, it is not immediately obvious how the needs of T1+ differ from those of the alkali metal ions; but that is because we tend to overlook the effect of ionic polarization on the stability of the solvated ion. The T1+ ion, because of its outer electron pair, has a low-lying dipole transition (6s -> 6p) which confers on it a high electric polarizability. As a result, a set of negative ligands on one side induce a negative charge on the other side, and this will hinder the approach of further ligands on that side - as suggested by the curious stereochemistry of some of Professor Truter's T1+ complexes.


Introduction: Acute appendicitis is the most common cause of abdominal pain requiring surgery in children. In most instances the infecting organisms are normal inhabitants of the lumen of appendix. Surgery allows easy microbiological sampling. Aspiration of fluid or pus in a syringe is preferred. Swabs are less suitable and only to be used when sampling with a syringe is not feasible. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing of the isolated bacteria and particularly of the anaer- obes can be important to adjust therapy in case of the presence of multi resistant bacteria. Objective: The aim of the study was to determine the bacteriological profile of acute appendicitis in children. Materials and Methods: Study design is a prospective descriptive study including children hospitalized for acute appendicitis. Tissue samples (a speci- men of the appendix), peritoneal fluid swab from the appendicial fossa and the peritoneal exudates (if exists) obtained at surgery from 54 children with suspected acute appendicitis operated at the pediatric surgery unit at the Maternity and Child Teaching Hospital in Al-Qadisiya province from the period 1st of June 2007 to the end of May 2011, were exam- ined histologically and by culture for aerobic and anaerobic bacteria. Results: Out of these, 39 boys (72.2%) and 15 (27.7% girls). Their age ranged between (1.8 - 13) years, with a mean of 6.9 years. Of the all patients studied 34 pre- sented with suppurative and phlegmnous appendicitis, 8 with gangrenous appendicitis, 6 with septic complications of appendicitis and 6 had normal appendices. Only 80 of the 108 swabs taken yielded a positive culture (74.07%). Con- clusion: Although in our study no antibiotic regime was changed on the basis of a positive culture swab and the perito- neal culture swabs do not improve immediate postoperative therapy based on surgical impression and rapid histological reporting, however, the routine use of peritoneal culture swabs may be of value in identifying patients requiring outpa- tient follow-up.


The experimental calorimetric two‐state criterion requires the van't Hoff enthalpy ΔHvH around the folding/unfolding transition midpoint to be equal or very close to the calorimetric enthalpy ΔHcal of the entire transition. We use an analytical model with experimental parameters from chymotrypsin inhibitor 2 to elucidate the relationship among several different van't Hoff enthalpies used in calorimetric analyses. Under reasonable assumptions, the implications of these ΔHvH's being approximately equal to ΔHcal are equivalent: Enthalpic variations among denatured conformations in real proteins are much narrower than some previous lattice‐model estimates, suggesting that the energy landscape theory "folding to glass transition temperature ratio" Tf /Tg may exceed 6.0 for real calorimetrically two‐state proteins. Several popular three‐dimensional lattice protein models, with different numbers of residue types in their alphabets, are found to fall short of the high experimental standard for being calorimetrically two‐state. Some models postulate a multiple‐conformation native state with substantial pre‐denaturational energetic fluctuations well below the unfolding transition temperature, or predict a significant post‐denaturational continuous conformational expansion of the denatured ensemble at temperatures well above the transition point, or both. These scenarios either disagree with experiments on protein size and dynamics, or are inconsistent with conventional interpretation of calorimetric data. However, when empirical linear baseline subtractions are employed, the resulting ΔHvH/ΔHcal's for some models can be increased to values closer to unity, and baseline subtractions are found to correspond roughly to an operational definition of native‐state conformational diversity. These results necessitate a re‐assessment of theoretical models and experimental interpretations. Proteins 2000;40:637–661. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Coups d'etat are major events that gain the attention of governments and citizens alike. As a result, the international media become saturated with stories surrounding them - and most of those stories are about men. This article examines how women were portrayed by the press in the aftermath of the Fijian coups and relates their stories as they appeared in the daily papers. By analysing the Fiji Times and the Fiji Sun for twelve days following three of the coups, evidence will show that Fiji's press has begun to recognise the role played by women as decision-makers and human rights activists and that, during these times of crisis, they moved from the periphery of the news in 1987 to play a more central role in 2000 and 2006.


Abstract Between 2012 and 2014 I interviewed some of the earliest civil partners to dissolve their partnerships about their experience of dissolution. When I presented my findings, most family lawyers responded that dissolution was 'pretty much like divorce'. And so it was, in many respects; but I thought that such comments missed an important difference. This article focuses on the legal understandings of gays and lesbians who have undergone dissolution of their civil partnerships, and on their experiences of it. This seemed to me significant for three reasons. First, the experiences of lesbians and gay men have historically been marginalised, pathologised or absent from legal accounts and the dominant legal consciousness. In this research they would be put centre-stage. Second, the institution of civil partnership – transient though it may turn out to be – deserves study as the point of entry into legal recognition and regulation of same-sex couples' relationships in the UK. And, third, it is this precise history that makes it different from marriage, and dissolution different from divorce, whatever the similarities in legal treatment.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:
 Ischemic stroke is a heterogeneous complex disease that results from the interaction between numerous genetic and environmental risk factors. Stroke heritability is approximately 40% in the overall population, similar to that of cancer, although there may be important differences in the etiologies of young (<49 years old) versus older onset ischemic stroke. The goal of this study was to conduct a mechanistic genome-wide association (GWA) analysis contrasting the gene pathways involved in young- and old-onset stroke.

