Unfair terms in credit contracts denominated in foreign currency – clause replacement by dispositive national regulations. On 30.04.2014 the CJEU delivered its judgment C-26/13 (Kasler/OTP) on the limits of the review of unfair terms and the "validation" of credit contracts denominated in foreign currency in the case of incapability of continuing in existence within the meaning of the Unfair Terms Directive 93/13/EEC. In mid-June 2014 the fundamental judgment of the Hungarian Kuria followed, in which the court tried to solve the main problem of the Hungarian credit contracts denominated in foreign currency with harmonizing effect. The Kasler judgment (C-26/13) of the CJEU lays down augmented requirements for the principle of transparency, whereby the judgment should be assessed as pathbreaking for the review of terms in credit contracts. The CJEU clearly states that the contractual terms must be drafted in plain intelligible language, so that the consumer can foresee, on the basis of clear, intelligible criteria, the economic consequences for him deriving from it. The consumer should, thus, be able to assess on his own the amount of the repayment and of the total costs of the credit. The judgment conveyed to the national courts a relatively wide margin of discretion in decision-making with regard to the review of contract terms, because the task of the assessment, whether the method of calculating the repayment instalments of credit contracts denominated in foreign currency is one of the contractual essentialia negotii, was assigned to the national court. The CJEU clarifies, however, that the difference between the selling rate and buying rate of the foreign currency is not to be regarded as remuneration; thus, the review of the contract terms pursuant to Art 4 Para 2 Unfair Terms Directive could not be excluded. The CJEU opens the way for the national courts to substitute the invalid terms in case of incapability of continuing in existence of the credit contract and thus to some extent changes its case law. It remains to be seen whether the repayment of credit contracts denominated in foreign currency will not be obstructed any more in Hungary after the Kasler judgment and the fundamental judgment of the Hungarian Kuria. However, the Hungarian civil courts are now threatened by mass actions that can hardly be mastered without a class-action option or a test case procedure.


We present a solution to repeatability assessment of an arm gesture recognition system using multiple orientation sensors. We focus specifically on the problem of controlling unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the presence of manned aircrafts on an aircraft deck. Our goal is to design a robust UAV control with the same gesture signals as used by current flight directors for controlling manned vehicles. Given the fact that such a system has to operate 24 hours a day in a noisy and harsh environment, for example, on a Navy carrier deck, our approach to this problem is based on arm gesture recognition rather than on speech recognition. We have investigated real-time and system design issues for a particular choice of active sensors, such as, the orientation sensors of the IS-300 Pro Precision Motion Tracker manufactured by InterSense. Our work consists of (1) scrutinizing sensor data acquisition parameters and reported arm orientation measurements, (2) choosing the optimal attachment and placement of sensors, (3) measuring repeatability of movements using dynamic time warping (DTW) metric, and (4) testing performance of a template-based gesture classification algorithm and robot control mechanisms, where the robot represents an UAV surrogate in a laboratory environment.


Abstract Popular media messaging has led to increased public perception that gluten‐containing foods are bad for health. In parallel, 'ancient grains' have been promoted with claims that they contain less gluten. There appears to be no clear definition of 'ancient grains' but the term usually includes einkorn, emmer, spelt and Khorasan wheat. Gluten is present in all wheat grains and all can induce coeliac disease (CD) in genetically susceptible individuals. Analyses of 'ancient' and 'modern' wheats show that the protein content of modern bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) has decreased over time while the starch content increased. In addition, it was shown that, compared to bread wheat, ancient wheats contain more protein and gluten and greater contents of many CD‐active epitopes. Consequently, no single wheat type can be recommended as better for reducing the risks of or mitigating the severity of CD. An estimated 10% of the population of Western countries suffers from gastrointestinal symptoms that lack a clear organic cause and is often referred to as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Many of these patients consider themselves gluten sensitive, but in most cases this is not confirmed when tested in a medical setting. Instead, it may be caused by gas formation due to fermentation of fructans present in wheat or, in some patients, effects of non‐gluten proteins. A significant overlap of symptoms with those of CD, IBS and inflammatory bowel disease makes a medical diagnosis a priority. This critical narrative review examines the suggestion that 'ancient' wheat types are preferred for health and better tolerance.


Objectives: This prospective cohort study aimed to investigate gender harassment and sexual harassment as risk factors for prospective long-term sickness absence (LTSA, ≥21 days). Furthermore, support from colleagues was investigated as a moderating factor of this association. Methods: Information on gender harassment, sexual harassment and support by colleagues were derived from the biannual Swedish Work Environment Survey 1999–2013, a representative sample of the Swedish working population (N=64 297). Information on LTSA as well as demographic and workplace variables were added from register data. Relative rates of LTSA the year following the exposure were determined using modified Poisson regression. Results: Monthly to daily exposure to gender harassment was a risk factor for prospective LTSA among women [rate ratio (RR) 1.04, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.02–1.05] and men (RR 1.07, 95% CI 1.04–1.10). Monthly to daily exposure to sexual harassment was also a risk factor for LTSA among women (RR 1.05, 95% CI 1.01–1.10) and men (RR 1.07, 95% CI 1.02–1.13). Exposure to sexual or gender harassment once in the last 12 months was not associated with LTSA. There was no support for an interaction between either of the exposures and support from colleagues in relation to LTSA. Conclusions: Sexual harassment and gender harassment appear to contribute to a small excess risk for LTSA among women and men. For both kinds of offensive behaviors, the pervasiveness appears to be important for the outcome. The role of support by colleagues was inconclusive and needs further investigation.


We present a proof-of-concept photodetector which is sensitive in the visible spectrum. Silicon nanocrystals (Si-NCs) obtained by laser ablation are used as the active absorption region. Si-NC films are formed from a polymeric dispersion. The films are sandwiched between thin insulating films to reduce the electrical leakage current. Furthermore, Ag nanoparticles are integrated with the photodetector to enhance the visible response using plasmonic effects. The measured photocurrent is resonantly enhanced, which is explained in terms of enhanced local fields caused by localized plasmons. The UV–vis spectrum of Ag nanoparticles is also measured to verify the resonance.


RATIONALE
Emerging evidence indicates that psychosocial stress enhances the effect of traffic exposure on the development of asthma.

OBJECTIVES
We hypothesized that psychosocial stress would also modify the effect of traffic exposure on lung function deficits.

METHODS
We studied 1,399 participants in the Southern California Children's Health Study undergoing lung function testing (mean age, 11.2 yr). We used hierarchical mixed models to assess the joint effect of traffic-related air pollution and stress on lung function.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
Psychosocial stress in each child's household was assessed based on parental response to the perceived stress scale (range, 0-16) at study entry. Exposures to nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, and total oxides of nitrogen (NOx), surrogates of the traffic-related pollution mixture, were estimated at schools and residences based on a land-use regression model. Among children from high-stress households (parental perceived stress scale > 4) deficits in FEV1 of 4.5 (95% confidence interval, -6.5 to -2.4) and of 2.8% (-5.7 to 0.3) were associated with each 21.8 ppb increase in NOx at homes and schools, respectively. These pollutant effects were significantly larger in the high-stress compared with lower-stress households (interaction P value 0.007 and 0.05 for residential and school NOx, respectively). No significant NOx effects were observed in children from low-stress households. A similar pattern of association was observed for FVC. The observed associations for FEV1 and FVC remained after adjusting for sociodemographic factors and after restricting the analysis to children who do not have asthma.

CONCLUSIONS
A high-stress home environment is associated with increased susceptibility to lung function effects of air pollution both at home and at school.


Seed dormancy is an important component of plant fitness that causes a delay of germination until the arrival of a favourable growth season. Dormancy is a complex trait that is determined by genetic factors with a substantial environmental influence. Several of the tissues comprising a seed contribute to its final dormancy level. The roles of the plant hormones abscisic acid and gibberellin in the regulation of dormancy and germination have long been recognized. The last decade saw the identification of several additional factors that influence dormancy including dormancy-specific genes, chromatin factors and non-enzymatic processes. This review gives an overview of our present understanding of the mechanisms that control seed dormancy at the molecular level, with an emphasis on new insights. The various regulators that are involved in the induction and release of dormancy, the influence of environmental factors and the conservation of seed dormancy mechanisms between plant species are discussed. Finally, expected future directions in seed dormancy research are considered.


Haiti has seen an increasing number of non-governmental organisations (NGO) and intergovernmental organisations (IGO), providing structural and emergency aid in times of conflict and weather-related events. This was intensified in 2010 when Haiti regained international attention from a ravaging earthquake that shook its core. This ethnographic study analyses the effects of NGOs and IGOs a decade after this natural disaster. We attempt to venture beyond the statistical evidence grounding most analyses provided by NGOs and IGOs to reveal perspectives from individual Haitians that are impacted by the policies and decisions of these organisations. In doing so, we examine the local standard of living, infrastructure, and social dynamics through four in-person interviews conducted in their respective geographic locations. These interviews set a basis for a discussion and examination of organisations' allocation, dependency, and sustainability. The voices of local Haitians reveal the profound, yet subtle impacts that go unreported by foreign scholars that are crucial to understanding the day-to-day challenges faced despite foreign aid. We conclude that Haitians face a stasis of social mobility despite the copious work done by aid organisations that is often inconsistent and misaligned with the needs of Haitians.


