A subset of prolyl oligopeptidases, including dipeptidyl-peptidase IV (DPP IV or CD26, EC ), specifically cleave off N-terminal dipeptides from substrates having proline or alanine in amino acid position 2. This enzyme activity has been implicated in the regulation of the biological activity of multiple hormones and chemokines, including the insulinotropic peptides glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP). Targeted inactivation of the CD26 gene yielded healthy mice that have normal blood glucose levels in the fasted state, but reduced glycemic excursion after a glucose challenge. Levels of glucose-stimulated circulating insulin and the intact insulinotropic form of GLP-1 are increased in CD26(-/-) mice. A pharmacological inhibitor of DPP IV enzymatic activity improved glucose tolerance in wild-type, but not in CD26(-/-), mice. This inhibitor also improved glucose tolerance in GLP-1 receptor(-/-) mice, indicating that CD26 contributes to blood glucose regulation by controlling the activity of GLP-1 as well as additional substrates. These data reveal a critical role for CD26 in physiological glucose homeostasis, and establish it as a potential target for therapy in type II diabetes.


This study sought to establish how teachers of English use drama techniques to teach. It aimed to establish how effective language teaching could be achieved through use of drama techniques that enhance authentic language use through learners'active participation. The study addressed the missing link between teachers methodology, choice of content and learners participation that justified the need to use classroom drama with shortcomings in the latest publications of English course-textbooks in mind. The study revealed that use of drama techniques was limited because teachers selected approaches that would enable them to easily complete the syllabus. In addition, drama techniques use was challenged by inadequate time allocated for teaching of English and the teachers unpreparedness to use it because of the tasks involved in preparation for such lesson. The study recommended that lessons be preceded with drama,or activities that stimulate learners. There was need to select a method that would ensure that learning was student-centered rather than teacher-centered. The findings would be useful for teachers and course designers for the improvement of quality of teaching and learning.


Climate change is projected to cause reduced rainfall, increased temperatures and more frequent fires for many parts of the world, particularly in Mediterranean-type ecosystems (MTEs). Such changes may profoundly impact species demography and ultimately their persistence. However, the impact of climate change on seed demography is not well documented. The MTE region of southwest Australia is a renowned plant biodiversity hotspot and has experienced significant warming and drying over the past 40 years. An iconic and important portion of the region's biodiversity are serotinous species which retain a canopy seed bank in woody fruits and offer a powerful opportunity to study climate impacts; these species often retain their lifetime reproductive effort as woody fruits which may be quantified, rather than most other plant species which disperse their seeds regularly upon ripening. The drivers of changes to the size of the seed store in serotinous species is unknown, but potential mechanisms include changes in seed/fruit production, seed viability or cone opening. Therefore, these factors were quantified for a selection of 11 serotinous species in the region and compared to data collected in the past (1983-2004) to quantify possible climate change impacts.

Total viable seed production was variable between species and time frames, with 54% of species showing a reduction in seeds produced (reductions of 4-76%). This result was driven by a reduction in fruit production in 57% of species surveyed, while seed viability did not change. Across a broad climatic gradient, there was more rapid cone opening in serotinous species (i.e. seed release into the inter-fire period) in mesic sites compared to xeric sites, with cones also opening at a younger age than they did in the past. This suggests that climate change is influencing the size of the overall seed store in serotinous species, with changes to fruit production and cone opening being most significant. This threatens the long-term persistence of these species under a changing climate, with less seeds available for post-fire recruitment leading to potential population collapse. These findings are applicable to many serotinous species in MTEs globally and warrant further investigation.


In the wake of the global financial crisis, several macroeconomic contributions have highlighted the risks of excessive credit expansion. In particular, too much finance can have a negative impact on growth. We examine the microeconomic foundations of this argument, positing a non-monotonic relationship between leverage and firm-level productivity growth in the spirit of the trade-off theory of capital structure. A threshold regression model estimated on a sample of Central and Eastern European countries confirms that TFP growth increases with leverage until the latter reaches a critical threshold beyond which leverage lowers TFP growth. This estimate can provide guidance to firms and policy makers on identifying "excessive" leverage. We find a similar non-monotonic relationship between leverage and proxies for firm value. Our results are a first step in bridging the gap between the literature on optimal capital structure and the wider macro literature on the finance-growth nexus.


Taking our bearings from Stuart Hall's essay from 1982, 'The rediscovery of "ideology": return of the repressed in media studies', we argue in this discussion piece for the need to pick up the tools of ideology critique once again. Quite simply, the contemporary moment where accelerating inequality is masked by blame of the poor and of migrants demands it. The case is made first through a critique of ideological responses to the economic crisis after 2008. Then in the final section we examine advocacy of 'social mobility' in the public sphere, an ideological project if ever there was one.


Oral appliances (OAs) represent a widespread treatment modality for patients with mild to moderate obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). OAs exist in many designs, but it is unknown if there are differences in terms of side effects between the various types. The aim of this pilot study was therefore to evaluate two OA designs, one rigid type of appliance (OAR) and a more flexible one (OAF) regarding increased crowding of the lower front teeth. Six patients with a mean age of 58 years (3 men) who had used OAR and another six patients with a mean age of 63 years (4 men) who had used OAF for at least 2 years were included in the study. The patients responded to a questionnaire and had impressions for plaster casts for analysis of the irregularity in the front teeth using Little's index. The distances between the contacts points between two adjacent teeth were measured in the frontal areas. The OAF group had an increased irregularity of lower front teeth with 0.89 mm (p>0.05) and the OAR group had a reduced irregularity of 0.58 mm (p>0.05). The difference between the groups was significant (p=0.041). There were no changes in crowding of the upper incisors in either group. Patient satisfaction with treatment did not differ between the groups. The present results indicate that a flexible type of OA increase the irregularity of the lower front teeth compared with a more rigid OA. The results should be confirmed in a larger sample.


Peer-to-peer systems can share the computing resources and services by directly communicating within a widely distributed network. It is important that these systems can efficiently locate, in as few hops as possible, the node storing the desired data in a large system. Thus, it is worth consuming some extra storage to obtain better routing performance. In this paper, we propose redundant strategies to improve the routing performance and data availability on Chord and De Bruijn topologies. Hybrid-Chord combines multiple chord rings and successors, and Redundant D2B maintains successors, to improve the routing performance. The proposed systems can reduce the number of lookup hops significantly (by as much as 50%) compared to the original ones, and have better fault tolerance capabilities, with a small storage overhead.


Observations with an altitude resolution of about 1 km were made with the large, vertically directed 50-MHz radar system at the Jicamarca Radar Observatory during the day, when the electrojet was strong. Type 1 ('two stream') echoes were seen in a limited range of altitudes, with Doppler shifts corresponding to upward and downward motion at the acoustic velocity. Most of the radar returns were due to type 2 echoes, however. The direction of motion of the type 1 waves sometimes reversed in as little as 1 s, supporting a turbulent model of the electrojet region. During the day the upgoing type 1 waves were observed to be somewhat more easily excited than the downgoing waves, an effect similar to an east-west asymmetry noted in earlier studies. The correspondence between the Jicamarca radar observations and rocket measurements in India is discussed. (AIP)


In this paper, a novel microstrip structure is developed to realize a dual-band bandpass fllter. The proposed bandpass structure uses a microstrip resonator with two independently controlled resonance frequencies producing two frequency bands of interest controlled by adjusting the dimensions of the resonator. Parametric analysis is performed on the structure to determine the optimum dimensions to obtain the desired frequency response and is explained in the paper. The dual-band bandpass fllter developed in this paper exhibits dual operating frequencies at 1390MHz and 2520MHz with 9.85% and 9.92% fractional bandwidths respectively. We achieved a compact second-order dual-band bandpass fllter with controllable resonance frequencies and low insertion losses in the passband with high selectivity. The measured results are in good agreement with simulated results. Additionally, it can be easily fabricated and can be used in applications where miniaturization and compatibility with microstrip technology are of primary concern.


BACKGROUND Low birth weight (LBW) is associated with increased incidence of high blood pressure (BP) and cardiovascular diseases in adulthood. OBJECTIVE To evaluate possible changes in Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring (ABPM) in LBW children. METHODS The birth weight (BW) of 1049 school children (ages 8 to 11) living in Goiânia was assessed. Children with low birth weight (BW or= 3.0 Kg). Information on birth weight was obtained from each child's health card. Casual BP and ABPM were measured. Height and weight measurements were obtained to calculate the body mass index (BMI), and sexual maturity was assessed according to Tanner's criteria (those at Tanner stage >or= 2 were excluded). RESULTS Thirty-four children had low birth weight (LBW) and 34 had normal birth weight (NBW). Both groups were similar regarding age, gender, race, body weight, height, BMI, and family history of hypertension. Low-birth-weight children had higher casual systolic blood pressure (SBP) (p = 0.007). ABPM recordings showed that these children had higher 24-hour diastolic blood pressure (DBP) (p = 0.009), daytime DBP (p = 0.002), night-time DBP and SBP (p = 0.005 and p = 0.001), and reduced nocturnal dip in SBP and DBP (p = 0.001) than those born with normal weight. Birth weight was positively correlated with nocturnal dip in SBP (p = 0.022) and negatively correlated with sleep SBP (p = 0.032). CONCLUSION Low-birth-weight children have higher BP and changes in circadian rhythm of blood pressure, with reduced nocturnal dipping. These findings may reflect increased risk of adult hypertension and cardiovascular diseases.