 METHODS:
 Our analysis included 946 young subjects (448 ischemic stroke subjects and 498 age and sex matched controls, mean age of stroke onset 41 years) and 2558 older subjects (1070 ischemic stroke subjects and 1488 controls, mean age of stroke onset 66.5 years). All subjects were of European ancestry. The young onset cases and controls were genotyped by Illumina Omni1-Quad array with imputation up to 1.8 M SNPs and the old onset cases and controls by a combination of 550 v1 and v3 as well as 610 Illumina arrays with imputation up to 5.0 M SNPs. Single SNP association testing was performed within each contributing study by logistic regression adjusting for age, sex and population structure. Numbers of genes assigned with significant SNPs (P<=0.0001) were 18 and 25 with young- and old-onset groups, respectively, which were used as an input to pathway analysis by the Pathway Studio (Ariadne Genomics, Co.)

 RESULTS:
 SNP-level analyses did not reveal any significant associations with each group that met Bonferroni adjusted thresholds for statistical significance. In analyzing the 'suggestively associated SNPs', protein-protein interaction pathway analysis in the young-onset group revealed a strong segregation of significant hub proteins (CAT, RUNX1, and EIF4E) with more than 100 connections, while in the old-onset group the interaction networks were dispersed without much segregation. We observed that protein-protein interaction networks have a power-law connectivity distribution in both young- and old-onset groups. We identified 3 significant and focused pathways, ROS metabolism, melanogenesis, and IGF1R->CdEBPA/FOXO1A signaling, enriched for young-onset stroke (P<0.04). In the old-onset group, 10 pathways were identified involving broader signaling pathways.

 CONCLUSIONS:
 Young-onset stroke may involve genetic predisposition characterized by a few distinct and finite pathways. Our data suggests that young onset stroke may involve a few pathways that relate to a small number of key hub proteins, including ROS metabolism, melanogenesis, and IGF1R->CEBPA/FOXO1A signaling. Our analysis is consistent with the hypothesis that different pathways may be involved in young versus old onset stroke.


The SG (Smart Grid) system provides advantages for its stakeholders, which can not only reduce wasted energy and maintenance cost but also increase reliability with transparency during delivering electricity from suppliers to customer. The HAN (Home Area Network), consisting of smart appliances, smart meter and management system, can enable an end-user to remotely control many digital appliances. However, anyone can easily eavesdrop communication between the components of the HAN due to wireless communication to support easy and quick connection. As a result, the adversary easily identify the type of appliances which belongs to the end-user by the energy consumption pattern. To prevent this, we propose a privacy-preserving authentication for HAN, which can support various security features such as mutual authentication, confidentiality, message integrity, anonymous communication, and resiliency against compromising smart meter.


Background: Dog bites and subsequent transmission of rabies virus continue to be a public health threat in some parts of the world. While prophylaxis has proven successful in limiting transmission of rabies virus, dog vaccination coverage has been far below the WHO-recommended level of 75% in many parts, particularly in Africa and Asia. Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the level of dog vaccination coverage in Moiben Subcounty of Uasin Gishu County, Kenya. The study also sought to investigate the reasons for possible low dog vaccination coverage. Methodology: The dog owners were interviewed using structured questionnaires on whether they had their dogs vaccinated, the frequency of vaccination and the number of dogs maintained per household. The respondents were also interviewed on whether their dogs were confined or not and whether they had bitten residents or not. Data was entered into SPSS version 22 of 2013 for analysis. The data was analyzed using chi square and the statistical significance determined at critical p-value of 0.05 and 0.01 in some cases. Results: The coverage of dog vaccination against rabies virus in Moiben Sub-county, Uasin Gishu County was found to be 19.5% (130/666). The number of dogs that had not been vaccinated were 536 out of 666 accounting for 80.5% of the sample in this study. It was established that 32.7% of dogs kept in singles per household and 5.9% of dogs kept in more than 4 dogs per household were vaccinated. The findings show that number of dogs kept by each household is significantly associated (X²=32.2) with the level of vaccination coverage. We also found that a total of 351 (54.6) children below 15 years were the majority who had been bitten by dogs (X² =26.3, p= 0.01) while the least bitten were those above 46 years of age. It was also established that the unconfined dogs (487/75.7%) significantly bit more people than those that were partially confined (X² =12.9, p= 0.01) Conclusion and Recommendation: The dog vaccination coverage at 19.5% in Moiben Subcounty is far below the 75% level recommended by the WHO. The frequency of dog vaccination was found to be once a year among some dog owners, twice among a few others, and once in the life-time of the dog among some dog owners. There was an inverse proportionality between vaccination frequency and the number of dogs owned per household. Dog confinement limits dog bites and hence should be enforced among dog owners. This study recommends that households in Moiben Sub-county keep the number of dogs that they can manage with regards to vaccination to be able to control rabies virus transmission. The county government of Uasin Gishu should move with speed to make and implement a policy on dog ownership to regulate the number of dogs owned per household.