For asthma and psychological morbidity, it is well established that higher prevalence among males in childhood is replaced by higher prevalence among females by adolescence. This review investigates whether there is evidence for a similar emerging female 'excess' in relation to a broad range of physical morbidity measures. Establishing whether this pattern is generalised or health outcome-specific will further understandings of the aetiology of gender differences in health. Databases (Medline; Embase; CINAHL; PsycINFO; ERIC) were searched for English language studies (published 1992e2010) presenting physical morbidity prevalence data for males and females, for at least two age-bands within the agerange 4e17 years. A three-stage screening process (initial sifting; detailed inspection; extraction of full papers), was followed by study quality appraisals. Of 11 245 identified studies, 41 met the inclusion criteria. Most (n 1⁄4 31) presented self-report survey data (five longitudinal, 26 cross-sectional); 10 presented routinely collected data (GP/hospital statistics). Extracted data, supplemented by additional data obtained from authors of the included studies, were used to calculate odds ratios of a female excess, or female:male incident rate ratios as appropriate. To test whether these changed with age, the values were logged and regressed on age in random effects meta-regressions. These showed strongest evidence of an emerging/increasing female excess for self-reported measures of headache, abdominal pain, tiredness, migraine and self-assessed health. Type 1 diabetes and epilepsy, based on routinely collected data, did not show a significant emerging/increasing female excess. For most physical morbidity measures reviewed, the evidence broadly points towards an emerging/increasing female excess during the transition to adolescence, although results varied by morbidity measure and study design, and suggest that this may occur at a younger age than previously thought. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


With the formal adoption of the Water Framework Directive in 2000, into European legislation it committed all member states to ensure that all inland waterbodies should reach good ecological status by 2015. As a result examination of the influence of hydromorphology on the ecological health of riverine ecosystems has become an increasingly important priority for statutory monitoring agencies such as the Environment Agency of England and Wales and equivalents in other parts of the UK. It is anticipated that by increasing our understanding of the role that hydromorphological processes play in shaping river habitats and the ecosystems that they support, river management strategies can be developed that will help lead to waterbodies achieving good ecological status. In this thesis, the influence of river hydromorphology and instream channel management activities on instream macroinvertebrate communities is explored. A two-scale approach was used at a regional macro-scale and local / catchment micro-scale. The macro-scale study examines the ecological, hydrological and geomorphological data for 88 river reaches located within the Environment Agency , Anglian Central and Anglian Northern regions, over a twenty year period (1986-2005). At the micro-scale two sub-catchments were selected, the River Bain and River Lymn, both located in Lincolnshire, England for detailed investigation. The micro-scale study was undertaken using ecological, hydrological and geomorphological data collected over three successive seasons (Autumn 2008, Spring 2009 and Summer 2009) enabling the seasonal variations and the influence of both stream size and habitat biotope on macroinvertebrate community composition and structure to be explored. The hydromorphological characteristics and condition of the rivers were quantified using ecologically relevant hydrological indices, calculated from flow discharge paired with geomorphological indices from River Habitat Survey data. The response of the instream macroinvertebrate communities was examined using a range of ecological indices including the Lotic-invertebrate Index for Flow Evaluation (LIFE). The results of the macro-scale investigation demonstrate that the macroinvertebrate community is directly influenced by instream hydromorphology and the level of anthropogenic modification. The micro-scale study highlights important differences in macroinvertebrate communities associated with instream habitat / biotope composition. The quantification of river hydromorphology, with the use of ecologically relevant hydrological indices and geomorphological indices, derived from River Habitat Survey data, is discussed with regards its ability to help explain the structure and composition of macroinvertebrate communities within highly managed /regulated riverine ecosystems. The implications of this research for river managers and for implementing river restoration and rehabilitation schemes are explored.


In the United States, horticultural therapy is primarily taught in university-affiliated certificate programs, with coursework for college credit that focuses on the use of horticulture for therapy and rehabilitation applied to a wide range of settings and applications. This study examines how individuals who have completed a certificate program at the Horticultural Therapy Institute (HTI) use their training. Associated with Colorado State University, HTI serves students from across the United States and internationally, has a relatively large student body, and is accredited by the American Horticultural Therapy Association. The majority of those who complete certificate courses are non-traditional adult learners who have earned a bachelor's degree or higher prior to enrollment. They are comprised of those with professional credentials in a variety of human service fields, those with experience in commercial horticulture, and those who seek to change careers or apply gardening skills in human service. Learning objectives for the intensive certificate courses include those that address horticultural therapy practice, treatment procedures, program development, therapeutic gardens, enabling tools, as well as site and program management. Understanding how individuals use horticultural therapy training is essential for career counseling and curriculum development, as well as to better understand the impact of horticultural therapy education. In order to collect this information, an online survey was sent to 317 people who completed the horticultural therapy certificate from 2003 through 2015. Questions included multiple choice and open-ended formats, with responses returned via the online tool and analyzed to gain an understanding of the influence of horticultural therapy certificate programs on graduates.


Cell based factories can be engineered to produce a wide variety of products. Advances in DNA synthesis and genome editing have greatly simplified the design and construction of these factories. It has never been easier to generate hundreds or even thousands of cell factory strain variants for evaluation. These advances have amplified the need for standardized, higher throughput means of evaluating these designs. Toward this goal, we have previously reported the development of engineered E. coli strains and associated 2-stage production processes to simplify and standardize strain engineering, evaluation and scale up. This approach relies on decoupling growth (stage 1), from production, which occurs in stationary phase (stage 2). Phosphate depletion is used as the trigger to stop growth as well as induce heterologous expression. Here, we describe in detail the development of optimal protocols used for the evaluation of engineered E. coli strains in 2-stage microfermentations. These protocols are readily adaptable to the evaluation of strains producing a wide variety of protein as well as small molecule products. Additionally, the development approach described is adaptable to additional cellular hosts, as well as other 2-stage processes with various additional triggers.


Summary of a symposium presented by the American Physiological Society (Cell and General Physiology Section and Muscle Group) at the 70th Annual Meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, St. Louis, Missouri, April 15, 1986, chaired by M. Lieberman and F. Fay. This symposium reflects a growing interest in seeking new technologies to study the basic physiological and biophysical properties of cardiac, smooth, and skeletal muscle cells. Recognizing that technical and analytical problems associated with multicellular preparations limit the physiological significance of many experiments, investigators have increasingly focused on efforts to isolate single, functional embryonic, and adult muscle cells. Progress in obtaining physiologically relevant preparations has been both rapid and significant even though problems regarding cell purification and viability are not fully resolved. The symposium draws attention to a broad, though incomplete, range of studies using isolated or cultured muscle cells. Based on the following reports, investigators should be convinced that a variety of experiments can be designed with preparations of isolated cells and those in tissue culture to resolve questions about fundamental physiological properties of muscle cells.


Within the past decade surrogate markers have become important and reliable tools for the early diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis. Surrogate markers include the antigens galactomannan and (1 --> 3)-beta-D-glucan for which commercial assays are available, as well as fungal DNA for which experimental PCR assays have been developed. Although many clinical validation studies have been performed, the kinetics of these markers are still largely unknown. Recent studies have addressed several issues related to variables that interact with the performance of the assays, including exposure to mould-active antifungal agents and the interpretive cut-off levels. Insights gained as a result of these studies will help us to further optimize management strategies and to determine the optimal test sequence.


Sahlins makes a forceful case for unification of Descola's fourfold scheme of ontologies. De Almeida graphically demonstrates differences possible even in unifying models. Descola continues his synthetic anthropology in Durkheimian, Lévi-Straussian mode, answering Sahlins with a strong defense of his four-ontologies view. Fischer tests Descola and Latour with Wittgensteinian skepticism of Whitehead, and a sensibility more post-Foucauldian than Lévi-Straussian. Fortun probes the politics of scientific inquiry in an age of extreme risks.


After World War II economists acquired increasing importance in the American society in general. Moreover, the production of economics PhDs in the United States increased substantially and became a less concentrated industry. This period witnessed also the reformulation of the graduate education in economics in the US, informed by the several changes that were occurring in economics: its mathematization, the neoclassicism, the advancement of econometrics, the "Keynesian revolution", and the ultimate Americanization of economics. The centrality that the MIT graduate program acquired in the postwar period makes it an important case study of the transformation of American economics more generally. Therefore, my aim here is to scrutinize the formative years of the PhD program, mostly the 1940s and 1950s.


Centrifugal casting method was used to fabricate composites with graded structures in alumina-zirconia system. The composition profiles of the graded composites showed three distinct regions, with a greater part of the specimen showing nearly linear variation of compositions. The composition profile can be varied by using zirconia powder of different size ranges. The top of the specimens showed nano-scaled microstructures. The composition profiles can also be varied by altering zirconia content in the starting suspension. It was found that the composites with graded structures showed higher bending strength than that of uniform composites. On the other hand, the specimens fractured with the lower zirconia content region being the crack initiate plane showed higher bending strength than that of fractured form higher zirconia content region.