Regulation of consumer protection in Japan is at present subject to far-reaching changes. Whereas traditionally the policy focus was on promotion of industry and economic growth, increasingly the interests of the consumers are taking over the regulatory stage. In 2008 the Japanese government decided to create a specific public institution in charge of defending consumer interests. Furthermore, various legislative reforms have strengthened the rights of consumers versus industry. This was mainly achieved by creating new civil rights that allow for and make it easier for consumers to fight for their rights in court. This can be characterized as a change from an ex ante regulation by administrative law controlling access to the market to an ex post regulation by granting individual and enforceable rights. Also, information duties of producers were increased. In sum, the Japanese legislator acknowledges the autonomy of consumers. (The editors)


Through talk and text, people can both create and undo social realities (Edwards, 1997). People have the capacity to produce discourse which perpetuates hegemonic, patriarchal accounts of women, so they should be able to recognise and challenge it (McKinlay & McVittie, 2008). The present study investigates comments on social media in response to the pregnancy announcement of Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand's third female Prime Minister, in January 2018. Ardern's case is notable as her pregnancy makes her gender highly salient as she occupies a leadership role commonly viewed as 'masculine'. Research has established that women are evaluated differently to men in leadership roles and are viewed as either warm and incompetent, or competent and cold (Hall & Donoghue, 2013). Representation of women in political leadership is therefore only one step toward gender equality as the underlying structures maintaining sexism need to be challenged. Comments were examined using a synthetic approach to discourse analysis (Wetherell, 1998) to determine how they resisted gender inequality talk. Two themes of resistance emerged from the corpus. Firstly, commenters employed devices that accounted for opposing views as outdated and not the norm in modern society. Arguments were bolstered by presenting factual accounts, diminishing the relevance of sexism, and isolating opposing views to individuals rather than society. Secondly, working motherhood was normalised. This was achieved by focusing on fathers, de-gendering 'parents', and reducing personal stake or interest. The comments examined here embedded radical feminist views into mainstream conversation and worked to undermine gender inequality talk by making alternative accounts robust and available.


The grinding fluid is typically used to provide functions such as lubrication and cooling in order to reduce surface grinding temperatures effectively in order to achieve better work-piece surface integrity and higher wheel life. This paper investigates the convection heat transfer coefficient of fluid based on the fluid dynamic and thermal modelling within the grinding zone under different grinding condition. This work makes it possible to determine a suitable value of the useful flowrate fluid through the grinding contact arc under optimization of the wheel speed, work speed and jet velocity of nozzle. Its simplicity and accuracy allow application to a wide range of grinding situations from shallow to high efficiency deep grinding.


Due to high performance of modern computers, Uncertainty Quantification is becoming an important part of engineering design. Every non intrusive Uncertainty Quantification method requires a considerable number of evaluations of the model, meaning that the design process is more expensive in terms of computational resources/time. In Computational Fluid Dynamics, the usual practice is to reduce the computational time by reducing the number of nodes of the used mesh. Each coarsening of the mesh leads to the increase of the error measured as the difference between the real solution and the solution provided by the computational model. In this work, an approach for quantification of the global error around the stochastic domain, in a mesh reduction process, is described and results obtained for a test case are detailed. The method is based on a comparison of the high accurate mesh against coarse mesh with lower accuracy, but less expensive in terms of computational time. The global error is defined as a volume difference between surrogate models created in the stochastic domain. The stochastic domain is given by pre-specified input variables with appropriate boundaries. Surrogate models are used and a non intrusive polynomial chaos model is created with response samples from high and low accuracy mesh. For the chosen test case, the input variables, related to the stochastic space, were the free stream pressure and free stream Mach number. A hypersonic flow solver developed at the von Karman Institute, Cosmic, was used to compute properties of a flow around the reentry spacecraft. A computational expensive mesh was used as a reference mesh. Due to computational resources, it was impossible to use expansive mesh for Monte Carlo simulation or high order Polynomial Chaos. Therefore, the global error estimation approach was applied to find an accurate and relatively inexpensive mesh for Uncertainty Quantification in hypersonic simulation. Multiple meshes with different coarsening were tested, based on expert knowledge of the problem. The global error estimation method allowed for finding a final mesh, with an error on the mean value 0.48% and on the standard deviation 5.89%, which was 4 times faster than the reference mesh.


Emotion Coaching is an observed parenting style considered to promote children's mental, physical and academic outcomes. It informs a successful parenting programme (Gottman et al., 1996, 1997; Gottman and DeClaire, 1997). In 2011, Emotion Coaching was adapted to provide a novel, relational-based practitioner approach to support emotional regulation and behaviours in UK educational and early-years setting (*Rose, McGuire-Snieckus and Gilbert, 2015).

This inductive qualitative study, guided by constructivist grounded theory, gives a voice to the practitioners' experience of Emotion Coaching in educational and early-years settings.

Twenty-one practitioners (18 female, 3 males) working in primary and secondary and early-years settings, voluntarily participated in intensive, semi-structured interviews. Their voice informed the exploration or their engagement with emotions, their Emotion Coaching training experience and practice and their views on Emotion Coaching efficacy and sustainability. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed, before undergoing constructivist grounded theory analysis.

Practitioners both viewed and used Emotion Coaching as a technique and an approach for managing emotions and emotional behaviours. Emotion Coaching practice was positioned on a 'spectrum of Emotion Coaching use', reflecting discourses of welfare and control. Conceptualization of the practitioner's Emotion Coaching experience identified: Structuring emotional identities; Positioning educational settings; Emotional journeying; and Building emotional toolkits, as integral to practitioner engagement in training and use of Emotion Coaching in practice.

A model of practitioner Emotion Coaching engagement is proposed, which evidences four states in the integration of Emotion Coaching into practice (Accept, Adopt, Adapt, Sustain). The model of practitioner Emotion Coaching engagement recognises the centrality of the practitioner's emotional awareness in their acceptance of the Emotion Coaching premise 'emotions matter to learning' and the training experience. Successful use increased practitioner Emotion Coaching adoption, leading to adaption and assimilation into routine practice repertoires.

The model of practitioner Emotion Coaching engagement proposes Emotion Coaching practice can be marginalized or disregarded if practitioners are unreceptive to, or challenged by, the Emotion Coaching premise or had compromised training experiences. Practitioner perceptions of unsatisfactory outcomes of lack of supportive colleagues can contribute to a reluctance to practise, which compromises Emotion Coaching adoption. Lack of use increases Emotion Coaching marginalization and can lead to eventual abandonment from practice.

Although some practitioners' practice appears to be innately Emotion Coaching - informed, the consensus was that Emotion Coaching had to be practised to be effectively adopted and adapted. Regardless of the practitioners' receptivity to Emotion Coaching, all participants in the study evidenced increased emotional awareness.


As the late Justice Thurgood Marshall noted, twentieth century racism was blatant, intentional, and its existence generally undisputed. The obvious nature of how racism operated in the twentieth century led to the passage of civil rights laws. Twenty-first century racism, on the other hand, is more subtle. It is harder to prove intentional racial discrimination today, and as a result, its existence is widely disputed. The widespread skepticism of the existence of racism in the twenty-first century was the motivating factor for this Symposium issue, entitled Critical Race Theory: The Next Frontier.Critical Race Theory (CRT) examines how the law and legal traditions impact people of color, not as individuals, but as members of a group. Although CRT does not employ a single methodology, it seeks to highlight the ways in which the law is not neutral and objective, but designed to support White supremacy and the subordination of people of color. One of CRT's central tenets is the pervasiveness of racism in American society.? At its core, CRT accepts the notion that even in the twenty-first century, if you are a person of color in America, you are the victim of racial subordination.Given that argument, what is the purpose of the statistical data found in several of the Symposium articles? Is it to prove that subordination and discrimination exist? Why prove something that is a given? This Symposium raises the fundamental question of whether empirical legal scholarship can ever co-exist with CRT.


Notorious for its poor prognosis and aggressive nature, triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a heterogeneous disease entity. The nature of its biological specificity, which is similar to basal-like cancers, tumors arising in BRCA1 mutation carriers, and claudin-low cancers, is currently being explored in hopes of finding the targets for novel biologics and chemotherapeutic agents. In this review, we aim to give a broad overview of the disease's nomenclature and epidemiology, as well as the basic mechanisms of emerging targeted therapies and their performance in clinical trials to date.


We present evidence for a small glitch in the spin evolution of the millisecond pulsar J0613−0200, using the EPTA Data Release 1.0, combined with Jodrell Bank analogue filterbank TOAs recorded with the Lovell telescope and Effelsberg Pulsar Observing System TOAs. A spin frequency step of 0.82(3) nHz and frequency derivative step of −1.6(39) × 10 −19 Hz s −1 are measured at the epoch of MJD 50888(30). After PSR B1821−24A, this is only the second glitch ever observed in a millisecond pulsar, with a fractional size in frequency of Δν/ν = 2.5(1) × 10 −12 , which is several times smaller than the previous smallest glitch. PSR J0613−0200 is used in gravitational wave searches with pulsar timing arrays, and is to date only the second such pulsar to have experienced a glitch in a combined 886 pulsar-years of observations. We find that accurately modelling the glitch does not impact the timing precision for pulsar timing array applications. We estimate that for the current set of millisecond pulsars included in the International Pulsar Timing Array, there is a probability of ∼ 50% that another glitch will be observed in a timing array pulsar within 10 years.