This article describes the historical shift from consumption taxation at the federal level to income taxation with the enactment of the 16th amendment (the intent of which was chiefly to tax the capital income of the wealthy) and the incremental shifts since then back toward consumption taxation (which frees capital from tax) through expansion of both the payroll taxes as well as the consumption tax features of our current hybrid income/consumption tax that target the middle class. It then addresses the issue of whether we ought to expand consumption tax treatment to the very wealthy by reviewing two recently published books on fundamental tax reform, Edward J. McCaffery's Fair Not Flat and Michael J. Graetz's The Decline (and Fall?) of the Income Tax. One of the author's chief concerns with McCaffery's proposal to replace the income/consumption tax (as well as the estate and gift tax) with a cash-flow consumption tax with graduated rates is the effect his proposal could have on the tax paid by the top one percent of wealth owners, which now owns nearly forty percent of the private wealth in the U.S. The author believes that a significant shift in the tax burden away from the top one percent would likely occur under McCaffery's proposal - in return for speculative economic benefits for the country, in the view of many economists - which could do no more than accelerate the wealth concentration in the top one percent that has already reached record levels in recent years. Graetz proposes a two-tier tax system in which all individuals pay a VAT and those individuals earning above $75,000 to $100,000 also pay an income tax. The author beleives that Graetz's proposal, which would remove 100 million taxpayers from having to file an annual return, is extremely important, but she would attempt to accomplish what Graetz is proposing within a single tax system rather than a two-tier system.


This paper presents a novel strategy for high-fidelity image restoration by characterizing both local smoothness and nonlocal self-similarity of natural images in a unified statistical manner. The main contributions are three-fold. First, from the perspective of image statistics, a joint statistical modeling (JSM) in an adaptive hybrid space-transform domain is established, which offers a powerful mechanism of combining local smoothness and nonlocal self-similarity simultaneously to ensure a more reliable and robust estimation. Second, a new form of minimization functional for solving the image inverse problem is formulated using JSM under a regularization-based framework. Finally, in order to make JSM tractable and robust, a new Split Bregman-based algorithm is developed to efficiently solve the above severely underdetermined inverse problem associated with theoretical proof of convergence. Extensive experiments on image inpainting, image deblurring, and mixed Gaussian plus salt-and-pepper noise removal applications verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.


In this paper we show the emergence of polycrystalline structures as a result of elastic energy minimisation. For this purpose, we introduce a variational model for two-dimensional systems of edge dislocations, within the so-called core radius approach, and we derive the $\Gamma$-limit of the elastic energy functional as the lattice space tends to zero.
In the energy regime under investigation, the symmetric and skew part of the strain become decoupled in the limit, the dislocation measure being the curl of the skew part of the strain. The limit energy is given by the sum of a plastic term, acting on the dislocation density, and an elastic term, which depends on the symmetric strains. Minimisers under suitable boundary conditions are piece-wise constant antisymmetric strain fields, representing in our model a polycrystal whose grains are mutually rotated by infinitesimal angles.


Land use and soil sealing are particularly high in metropolitan regions. They bring about conflicts of use: the demand for housing, business and economy is enormous, but at the same time, quality of life depends on a network of green spaces. With the aid of remote sensing, the change of urban areas can be observed and quantified over time. This study investigates the change dynamics of land cover and land use in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) with multispectral satellite data, focussing on imperviousness. Landsat data is used to monitor and analyse half a century of landscape development. In addition, recent trends in land surface temperature (LST) are estimated from MODIS data. Changes to the LST are caused by land cover and land use changes amongst other factors. Accordingly, a link can be shown between the medium-term LST changes and the hotspots of landscape transformation in NRW. Due to global climate change, land consumption is increasingly affecting the densely populated urban areas, which calls for measures to increase their resilience. The results of the study can be used by decision makers to assess the environmental impact of land use, the loss of agricultural land or the resulting effects of climate change.


BACKGROUND
The development of granulomatous lesions within tattoos is a well-recognized occurrence in individuals with sarcoidosis. The characteristic histopathological finding of sarcoidosis is the presence of noncaseating granulomas; however, similar histopathogical findings may be seen in foreign body granulomas. Several reports have challenged the assertion that the presence of foreign material within sarcoidal granulomas is incompatible with a diagnosis of sarcoidosis.

OBSERVATIONS
We describe a patient who had multiple linearly arranged papules along her eyebrows and the vermillion border of her upper lip. She had had cosmetic tattooing performed on these areas 3 year prior to presentation. Histopathologic examination revealed sarcoidal granulomas, polarizable foreign material, and pigment granules. Hilar adenopathy was noted on a chest radiograph. After 4 months of treatment with a midpotency topical steroid and doxycycline, she experienced complete clearance of her cutaneous lesions and normalization of chest x-ray film findings.

CONCLUSIONS
This case demonstrates a unique adverse result after cosmetic tattooing and highlights the concept that granulomatous histopathologic findings containing foreign material should not be an exclusionary criterion for the diagnosis of sarcoidosis. In this setting, further investigation for the presence of systemic disease is indicated.


What are the cultural effects of generalized access to upper secondary education, which became effective in France in the 1980s and 1990s? Data on reading and television-watching suggest that reading is in decline, a decline concentrated among high school and higher education graduates, and that television occupies a greater place in the lives of generations who attended school in the 1980s and 1990s than in those of the preceding generations. These two developments result from a complex combination of the "net" and structural effects of mass education. Mass education has slowed the decline of reading and mitigated the increase in television-watching: the proportional weight in the population at large of categories most likely to read heavily and least likely to be intensive TV watchers – i.e., high school and higher education graduates– has grown, as reading and television-watching levels among the highest educated have gradually, over the generations, come to resemble those for the less educated. This combined development may be interpreted in two ways that are not necessarily mutually exclusive: 1) both the decline of reading and the increase in television-watching reflect a change in the cultural function of education, a change in turn due to changes in teaching methods and curriculum content reinforced by the sharp rise in influence of the mass media; but 2) these changes also reflect morphological changes in the world of upper secondary and higher education students: with the generalizing of access to the baccalaureat [French high school-leaving degree], the proportion of "inheritors" has considerably fallen. The changes can therefore be read persuasively both as a sign that schooling in France has lost some of its cultural authority and that cultural gaps within the generations who experienced mass education have narrowed.