The objectives of this research paper were to study the influencing factors that contributed to the success of electronic commerce (e-commerce) and to study the approach to enhance the standard of e-commerce for small and medium enterprises (SME). The research paper focused the study on only sole proprietorship SMEs in Bangkok, Thailand. The factors contributed to the success of SME included business management, learning in the organization, business collaboration, and the quality of website. A quantitative and qualitative mixed research methodology was used. In terms of quantitative method, a questionnaire was used to collect data from 251 sole proprietorships. The System Equation Model (SEM) was utilized as the tool for data analysis. In terms of qualitative method, an in-depth interview, a dialogue with experts in the field of ecommerce for SMEs, and content analysis were used. By using the adjusted causal relationship structure model, it was revealed that the factors affecting the success of e-commerce for SMEs were found to be congruent with the empirical data. The hypothesis testing indicated that business management influenced the learning in the organization, the learning in the organization influenced business collaboration and the quality of the website, and these factors, in turn, influenced the success of SMEs. Moreover, the approach to enhance the standard of SMEs revealed that the majority of respondents wanted to enhance the standard of SMEs to a high level in the category of safety of e-commerce system, basic structure of e-commerce, development of staff potentials, assistance of budget and tax reduction, and law improvement regarding the e-commerce respectively. Keywords—Electronic Commerce, Influencing Factors, Small and Medium Enterprises.


SUMMARY: The bioassay on pink bollworm Pectinophora gassypiella (Saunders) was carried out using δ - endotoxin or purified crystals of an indigenous isolate of bacillus thuringiensis sotto. The crystals were obtained by two phase liq/liq separation technique. LD 50 of the target insect was determined to be 30 µg/ml of purified δ - endotoxin per milliliter of the diet.


We propose a new kernel-based data transformation technique. It is founded on the principle of maximum entropy (MaxEnt) preservation, hence named kernel MaxEnt. The key measure is Renyis entropy estimated via Parzen windowing. We show that kernel MaxEnt is based on eigenvectors, and is in that sense similar to kernel PCA, but may produce strikingly different transformed data sets. An enhanced spectral clustering algorithm is proposed, by replacing kernel PCA by kernel MaxEnt as an intermediate step. This has a major impact on performance.


Combustion-generated pollutants, principally those from solid-fuels including biomass and coal when cooking and heating, bring out a significant public health hazard in both developed and developing countries. Most of the existing studies addressing this issue focus on developing countries, and on exposure when cooking rather than heating. By using Kentucky rural data, this research explores the health risk associated with heating fuel choice. Given the simultaneity between heating fuel choice and prevalence of asthma and allergy, we obtain the instrumental variable (IV) estimate for Logit models through the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). After correcting for simultaneity bias, we do not find strong evidence supporting the causal relationship between polluting heating use and the prevalence of asthma, allergy, and other respiratory disease. Some demographic and lifestyle factors do have significant effects on the prevalence of these diseases.


Studies have found requirement of an application for the police to effectively manage the police personnel and to get updates quickly about impending traffic rule breakers and in a better manner. There is distinct need of this application for the police to be smart in smart city scenario, we have implemented this application to help the police in better manner and quickly have good solving of the problem and doing police duties in a proper way. The resultant draws attention to the problems faced by police officers and creates effectiveness in the working of this system. Solving the problem of corruption is the primary end result of this project. We provide a survey base paper for understanding and judging the requirement for the police personnel and present the required solution.


Abstract Despite recent progress on synthetic transcription factor generation in eukaryotes, there remains a need for high-activity bacterial versions of these systems. In synthetic biology applications, it is useful for transcription factors to have two key features: they should be orthogonal (influencing only their own targets, with minimal off-target effects), and programmable (able to be directed to a wide range of user-specified transcriptional start sites). The RNA polymerase of the bacteriophage T7 has a number of appealing properties for synthetic biological designs: it can produce high transcription rates; it is a compact, single-subunit polymerase that has been functionally expressed in a variety of organisms; and its viral origin reduces the connection between its activity and that of its host's transcriptional machinery. We have created a system where a T7 RNA polymerase is recruited to transcriptional start sites by DNA binding proteins, either directly or bridged through protein–protein interactions, yielding a modular and programmable system for strong transcriptional activation of multiple orthogonal synthetic transcription factor variants in Escherichia coli. To our knowledge this is the first exogenous, programmable activator system in bacteria.


We consider controller-stopper problems in which the controlled processes can have jumps. The global filtration is represented by the Brownian filtration, enlarged by the filtration generated by the jump process. We assume that there exists a conditional probability density function for the jump times and marks, given the filtration of the Brownian motion, and decompose the global controller-stopper problem into controller-stopper problems with respect to the Brownian filtration, which are determined by a backward induction. We apply our decomposition method to indifference pricing of American options under multiple default risk. The backward induction leads to a system of reflected backward stochastic differential equations (RBSDEs). We show that there exists a solution to this RBSDE system and that the solution provides a characterization of the value function.


The groups of algebraic cycles on complex projective space P(V ) are known to have beautiful and surprising properties. Therefore, when V carries a real structure, it is natural to ask for the properties of the groups of real algebraic cycles on P(V ). Similarly, if V carries a quaternionic structure, one can define quaternionic algebraic cycles and ask the same question. In this paper and its sequel the homotopy structure of these cycle groups is completely determined. It turns out to be quite simple and to bear a direct relationship to characteristic classes for the classical groups. It is shown, moreover, that certain functors in K-theory extend directly to these groups. It is also shown that, after taking colimits over dimension and codimension, the groups of real and quaternionic cycles carry E∞-ring structures, and that the maps extending the K-theory functors are E∞-ring maps. This gives a wide generalization of the results in [BLLMM] on the Segal question. The ring structure on the homotopy groups of these stabilized spaces is explicitly computed. In the real case it is a simple quotient of a polynomial algebra on two generators corresponding to the first Pontrjagin and first Stiefel-Whitney classes. These calculations yield an interesting total characteristic class for real bundles. It is a mixture of integral and mod 2 classes and has nice multiplicative properties. The class is shown to be related to the Z2-equivariant Chern class on Atiyah's KR-theory. Table of


A LabVIEW-language computer program enables monitoring and control of a Transistor Devices, Inc., Dynaload WCL232 (or equivalent) electronic load via an RS-232 serial communication link between the electronic load and a remote personal computer. (The electronic load can operate at constant voltage, current, power consumption, or resistance.) The program generates a graphical user interface (GUI) at the computer that looks and acts like the front panel of the electronic load. Once the electronic load has been placed in remote-control mode, this program first queries the electronic load for the present values of all its operational and limit settings, and then drops into a cycle in which it reports the instantaneous voltage, current, and power values in displays that resemble those on the electronic load while monitoring the GUI images of pushbuttons for control actions by the user. By means of the pushbutton images and associated prompts, the user can perform such operations as changing limit values, the operating mode, or the set point. The benefit of this software is that it relieves the user of the need to learn one method for operating the electronic load locally and another method for operating it remotely via a personal computer. This program was written by Vincent Scullin of Glenn Research Center and Christopher Garcia of QSS Group, Inc. Further information is contained in a TSP [see page 1]. Inquiries concerning rights for the commercial use of this invention should be addressed to NASA Glenn Research Center, Commercial Technology Office, Attn: Steve Fedor, Mail Stop 4–8, 21000 Brookpark Road, Cleveland, Ohio 44135. Refer to LEW-17292.


As the memory density and capacity grows, it is more likely that the number of defects increases. For this reason, in order to improve memory yield, repair analysis is widely used. Built-in redundancy analysis (BIRA) is regarded as one of the solutions to improve memory yield. However, the previous BIRA approaches require large hardware overhead to achieve an optimal repair rate. This is the main obstacle to use BIRA practically. Therefore, a new BIRA is proposed to reduce the hardware overhead significantly using spare allocation probability according to the number of faults on a sparse faulty line. The experimental results show that the hardware overhead of the proposed approach can be considerably reduced with slight loss of repair rate. Therefore, it can be used as a practical solution for BIRA.


Background: Seasonal variation in hospitalization for cardiovascular disease has been described in the temperate regions of the world as well as in Northern Nigeria. Increase admission rates during the cold seasons have been reported in these areas. No studies have been done in Southern Nigeria. This study is thus aimed at describing the seasonal variation in admissions for heart failure, uncontrolled hypertension and hypertension related-stroke in Southern Nigeria. Methods: Hospital records of patients admitted to the medical wards of the University of Uyo Hospital (UUTH) with heart failure of all causes, uncontrolled hypertension and hypertension – related stroke (Cerebrovascular accident) between January 1998 and December 2001 were used. Epi-Info 2002 software was used to analyze data. Results: Of the 3500 patients admitted during the study period 542 (15.3%) were on account of heart failure, uncontrolled hypertension and hypertension related cerebrovascular accident (CVA). The mean age of patients was 52 ± 12.8 years. The average monthly admission was eleven (11). More admissions were recorded in the rainy (cold) season than in the dry (hot) season. The observed difference was however statistically significant only for heart failure and uncontrolled hypertension (P<.05). Conclusion: Admissions for heart failure and uncontrolled hypertension are therefore more during the wet (cold) season in southern Nigeria. This may be attributed to the high default rate to follow up visit in this season when agricultural activity is intense and less attention given to medical care. This leads to poor compliance to medications and clinical deterioration. The already bad road network both in rural and urban centers also become worse at this time making access to medical care difficult. Facilities and measures should thus be put in place to provide adequate medical care for these patients during that


In this paper we evaluates the effectiveness of three different distributed genetic algorithms (DGAs). The first one is DGA with Diversity Guided Migration, second one is DGA with Automated Adaptive Migration and the last one is DGA with Bi-coded chromosomes and confidence rates. All these algorithms were investigated to improve the overall quality of solutions in the distributed genetic algorithm for different problems. Our comparison between those algorithms depended on some important factors; like, achieving diversity in selecting individuals, process of replacing the individuals between subpopulations, computational time and memory space. As a result, DGA with Diversity Guided Migration (DGM), was nominated to be better than the other DGAs. It improves the performance for many problems and search spaces.