Visual analyses of English Romanesque architecture have often taken second place to questions of structure, dating, or filiation despite the fact that English buildings from the years 1080-1150 display the richest variety of wall articulation in Romanesque Europe. This variety did not much affect the traditional three-story elevation of arcade, gallery, and clerestory, but lay rather in the manipulation of pier form and vertical wall shafts. Some masters in England adopted the Norman system of compound piers and vertical wall shafts without major change while others designed arcades of cylindrical piers for elevations which lacked any vertical articulation. Soon combinations and extensions of these systems appeared, most of which attempted to enhance the vertical connections between the stories without entirely abandoning cylindrical piers. This study attempts a comprehensive overview of these formal developments and argues that the variety, sophistication, and originality of the resulting solutions strongly suggest that impressive visual effects were more valued by contemporaries than structural or spatial innovation.


The history of Australian Presbyterian Mission in Korea (APM) is not comprehensive, nor the study of missiology that addresses the marginalised. This study of the ministry of APM missionary, J.N. Mackenzie, to lepers in Japanese-occupied Korea, adds significantly to both these areas. An understanding of the role and methods of Mackenzie's missionary activities among the marginalised in Korea can encourage today's Church to effectively restore the marginalised in society, moving from Church doctrine to practical reproduction of the example of Jesus recorded in Mark's gospel. Using original and published sources, the study examines the social conditions in which Mackenzie found Korean lepers, their historic treatment and government policies and the growth of his holistic mission, with its methods and fruits. Mackenzie's work is documented with recorded data included to demonstrate its Christ-like effectiveness both spiritually and physically. By tracing Mackenzie's work with lepers, it is clear that holistic mission can helpfully impact the situation of the most marginalised. Mackenzie's work expanded dramatically, churches were formed and it even created cured evangelists, making it a useful model for mission work among the marginalised. Mackenzie's work played a significant part in the Church and National history of Korea and presented a new path in the mission work of APM. It has the potential to influence modern mission in being 'as Christ' to the marginalised and thus to impact the society. This study has given a unique perspective on the history and theology of mission to the poor and traditionally powerless in society. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Traditional views of history, theology and missiology have focussed on the ruling classes and urban societies. A perspective of the marginalised encourages a shift in these as it can be seen that the rural poor responded to holistic ministry and affected history and society. Such insights can give direction now.


This paper describes a methodology to identify potential conflicts among power flow control devices that may slow down or impair convergence. The proposed methodology is based on the eigenvalue analysis of the sparse Jacobian matrix associated with the Newton power flow with controls. Practically identical results are obtained from a smaller control sensitivity matrix. The implementation in a power flow program has been tested using both small- and large-scale systems. The results presented validate and clearly indicate the effectiveness of the proposed technique.


The malfunction or failure of an electrical system because unintentional signal or power flow paths were incorporated in the electrical circuit design is known to be the cause of several major failures of engineering systems. These unintentional signal or power paths are known as sneak circuits. The nature of sneak circuits was first considered after they had been identified as the cause of some spectacular and expensive rocket failures in the United States space programme. This paper reviews the status of sneak circuit analysis (SCA) and presents a general systematic method the author has devised to identify sneak circuits. The application of the method of SCA is illustrated with a case study. The paper makes a case to take the investigation of an electrical failure or malfunction beyond the identification of a failed component to include a search for possible sneak circuits. The obvious fact that could result from the discovery of a sneak circuit is the shift in legal responsibility from the component m...


The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly, that the significant interest in protecting children's health would not allow the government to overly burden the flow of communication to adults about tobacco products, has left public health officials with little room to craft tobacco advertising restrictions that are both demonstrably effective and constitutional. This article focuses on social scientific research in the field of health communication, and legal doctrines of counterspeech and governmental speech.It specifically posits how a national counter-marketing tobacco prevention campaign targeting youth and paid with compulsory fees, or a tax paid by tobacco companies, would advance the government's interest in preventing youth smoking while still upholding First Amendment ideals and allowing adults to continue to receive information about legal products. However, the article also concludes that not all counter-marketing campaigns are created equal, and that campaigns should be well-funded and focus on using marketing techniques proven to be effective.


The operation of the carbon cycle forms an important part of the processes relevant to future changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide. The balance of carbon between terrestrial and oceanic reservoirs is an important factor and here we focus in particular on the oceans. Future changes in the carbon cycle that may affect air–sea partitioning of CO2 are difficult to quantify but the palaeoceanographic record and modern observational studies provide important evidence of what variations might occur. These include changes in surface nutrient use, the oceanic inventory of nutrients, and the elemental composition and rain–rate ratio of marine particles. Recent work has identified two inter–linked processes of potential importance that we consider in some detail: the response of marine calcification to changes in surface water CO2 and the association of particulate organic carbon with ballast minerals, in particular biogenic calcite. We review evidence from corals, coccolithophores and foraminifera, which suggests that the response of reduced calcification provides a negative feedback on rising atmospheric CO2. We then use a box model to demonstrate how the calcification response may affect the organic carbon rain rate through the ballast effect. The ballast effect on export fluxes of organic and inorganic carbon acts to counteract the negative calcification response to increased CO2. Thus, two oceanic buffers exert a significant control on ocean–atmosphere carbonate chemistry: the thermodynamic CO2 buffer; and the ballast/calcification buffer. Just how tightly coupled the rain–rate ratio of CaCO3/Corg is to fluxes of ballast minerals is an important question for future research.


: Two cases of peri-anal ulceration of tuberculous origin are reported: one revealed an active pulmonary and ileo-caecal tuberculosis, the other complicated a chronic pulmonary tuberculosis of several years' duration. Cutaneous manifestations of tuberculosis are exceptional. In patients with protracted peri-anal ulceration, a biopsy should be performed that will show a typical tuberculoid granuloma. The most frequently encountered anorectal tuberculous lesions are suppurations and fistulae. The main differential diagnosis is Crohn's disease with anorectal manifestations.


In many situations, there exist plenty of spatial and temporal redundancies in original signals. Based on this observation, a novel Turbo Bayesian Compressed Sensing (TBCS) algorithm is proposed to provide an e ffi cient approach to transfer and incorporate this redundant information for joint sparse signal reconstruction. As a case study, the TBCS algorithm is applied in Ultra-Wideband (UWB) systems. A space-time TBCS structure is developed for exploiting and incorporating the spatial and temporal a priori information for space-time signal reconstruction. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed TBCS algorithm achieves much better performance with only a few measurements in the presence of noise, compared with the traditional Bayesian Compressed Sensing (BCS) and multitask BCS algorithms.


Avicenna's analysis of the definition of substance and accident repeatedly emphasizes two points: one and the same essence cannot be substance in one instance and accident in another; whether x is extrinsic or intrinsic for an underlying y does not tell us anything as to whether x is substance or not. Both points are development in an argument against certain unnamed people who claimed the opposite. In this article I will show that Avicenna's opponents are to be identified with the mainstream Baghdad Peripatetic School (Ibn Suwār, Ibn al - Ṭ ayyib) which based itself on the Late Antique rule that "parts of substances are substances". As for Avicenna's own position, it was developed on the basis of the heterodox position of Ya ḥyā b. ʿAdī, who anticipated Avicenn a's first point. This is a further piece of evidence for something that has only recently begun to be appreciated: the influence of Ibn ʿAdī on Avicenna.


Abstract.
 New morphological features of the mobergellan Discinella micans (Billings, 1871) from the lower Cambrian (Stage 4) of Northeast Greenland and southern Labrador are described. The new features include: (1) the morphology of the larval shell, which is shown to be cap-shaped, subcircular, and with impressions of the internal muscle attachment scars; (2) a range of unusual shell deformations (changes in growth direction resulting in thickened shells, partial detachment of shell laminae and subsequent regrowth, internal projections of shell material increasing the depth of the shell by up to 150%, disturbances and irregular fusion of muscle scars). In addition, we provide new details about the variability in number and shape of the anteriormost internal muscle scars, which often fuse and may vary in number from one to three (resulting in nine to 11 scars in total). Together the new observations provide additional strength for the hypothesis that mobergellan shells represent opercula of an as yet unknown tubular organism.


Computed Tomography Angiography has progressively replaced the invasive conventional angiography, and has now become the preferred modality for the diagnosis and characterization of most cardiovascular abnormalities. Computed Tomography Angiography (CTA) alone is mostly sufficient to adequately evaluate vascular lesions in various disease conditions. This study reports the institutional evaluation of various vascular lesions on a 64 64 slice Computed Tomography (CT) scanner over an eight-year duration. It evaluates the major clinical indications for angiography studies and spectrum of findings on CTA, any agreement between major clinical diagnosis and CTA findings over an eight-year period at a major referral tertiary hospital in South-West Nigeria was also determined in this hospital based retrospective study of patients with suspected vascular lesions throughout the body evaluated with CTA from January 2011 to December 2018. All CTA scans were performed using a 64-slice Multidetector Toshiba Aquilion Computed Tomography scanner. The demographics, clinical diagnosis, type of CT angiography, and result of the CT angiography procedure data were extracted and documented. The data was analysed using IBM SPSS version 23.0. A total of 305 patients were studied. Among the extra-cranial CTA studies, pulmonary thrombo-embolism (38/184) was the commonest reason for CTA. There was fair significant agreement between clinical diagnosis of PTE and CTA diagnosis of PTE, but weak agreement between Aneurysms/AVMs and corresponding findings on CTA. The commonest CTA examination was cranial angiographies followed by pulmonary CTAs. The Hospital incidence of aneurysms was 2.6 times that of AVMs in this study.

 Key words: Computed tomography, angiography, vascular lesion, aneurysms, arterio-venous malformation.