The studies in this thesis describe the application of genotyping and allele specific expression analysis to genetic studies. The role of the gene NPC1 in Triglyceride metabolism was explored in mouse models and in humans on the population level in study I. NPC1 was found to affect hepatic triglyceride metabolism, and to be relevant for controlling serum triglyceride levels in mice and potentially in humans. In study II the utility of the HapMap CEU samples was investigated for tagSNP selection in six European populations. The HapMap CEU was found to be representative for tagSNP selection in all populations while allele frequencies differed significantly in the sample from Kuusamo, Finland. In study III the power of Allele specific expression as a tool for the mapping of cis-regulatory variation was compared to standard eQTL analysis, ASE was found to be the more powerful type of analysis for a similar sample size. Finally ASE mapping was applied to regions reported to harbour long non-coding RNAs and associated SNPs were compared to published trait-associations. This revealed strong cis-regulatory SNPs of long non-coding RNAs with reported trait or disease associations.


The timing of the development of strath terraces with respect to climatic variability remains equivocal. Previous studies attribute strath-terrace formation to glacial or interglacial climates or to variations in sediment and water fluxes that cause lateral erosion followed by vertical incision. A chronology of strath-terrace formation spanning similar to900 k.y. has been generated on the basis of loess-paleosol couplets and paleomagnetic, thermoluminescence, and radiocarbon dating of strath terraces in the Qilian Shan of northeastern Tibet. Repetitive stratigraphic and geomorphic patterns on each terrace indicate that they formed during glacial-interglacial transitions. Long-term bedrock incision rates and inferred rock uplift rates appear steady and unrelated to strath formation over the past 900 k.y.


The electrophysiology of shark proximal tubules (Squalus acanthias) was investigated using conventional microelectrodes and cable analysis. Under in vitro perfusion with symmetrical Ringer solutions, tubule transepithelial resistance was 36.3 +/- 2.3 omega X cm2 (means +/- SE, n = 44). Other electrophysiological variables varied widely under control conditions. In unstimulated tubules (n = 16) the transepithelial voltage (VT,o) was lumen positive (1.2 +/- 0.2 mV), the basolateral membrane potential (Vbl,x) was -61.3 +/- 1.6 mV, and the fractional resistance of the apical membrane (fRa) was 0.67 +/- 0.02. Spontaneously stimulated tubules (n = 28) had lumen-negative VT,o values (-1.5 +/- 0.4 mV), low Vbl,x values (-41.3 +/- 1.7 mV), and low fRa values (0.30 +/- 0.02). The stimulated state can be induced in unstimulated tubules via treatment with cAMP. Multiple microelectrode impalements in a single tubule revealed epithelial cells sharing similar electrophysiological properties. Selective ion substitutions in the tubule lumen and peritubular bath uncovered an increased Cl conductance in the apical membrane of spontaneously and cAMP-stimulated tubules. Anthracene-9-carboxylic acid tended to reverse the stimulated state, and furosemide hyperpolarized Vbl,x. These results constitute the first evidence for secretory Cl transport in a renal proximal tubule. The electrophysiological responses to ion substitutions, stimulators, and inhibitors are strikingly similar to those of known Cl-transporting epithelia.


NCRP Report No. 49, published in 1976, describes how to calculate the shielding for the medical use of x rays and gamma rays for energies up to 10 MV, including primary, scattered, and leakage radiation. However, in that report, data for scattered radiation for linear accelerators exist only for 6 MV, and leakage radiation is assumed, incorrectly, to be equivalent to primary radiation. Since the publication of that report, linear accelerators with energies up to 25 MV have been widely used in the radiation therapy community. Thus, there is a need to measure additional data for all energies in the range 4-25 MV. In this study, measurements were made of the "a" factor for 4, 6, 10, and 23 MV x rays at scattering angles between 30 degrees and 135 degrees. The results show that the 6 and 10 MV "a" factor data are consistent with published data, and the 23 MV data are also consistent with recently published data at 18 and 25 MV. The data show that, in general, the "a" factor decreases with energy; the exception is that 23 MV data show a sharp increase at low scattering angles, much greater than at other energies.