Erected more than 20 years ago as a controversial test-bed for the human colonization of space, Biosphere 2 is back in business with the new Landscape Evolution Observatory (LEO). Just like Biosphere 2, the gleaming observatory is unprecedented in scale and boasts impressive engineering. Housed inside three cavernous, glass-enclosed bays, LEO9s hillslopes are realistic in size yet still offer the ability to manipulate the environment. The resulting observations will help researchers study questions such as how the flow of underground water is affected by plant growth and chemical changes in the soil. In addition, scientists will test computer models of watershed hydrology and vegetation dynamics, important for predicting environmental change from global warming.


Once the importance of the role of humans in an organization or company, so the company needed support for the development of human resource development (HRD) as a principal activity of the company. HR has a major role in improving the effectiveness of the company, so it must be managed and maintained. HR must be managed properly increasingly realized by the company so that the term human resource management is not just management personnel (Personnel Management), but include broader goals, which views human beings with all of its uniqueness and ability to grow. Organizational culture is often called the working culture, because it is indispensable to the performance (performance) HR; strong organizational culture, the stronger the incentive to excel. MCF remained unmoved and did not stagnate in improving the quality of human resources and try to resist the negative impact of global recession, but with lower costs to a minimum. One theory or the concept of culture's most famous and very simple is the concept of Kaizen. The concept can be regarded as a traditional concept in management science has a tremendous effect if run properly. Gemba can be interpreted as a workplace that is as a place of products created, manufactured, and developed. While Kaizen is defined as continuous improvement (continuous). Kaizen concept assumes that life should strive for continuous improvement. Culture that must be brought into the work environment. So the concept is rooted from individual each employee.
Formulation of the problem in this study are as follows: (1) How is the application of Kaizen culture in PT. Mega Central Finance Branch Tulungagung? (2) How is the performance of employees at PT. Mega Central Finance Branch Tulungagung? (3) Is there a significant influence on employee performance and Kaizen culture?
This study uses a quantitative approach. Sources of data in this study were (1) Primary data, (2) secondary data. Techniques used for data collection in this study are as follows: (1) questionnaire (2) documentation (3) interviews. Analysis of data using a variety of scales, validity, reliability test, multiple linear regression
Based on the analysis and discussion of the results obtained as follows: (1) The culture of kaizen in PT. Mega Central Finance Branch Tulungagung is to apply the 5 elements of kaizen Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, and Shitsuke. (2) The performance of employees in PT. Mega Central Finance Branch Tulungagung considered to be high and this can be seen from the values obtained show that high performance is for the number of 105 employees included in the category of high, quality improved 103 into the high category, and a matter of time 108 included in the high category while for the average score 105.33 average, including in the high category.


In this paper we prove a C regularity result in dimension two for almost-minimizers of the constrained one-phase Alt-Caffarelli and the two-phase Alt-Caffarelli-Friedman functionals for an energy with variable coefficients. As a consequence, we deduce the complete regularity of solutions of a multiphase shape optimization problem for the first eigenvalue of the DirichletLaplacian up to the fixed boundary. One of the main ingredient is a new application of the epiperimetric-inequality of [18] up to the boundary. While the framework that leads to this application is valid in every dimension, the epiperimetric inequality is known only in dimension two, thus the restriction on the dimension.


There is mounting evidence that functional deficiencies or imbalances in certain highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFA) of the omega-3 and omega-6 series may contribute to a wide range of developmental and psychiatric conditions, including dyslexia, dyspraxia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, depression, bipolar disorder and the schizophrenia spectrum. These nutrients are essential to the development and function of the brain, but the omega-3 HUFA in particular (eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acids) are often lacking from modern diets. The evidence implicating omega-3 fatty acids in these conditions is summarized here, with a focus on the results from randomized controlled treatment trials. These indicate that treatment with eicosapentaenoic acid can reduce symptoms in adults with mood disorders, schizophrenia and possibly Huntington's disease. In children, preliminary evidence suggests that omega-3 HUFA could also reduce some of the
 behavioural and learning difficulties associated with ADHD, dyslexia and related conditions. The key features of most of these conditions can be found in milder form as part of normal individual differences in mood, behaviour and cognition. The evidence presented here therefore has implications for the general population, and indicates that an adequate dietary intake of omega-3 fatty acids in particular may be crucial for optimal mental health and functioning. Keywords: brain; development disorders; mental health; unsaturated fatty acids


In this study, an Ohno's anti-symmetric shear loading test was conducted after strengthening reinforced concrete (RC) beams damaged by corrosion of stirrup, with carbon fiber sheets (CFS) with a view to reviewing the effect of CFS on shear strengthening. As a result, it was found that CFS like stirrups could take shear stress, and that shear strength could be increased by using more CFS for reinforcement. It was also revealed that shear strength could be calculated by an existing evaluation equation by properly evaluating the effect of CFS on shear strengthening, based on the quantity of reinforcing CFS, ways of fixing the sheets and anchorage length as the effect on shear strengthening varied depending on the fixing method while sheet anchorage increased deformability.


The central concern of this thesis is to explore the role of biography in the post-experience development of administrators. To this end the thesis uses a case study approach to examine the use of biography in the Administrative Staff Colleges of Britain and Australia, the case material then forming a methodological spring-board for a prospective study of alternative approaches.
The use of biography toward educational ends has its roots in classical antiquity, but its evolution has been strongly influenced by the fluctuating status of the individual in social thought and science, and it was perhaps not entirely coincidental that biography appeared in its first major institutional setting at a time when the individual was experiencing something of a revival as an object of legitimate concern.
In this pioneering use of biography, the Administrative Staff College at Henley-on-Thames adopted the generalized study of past lives as a catalyst in the process of administrative socialization, an approach which was later replicated in its Australian counterpart at Mount Eliza. From their inception in 1948 and 1957 respectively, both Colleges maintained this generalized approach rather than adapting to their biographies any of the previous or subsequent developments in applied biography. This was atypical of the Colleges which were generally responsive not only to changing priorities in
the development of administrators but also to pedagogical innovations. Accordingly, the extent to which their biographies meshed with the overall pattern of their programmes progressively diminished: at Henley the biographies gradually became absorbed in an attenuated form within other elements of the course; at Mount Eliza they ultimately succumbed to the effects of that College's response to changing administrative needs.
The case studies not only reveal the need for a theoretical underpinning and for an approach which is sufficiently flexible to meet changing needs, but also highlight the opportunities presented by biography as a means to programme integration and in facilitating the organization of experience which gives an overall clarity to life as an administrator.
In developing alternative approaches to the use of biography in the post-experience development of administrators, the thesis draws upon both the case material and the literature of a number of disciplines. From generating a set of prescriptive criteria
to serve as a paradigm for this application of biography, the thesis turns to an exploration of the first of the alternative approaches, using administrative style as a conceptual base. After mapping the various perspectives on style, the thesis develops guidelines for, and an illustration of, the application of the concept. The second of the alternative approaches is an amalgam of the intuitive method of personalistic psychology with an analytical framework. The thesis discusses the theoretical underpinning of this approach and illustrates how it may be applied.
The overall conclusion drawn by the thesis is that biography not only can but should play an integral role in the post-experience development of administrators.
To paraphrase Lasswell: administration without biography is a form of taxidermy.


Psychosocial interventions in many post conflict settings, including Rwanda, have failed to facilitate dialogue between members of conflicting groups while aiming to rebuild the broken social fabric that individuals and communities depend on for sustainable peace and development. Locally initiated programmes that do engage conflicting parties in dialogue are often overlooked, and therefore unable to inform interventions. To begin to fill this gap, this article presents a qualitative study of key factors that facilitated intergroup dialogue and mutual healing between Hutus and Tutsis through the Healing of Life Wounds, a community based mental health programme initiated in Rwanda. Data were collected from 23 participants who attended the programme as part of this investigation and includes pre and post intervention interviews, as well as notes from participant and researcher's observations. Findings indicate that openness to change, a safe space for sharing, an understanding facilitator and supportive material resources were all factors that encouraged participants to share their personal stories and engage in acts of mutual support. Participants began to integrate positive patterns of relationships within the group, and in their communities. The implications for post conflict rebuilding are also discussed.


Summary.  The objectives of this article were to study the reported prevalence of haemophilia B (HB) on a country‐by‐country basis and to analyse whether the prevalence of HB varied by national economy. The prevalence of HB is the proportion of diagnosed, reported cases of HB in a population at a specific point of time. We collected data on the HB prevalence for 105 countries from the World Federation of Hemophilia annual global surveys. Our results showed that the HB prevalence varied considerably among countries, even among the wealthiest of countries. The HB prevalence (per 100 000 males) for the highest income countries was 2.69 ± 1.61 (mean ± SD), whereas the prevalence for the rest of the world was 1.20 ± 1.33 (mean ± SD). Ireland had the highest reported HB prevalence of 8.07 per 100 000 males. There was a strong trend of increasing HB prevalence (per 100 000 males) over time. Prevalence data reported from the WFH compared well with prevalence data from the literature. The WFH annual global surveys have some limitations, but they are the best available source of worldwide haemophilia data. Prevalence data are extremely valuable information for the planning efforts of national healthcare agencies in setting priorities and allocating resources for the treatment of HB.