In continuous casting (CC), thermomechanical simulation is essential to analyze important issues: gap formation; stress and deformation of the solidified shell; bulging of product between supporting rolls in the case of steel CC; size of final product, butt-curl defect in direct chill casting of aluminium. The numerical simulation package THERCAST has been developed with the objective of supplying an accurate analysis of those phenomena, permitting to define relevant process actuators. In this paper, some characteristic features especially developed for steel continuous casting are presented and illustrated by examples of industrial application.


Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) is a global health problem, with over 170 million infected individuals worldwide. 70-80% of infected individuals develop progressive disease, and approximately 2% of these acquire hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). HCV entry is dependent on tetraspanin CD81, scavenger receptor BI, and tight junction proteins claudin-1 and occludin. Tetraspanins are involved in multiple biological functions including cell-ECM adhesion and motility. An actin polymerization-dependent cell spread was observed upon ligation of CD81 on hepatoma cells. Importantly, HCV infection perturbed CD81-dependent cell spread, suggesting HCV infection may modulate CD81 function in hepatoma cells. Functional assays demonstrated that CD81 expression and HCV infection promote hepatoma cell motility. These findings allude to a link between HCV infection and associated HCC development. Establishment of a chronic infection demonstrates that HCV can escape from the host adaptive immune responses. We developed an in vitro cell culture system to monitor viral transmission in the presence of neutralizing antibodies (nAb). Separation of producer and target cells ablated nAb resistant transmission, suggesting that cell-cell contact was essential. Furthermore nAb resistant transmission was dependent upon all four co-receptors. These observations confirm HCV immune evasion by cell-to-cell transfer and have major implications for anti-glycoprotein targeted therapies.


Having studied the clinical picture and changes in the activity of various enzymes in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in 140 patients with cerebral strokes, the authors showed a diagnostic and prognostic value of determining the activity of LDH and GGTP in the CSF. The activity of these enzymes increased in hemorrhagic stroke and in cases of unfavourable outcome. Their activity was lower in ischemic stroke and in cases of a favourable course of the disease.


Jaques Ranci�re (2009b) argues that if there is a political question in contemporary art, ??it will be grasped through the analysis of the metamorphoses of the political ?third?, the politics founded on the play of exchanges and displacements between the art world and that of non art? (2009b:51). Looking at graffiti and street art in Barcelona as ?textures?, which stimulate the mind, body and senses. I have investigated what public space means for its inhabitants through the material nature of the surfaces by which it is contained and by applying media devices. This has led me to develop an ethnography of encounters, perceptions and sensibilities linked to political practices and different modes of participation in the everyday life of the city. Following Jacques Ranci�re?s (2004) conception of ?political aesthetics?, I argue that the aesthetic of graffiti and street art can be embodied according to different sensible orders in the city. The public space is key in this process and I see it as an interface between graffiti artists, the general public and the institutions of the city. Graffiti activate the urban landscape through visual and tactile transformations of space through surfaces. These interactions, as De Certeau (1985) claims about everyday practices, may articulate narratives, which became the main source of information for this thesis. Thinking about the graffiti works in Barcelona in terms of Bakhtin?s (1981) idea of ?the chronotope?, I have recounted the stories, which make the transformation of public space indicative of the everyday life of the city applying practices of collaboration, dialogue and intervention. These practices connected me to different surfaces of the city so as to explore how their material qualities are permeated with social relations and artistically inscribed with historical and political meanings. Here, graffiti and the city formed a compound of images in which I have studied the ?visuality? of graffiti in Barcelona. This, as Hal Foster (1988) argues, encloses at the same time social facts and physical operations (body and psyche) and moves, as I will show throughout this thesis, between dominant and resistance cultures. In short, I have materialized these ideas and images in the graffiti texture of Barcelona, seeing it as a mutable surface, which mediates between different ways of seeing and living in this city.


The types and characteristics of phase change materials were discussed. With respect to application in building materials, the PCM should have more attractive properties including high latent heat values, stability and proper melting point, inflammability, corrosiveness and supercooling. Phase change building material (PCBM) was prepared using vacuum absorption method and tested by means of Differential Scanning Calorimetry(DSC) and Scanning Electron Microscopy(SEM). The testing results have shown that organic PCM was absorbed into the holes of inorganic carriers completely and distributed evenly with stable performances. It is concluded that the composite PCM has steady temperature-adjusting function and the preparation means is acceptable.


Abstract : War theorists believe we have entered into a new generation of warfare where an "evolved form of insurgency uses all available networks - political economic social military - to convince the enemy's decision makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly for the perceived benefit." They have named this new era of war "fourth generation warfare." Currently the Department of Defense's intelligence strategy is designed to defeat conventional adversaries vise a fourth generation warfare opponent. To be successful against a fourth generation warfare opponent the Department of Defense must transform its intelligence efforts. It must shift collection efforts from high-technology to low-technology solutions; redefine intelligence indicators; increase processing and analysis capabilities; and develop more agile dissemination systems. In addition the Department must develop a holistic strategy to fight and win a fourth generation war. This project will discuss the theory of fourth generation warfare and highlight its distinct characteristics. The study then identifies the challenges faced by the intelligence community as a result of this new form a war. Finally recommendations will be provided to enhance intelligence support to the military in their effort to win a fourth generation war.


Heralded universal quantum gates can largely decrease the quantum resource consumed in the integration of a multiqubit quantum circuit. Here, we present a scheme for heralded universal quantum computing, including the construction of the CNOT gate, Fredkin gate, and Toffoli gate on the electron spins in diamond nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers assisted by low-$ Q $Q microtoroidal resonators. These quantum gates can achieve unity fidelity, as the infidelity induced by the imperfect input–output process is transferred into photon loss. The clicks on different single-photon detectors can either herald the success of the quantum gates or instruct an immediate recycling procedure, even without reinitializing the NV centers. Besides the heralding, this scheme is also more realistic, observing that the non-monochromatic auxiliary photon and the inhomogeneous NV centers have no adverse impact on fidelity. The high fidelity and efficiency with experimental parameters show that the scheme is feasible with current technology.


III-nitride Schottky rectifiers (SRs) with (i.e., SR_A) and without (i.e., SR_B) the AlGaN/GaN/AlGaN/GaN quadruple layer were both fabricated. It was found that we could achieve a lower leakage current from SR_A. Under reverse bias, it was found that SR_A showed a more than five orders magnitude smaller dark current than that in SR_B. It was also found that lower on-state resistance was due to the larger Schottky barrier height and larger breakdown voltage was due to reduced defect densities in SR_A. The SRs with a quadruple layer was suitable for applications to low noise or/and ultraviolet (UV) detection as well.


Practical Epidemiology, 4th edn D J P Barker and A J Hall 176 pp £7.95 ISBN 0-443-03787-6 Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 1991 The ideas of epidemiology are relatively simple, indeed the only central one is the concept of a denominator: the relation of cases of disease to a population; but carrying out epidemiological studies requires great skill practical flexibility combined with intellectual rigour. The right mixture of theory and practice will vary with both problem and circumstances. This small textbook, now in its fourth edition, seeks to provide a basic account for the epidemiological worker in developing countries. It succeeds remarkably well. The approach is broad, encompassing many types of epidemiological study, but giving detailed practical advice in a very clearly written text which lacks jargon and is a model of how to write for a diverse readership. The main new feature of this edition is in paying regard to the increase in availability and use of small computers in developing countries. Their use in epidemiology is set out concisely and in realistic terms. The book can be read through in a couple of evenings, but the contents should influence any medical worker for a lifetime. It deserves a place on the essential book list of every doctor in the tropics and many other health workers too.


BACKGROUND There is mounting evidence that microbes resident in the human intestine contribute to diverse alcohol-associated liver diseases (ALD) including the most deadly form known as alcohol-associated hepatitis (AH). However, mechanisms by which gut microbes synergize with excessive alcohol intake to promote liver injury are poorly understood. Furthermore, whether drugs that selectively target gut microbial metabolism can improve ALD has never been tested. METHODS We used liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry to quantify the levels of microbe and host choline co-metabolites in healthy controls and AH patients, finding elevated levels of the microbial metabolite trimethylamine (TMA) in AH. In subsequent studies, we treated mice with non-lethal bacterial choline TMA lyase (CutC/D) inhibitors to blunt gut microbe-dependent production of TMA in the context of chronic ethanol administration. Indices of liver injury were quantified by complementary RNA sequencing, biochemical, and histological approaches. In addition, we examined the impact of ethanol consumption and TMA lyase inhibition on gut microbiome structure via 16S rRNA sequencing. RESULTS We show the gut microbial choline metabolite trimethylamine (TMA) is elevated in AH patients and correlates with reduced hepatic expression of the TMA oxygenase flavin-containing monooxygenase 3 (FMO3). Provocatively, we find that small molecule inhibition of gut microbial CutC/D activity protects mice from ethanol-induced liver injury. CutC/D inhibitor-driven improvement in ethanol-induced liver injury is associated with distinct reorganization of the gut microbiome and host liver transcriptome. CONCLUSIONS The microbial metabolite TMA is elevated in patients with AH, and inhibition of TMA production from gut microbes can protect mice from ethanol-induced liver injury.