Abstract. The Keeling plot analysis is an interpretation method widely used in terrestrial carbon cycle research to quantify exchange processes of carbon between terrestrial reservoirs and the atmosphere. Here, we analyse measured data sets and artificial time series of the partial pressure of atmospheric carbon dioxide (pCO2) and of δ13C of CO2 over industrial and glacial/interglacial time scales and investigate to what extent the Keeling plot methodology can be applied to longer time scales. The artificial time series are simulation results of the global carbon cycle box model BICYCLE. The signals recorded in ice cores caused by abrupt terrestrial carbon uptake or release loose information due to air mixing in the firn before bubble enclosure and limited sampling frequency. Carbon uptake by the ocean cannot longer be neglected for less abrupt changes as occurring during glacial cycles. We introduce an equation for the calculation of long-term changes in the isotopic signature of atmospheric CO2 caused by an injection of terrestrial carbon to the atmosphere, in which the ocean is introduced as third reservoir. This is a paleo extension of the two reservoir mass balance equations of the Keeling plot approach. It gives an explanation for the bias between the isotopic signature of the terrestrial release and the signature deduced with the Keeling plot approach for long-term processes, in which the oceanic reservoir cannot be neglected. These deduced isotopic signatures are similar (−8.6‰) for steady state analyses of long-term changes in the terrestrial and marine biosphere which both perturb the atmospheric carbon reservoir. They are more positive than the δ13C signals of the sources, e.g. the terrestrial carbon pools themselves (−25‰). A distinction of specific processes acting on the global carbon cycle from the Keeling plot approach is not straightforward. In general, processes related to biogenic fixation or release of carbon have lower y-intercepts in the Keeling plot than changes in physical processes, however in many case they are indistinguishable (e.g. ocean circulation from biogenic carbon fixation).


Purpose Catheter ablation has been recently utilised in patients with Brugada syndrome to prevent ventricular arrhythmias. We hypothesized whether a mapping algorithm "Ripple-mapping" would be able to rapidly identify the areas of long-duration multicomponent electrograms which constitute the targets for ablation for an automated strategy. Methods Ripple-Mapping analysis was performed in all patients undergoing catheter ablation of Brugada syndrome in 2 centers. The activity propagation pattern determined by Ripple-Mapping was assessed, and areas of long duration potentials identified by visual inspection. The area of interest with long-duration potentials was correlated with the location of the ablation lesions. Results Detection of long duration potentials was possible in all four patients in this analysis. Points marking the ablation area in 2 patients were a perfect match to abnormal areas identified by Ripple-mapping. However, in 2 patients Ripple-mapping identified additional sites of long duration potentials which were not ablated. Acute and mid-term normalization of the ECG pattern was observed in three patients, and all these were free from arrhythmia relapse during a 10.3±3.2 months follow-up. In one patient, who had no ECG normalization and had arrhythmia relapse, the ablated area corresponded to <25% of the Ripple-map region of interest. Conclusions This study shows the potential use of Ripple-mapping for identifying areas of long duration multicomponent electrograms in patients with Brugada syndrome and recurrent ventricular arrhythmias. This technique enables the rapid definition of an area of interest which should then be validated by the operator before performing ablation with an end-point of ECG normalisation.


AXPs and SGRs constitute a special population of young neutron stars, which are thought to be magnetars, i.e., neutron stars with super-strong magnetic fields (10^14 - 10^15 G). Assuming that AXPs and SGRs accrete matter from a fallback disk, we attempt to explain the energy-dependent pulse profiles of AXP 4U 0142+61, as well as its phase-dependent energy spectra. In the fallback disk model, the Thomson optical depth along the accretion funnel is significant and bulk-motion Comptonization operates efficiently. This is enhanced by resonant cyclotron scattering. The thus scattered photons escape mainly sideways and produce a fan beam, which is detected as a main pulse up to energies of ~160 keV. The approximately isotropic emission from the stellar surface (soft thermal photons and reflected hard X-ray ones) is detected as a secondary pulse. This secondary pulse shows a bump at an energy of ~60 keV, which may be interpreted as resonant cyclotron scattering of fan-beam photons at the neutron-star surface, implying a dipole magnetic field strength B ~7 x 10^12 (1+z) G, where z is the gravitational redshift. Our model explains the soft and hard X-ray spectra of 4U 0142+61 and its energy dependent pulse profiles of the quiescent emission, while the short bursts are due to magnetar-type processes taking place in superstrong multiple fields.


The subjects of the study were 15 volunteers aged 22 to 25 years, who underwent 25 air ionization sessions. The effects of genome instability were evaluated, and correlations between indicators of genome damage (lesions of micronuclei and nucleoplasmatic bridges) and parameters of proliferative and replicative activity (mitotic index, proliferative pool, the fraction of rapidly dividing cells, and replication index) of blood lymphocytes in the culture were studied. In order to establish the associations between the parameters, the parallel cultures were exposed to 0.07 mM of the standard mutagen MNNG during 5 hours. The study showed that the course of air ionization did not induce the micronuclei and nucleoplasmatic bridges in binuclear cells, but increased proliferative cell activity. This effect was accompanied by an increase in the fraction of rapidly dividing cells among all the dividing cells, and an increase in the dispersion of all proliferation parameters. MNNG induced a constant level of micronuclei in binuclear cells during the whole course, but not before the beginning of air ionization. The changes in the parameter "the fraction of dividing cells" (proliferative pool) were the most prominent manifestation of the suppression of proliferation by MNNG. MNNG loading inhibited the formation of binuclear cells most of all. The results demonstrate a non-random character of the correlation between the level of micronuclei in binuclear cells and proliferative activity parameters during cell cultivation under the conditions of cytokinetic block.