In this paper, branching entropy techniques and isiXhosa language heuristics are adapted to develop unsupervised morphological segmenters for isiXhosa. An overview of isiXhosa segmentation issues is given, followed by a discussion on previous work in automated segmentation, and segmentation of isiXhosa in particular. Two unsupervised isiXhosa segmenters are presented and compared to a random minimum baseline and Morfessor-Baseline, a standard in unsupervised word segmentation. Morfessor-Baseline outperforms both isiXhosa segmenters at 79.10% boundary identification accuracy. The IsiXhosa Branching Entropy Segmenter (XBES) performance varies depending on the segmentation mode used, with a maximum of 73.39%. The IsiXhosa Heuristic Maximum Likelihood Segmenter (XHMLS) achieves 72.42%. The study suggests that unsupervised isiXhosa morphological segmentation is feasible with better optimization of the current attempts.


Clinicians involved in the conservative care of chronic wounds have many treatment interventions from which to choose, including debridement/irrigation, dressings and pressure-relieving devices, to name a few. All are physical treatments that create an ideal wound healing environment. Unfortunately, many wounds heal very slowly, do not heal, or worsen. This situation relates to the woman in this case study who had a non-healing leg ulcer for 12 months. One of the interventions commonly used to treat chronic wounds is bio-electrical stimulation therapy (BEST), and the rationale for use of this method is based on the fact that the human body has an endogenous bioelectric system that enhances healing of bone fractures and soft-tissue wounds. When the body's endogenous bioelectric system fails and cannot contribute to wound repair processes, therapeutic levels of electrical current may be delivered into the wound tissue from an external source.


Adjuvants are essential components of most clinically used vaccines. This is because the majority of nonliving vaccines are relatively poor inducers of adaptive immunity unless effective adjuvants are co-administered. Aluminum salts (alum) have been used as adjuvants with great success for almost a century and have been particularly effective at promoting protective humoral immunity. However, alum is not optimally effective for diseases where cell-mediated immunity is required for protection. Furthermore, adjuvants including oil-in-water emulsions have shown improved efficacy for avian influenza protection suggesting that even for diseases where humoral immunity can confer protection, there is scope for developing improved adjuvants. There have been major developments in antigen discovery over the past decade, which has accelerated the vaccine development process for new indications and this demands a new generation of adjuvants that can drive and specifically direct the desired immune responses. A number of systems are under investigation that combine different types of adjuvants into specific formulations with greater activity. Additionally, targeting of vaccines to specific immune cells shows great promise. In the case of cancer and chronic infectious diseases, it may be difficult to develop effective vaccines without blocking immune regulatory pathways, which impede cell-mediated responses. However, increased understanding of immunology and particularly the innate immune system is informing vaccine adjuvant research and consequently driving the development of novel and specifically directed vaccine adjuvant strategies. In this article we address the importance of adjuvants in vaccine development, the known mode of action of specific adjuvants and recent developments in this important field.


Wireless communications using ad hoc networks are receiving an increasing interest. The most attractive feature of ad hoc networks is the flexibility. The network is set up by a number of units in an ad hoc manner, without the need of any fixed infrastructure. Communication links are established between two units if the signal strength is sufficiently high. As not all pairs of nodes can establish direct links, the traffic between two units may have to be relayed through other units. This is known as the multihop functionality. Design of ad hoc networks is a challenging task. In this paper we study the problem of resource allocation with spatial TDMA (STDMA) as the access control scheme. Previous work for this problem has mainly focused on heuristics, whose performance is difficult to analyze when optimal solutions are not known. We develop, for both node-oriented and link-oriented allocation strategies, mathematical programming formulations for resource optimization. We further present a column generation approach, which, in our numerical experiments, constantly yields optimal or near-optimal solutions. Our results provide important benchmarks when evaluating heuristic on-line algorithms for resource optimization using STDMA.


The study was conducted to determine the effect of calcium (Ca) supplementation in the diets of old layers using different Ca sources and levels on their production performance and egg quality. One hundred 50-week old layers were randomly distributed to five treatments following a completely randomized design: 1) basal diet (control); 2) basal diet + 1% Ca source A; 3) basal diet + 1.5% Ca source A; 4) basal diet + 1% Ca source B; and 5) basal diet + 1.5% Ca source B. Each treatment was replicated 20 times with an individually caged layer per replicate. The feeding period lasted for 16 weeks. Results showed that the addition of 1% and 1.5% Ca from different sources other than limestone (grits and fine) did not significantly affect the performance of the old layers in terms of body weight gain, livability, feed consumption, feed efficiency and percent egg production. However, significant effect was only observed on egg quality parameters in layers fed with 1% and 1.5% additional Ca – heavier eggs laid, thicker shells and lesser number of defective eggs. The added component of the Ca supplements improved Ca absorption resulting in improved egg quality. It is also implied that 5.15g of Ca per day is tolerable; above this level depresses egg production. Income over feed cost was higher for layers fed with 1% additional Ca supplementation followed by diets with 1.5% additional Ca source. Keywords: Ca, dietary treatments, egg quality, old layers, production performance


The local linear method is popular in estimating the nonparametric continuous-time diffusion models but it may produce negative results for the diffusion (or volatility) function and thus lead to insensible inference. We demonstrate this using US interest rates data. We propose a new functional estimation method of the diffusion coefficient based on re-weighting the conventional Nadaraya-Watson estimator. It preserves appealing bias properties of the local linear estimator and is guaranteed to be non-negative in finite samples. A limit theory is developed under mild requirements (recurrence) of the data generating mechanism without assuming stationarity or ergodicity.


The conventional fuzzy C-means (FCM) algorithm is not robust to noise and its rate of convergence is generally impacted by data distribution. Consequently, it is challenging to develop FCM-related algorithms that have good performance and require less computing time. In this article, we elaborate on a comprehensive FCM-related algorithm for image segmentation. To make FCM robust, we first utilize a morphological grayscale reconstruction (MGR) operation to filter observed images before clustering, which guarantees noise-immunity and image detail-preservation. Since real images can generally be approximated by sparse coefficients in a tight wavelet frame system, feature spaces of observed and filtered images can be obtained. Taking such features to be clustered, we investigate an improved FCM model in which a sparse regularization term is introduced into the objective function of FCM. We design a three-step iterative algorithm to solve the sparse regularization-based FCM model, which is constructed by the Lagrangian multiplier method, hard-threshold operator, and normalization operator, respectively. Such an algorithm can not only perform well for image segmentation, but also come with high computational efficiency. To further enhance the segmentation accuracy, we use MGR to filter the label set generated by clustering. Finally, a large number of supporting experiments and comparative studies with other FCM-related algorithms available in the literature are provided. The obtained results for synthetic, medical and color images indicate that the proposed algorithm has good ability for multiphase image segmentation, and performs better than other alternative FCM-related algorithms. Moreover, the proposed algorithm requires less time than most of the existing algorithms.


BACKGROUND
Patient outcomes are presumed to vary during early implementation of a trauma system because of fluctuations in processes of care. This study estimates risk-adjusted survival for injured geriatric patients during implementation of the Washington State trauma system.

METHODS
A presystem (1988-1992) versus early construction phase (1993-1995) retrospective cohort analysis of hospitalized geriatric injured patients in Washington State was conducted. Hospital data were cross-linked to death certificates, providing patient follow-up. A Cox proportional hazards model assessed survival to 60 days from hospital admission.

RESULTS
A total of 77,136 geriatric patients were assessed. No difference in survival was observed (before vs. after) for all geriatric injured patients. However, among severely injured patients (Injury Severity Score > 15), survival during the implementation phase increased by 5.1% compared with patients admitted during the presystem years (p = 0.03).

CONCLUSION
This study demonstrates improved survival for seriously injured geriatric trauma patients during construction of the Washington State trauma system.


Parathyroid hormone-related protein (PTHrP) was discovered as a result of a search for the circulating factor secreted by cancers which causes the common paraneoplastic syndrome humoral hypercalcemia of malignancy. Since the identification of the peptide in 1982 and the cloning of the cDNA in 1987, it has become clear that PTHrP is a prohormone that is posttranslationally cleaved by prohormone convertases to yield a complex family of peptides, each of which is believed to have its own receptor. It is also clear that the PTHrP gene is expressed not only in cancers but also in the vast majority of normal tissues during adult and/or fetal life. In contrast to the situation in humoral hypercalcemia of malignancy in which PTHrP plays the role of a classical "endocrine" hormone, under normal circumstances PTHrP plays predominantly paracrine and/or autocrine roles. These apparent physiological functions are also complex and appear to include 1) regulation of smooth muscle (vascular, intestinal, uterine, bladder) tone, 2) regulation of transepithelial (renal, placental, oviduct, mammary gland) calcium transport, and 3) regulation of tissue and organ development, differentiation, and proliferation. In this review, the discovery of PTHrP, the structure of its gene and its cDNAs, and the posttranslational processing of the initial translation products are briefly reviewed. Attention is then focused on a detailed organ system-oriented review of the normal physiological functions of PTHrP.


Sensor nodes are one of the basic elements in the Tactile Internet-based fog computing architecture. They provide a huge amount of data to the network due to the widespread real-world applications that use these types of wireless devices. This huge number of data, transmitted by the sensor devices to the fog gateway and then to the cloud, leads to high communication costs, increased power consumption, and high latency at the fog gateway. These challenges would be considered as a hurdle in the Tactile Internet-based fog system. To tackle these challenges, this paper proposes an Energy-efficient Fog Computing-enabled Data Transmission (EFoCoD) protocol in Tactile Internet-based Applications. The protocol works on sensor devices level in the Tactile Internet-based fog computing architecture. EFoCoD protocol executes a Lightweight Data Redundancy Elimination (LiDaRE) Algorithm at the sensor level to reduce the collected data before transferring them to the smart fog gateway. To study the performance of the EFoCoD, it was compared to its counterpart protocols in the literature just like ATP and PFF. Simulation results show that EFoCoD outperforms these protocols in terms of energy consumption, transmitted data, and data accuracy.