Cloud providers have started to deploy various FPGA accelerators in their datacenters because the performance of many applications can be significantly improved by implementing their core routines in FPGAs. In conventional datacenters with FPGA accelerated servers, if a tenant wants to use FPGA accelerators, it requests for a VM instance residing in a server equipped with an FPGA accelerator. This paradigm to integrate FPGA into Cloud leads to poor resource sharing of the precious FPGA resources. In this paper, we propose FPGAPooling, an FPAG-enabled Cloud system where all FPGA accelerators are managed as a single resource pool and shared among all VMs. For a VM, instead of requesting the Cloud to run the VM on an FPGA accelerated server, at run time, when a VM needs to use FPGA acceleration, it requests an FPGA accelerator from the pool. After the VM finishes using the FPGA accelerator, it releases the FPGA accelerator back to the pool. We design a centralized scheduler to handle acceleration requests from VMs and assign each request to an idle FPGA accelerator at run time; We implemented a system prototype on IBM's OpenPower Cloud system. The key challenging of FPGAPooling is scheduling. We designed and implemented a group of scheduling algorithms for the FPGAPooling system. With extensive evaluations on both a small testbed and a large-scale simulation, we found that our algorithms can improve the average and tail job completion time by up to 7 and 4 times, respectively.


We present a patient who presented with cortical blindness (CB) 1 week after repeated cardiac arrest while undergoing treatment for an acute myocardial infarction. He had been revived within 5 min in each instance and was apparently neurologically normal until presentation. Magnetic resonance imaging showed subtle hyperintensities on fluid-attenuated inversion recovery and diffusion-weighted imaging in both temporooccipital cortices. A rapid recovery over the next 2 weeks was remarkable for the appearance of metamorphopsia. CB may present even days to weeks after hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy following cardiac arrest, even in patients apparently without immediate neurological sequelae. The pathogenesis of this phenomenon remains to be fully elucidated, but is likely to be due to delayed effects of anoxia on the occipital cortex and may be analogous to the previously described syndrome of delayed posthypoxic leukoencephalopathy. Prognosis for visual recovery appears to be good.


We consider the problem of defining, generating, and tracing provenance in dataoriented workflows, in which input data sets are processed by a graph of transformations to produce output results. We first give a new general definition of provenance for general transformations, introducing the notions of correctness, precision, and minimality. We then determine when properties such as correctness and minimality carry over from the individual transformations' provenance to the workflow provenance. We describe a simple logical-provenance specification language consisting of attribute mappings and filters. We provide algorithms for provenance tracing in workflows where logical provenance for each transformation is specified using our language. We consider logical provenance in the relational setting, showing that for a class of Select-Project-Join (SPJ) transformations, logical provenance specifications encode minimal provenance. We have built a prototype system supporting the features and algorithms presented in the paper, and we report a few preliminary experimental results.


Conventional block-based broadcast authentication protocols overlook the heterogeneity of receivers in mobile computing by letting the sender choose the block size, divide a broadcast stream into blocks, associate each block with a signature, and spread the effect of the signature across all the packets in the block through hash or coding algorithms. They suffer from some drawbacks. First, they require that the entire block with its signature be collected before authenticating every packet in the block. This authentication latency can lead to the jitter effect on real-time applications at receivers. Second, the block-based approach is vulnerable to packet loss in mobile computing in the sense that the loss of some packets makes the other packets unable to be authenticated, especially when the block signature is lost. Third, they are also vulnerable to DoS attacks caused by the injection of forged packets. In this article we propose a novel broadcast authentication protocol based on an efficient cryptographic primitive called a batch signature. Our protocol supports the verification of the authenticity of any number of packets simultaneously and avoids the shortcomings of the block-based approach.


New experimental methodologies were applied to measure the unbound brain-to-plasma concentration ratio (K(p,uu,brain)) and the unbound CSF-to-plasma concentration ratio (K(p,uu,CSF)) in rats for 43 structurally diverse drugs. The relationship between chemical structure and K(p,uu,brain) was dominated by hydrogen bonding. Contrary to popular understanding based on the total brain-to-plasma concentration ratio (logBB), lipophilicity was not a determinant of unbound brain exposure. Although changing the number of hydrogen bond acceptors is a useful design strategy for optimizing K(p,uu,brain), future improvement of in silico prediction models is dependent on the accommodation of active drug transport. The structure-brain exposure relationships found in the rat also hold for humans, since the rank order of the drugs was similar for human and rat K(p,uu,CSF). This cross-species comparison was supported by K(p,uu,CSF) being within 3-fold of K(p,uu,brain) in the rat for 33 of 39 drugs. It was, however, also observed that K(p,uu,CSF) overpredicts K(p,uu,brain) for highly effluxed drugs, indicating lower efflux capacity of the blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier compared to the blood-brain barrier.


During the 1980s the Israeli Supreme Court went through revolutionary changes, becoming more active in public life and in the political arena. Scholars predicted that the institutional legitimacy of the Court, based on its image as an objective, neutral, and apolitical institution, would decline following these changes. However, public polls showed that the Court's institutional legitimacy remained very high long after the 1980s. This Article aims to explain the lack of a decline in the institutional legitimacy of the Court during those years by presenting an empirical study of the Court's news television coverage beginning with the inception of Channel One (1968) until just before the entrance of the commercially financed Channel Two (1993). The Article shows that the increase in the visibility of the Court was not substantial enough to diminish the Court's image. Moreover, television continued to present the Court, by and large, through a mythical perspective as an objective, neutral, and apolitical body. The Article concludes that the Israeli public, unaware of the changes in the Court's adjudication, continued to award the Court support based on the Court's unchanged fabled image presented by the news media. Hence, a politically active court may continue to receive high public support based on in its mythical image if the changes in its adjudication are not visible to the public. Research of the portrayal of courts in the media is thus of utmost importance in understanding changes in the institutional legitimacy of courts.


Bladder cancer (BC) is the most common malignancy of the urinary tract. We developed a new and ELISA kit for detecting aberrantly glycosylated integrin α3β1 (AG31) in human urine. We analysed urine samples (n=408) of patients with BC, renal cell carcinoma (RCC), prostate cancer (PC), cystitis, nephritis, and prostatitis from two centres in China. The subjects in the validation groups (n=2317) were recruited from other centres in China between July 2012 and September 2013. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to determine diagnostic accuracy. AG31 levels in urine samples were significantly higher in patients with BC than in any of the control subjects. Moreover, elevated levels of AG31 in urine could distinguish BC from benign inflammatory diseases. Finally, the urinary AG31 test was much more sensitive and specific than the NMP22 test. Therefore, the urinary AG31 test will provide an ideal and assay for the detection of BCs.


One‐hundred‐thirty‐five university faculties participated in a survey‐based study of burnout. This study investigated the role of person‐organization value congruence on the experience of burnout. Also, the mediating role of burnout on the relationship between person‐organization value congruence and outcomes (in congruence with Maslach, Schaufel and Leiter's theory) was examined. As predicted by a coping/withdrawal framework, burnout was associated with less time spent on teaching, service/administrative tasks, and professional development activities. To a lesser extent, burnout was associated with spending more time on non‐work activities. Person‐organization value congruence was strongly associated with burnout. Value congruence had direct relationships with several of the outcome variables, and, consistent with the model, burnout partially or fully mediated the relationship between congruence and satisfaction, spending less time on teaching, and on professional development activities.


Sensor errors can adversely affect the behavior of a control system. When multiple sensors are used, a broken sensor can have its effects minimized by artificially inflating its error covariance. In this paper, a different approach to compensating for sensor errors in a multiple-sensor control system is introduced. The technique, referred to as a neural extended Kalman filter (NEKF), is developed for closed-loop control systems. The NEKF learns on-line from the same residual information used in the state estimator. The improvement in the sensor report is made by the neural network being added to the measurement model. In this work, the NEKF is applied to vehicle trajectory control problem with a position sensor and a velocity sensor.


KAATSU training involves the restriction of blood flow to exercising muscle and is the culmination of nearly 40 years of experimentation with the singular purpose of increasing muscle mass. KAATSU Training consists of performing low-intensity resistance training while a relatively light and flexible cuff is placed on the proximal part of one's lower or upper limbs, which provides appropriate superficial pressure. KAATSU Training should not be confused with training under ischemic conditions which has previously been reported (Sundberg, 1994). KAATSU Training does not induce ischemia within skeletal muscle, but rather promotes a state of blood pooling in the capillaries within the limb musculature. Applied basic and clinical research conducted over the past 10 years has demonstrated that KAATSU Training not only improves muscle mass and strength in healthy volunteers, but also benefits patients with cardiovascular and orthopedic conditions.


Participation in childhood daily functional performance was examined in 78 children: 44 with sensory modulation disorder (SMD); (33 males, 11 females; mean age 7y 6mo [SD 1.20]) and 34 without SMD (18 males, 16 females; mean age 7y 8mo [SD 1.33]). Group classification was determined using two measures: the Short Sensory Profile (SSP) and the Full‐form Sensory Profile. Parents completed a battery of caregiver questionnaires. Children with SMD scored significantly lower on all three participation scales than the control group. A high correlation was observed between level of activity performance of the Participation in Childhood Occupations Questionnaire (PICO‐Q) and the SSP, and a moderate correlation was observed between the Enjoyment of Performance of the PICO‐Q and the SSP. A low correlation was observed between Frequency of Performance of the PICO‐Q and the SSP. Logistic regression indicated that all three participation scales (level of activity performance, level of enjoyment of the activity, and frequency of performance of the activity) are significantly associated with group classification, with odds ratios of 3.13, 2.05, and 1.73 respectively. These findings are the first, to our knowledge, to confirm claims of limited participation in daily activities among children with SMD. Our results have significant clinical implications and provide support for the need for practitioners and caregivers of children with SMD to facilitate participation.