Colorectal cancer (CRC) is considered to develop slowly via a progressive accumulation of genetic mutations. Markers of CRC may serve to provide the basis for decision-making, and may assist in cancer prevention, detection and prognostic prediction. DNA and messenger (m)RNA molecules that are present in human feces faithfully represent CRC manifestations. In the present study, exogenous mouse cells verified the feasibility of total fecal RNA as a marker of CRC. Furthermore, five significant genes encoding solute carrier family 15, member 4 (SLC15A4), cluster of differentiation (CD)44, 3-oxoacid CoA-transferase 1 (OXCT1), placenta-specific 8 (PLAC8) and growth arrest-specific 2 (GAS2), which are differentially expressed in the feces of CRC patients, were verified in different CRC cell lines using quantitative polymerase chain reaction. The present study demonstrated that the mRNA level of SLC15A4 was increased in the majority of CRC cell lines evaluated (SW1116, LS123, Caco-2 and T84). An increased level of CD44 mRNA was only detected in an early-stage CRC cell line, SW1116, whereas OXCT1 was expressed at higher levels in the metastatic CRC cell line CC-M3. In addition, two genes, PLAC8 and GAS2, were highly expressed in the recurrent CRC cell line SW620. Genes identified in the feces of CRC patients differed according to their clinical characteristics, and this differential expression was also detected in the corresponding CRC cell lines. In conclusion, feces represent a good marker of CRC and can be interpreted through the appropriate CRC cell lines.


In this article, John Visser and colleagues report findings from their DfEE funded study of mainstream schools' practice in relation to pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD). The article outlines some key features of schools which cater successfully for the needs of many pupils with EBD. This suggests that schools which foster a culture of caring, sharing and learning, as defined later in the article, are more effective in achieving inclusion for those pupils who are regarded as the most difficult to include. The full report on which this article is based (Daniels, Visser, Cole and de Reybekill, 1998) is available, as Research Report RR90, from the DfES.


Human ether-a-go-go-related gene (HERG) potassium channels are expressed in multiple tissues including the heart and adenocarcinomas. In cardiomyocytes, HERG encodes the alpha-subunit underlying the rapid component of the delayed rectifier potassium current, I(Kr), and pharmacological reduction of HERG currents may cause acquired long QT syndrome. In addition, HERG currents have been shown to be involved in the regulation of cell proliferation and apoptosis. Selective alpha 1-adrenoceptor antagonists are commonly used in the treatment of hypertension and benign prostatic hyperplasia. Recently, doxazosin has been associated with an increased risk of heart failure. Moreover, quinazoline-derived alpha 1-inhibitors induce apoptosis in cardiomyocytes and prostate tumor cells independently of alpha1-adrenoceptor blockade. To assess the action of the effects of prazosin, doxazosin, and terazosin on HERG currents, we investigated their acute electrophysiological effects on cloned HERG potassium channels heterologously expressed in Xenopus oocytes and HEK 293 cells.Prazosin, doxazosin, and terazosin blocked HERG currents in Xenopus oocytes with IC(50) values of 10.1, 18.2, and 113.2 microM respectively, whereas the IC(50) values for HERG channel inhibition in human HEK 293 cells were 1.57 microM, 585.1 nM, and 17.7 microM. Detailed biophysical studies revealed that inhibition by the prototype alpha 1-blocker prazosin occurred in closed, open, and inactivated channels. Analysis of the voltage-dependence of block displayed a reduction of inhibition at positive membrane potentials. Frequency-dependence was not observed. Prazosin caused a negative shift in the voltage-dependence of both activation (-3.8 mV) and inactivation (-9.4 mV). The S6 mutations Y652A and F656A partially attenuated (Y652A) or abolished (F656A) HERG current blockade, indicating that prazosin binds to a common drug receptor within the pore-S6 region. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that HERG potassium channels are blocked by prazosin, doxazosin, and terazosin. These data may provide a hypothetical molecular explanation for the apoptotic effect of quinazoline-derived alpha1-adrenoceptor antagonists.


This paper puts forward a fast multi-scale retinex algorithm in order to solve the problem of color distortion and to improve the disadvantages of a slowly time-consuming arithmetic in the course of image enhancement which is based on the multi-scale retinex algorithm. Through construction of average value templates in advance, Gaussian convolution operation is simplified to be average arithmetic. A new rational color space is constructed which possesses the advantages of simple space conversion and small quantity of calculation. Meanwhile it keeps the color image in a better way. The experimental results demonstrate that the fast multi-scale retinex algorithm can ensure the treated effect and improve the efficiency of execution; furthermore it can run in the personal computers and the embedded environment. Therefore it has much better practical value.


In this study, geological, historical, and meteorological data were combined to produce a regional chronology of flood magnitude and frequency in nine small basins (7-70 km2). The chronology spans more than 1000 years and demonstrates hat detailed records of flood magnitude and frequency can be compiled in arid regions with little to no conventional hydrologic information. The recent (i.e., post-1950) flood history was evaluated by comparing a 50-year series of aerial photographs with precipitation data, ages 14 of flood-transported beer cans, anthropogenic horizons in flood sediments, postbomb C dates on flotsam, and anecdotal accounts. Stratigraphic analysis of paleoflood deposits extended the regional flood record in time, and associated flood magnitudes were determined by incorporating relict high-water evidence into a hydraulic model. The results reveal a general consistency among the magnitudes of the largest floods in the historical and the paleoflood records and indicate that the magnitudes and relative frequencies of actual large floods are at variance with "100-year" flood magnitudes predicted by regional flood frequency models. This suggests that the predictive equations may not be appropriate for regulatory, management, or design purposes in the absence of additional, real data on flooding. Augmenting conventional approaches to regional flood magnitude and frequency analysis with real information derived from the alternative methods described here is a viable approach to improving assessments of regional flood characteristics in sparsely gaged desert areas.