High speed, flexibility, and good arithmetic abilities make digital signal processors (DSP) a good choice as input/output controllers for real time applications. The DSP can be made to pre-process data in real time to reduce data volume, to open early windows on what is being acquired and to implement local servo loops. We present an example of a DSP as an input/output controller for a digital subtraction angiographic imaging system. The DSP pre-processes the raw data, reducing data volume by a factor of two, and is potentially capable of producing real-time subtracted images for immediate display.


High integration, density and complexity are essential in electronic products such as compact and light mobile phone recently. A new type of development for component and material is also needed. In the PCB design aspect, a technique such as pad on via, trying to keep up with the demand for compact and slim products, is commonly used. In a response to increased pressure from these situations, an enhanced ability on reliability of electronic products is gradually needed. The high cost and risk, however, are higher and higher for the assurance in the reliability. We made a procedure which can evaluate a solder joint reliability on the product development phase. Furthermore, we've pursued a development process for preventing failure as we analyzed the failure mode from predicting the causes of the failure more precisely. In this study, focusing on the joint reliability of the solder interconnection between CSP and pad on via, we have passed through a test procedure as follows. First, making samples applied with high integrated circuit (CSP: 0.65 pitch, via hole size: 165um, solder: Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu). Second, operating the thermal cycling experiment (- 45°C~+125°C, 30min/cycle) to find a failure of the test specimen with an electrical method. Third, observation the non-destructive X-ray microscopy and the metallographic cross-sectioning. Fourth, simulation of the finite element model and deformation analysis. Fifth, completion the modeling of the failure mode. Lastly, prediction a lifetime of the solder joint.


Austerity measures in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in the global south have made it virtually impossible for national health systems to provide quality, comprehensive primary care services to the general population. However, recent scholarship has begun to challenge the suggestion that constrained resources have rendered African institutions powerless; rather, in the current landscape of clinical trials and global health interventions, the global south has seen yet another scramble for valued medical subjects and bodies, without which no evidence could be constructed. This makes health institutions and medical staff in "weak" states key to scientific progress and publication. African health researchers and government hospitals have leveraged this relationship by positioning themselves as intervention-ready to well-funded research institutions in the North, in order to fill gaps in services. While earlier scholarship in critical medical anthropology has bemoaned how Northern entities have been able to exploit existing power differentials, this paper follows Okwar and Geissler (2015) in illuminating the agency and entrepreneurialism of the health workers on the ground staffing these transnational "collaborations". Ethnographic data (semi-structured interviews and participant observation) from research on the implementation of a group antenatal care program among nurse-midwives and collaborators in East Africa is presented. Government-employed nurses in this project advocated for previously unconsidered compensation and accepted payment (in various currencies) for work done largely by others. Vignettes of agency from this research illuminate subtle challenges to the assertion of power in this context and invite discussion of unintended consequences which nonetheless reinforce and reproduce the existing system.


An efficient Monte Carlo computer program for simulation and calculation of the total and full energy peak efficiency (absolute and intrinsic) of the cylindrical NaI(Tl)detector (with different: volumes, source-detector separation and gamma rays energies) is described. All the fundamental physical processes (photoelectric effect, compton scattering effect and pair production effect) occurring inside the detector are taken into account. Very fast analytical expressions for the absorption coefficients are obtained. The same program can be used to calculate the response function of the detector to gamma ray. The results show quite well agreement with experimental data and with other calculations within error rate less than 2%. The results can be used in gamma spectroscopy and determining the activity of sources.


This paper discusses the use of a market-driven technique ? transfer of development rights ? to preserve land from development while guaranteeing the rights of property owners. While the technique is often used in the United States, Europe has a lot more urgency in land preservation but it is still lagging in the use of market based instruments such as transfer of development rights. Property ownership can be described as a bundle of rights, including the right to use, the right to exchange, and the right to convert. The transfer of development rights (TDR) technique assumes that the development rights of a parcel, as part of the right to convert, can be sold and used in another parcel. The motivation for the creation of a TDR program is the preservation of environmentally sensitive areas, agricultural land, open space, and historic landmarks. In the task of preserving these areas, TDR is thought to be the best technique since it is a market-type transaction involving low costs for the public, it is more effective than zoning in the protection of land and landmarks, and it provides compensation to landowners that alienate the development rights. The typical TDR program involves the landowner of a preservation or sending zone (or parcel) selling the development rights to a developer who will use these rights in an area designated as development or receiving zone (or parcel). In general, the receiving area allows higher density of construction, which becomes the incentive for developers to buy the development rights. A variation of this program occurs when government creates a TDR bank from which developers acquire rights to develop at higher densities and the government uses the money to purchase development rights in areas it wishes to protect. TDR banks can also help during economic recessions to sustain the price of certificates. The economic analysis argues that TDR programs should be preferred to zoning for four reasons. First, TDR programs are market-based alternatives and, therefore, entail less administrative costs then command-and-control regulation. Second, rezoning decisions frequently involve large rent-seeking costs, whereas TDR overcomes the market failure and increases the net benefits of regulation. Third, the certificates of development rights can be exchanged in the market and provide a compensation to the landowner for the loss of the right to develop. Fourth, in communities facing urban sprawl and suffering pressures to develop, the outcome of a TDR program is an efficient market allocation of land to its most valued use: the market maximizes the aggregate value of the land. The paper summarizes the economic arguments favoring the use of TDR programs and discusses the difficulties in implementing these programs in Europe where command-and-control regulation has been preferred over market-based solutions.


This paper uses a case study of the drawings, early writings and imaginative role play of two children to illustrate how children use a variety of modes to make meaning in ways that are creative and beyond the design and expectation of adults. It aims to valorise the kinds of practices in which children routinely engage but which are often overlooked and de-valued by adults, both parents and teachers. Framed by social semiotic theories of communication, multimodal pedagogies and cognitive accounts of children's drawings, it illustrates how the children in this study work easily and seamlessly across a variety of materials and modes, using the semiotic resources available in their environments, to create imaginary worlds and express meanings according to their interests. In profiling these children, this paper lends support to the claim of multimodal pedagogies that it is the shifting across modes, as well as the freedom to choose the mode of expression, that engages the child's affect and creativity and builds agency and voice.


Schorl dravite and schorl elbaite from different zones of the rare-element-enriched complex granitic pegmatite dykes of the Cruzeiro mine, in Minas Gerais, Brazil, were analyzed by electron and ion (H, Li, B) microprobi s. Geniril mechanisms ofsubstitution (common to schorl and to elbaite independently oftheir position in the pegmatites) drive compositions to "proton-deficient schor1", "alkali-free schorl", and "alkali-free elbaite" end-members, each involving Al enrichrnent. Among the specific mechanisms (1e., those characterizing tourmaline within each separate zone), "octahedral-defect" and "alkalifree proton-rich" types are particularly important in OH-rich, pocket elbaite. The substitution x! + OH<-> xNau + Oz , driving compositions to an "alkali-free proton-rich elbaite", is proposed to explain both the lack of Na and the excess of (OH + F). Bond-valence calculations based on results ofunpublished structure-refinement data allow the OH excess to be assigned to the O(2) site. The composition of the tourmaline in the Cruzeiro suite (high Al content; Mg, Fe, Zn, Mn, and Li covariation; antithetic behavior of oH and F ) records the evolution of the pegmatite-forming melt.


Two experiments investigated adult age differences in episodic and semantic long-term memory tasks, as a test of the hypothesis of specific age-related decline in context memory. Older adults were slower and exhibited lower episodic accuracy than younger adults. Fits of the diffusion model (R. Ratcliff, 1978) revealed age-related increases in non-decisional reaction time for both episodic and semantic retrieval. In Experiment 2, an age difference in boundary separation also indicated an age-related increase in conservative criterion setting. For episodic old-new recognition (Experiment 1) and source memory (Experiment 2), there was an age-related decrease in the quality of decision-driving information (drift rate). As predicted by the context-memory deficit hypothesis, there was no corresponding age-related decline in semantic drift rate.


Aiming at the corrosion problem of concrete structure of bridges in Chaerhan salt lake area, the paper puts forward a new method of using multi-defense lines against salt erosion, helpful to improve the durability of concrete structures. Single factor experiment of salt erosion and a dual-action experiment of salt erosion and drying-wetting cycles were conducted, using 3 kinds of concrete specimens, including simple high performance concrete (HPC), HPC coated with waterproof material outside and HPC mixed with waterproof material. Results of experiments show that high performance concrete prepared in the experiments has good anti-corrosion performance. Moreover, HPC with multi-defense lines application effectively delays salt erosion to concrete, and lengthens service life of concrete structures in saline-lake environment.