___________________________________________________________________ This research attempted to find out the translation techniques and grammatical errors in students' Indonesian-English text translation. The objectives of this research were to describe the choice of translation techniques and grammatical errors of the students' translation of a narrative text. This research used descriptive qualitative method. The translation techniques analysis was done by using Molina and Albir's (2002) classification of translation techniques while grammatical errors of the students' translation were analyzed using the guide for correcting writing errors by Betty Azar (1941). The translation technique analysis was done by comparing the students' translation work with the source text of a narrative entitled Lari Kepagian then grammatical errors analysis was done to find out their errors in the use of grammatical rules. The result of the study found that there were 3012 data of translation techniques and 429 grammatical errors. The data showed that the most used translation techniques were literal translation technique (30.1%) and modulation technique (22.6%) and the most grammatical errors made were capitalization (18.2%) and verb tense (16.6%). The most used translation technique that resulted in most grammatical errors was modulation technique (17%) in the translation done by 24 students.


ABSTRACT Introduction: Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) has a large economic burden with important complications that include esophagitis, Barrett's esophagus, and adenocarcinoma. Despite endoscopy, validated patient questionnaires, and traditional ambulatory pH monitoring, the diagnosis of GERD continues to be challenging. Areas covered: This review will explore the difficulties in diagnosing GERD with a focus on new developments, ranging from basic fundamental changes (histology and immunohistochemistry) to direct patient care (narrow-band imaging, impedance, and response to anti-reflux surgery). We searched PubMed using the noted keywords. We included data from full-text articles published in English. Further relevant articles were identified from the reference lists of review articles. Expert commentary: Important advances in novel parameters in intraluminal impedance monitoring such as baseline impedance monitoring has created some insight into alternative diagnostic strategies in GERD. Recent advances in endoscopic assessment of esophageal epithelial integrity via mucosal impedance measurement is questioning the paradigm of prolonged ambulatory testing for GERD. The future of reflux diagnosis may very well be without the need for currently employed technologies and could be as simple as assessing changes in epithelia integrity as a surrogate marker for GERD. However, future studies must validate such an approach.


The dominant system of global private economic ordering, grounded in classical liberal economic theory and based on robust private markets and a limited state regulatory role, has come under attack. That attack has been sharpened over the last several decades as the development of many poor states has failed to accelerate and as a consequence of the economic crisis of developed states that began to be felt in earnest in 2008. Like legal systems, economic systems grounded solely on rational activity without a foundation in normative value systems, are either incomplete or subject to perversion. This paper focuses on the values of substantive economics developed recently through application of Catholic theology. It focuses on the Catholic critique of consumerism, its understanding of a necessary labor policy and its sense of just global economics. It will suggest a number of places where socio-economic and theology share common ground, and even something of a common framework of analysis, and that consequentially, there may be some force to arguments that some values may be trans-religious, as well as transcultural. The paper starts with a short consideration of the approach of economics in its modern globalized context, and the contribution of socio-economic to that approach. It then briefly suggests the contours of an economic critique of that modern approach, using as a foil for that purpose Fidel Castro's attacks on economic globalization and arguments in favor of Marxist alternative global economic models. It then considers Catholic social thought as an alternative to both. For that purpose the paper focuses on Catholic social thought as it touches on the issues raised by global economic activity in three respects: materialism, labor rights and globalization. It ends with a consideration of an important criticism of conventional economics in Catholic social thought: that the dominant system is likely to fail because it lacks a legitimate ethical framework. For that purpose, the paper considers a recent revival of an article written by Benedict XVI in the 1980s when, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he suggested that the current dominant system would collapse for lack of a legitimate moral base, a base that could only be provided by Religion.


We consider a cointegrating regression in which the integrated regressors are messy in the sense that they contain data that may be mismeasured, missing, observed at mixed frequencies or have other irregularities that cause the econometrician to observe them with mildly nonstationary noise. Least squares estimation of the cointegrating vector is consistent. Existing prototypical variance‐based estimation techniques, such as canonical cointegrating regression, are both consistent and asymptotically mixed normal. This result is robust to weakly dependent but possibly nonstationary disturbances.


This paper describes standard and innovative methods for characterizing the mechanical properties of single-crystal silicon cells [orientation (100)] for photovoltaic applications. The knowledge of their mechanical properties is not completely known in the technical literature and this knowledge could enhance the results of modern simulation softwares. The silicon cells were investigated before and after an aging at 100°C for 100 h. In the technical literature, an annealing at temperatures ranging from 70°C up to 180°C is proposed as a possible way to reverse the degradation of such components caused by long-time exposure to daylight (light-induced degradation, LID), and to obtain a recovery of the efficiency. Nevertheless, little information about the influence of such an annealing on the panel mechanical performances is available. Universal instrumented hardness tests were carried out to estimate the Young's modulus; the fracture toughness was calculated by measuring the lengths of the cracks originated from the imprint corners. Moreover, the threshold load under which no cracks appear was estimated. Finally, bending tests were performed to evaluate the mechanical resistance. Such tests were carried out on a tensile testing machine after the design and the realization of suitable devices assembled on the machine standard fixtures.


Abstract. In this paper we study the temperatures of electrons convected with the solar wind to large solar distances and finally transported over the solar wind termination shock. Nearly nothing, unless at high energies in the cosmic ray regime, is known about the thermodynamical behaviour of these distant electrons from in~situ plasma observations. Hence it is tacitly assumed these electrons, due to their adiabatic behaviour and vanishing heat conduction or energization processes, have rapidly cooled off to very low temperatures once they eventually arrive at the solar wind termination shock (at about 100 AU). In this paper we show that such electrons, however, at their passage over the termination shock due to the shock–electric field action undergo an over-adiabatic heating and therefore appear on the downstream side as a substantially heated plasma species. Looking quantitatively into this heating process we find that solar wind electrons achieve temperatures of the order of 2–4 × 106 K downstream of the termination shock, depending on the upstream solar wind bulk velocity and the shock compression ratio. Hence these electrons therewith play an important dynamical role in structuring this shock and determining the downstream plasma flow properties. Furthermore, they present an additional ionization source for incoming neutral interstellar hydrogen and excite X-ray emission. They also behave similar to cosmic ray electrons and extend to some limited region upstream of the shock of the order of 0.1 AU by spatial diffusion and thereby also modify the upstream solar wind properties.


Background: Sub-lexical dyslexia is characterized by difficulty in reading non-words relative to true words. Identification of this impairment requires tests assessing word and non-word reading performances. No such tests are available in Kannada, a South-Indian language. Objectives: a) to develop and validate: Graded word and Graded non-word reading tests in Kannada b) to standardize the tests by administering n 100 children each from Grades III to VII and to establish grade-wise criteria to identify sub-lexical dyslexia. Methods: The Graded Word Reading Test was developed separately for Grades III-VII by compiling 30 words each from Kannada textbook of the specific grade. The Graded Non-word Reading Test was developed by creating 70 randomized non-words. It was then given to 10 Kannada teachers to opine on the pronounceability and suitability of items for target Grades. The test battery was later administered on 25 children with good oral reading skills and subsequently standardized on a cross-section of 500 children from four Kannada-medium schools. This data was used to establish Grade- pecific criteria for reading words and non-words in Kannada. Results: The Graded-word and non-word reading test demonstrated good content and face validity. A total of 44 (8.8%) children were identified to have sub-lexical dyslexia across Grades. Conclusion: This novel test battery is first of its kind which also 'quantifies' the 'relative performances' on word and non-word reading to identify sub-lexical dyslexia in Kannada from Grades III to VII.


The concept of channel assignment in adaptive TDD (ATDD) fixed wireless networks is addressed in this paper. A novel rotated-interleaved channel assignment (RICA) scheme is proposed that improves throughput, compared to existing schemes, by up to 9% inducing no further costs. Furthermore, the spectral efficiency between FDD and ATDD modes of operation is investigated considering the same network characteristics and RICA. It appears that according to the traffic asymmetry variations as expressed in the moving TDD boundary, the throughput performance of ATDD is from 2% to 14% less than that of FDD.


Tensile strength is a dynamic property and is sensitive to soil structure because it is related to the presence of air-filled pores, the occurrence of micro-cracks and the strength of inter-granular bonds within and between micro-cracks. Moreover, the tensile strength of soil is much affected by the soil water content and processes which change pore characteristics and/or the cementation between structural units. A friability index has been proposed that is based on measurements of tensile strength of different sized aggregates. The main objectives of the present paper were to measure the mechanical properties (tensile strength and friability) of soil aggregates collected from three agricultural soils, and to explore the relationships between mechanical and basic physical properties of the investigated soils. Soils used in these investigations can be described as "friable" according to the classification used for friability index, F1, values. Soil aggregates of the sandy soil from Grădiștea had the smallest values of tensile strength. The highest values of tensile strength were recorded in case of clayey soil, whereas the loamy soil had values between the sandy and clayey soils. Increasing organic matter content decreased the values of tensile strength for soil aggregates from all soils. High values of clay content in case of loamy and clayey soils increased the values of tensile strength. Increasing amount of clay in sandy soil has been shown to increase the tensile strength of this soil. This may be due to clay particles acting as cementing materials between large particles. Higher amounts of clay in sandy soils provide more opportunities for interparticle contact. Small size classes of aggregates presented higher values of tensile strength as compared with larger size classes of aggregates when the volume dependence method was used. In case of sandy and clayey soils were found underestimates and respectively overestimates of F2 values. As for the loamy soil, the volume dependence method (F2) gave similar values when compared to the coefficient of variation method (F1). The coefficient of variation method is recommended as standard method for measuring soil friability.