A preliminary sample of contracts of apprenticeship from three periods in the history of early modern Venice is analysed, as recorded in the archive of the Giustizia Vecchia, a Venetian magistracy. The periods are the end of the 16th century, the 20s and the 50s of the 17th. First, the variety of professions represented in the dataset reduces over time, as the proportion of Venetian apprentices is found to increase, hinting at the city's economy becoming more introvert over time. Secondly, apprenticeships are found to be divided into two groups: those which stipulated a salary to be paid by the master to the apprentice (circa 80%), and those which did not. The first group is likely to represent contracts used to hire workforce more than provide training. Lastly, professional profiles are introduced, as a combination of statistics which provide evidence of three groups of professions with respect to apprenticeship market dynamics. This paper is but a preliminary result of the Garzoni (GAWS) project, which will extensively study Venetian apprenticeship in the coming years.


ABSTRACT The phototrophic purple bacterium Rhodobacter capsulatus encodes two transcriptional regulators, MopA and MopB, with partially overlapping and specific functions in molybdate-dependent gene regulation. Both MopA and MopB consist of an N-terminal DNA-binding helix-turn-helix domain and a C-terminal molybdate-binding di-MOP domain. They formed homodimers as apo-proteins and in the molybdate-bound state as shown by yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) studies, glutaraldehyde cross-linking, gel filtration chromatography, and copurification experiments. Y2H studies suggested that both the DNA-binding and the molybdate-binding domains contribute to dimer formation. Analysis of molybdate binding to MopA and MopB revealed a binding stoichiometry of four molybdate oxyanions per homodimer. Specific interaction partners of MopA and MopB were the molybdate transporter ATPase ModC and the molbindin-like Mop protein, respectively. Like other molbindins, the R. capsulatus Mop protein formed hexamers, which were stabilized by binding of six molybdate oxyanions per hexamer. Heteromer formation of MopA and MopB was shown by Y2H studies and copurification experiments. Reporter gene activity of a strictly MopA-dependent mop-lacZ fusion in mutant strains defective for either mopA, mopB, or both suggested that MopB negatively modulates expression of the mop promoter. We propose that depletion of the active MopA homodimer pool by formation of MopA-MopB heteromers might represent a fine-tuning mechanism controlling mop gene expression.


This article discusses the process of transforming partnership from a conceptual framework into a practical, operational framework for field-level interaction among humanitarian organisations. The authors approach this transformation from the perspective of the core values of the partnership concept and the ability of field workers to behave in ways that are consistent with these core values, illustrated by an empirical study of the relationships between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and NGOs in a refugee-assistance programme in northern Uganda. The authors connect inter-organisational structures with the role of people charged with making partnership work, concluding that the structures and context in which individuals operate make it impossible for them to 'act out' the core values of partnership. By identifying the major challenges to creating field-level, operational partnerships, the authors offer lessons for current and future partnership-building initiatives, such as the Global Humanitarian Platform.


The phylogenetic relationships of the benthic phyllodocid genera are estimated by a parsimony analysis based on 26 morphological characters. It is concluded that the cephalization within Eteone has led to a reduction of segment 1 and loss of the first pair of tentacular cirri. Biramous parapodia (like in Austrophyllum and Notophyllum) constitute an ancestral state, which has evolved independently also within Phyllodoce. A new subfamily, Notophyllinae, is erected, and the two additional subfamilies, Phyllodocinae and Eteoninae, are redefined. Pareteoninae is treated as a junior synonym to Phyllodocinae, and Lugiinae as a nomen dubium. A number of genera are redefined and new combinations introduced. Based on type material Zverlinum and Phyllouschakovius are synonymized with Phyllodoce, Nipponophyllum with Notophyllym, Vitiaziphyllum with Eumida, Pareteone, Eulalia (Euphylla) and Compsanaitis with Paranaitis. More tentatively proposed synonymizations include Bergstroemia with Austrophyllum, Prophyllodoce with Phyllodoce, and Pseudeulalia with Protomystides. Eulalia lapsus is proposed as a replacement name for E. anoculata Fauchald, 1972, junior homonym to E. anoculata Hartman & Fauchald, 1971, and a number of species are synonymized and new combinations introduced. A checklist of phyllodocids together with information on the location of their type specimens is included.


This article shows that we can identify a subset of religious and cultural accommodation cases that follow the structure of a particular disability model: the Human Variation Model. According to this model, disadvantageous disability arises because most social arrangements are tailored to the needs of individuals with typical characteristics; people with atypical features are frequently left out from these arrangements. Hence, the latter need personalised resources tailored to them, or their social and/or material environment ought to change according to their atypical characteristics. I argue, however, that not everyone's claim stemming from an atypical characteristic merits accommodation – it would be simply unreasonable to provide personalised resources to everyone or modify the environment to accommodate everyone's needs. In other words, these human variation claimants must be 'reasonably accommodated'. Nevertheless, members of certain social groups have a justifiable claim to receive such accommodation and those in religious and cultural groups could be among them for two specific sociological reasons.


Although rather uncommon and multifactorial in etiology, liver cirrhosis is a severe and often rapidly fatal disease in pediatrics. In our institution, during the last 15 years, 22 children with liver cirrhosis have been followed. The underlying predisposing condition was HBV infection (8 cases), CMV perinatal infection (2 cases), Wilson's disease (4 cases), chronic cholestasis (2 cases) and alcohol abuse (2 cases); in 4 cases no predisposing condition was evident. In all cases the histological examination of the liver was the diagnostic cornerstone. The mean age at diagnosis was 6 years and 8 months, with an early onset especially in the posthepatitis cirrhosis. In 10 out of 22 patients, cirrhosis was not preceded by an history of chronic liver disease. Poor subjective symptomatology was present in 13 of the cases, hepatomegaly in all, splenomegaly in 18 cases, signs of hepatic failure in 13 cases. In all patients various impairments of hepatocellular synthesis were detectable, especially during the period preceding the development of hepatic insufficiency. The mean time to cirrhosis was 5 years. The average duration of the follow up was 3 years and 4 months: during the follow up 6 patients improved, 5 patients showed no clinical or functional modifications of their hepatic disease, 3 patients worsened and 8 died. In order to perform suitable treatment of liver cirrhosis the need of early diagnosis and etiological definition should be emphasized.