Background and purpose — The use of uncemented fixation in total hip arthroplasty (THA) is increasing. Registry studies have indicated an increased risk of revision of uncemented implants due to early periprosthetic femoral fracture. In this paper, we describe the incidence and predisposing factors for intraoperative and early postoperative (≤ 90 days) periprosthetic femoral fractures after cemented and uncemented THA. Patients and methods — This was a prospective observational study in 8 Danish high-volume centers from February 2010 to November 2013. We used the 90-day follow-up from the Danish National Patient Registry and patient records. We obtained intraoperative information from the Danish Hip Arthroplasty Registry and from surgical notes. Results — Of 7,169 primary consecutive THAs, 5,482 (77%) were performed using uncemented femoral components. The total incidence of periprosthetic femoral fractures ≤ 90 days postoperatively was 2.1% (n = 150). 70 fractures were detected intraoperatively (46 required osteosynthesis). 51 postoperatively detected fractures occurred without trauma (42 of which were reoperated) and 29 were postoperative fall-related fractures (27 of which were reoperated). 134 fractures (2.4%) were found in uncemented femoral components and 16 (0.9%) were found in cemented femoral components (p < 0.001). Uncemented femoral stem (relative risk (RR) = 4.1, 95% CI: 2.3–7.2), medically treated osteoporosis (RR =2.8, CI: 1.6–4.8), female sex (RR =1.6, CI: 1.1–2.2), and age (RR =1.4 per 10 years, CI: 1.2–1.6) were associated with increased risk of periprosthetic femoral fracture when analyzed using multivariable regression analysis. Interpretation — Uncemented femoral components were associated with an increased risk of early periprosthetic femoral fractures, especially in elderly, female, and osteoporotic patients.


Instrumental variables (IV) estimation of a demand equation using time series data is shown to produce a weighted average derivative of heterogeneous potential demand functions. This result adapts recent work on the causal interpretation of two-stage least squares estimates to the simultaneous equations context and generalizes earlier research on average derivative estimation to models with endogenous regressors. The paper also shows how to compute the weights underlying IV estimates of average derivatives in a simultaneous equations model. These ideas are illustrated using data from the Fulton Fish market in New York City to estimate an average elasticity of wholesale demand for fresh fish. The weighting function underlying IV estimates of the demand equation is graphed and interpreted. The empirical example illustrates the essentially local and context-specific nature of instrumental variables estimates of structural parameters in simultaneous equations models.


Chuquicamata, in northern Chile, is the world's greatest copper orebody. It was controlled, from the initial intrusions (probably at 36–33 Ma) through mineralization (last major hydrothermal event at 31 Ma) to postmineral brecciation and offset, by the West fault system. East porphyry, West porphyry, Banco porphyry, and Fine Texture porphyry make up the Chuqui Porphyry Complex. East porphyry, the dominant host rock, has a coarse, hypidiomorphic-granular texture. Intrusive contacts between most porphyries have not been found, but early ductile deformation, subsequent pervasive cataclastic deformation, and faulting affects all of the rocks and makes recognition of intrusive contacts very difficult. Potassic alteration affects all porphyries, comprises partial K feldspar and albite replacement of plagioclase, and more widespread biotite replacement of hornblende, with igneous texture largely preserved. It is accompanied by granular quartz and quartz-K feldspar veinlets, which contain only trace disseminated chalcopyrite ± bornite remains from this early stage. Fine-grained quartz-K feldspar alteration, with destruction of biotite and apparently following albitization of plagioclase, accompanies strongest cataclastic deformation and destruction of igneous texture. A band of quartz-K feldspar alteration, up to 200 m wide and 1,500 m long, lies along the southward extension of Banco porphyry dikes and is the locus of the bornite-digenite center of the sulfide zoning pattern. This passes east through chalcopyrite-bornite to chalcopyrite-pyrite as sulfide abundance fades out. Sulfides in quartz-K feldspar alteration are abundant only where there is intense crackle brecciation. Propylitic alteration is superimposed on biotitic alteration at the eastern edge of the deposit, but there is no pyritic fringe. Westward, this zoning is interrupted by the superposition of pyritic main-stage veins with pervasive quartz-sericite. Veins of quartz-molybdenite, up to 5 m wide and cutting all porphyries, were emplaced between the early and the main stages. These veins and early-stage quartz veins are commonly segmented and sheared, with fine recrystallization of quartz that eliminates all original fluid inclusions. It is not clear whether quartz-K feldspar alteration was formed later or earlier than quartz-molybdenite veins. Main-stage veins were focused along a structural zone adjacent to the West fault. This stage is distinctly younger than early-stage mineralization, although it occupies many of the same structures and may involve massive remobilization of earlier mineralization. It may represent a more brittle and much shallower environment, which followed significant erosion of the upper parts of the early mineralization system. Main-stage veins with quartz, pyrite, chalcopyrite, and bornite were formed during dextral shear of the West fault system. The last mineralization of the main stage was enargite, digenite, covellite, pyrite, and minor coarse sphalerite, along with sericite, and locally alunite but only local traces of pyrophyllite and dickite. Some northwest enargite veins were apparently opened after the sense of shear on the West fault system changed to sinistral. Vein and veinlet filling faults and fault-related shatter zones contain the overwhelming proportion of copper at Chuquicamata in all alteration zones and assemblages, including pyrite-free early-stage assemblages. Practically all of these fractures have been opened and mineralized more than once. A still poorly understood late stage formed digenite with relatively coarse grained covellite from deep in the sericitic zone and flaring upward and outward under what became the supergene chalcocite enrichment blanket. The presence of associated anhydrite, typical also of earlier stages but largely leached or hydrated to gypsum by later supergene action, proves this is not supergene covellite, but it is otherwise very difficult to distinguish from supergene covellite. Rims of sphalerite on primary sulfides, almost invariably with inner rims of coarse-grained covellite and/or digenite, occur below the chalcocite blanket from which Zn has been leached. The sphalerite rims are interpreted by most as supergene, but the close association with apparently late hydrothermal covellite-digenite and their absence in all other porphyry copper deposits suggests they too may be hydrothermal. A partially preserved leached capping and oxide copper ore, replacing an upper chalcocite blanket, overlie a high-grade supergene chalcocite body that extends up to 800 m in depth in the zone of fault brecciation and pervasive main-stage sericitic alteration. Some leached copper moved laterally to form exotic copper oxides and silicate in adjacent gravels. Continued movement on the West fault produced a wide zone of brecciation and major displacements of mineralized rock. Net sinistral displacement of about 35 km is indicated by regional mapping, but the details of how much of each stage of mineralization was displaced and how far on which splits of the fault are not well understood. The uniqueness of Chuquicamata is due to its intimate and complex relationship with active regional faulting and to superposition of at least two distinct periods of mineralization.


We present a novel and hierarchical approach for supervised classification of signals spanning over a fixed graph, reflecting shared properties of the dataset.
To this end, we introduce a Convolutional Cluster Pooling layer exploiting a multi-scale clustering in order to highlight, at different resolutions, locally connected regions on the input graph. Our proposal generalises well-established neural models such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) on irregular and complex domains, by means of the exploitation of the weight sharing property in a graph-oriented architecture. In this work, such property is based on the centrality of each vertex within its soft-assigned cluster. Extensive experiments on NTU RGB+D, CIFAR-10 and 20NEWS demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique in capturing both local and global patterns in graph-structured data out of different domains.


Through a thick description of a gay squatting community in south London in the 1970s, this piece explores the ways in which local histories complicate broader accounts of gay life, politics, and culture. Such a focus alerts us to the impact of personal encounters, of local politics, and material circumstances, of coincident local communities, of jobs (or the lack of them), and of major local events (like the Brixton riots of 1981). The local focus and the oral history sources also illuminate the complex ways in which unspoken and often unconscious imperatives associated with ethnicity, class, and the familial, social, and cultural contexts of our upbringings are played out under new and changing circumstances. Taking this approach fractures homogenizing assumptions about gay identity and community--even of a self-identified gay community like this squatting collective. It can also decentre sexuality as a primary category of identity and analysis as other factors come into sharper focus and shed light on the ebb and flow of identification and on the ways in which broader histories are woven into everyday lives. The piece thus considers different scales of analysis, the limits of identification, the inclusions and exclusions enacted when communities come together and identities coalesce, the continuities and discontinuities between broader and counter cultures (especially in relation to ideas and lived experiences of home), and the way memories of the squats and of the 1970s are modulated by subsequent national and gay politics, by AIDS, and by a profound sense of loss.


Many-objective optimization refers to the optimization problems containing large number of objectives, typically more than four. Non-dominance is an inadequate strategy for convergence to the Pareto front for such problems, as almost all solutions in the population become non-dominated, resulting in loss of convergence pressure. However, for some problems, it may be possible to generate the Pareto front using only a few of the objectives, rendering the rest of the objectives redundant. Such problems may be reducible to a manageable number of relevant objectives, which can be optimized using conventional multiobjective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs). For dimensionality reduction, most proposals in the paper rely on analysis of a representative set of solutions obtained by running a conventional MOEA for a large number of generations, which is computationally overbearing. A novel algorithm, Pareto corner search evolutionary algorithm (PCSEA), is introduced in this paper, which searches for the corners of the Pareto front instead of searching for the complete Pareto front. The solutions obtained using PCSEA are then used for dimensionality reduction to identify the relevant objectives. The potential of the proposed approach is demonstrated by studying its performance on a set of benchmark test problems and two engineering examples. While the preliminary results obtained using PCSEA are promising, there are a number of areas that need further investigation. This paper provides a number of useful insights into dimensionality reduction and, in particular, highlights some of the roadblocks that need to be cleared for future development of algorithms attempting to use few selected solutions for identifying relevant objectives.