Just a few years ago, becoming an entrepreneur was pretty simple. All you needed was some idea--any idea--a little experience, and venture capital funds to get you going. Many young people started to believe that entrepreneurship was a viable, even safe, career choice. Older folks, too, underestimated the risks of financing start-ups, and, as a result, they ended up throwing millions of dollars into doomed ventures. The economic downturn has laid waste to those illusions. So now is a good time to ask potential entrepreneurs and their financial backers the hard questions unheeded in the days of the Internet boom: What makes an entrepreneur? What characteristics set successful entrepreneurs apart, enabling them to keep their company alive even when the going gets tough? This article addresses those questions, reminding us that becoming a successful entrepreneur is decidedly not a squeaky-clean affair; you may end up making powerful enemies, risking your own financial security, or even, in extreme cases, looking at jail time. Specifically, the article explores the key qualities that make someone a successful entrepreneur. Walter Kuemmerle has distilled these characteristics into a kind of litmus test of the following five straightforward, albeit disquieting, questions you should ask yourself if you are considering starting your own venture: Are you comfortable stretching the rules? Are you prepared to make powerful enemies? Do you have the patience to start small? Are you willing to shift strategies quickly? Are you a closer? Answering these questions honestly will help you decide if you have what it takes to become an entrepreneur.


Abstract One peculiar source of nonlabor income that has not been extensively studied for its effect on labor supply is the Alaska Permanent Fund (APF) dividend. This is somewhat surprising given the recent policy focus on Guaranteed Basic Income programs. An annual lump-sum payment, the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) is available to almost all Alaska residents, is clearly exogenous with respect to work effort, and – while relatively predictable – varies over time and across households (since it increases linearly with family size). This paper estimates the nonlabor income elasticity of labor supply using exogenous variation from the Alaskan PFD and data from the American Community Survey (ACS). The analysis finds that men have elasticities between −0.15 and −0.10, depending on the specification. Single women have elasticities between −0.14 and −0.09, while married women have somewhat larger elasticities between −0.18 and −0.11.


The absence of boreal forests from global policy agendas on sustainable development and climate change mitigation represents a massive missed opportunity for environmental protection. The boreal zone contains some of the world's largest pools of terrestrial carbon that, if not safeguarded from a conversion to a net source of greenhouse gases, could seriously exacerbate global climate change. At the same time, boreal countries have a strong tradition of forest management—expertise that could be effectively leveraged toward global and national carbon mitigation targets and sustainable development. Current obstacles against such contributions include weak incentives for carbon sequestration and a reluctance to embrace change by forest managers and policy makers. We discuss possible solutions to overcome these obstacles, including the improvement of ineffective incentives, the development of alternative forest management strategies, and the need to maintain ecosystem resilience through the pursuit of policy and management options.


Aim To investigate the demographic characteristics, care pathways, and clinical and service outcomes of people who present to ambulance services with a psychiatric or self-harm emergency Methods We conducted a retrospective cohort study of patients attended by the Scottish Ambulance Service in 2011 with ambulance clinician attendance codes relating to 'psychiatric emergency' or 'self-harm'. Patients resident in Scotland and>=16 years on first contact were included. We used NHS Scotland's Unscheduled Care Data Mart (1) to link data from: – the ambulance service; emergency departments (ED); general and psychiatric inpatient hospital admissions episodes; and death records. Results There were 9014 calls from 6802 people. Slightly more males (n=4708, 52%) than females (n=4306, 48%) were attended. Most were discharged from ED with no known follow-up (n=4566; 51%). Some were left at home (n=1003 attendances, 11%). Almost half of the people (n=3238, 48%) made at least one repeat call. People who self-discharge from ED were more likely to have another ambulance attendance for psychiatric emergency/self-harm within the same year (Pearson chi square=5.24, p=0.02). Two hundred and seventy-nine (4%) people died within the study period, 97 (35%) were recorded as suicide. Ethical approval (NRES 15/EM/0260) and other data approvals were received. Conclusion While linked data analysis may not identify all relevant cases, it provides important information to guide the development and evaluation of evidence-based interventions. Ambulance service and ED are missing opportunities to improve outcomes for people who experience a psychiatric emergency or who self-harm. New interventions could lead to decreases in the number of suicides, episodes of self-harm and levels of patient distress; and ambulance and ED service use. Reference Information Services Division (NHS Scotland) (2016) Unscheduled Care Datamart Background Paper. Accessible at http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Emergency-Care/Patient-Pathways/unscheduledcare_background.pdf Accessed on 13/01/17 Conflict of interest None declared. Funding Scottish Government, Chief Scientists Office


The first catalytic antibodies (abzymes) were reported in 1986 . Since then abzymes catalyzing various types of reactions have been reported. There have been a number of reviews on the abzymes, so in this review I intended not to overlap them , but briefly d escribed (i) the background of abzyme production, (ii) the catalytic mechanism of the enzymic reaction, and (iii) some examples of monoclonal and polyclonal abzymes. Recent advancements as to abzyme studies are the invention of an assay system for catalytic activity during cloning, the estimation of the solvent effect on abzyme-catalyzed decarbox ylation, the production of abzymes catalyzing disfavored chemical reactions and cocaine hydrolysis, and the feasibility of the usage of polyclonal abzymes. Several advantages of polyclonal abzyme studies were also pointed out.


Fumonisins are considered among the important mycotoxins associated with human esophageal cancer and livestock diseases. These mycotoxins are mainly produced by Fusarium verticillioides in tropical and subtropical regions such as the Philippines and Egypt and humid temperate regions of the world. The classical taxonomy of fumonisin-producing fungi is challenging, and species-specific PCR reactions are commonly used to clearly identify species within these complexes. The aim of this study was to isolate, identify and quantify fumonisin-producing species in maize, wheat and soil samples from Egypt and the Philippines, and to test Eppendorf-Agar as a long term preservation method. We isolated 44 single spore isolates (39 from Egypt and five from the Philippines) from the collected samples (25 isolates from maize, five from wheat and 14 from soil). In addition, we quantified the content of fumonisin-producing fungi DNA from 15 maize samples and six wheat samples from Egypt, and from six maize samples from the Philippines. morphological and microscopic identification indicated that 21 isolates from Egypt and five from the Philippines were F. verticillioides , one isolate was F. proliferatum and two isolates were F. nygamai . Molecular identification indicated that all these isolates belonged to F. verticillioides. Most were from maize, four were from soil and only one was from wheat. Other Fusarium species isolated included F. oxysporum and F. solani . No F. graminearum isolates were found. The quantitative PCR (qPCR) results obtained using the Taqfum-2f, Vpgen-3R primer pair and the FUMp probe for quantification of fumonisin-producing Fusarium species showed that fumonisin-producing Fusarium isolates were present in four maize samples from the Philippines and eight maize samples from Egypt. The Fusarium DNA levels from fumonisin-producing isolates were in the range of 13 × 10 -3 to 61 × 10 -1 ng ng -1 total DNA in positive samples, except in one maize sample from the Philippines with high concentration of >0.5 ng ng -1 total DNA. This indicates that >50 % of all DNA was Fusarium DNA. No fumonisin-producing Fusarium DNA was detected in the wheat samples and in the remaining maize samples. These results showed that PCR-techniques based on qPCR can be used to identify fumonisin-producing Fusarium species and quantify risks of mycotoxin contaminated grains.


Online monitoring of the lubrication and friction conditions in internal combustion engines can provide valuable information and thereby enables optimal maintenance actions to be undertaken to ensure safe and efficient operations. Acoustic emission (AE) has attracted significant attention in condition monitoring due to its high sensitivity to light defects on sliding surfaces. However, limited understanding of the AE mechanisms in fluid-lubricated conjunctions, such as piston rings and cylinder liners, confines the development of AE-based lubrication monitoring techniques. Therefore, this study focuses on developing new AE models and effective AE signal process methods in order to achieve accurate online lubrication monitoring. Based on the existing AE model for asperity–asperity collision (AAC), a new model for fluid–asperity shearing (FAS)-induced AE is proposed that will explain AE responses from the tribological conjunction of the piston ring and cylinder. These two AE models can then jointly demonstrate AE responses from the lubrication conjunction of engine ring–liner. In particular, FAS allows the observable AE responses in the middle of engine strokes to be characterised in association with engine speeds and lubricant viscosity. However, these AE components are relatively weak and noisy compared to others, with movements such as valve taring, fuel injection and combustions. To accurately extract these weaker AE's for lubricant monitoring, an optimised wavelet packet transform (WPT) analysis is applied to the raw AE data from a running engine. This results in four distinctive narrow band indicators to describe the AE amplitude in the middle of an engine power stroke. Experimental evaluation shows the linear increasing trend of AE indicator with engine speeds allows a full separation of two baseline engine lubricants (CD-10W30 and CD-15W40), previously unused over a wide range of speeds. Moreover, the used oil can also be diagnosed by using the nonlinear and unstable behaviours of the indicator at various speeds. This model has demonstrated the high performance of using AE signals processed with the optimised WPT spectrum in monitoring the lubrication conditions between the ring and liner in IC engines.


OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to review the literature on the use of flow-diverting devices (FDDs) to treat intracranial aneurysms (IAs) and to investigate the safety and complications related to FDD treatment for IAs by performing a meta-analysis of published studies. METHODS A systematic electronic database search was conducted using the Springer, EBSCO, PubMed, Medline, and Cochrane databases on all accessible articles published up to January 2016, with no restriction on the publication year. Abstracts, full-text manuscripts, and the reference lists of retrieved articles were analyzed. Random-effects meta-analysis was used to pool the complication rates across studies. RESULTS Sixty studies were included, which involved retrospectively collected data on 3125 patients. The use of FDDs was associated with an overall complication rate of 17.0% (95% confidence interval [CI] 13.6%-20.5%) and a low mortality rate of 2.8% (95% CI 1.2%-4.4%). The neurological morbidity rate was 4.5% (95% CI 3.2%-5.8%). No significant difference in the complication or mortality rate was observed between 2 commonly used devices (the Pipeline embolization device and the Silk flow-diverter device). A significantly higher overall complication rate was found in the case of ruptured IAs than in unruptured IA (odds ratio 2.3, 95% CI 1.2-4.3). CONCLUSIONS The use of FDDs in the treatment of IAs yielded satisfactory results with regard to complications and the mortality rate. The risk of complications should be considered when deciding on treatment with FDDs. Further studies on the mechanism underlying the occurrence of adverse events are required.


View-dependent effects such as reflections pose a substantial challenge for image-based and neural rendering algorithms. Above all, curved reflectors are particularly hard, as they lead to highly non-linear reflection flows as the camera moves. We introduce a new point-based representation to compute Neural Point Catacaustics allowing novel-view synthesis of scenes with curved reflectors, from a set of casually-captured input photos. At the core of our method is a neural warp field that models catacaustic trajectories of reflections, so complex specular effects can be rendered using efficient point splatting in conjunction with a neural renderer. One of our key contributions is the explicit representation of reflections with a reflection point cloud which is displaced by the neural warp field, and a primary point cloud which is optimized to represent the rest of the scene. After a short manual annotation step, our approach allows interactive high-quality renderings of novel views with accurate reflection flow. Additionally, the explicit representation of reflection flow supports several forms of scene manipulation in captured scenes, such as reflection editing, cloning of specular objects, reflection tracking across views, and comfortable stereo viewing. We provide the source code and other supplemental material on https://repo-sam.inria.fr/fungraph/neural_catacaustics/


Learning is closely tied to effective assessment, which can expose student thinking and facilitate more effective instruction. Various means of assessing knowledge, in particular, conceptual knowledge are being devised. In this paper, student explanations for their answers to multiple choice conceptual questions were studied, both to expose misconceptions and to determine whether the questions themselves indeed evoke thinking about relevant concepts. Explanations were generated by individual students at the beginning of the Statics course, prior to significant instruction. Means of categorizing explanations (a coding scheme) were devised based on responses obtained during a prior term. The coding scheme was then applied independently by the authors to responses of students in the current term. The results of the protocol analysis showed that certain misconceptions were particularly common. In addition, certain misconceptions tended to be more evident among students who selected certain answers


Objective: In multiple sclerosis (MS), the aim of therapies is to prevent the accumulation of irreversible disability. This is difficult to assess given the short time course of clinical trials. MRI markers and relapses are often used as surrogate of disability in MS studies, but their validity remains controversial. We sought to validate, at the individual patient level, MRI lesions and relapses as surrogates for disability progression over the course of MS trials. Methods: Individual patient data from a large, placebo-controlled trial of interferon β-1a in relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) were analyzed. The Prentice criteria were applied to evaluate surrogacy of 1-year MRI active lesions and relapses for disability worsening (Expanded Disability Status Scale [EDSS]) over the 2-year follow-up. Results: All Prentice criteria were satisfied. Treatment reduced by 31% the odds of having EDSS worsening over 2 years, reducing the mean number of MRI lesions by 61% and the mean number of relapses by 36% over 1 year. Both 1-year MRI lesion activity and relapses, when considered independently, accounted for more than 60% of the treatment effect on 2-year EDSS worsening. A combination of 1-year MRI lesion activity and relapses explained 100% of the treatment effect on EDSS worsening over 2 years. Conclusions: A combined measure of 1-year changes in MRI lesions and relapses after interferon therapy fully estimated the corresponding effect on 2-year EDSS worsening. This short-term combined measure appears to be a surrogate for disability progression over a longer term when evaluating the effect of interferon in RRMS.


A compact 40-Gb/s optical receiver module with an MU-connector interface has been developed. Its packaging has three main technical features. (1) Coplanar waveguide (CPW) patterns of the waveguide photodiode (WG-PD) and of the preamplifier IC in the facing area of the flip-chip structure are optimized for impedance matching. (2) A film carrier is used to connect the preamplifier IC to an electrical coaxial connector for electrical signal output. (3) An MU-connector is used as the optical interface to reduce the module size. Optimum design enabled a module size of 14.0 mm wide, 40.4 mm long, and 9.65 mm high. Measurements showed a 3-dB down bandwidth of the optical/electrical response of at least 50 GHz and a clear open eye pattern for a 40-Gb/s non-return-to-zero (NRZ) signal input. This optical receiver module is suitable for large-capacity communication network systems.


Developing small learner and native corpora, this case study examines how Korean L2 learners used six types of lexical collocations in L2 writing to address (a) the frequency and acceptability of learner collocations, (b) problematic constituents of deviant collocations, and (c) possible sources of the learner difficulties. The overall frequency (about 8% of each corpus) and relative frequencies of each collocation type were similar between the learner and native corpora in descending order of adjective-noun, verb-noun, noun-noun, adverb-verb, adverb-adjective, and noun-verb combinations. The average and individual acceptability rates of each collocation type were around 70% and the problematic constituents were found both in nodes and collocates. L2 influence on learner difficulties mostly lied in confusions about synonyms, overuse of delexical verbs, and use of correct collocations in wrong contexts. Relying on L1 semantic representations, the learners produced non-habitual combinations, misrepresented the intended meaning, and paraphrased L2 collocations. Pedagogical implications arose for teaching L2 collocations about the importance of considering the immediate context of L2 writing and taking different approaches to different types of collocations.


ABSTRACT During the 1970s and early 1980s, sections of the trade union movement questioned the African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party's (SACP's) narrow vision of freedom, which was based on the capture of the colonial state by a nationalist elite. Located within a distinct political current that prioritised participatory/direct-democracy and egalitarianism, workers were regarded as the locus of transformative power in society, and their organisations were viewed as prefiguring a radically democratic future. This article examines the very different kind of radical anti-colonial engagement offered by 'workers' control' in the 1970s and 'workerism' in the early 1980s that was developed by the Trade Union Advisory Coordinating Council (TUACC) and the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU), respectively. Keen to draw lessons for the trade union movement today, this article outlines the key characteristics and limits of these traditions that facilitated their decline in the post-apartheid context.


The bioenergy sector is becoming of increasing interest: the European Union (EU) is not an exception, as, indeed, is in need of solutions to face one of the worst energy crises of the last century. The sector's growth faces numerous challenges. The main use of energy crops, as feedstock, generates stiff competition on the use of land for food and energy purposes. The production of bioenergy has relevant environmental implications in terms greenhouse gas emissions. The social aspects related to the bioenergy sector are also potential obstacles to its development. These pressing issues for policymakers call for a better understanding on how national and international laws should regulate the growth of the bioenergy sector. Flying over the economic, environmental, social, and legislative aspects faced by the bioenergy sector, we conclude on threads, opportunities and priorities that should be considered for its development and propose directions for future studies.


An expected utility model with Baysean information processing that explains the extent of consumer reaction to a food scare by the degree of supplier differentiation with respect to reliability is put to an experimental test. The empirical results offer no support for the theoretical prediction that post food scare consumer trust in a particular supplier decreases with an increasing degree of differentiation. While gender and personal experience with a food poisoning contribute significantly to the explanation of the individual level of consumer trust after the – hypothetical – food safety incident, perceived characteristics of the specific risk factor listeriosis chosen for this study had by far the biggest impact.


Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) is a new and increasingly used therapeutic approach that focuses on helping clients construct solutions rather than solve problems. The approach evolved in a clinical context amid many anecdotal reports of success from both therapists and clients, but it has not been subjected to controlled empirical testing until very recently. In this article we critically review all of the controlled outcome studies of SFBT to date (N = 15) to assess the extent to which SFBT has received empirical support. Five studies were well-controlled and all showed positive outcomes--four found SFBT to be better than no treatment or standard institutional services, and one found SFBT to be comparable to a known intervention: Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Depression (IPT). Findings from the remaining 10 studies, which we consider moderately or poorly controlled, were consistent with a hypothesis of SFBT effectiveness. We conclude that the 15 studies provide preliminary support for the efficacy of SFBT but do not permit a definitive conclusion. Our critique highlights areas where methodology in future studies can be strengthened to provide more conclusive evidence of SFBT efficacy.


The results are presented of a model experiment to investigate the dielectric recovery of an axially blown sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) arc after current zero. With the aid of Schlieren pictures and interferometry, the temperature decay after current zero is observed up to the point of complete recovery of the gap. The dielectric recovery is directly measured by applying voltage pulses across the gap which causes breakdown at different times after current zero. Residual charges, which play a role in the early recovery phases, are detected using a specialiy developed technique. Variations of the shape of the voltage pulses and the geometry cause characteristic changes of the recovery, which support the interpretation of the experimental data.


Whiplash associated disorders have become an international medicolegal and social dilemma. Physicians are not sure what the best therapeutic approach should be, and the courts are finding the topic growing ever more controversial. There are many evident paradoxes in the development and presentation of such disorders. We will focus particularly on the remarkable epidemiological findings covering the "natural history" of this problem, and provide a biopsychosocial model to explain these observations.