An actigraph (ZAK company) is a small device that can be worn on the wrist like a watch. We carried out a study to compare sleep efficiency and total sleep time as determined by actigraphy and polysomnography. The number of body movements per minute is a density function. The integrated function shows a virtually constant gradient in the wake state and a different constant gradient during sleep. The body movement density function per hour provides a useful threshold for correctly differentiating between wake and sleep states. This threshold is defined as the minimum between the two maxima of the bimodal logarithmic body movement density distribution. In the second step we computed a rank scale of the different gradients and approximated the integrated function for every scale element using linear graphs. The points of intersection of the straight lines define the time points for sleep onset and end of sleep. Sleep efficiency is given by SE = 100 (TST-sleep interruption time)/TST. Total sleep time is the interval between sleep onset and end of sleep. Actigraphy is a suitable semi-objective method for estimating sleep efficiency and total sleep time, and--for cost reasons--should be used for screening before approaching a sleep laboratory. Actigraphy carried out over several days shows only small differences in comparison with polysomnography. The estimation of parameters is more accurate the longer the patient wears the actigraph, and a minimum of five days is recommended. Spectral analysis of the intregrated body movement density provides important information for detecting subclinical sleep disorders.


The thesis is focused on the investigation of structural properties of AuPd nanoparticles via theoretical and experimental studies. For the first system, the 98-atom AuPd nanoclusters, a theoretical analysis has been employed to study the energetics and segregation effects and to assess how typical is the Leary Tetrahedron (LT). Although this motif is the most stable at the empirical level, it loses stability at the DFT level against FCC or Marks Decahedron. The second system is the Au24Pd1 nanoclusters. Theoretically, by performing a search at the DFT level using Basin Hopping Monte Carlo, we identified pyramidal cage structures as putative global minima, where Pd sits in the core and Au occupies surface positions. The Lowdin analysis emphasized charge transfer between Pd and Au, explaining the enhanced catalytic activity with respect to Au25 clusters. Experimentally, STEM has been employed for the structural characterization of Au24Pd1 clusters supported on Multiwall Carbon Nanotubes. Whenever possible, we have tried to link the experimental analysis to the theoretical findings. The third system has been the evaporated AuPd nanoparticles. We observed that the annealing process led to the formation of L12 ordered phases as well as layered and core-shell structures. This study aimed to bring an insight on the segregation and energetics effects of AuPd nanoparticles with potential applications in nanocatalysis.


: The pathogenesis of reflux nephropathy and morbidity is discussed first, then chances of spontaneous maturation and risks for scarring are compared with resulting guidelines for conservative and operative treatment. A list of indications is proposed regarding grade of reflux, age, essential diagnostic parameters (VC, cystoscopy, IVP), history and other clinical aspects. Over and above this, an "ephedrine-test" developed at Erlangen in 1976 is described with regard to possible adrenergic treatment of primary reflux. Results of over 500 Gregoir-Lich procedures from 1963 to 1976 are presented with rates of stenosis (0-2%) and failure (4.3-5.2%), complications and persistence of infection. Finally, a short review is presented of the morphology and management of secondary reflux (associated with infravesical obstruction).


The High School Summer Research Program (HSSRP) is a rigorous eight-week research experience that challenges high school students to a novel scientific question in an engineering laboratory at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science (HSSEAS) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The program collates highly motivated students from all socioeconomics statuses, ethnicity, and gender to increase the diversity of applicants for STEM majors at four-year universities, and thereby potentially promotes a more diverse and innovative STEM workforce. To supplement students' unique research projects, HSSRP comprises several professional development opportunities, such as faculty presentations, lab tours, and industry tech talks. Students are trained to communicate their research through scientific posters and oral presentations in a ''learn-by-teaching'' system that further exposes all students to the multitude of creative strategies that are currently employed across the engineering disciplines to tackle world issues. This integrates with HSSRP's strong social element, which encourages students to act as a support system for each other in the midst of the challenging eight weeks, and serves as a network for students after the program. A survey of the 2014-2016 HSSRP classes indicates high satisfaction with the program, and a high liklihood of pursuing a STEM degree and advanced STEM degrees. Surveys of HSSRP alumni shows that a vast percentage of students are pursuing STEM degrees or are currently working in the STEM field.


The purpose of this literature review is to investigate how technology can be used to encourage the presence of the nature of science in a science classroom. Within the concept of the nature of science there is a strong focus on scientific inquiry which is the basis of a lot of the literature, but other aspects of the nature of science, such as providing meaning to content outside of the classroom are also covered. The promotion of the nature of science in a science classroom is a popular topic within the science education community, as student engagement and interest in the school subject continues to steadily decrease. The reviewed literature took a range of views into consideration to outline the beneficial links between the use of technology and having the presence of the nature of science in a science classroom. This review also discusses issues of economical and functional access to technology as well as the importance of correct implementation within a science education context.