Armed with a photometer originally designed for evaluating telescopes, Richard Potter in the early 1830s measured the re(integral)ective power of metallic and glass mirrors. Because he found significant discrepancies between his measurements and Fresnel's predictions, Potter developed doubts concerning the wave theory. However, Potter's measurements were colored by a peculiar procedure. In order to protect the sensitivity of the eye, Potter made certain approximations in the measuring process, which exaggerated the discrepancies between the theory and the data. Potter's measurements received strong criticisms from wave theorists, not because they felt they needed to defend their theory, but because they believed that Potter was wrong in using the eye as an essential apparatus in the experiments. Potter's photometric measurements and the subsequent debate reveal the existence of two incompatible sets of measuring procedures, each of which consisted of a body of practices concerning how photometric instruments should be used properly. In the debate, the differences regarding measuring procedures shaped the participant's judgments of experimental evidence and eventually their evaluations of the optical theories.


: Purpose: This study suggests introducing two new institutions in Vietnam, the Public Warehouse, and the Commodity Exchange. Based on these institutes, recommends three commodity-financing methods for financing agricultural commodities, the classical public warehousing-based Lombard financing, the combined version of this with commodity exchange futures and a special 'Trading House' based commodity financing. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study is based on nine-year-long history of connection building, lecturing and examinations of Vietnamese and international sources, furthermore, based on primary research in acquiring direct information from several academic and non-academic experts and prestigious market participants on the examined market. Findings: In the case study the authors examined and presented the reflects to an efficient pattern that can be applied for other sectors and adopted by other developing countries. The establishment of an integrated financing model in vertical integration / supply systems can generate a win-win type of co-operation for all the stakeholders. Practical implications: The combined use the functions of these institutions could help grain market participants, such as producers, manufactures, traders, and financiers for convenient business decisions, price, and credit risk management, and able to involve extra financing resources to the Vietnamese agriculture in a great extent. Beyond market participants advantages, these solutions can help to reach market regulation and stockpiling strategy goals for Vietnamese Government. Originality/value: The proposed techniques offer relatively new solutions but could contribute to the further development of these fields while these methods can eventually be used in other sectors of the Vietnamese economy as well.


Scottish Gaelic has been cited as providing an instance of vowel excrescence (Hall 2006). One of the defining properties of excrescent vowels is that they are phonologically inert and are not motivated by – nor do they contribute to – the syllable structure of a language. In this paper, we report on a series of experiments which tap into native speakers' intuitions of syllable structure in Scottish Gaelic. Insofar as intuitions about syllable count and syllabification reflect phonological structure, our results suggest that the relevant vowels of Scottish Gaelic are not phonologically inert, and contribute directly to native speaker intuitions involving the number of syllables and the affiliation of consonants to those syllables. However, our results also establish that the relevant vowels have an intermediate phonological status, which also distinguishes them from underlying vowels.


Each year the Governor presents a state budget to the General Assembly, detailing all proposed expenditures for each state agency.


Toxoplasmosis is a parasitic disease with worldwide distribution and a major public health problem. In Algeria, human toxoplasmosis is screened in pregnant women and immunosuppressed persons; however, no information is available on the animal infection and a probable implication of the parasite in abortions occurring in the field. This sero-epidemiological cross-type survey on toxoplasmosis in cattle (332), sheep (276) and goats (106) revealed the presence of anti-Toxoplasma antibodies based on the indirect fluorescent antibody test (IFAT), at the respective rates of 3.92, 11.59 and 13.21%. The likelihood of acquiring Toxoplasma gondii infection was higher in sheep and goats (OR=3.22, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.65-6.27 and OR= 3.73, [CI]: 1.69-8.24 respectively) than in cattle (p<0.001). However, the difference between sheep and goats is not significant. At herd level, 5 herds out of 41 (12.19%), 11 herds out of 19 (57.89%) and 4 herds out of 6 (66.66%) showed at least one seropositive case in cattle, sheep and goat herds, respectively. Statistical comparison between genders and age groups showed no significant difference in the three species. The highest serological titers obtained are 1:64, 1:2048 and 1:4096 for cattle, sheep and goats, respectively. Suspicion of the parasite's role in abortions has been investigated, the seroprevalence showed no significant difference between abortive and non abortive females for cattle and goats; however, it was significantly higher in ewes that have not aborted as compared to those having abortions, a high suspicion was done for one abortive ewe whose antibody titer reached 1:1024. The presence of anti-Toxoplasma antibodies has been highlighted for the first time in livestock in Algeria, indicating a contamination with the parasite.

 Key words: Toxoplasma gondii, seroprevalence, cattle, sheep, goats, abortion, Algeria.


Pain has been described as one of the leading causes of morbidity worldwide and is one of the most significant contributors to absence from work and thereby a decrease in productivity. Acute pain is frequently neglected and undertreated both in the emergency department (ED) and in the postoperative period. The management of acute pain is very often inconsistent and inadequate relative to the degree of pain perceived by the patient. This also results in reduced patient satisfaction, readmissions, and delayed recovery in postoperative patients. Suboptimal analgesia is frequently a result of certain barriers, at the physician level as well as patient level. In the setting of an ED, the key to solving the problem of oligoanalgesia starts with the acknowledgment and assessment of pain, involving the treating physicians, nurses, and the other emergency medical service providers.


Excerpt] Each evening during their hunting season, the Naskapi Indians of the Labrador Peninsula determined where they would look for game on the next day's hunt by holding a caribou shoulder bone over the fire.1 Examining the smoke deposits on the caribou bone, a shaman read for the hunting party the points of orientation of tomorrow's search. In this way, the Naskapi introduced a randomizing element to confound a short term rationality in which the one best way to find game would have been to look again tomorrow where they had found game today. By following the daily divergent map of smoke on the caribou bone, they avoided locking in to early successes that, while taking them to game in the short run, would have depleted the caribou stock in that quadrant and reduced the likelihood of successful hunting in the long run. By breaking the link between future courses and past successes, the tradition of shoulder bone reading was an antidote to path dependence in the hunt.


Our current understanding of brainstem reflex physiology comes chiefly from the classic anatomical-functional correlation studies that traced the central circuits underlying brainstem reflexes and establishing reflex abnormalities as markers for specific areas of lesion. These studies nevertheless had the disadvantage of deriving from post-mortem findings in only a few patients. We developed a voxel-based model of the human brainstem designed to import and normalize MRIs, select groups of patients with or without a given dysfunction, compare their MRIs statistically, and construct three-plane maps showing the statistical probability of lesion. Using this method, we studied 180 patients with focal brainstem infarction. All subjects underwent a dedicated MRI study of the brainstem and the whole series of brainstem tests currently used in clinical neurophysiology: early (R1) and late (R2) blink reflex, early (SP1) and late (SP2) masseter inhibitory reflex, and the jaw jerk to chin tapping. Significance levels were highest for R1, SP1 and R2 afferent abnormalities. Patients with abnormalities in all three reflexes had lesions involving the primary sensory neurons in the ventral pons, before the afferents directed to the respective reflex circuits diverge. Patients with an isolated abnormality of R1 and SP1 responses had lesions that involved the ipsilateral dorsal pons, near the fourth ventricle floor, and lay close to each other. The area with the highest probabilities of lesion for the R2-afferent abnormality was in the ipsilateral dorsal-lateral medulla at the inferior olive level. SP2 abnormalities reached a low level of significance, in the same region as R2. Only few patients had a crossed-type abnormality of SP1, SP2 or R2; that of SP1 reached significance in the median pontine tegmentum rostral to the main trigeminal nucleus. Although abnormal in 38 patients, the jaw jerk appeared to have no cluster location. Because our voxel-based model quantitatively compares lesions in patients with or without a given reflex abnormality, it minimizes the risk that the significant areas depict vascular territories rather than common spots within the territory housing the reflex circuit. By analysing statistical data for a large cohort of patients, it also identifies the most frequent lesion location for each response. The finding of multireflex abnormalities reflects damage of the primary afferent neurons; hence it provides no evidence of an intra-axial lesion. The jaw jerk, perhaps the brainstem reflex most widely used in clinical neurophysiology, had no apparent topodiagnostic value, probably because it depends strongly on peripheral variables, including dental occlusion.


Fence lizards, Sceloporus undulatus, reproduce multiple times per year. Survival of reproducing females drops dramatically between clutches from first to final clutch of the year. Also, offspring from later clutches emerge with less time available for growth and storage prior to hiber- nation. Considering these two facts, life history theory predicts that (1) females should exhibit greater reproductive effort (RE) in the second clutch of the active season than in the first, and (2) that the increase in RE should be mediated by a greater allocation of energy per offspring. To test these hypotheses, we compared reproductive traits (RE, clutch size, and egg mass) of lizards from a New Jersey population laying their first and second clutches. Two different estimates of RE (relative clutch mass, and clutch mass adjusted for condition) were significantly lower for the second clutch than for the first clutch. The difference in RE was manifested primarily as a decrease in clutch size. Clutch size was correlated with female body size and condition, but average egg mass was not correlated with either variable. Egg mass varied twice as much among clutches as it did within clutches. In fact, the variation in average egg mass observed among clutches was almost as great as that which exists among populations of S. undulatus. Variation in egg mass within and among clutches has consequences for offspring quality because egg mass was positively correlated with snout-vent length, body mass, and condition of hatchlings. Our data do not support the pre- dictions of existing theories regarding the optimal allocation of RE among offspring.