Shell "locked" nanoassemblies ranging in size from 34 to 78 nm have been prepared from interpolyelectrolyte complexation of block copolymer micelles of poly[(N,N-dimethylacrylamide)-b-(N-acryloylalanine)-b-(N-isopropylacrylamide)] with the homopolymer poly(ar-vinylbenzyl)trimethylammonium chloride above the unimer to micelle phase transition temperature of the block copolymer in water. Of technological significance is the reversibility of the shell cross-linking by addition of 0.4 M NaCl, allowing micelle dissociation below the lower critical solution temperature of the copolymer micelles. Poly(N-acryloylalanine) (AAL) and block copolymers were prepared directly in water via controlled reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization utilizing mono- and difunctional poly(N,N-dimethylacrylamide) macroCTAs.


Aerobic cells adjust the expression of antioxidant enzymes to maintain reactive oxygen species within tolerable levels. In addition, phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase (PI3K) and its downstream protein kinase effector Akt adapt cells to survive in the presence of oxidative stress. Here we provide evidence for an association between these two defense systems via transcriptional regulation of Cu/Zn-superoxide dismutase (Cu/Zn-SOD). PC12 pheochromocytoma cells expressing active Akt1 exhibit lower ROS levels in response to hydrogen peroxide, as determined with the superoxide-sensitive probe hydroethidine. Transfection of constitutive or 4-hydroxytamoxifen-inducible versions of Akt1 results in higher messenger RNA and protein levels of Cu/Zn-SOD. Luciferase reporter constructs, carrying different length fragments of the human sod1 gene promoter, have identified a region between -552 and -355 that is targeted by PI3K and Akt and that contains a putative site of regulation by nuclear factor-kappaB (NF-kappaB). Nerve growth factor (NGF) and Akt augment the transactivating activity and produce higher nuclear levels of p65-NF-kappaB. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays indicate that the putative NF-kappaB regulatory sequence binds p65-NF-kappaB more efficiently in nuclear extracts from these cells. A dominant-negative mutant of IkappaBalpha further demonstrates that the PI3K/Akt axis targets the sod1 promoter at the level of the newly characterized NF-kappaB site. These results illustrate a new mechanism by which the PI3K/Akt pathway protects cells against oxidative stress, involving the upregulation of Cu/Zn-SOD gene expression, and the results identify NF-kappaB as a key mediator in the regulation of this gene.


The objective of this study was to explore the elements of delivering Islamic education through Islamic morality. Three candidates were chosen based on purposeful sampling. The qualitative case study was used and the methods were observation, semi-structured interview and document analysis. This research, which was based on theoretical study adapted from the writings of Al-Ghazali's Ihya' Ulumuddin (first edition), found that there were six elements of delivering Islamic education through Islamic morality, namely, feeling love and sympathy; being sincere; contributing advice; handling error correction wisely; becoming a great role model (qudwah hasanah); and teaching by steps. The research findings showed that the Islamic education teachers involved in this study had learnt the elements of delivering Islamic education through Islamic morality from various sources. In addition, the research found that every respondent had implemented these six elements in their classrooms during the teaching and learning process. Thus, it is hoped that these findings will contribute towards basic knowledge regarding the teaching and learning process in Islamic education, especially the implementation of the six elements during teaching and learning in Islamic education.


Epidemiological research has gone through a very exciting time over the past years in rheumatic and musculoskeletal disorders (RMDs). The future is just as exciting. Although 'traditional' epidemiology in terms of prevalence and incidence of diseases is quite well-known now, there are many gaps to our knowledge in particular in the field of outcomes research (what to assess, when and how?) but also in the field of predictive factors (e.g. predictive factors of severity and of treatment response). Better knowledge in outcomes assessment is key to feasibility of standardised assessments and is the basis of shared decision making. Better knowledge of predictive factors will open the door to truly personalised medicine. Some future directions will be discussed in this talk. Disclosure of Interest None declared


This article is a tribute to Michael White, co-founder of narrative therapy, who passed away on 5 April 2008. Michael White and David Epston founded a substantial and ground-breaking psychological movement based on narrative therapy. Michael touched with dignity and changed for the better the lives of thousands. Michael White was an extraordinary person: philosopher, scientist and psychologist, who has opened alternative opportunities of hope to individuals through narrative therapy. Michael will be mourned by many; his teachings will be celebrated by many more. May the richness of his legacy flourish. A discussion follows concerning the theory of narrative therapy. This is illustrated by picture, depicting the main constructs of narrative therapy (figure 1), representing a metaphor of narrative therapy. This picture is in line with the therapeutic method of drawing pictures of metaphors in the counselling process, as propagated by White and Epston, and illustrated on DVD by David Epston: Narrative therapy with a young boy (Epston, 2002). The aim of the paper is not to give a linear representation of what narrative therapy should be, but rather to illustrate the main facets of narrative therapy. IFE PsychologIA Vol. 16 (2) 2008: pp. 255-274


This work reports an experimental study of the kinetics and mechanisms of gelation of carbon nanotubes (CNTs)-hyaluronic acid (HA) mixtures. These materials are of great interest as functional biogels for future medical applications and tissue engineering. We show that CNTs can induce the gelation of noncovalently modified HA in water. This gelation is associated with a dynamical arrest of a liquid crystal phase separation, as shown by small-angle light scattering and polarized optical microscopy. This phenomenon is reminiscent of arrested phase separations in other colloidal systems in the presence of attractive interactions. The gelation time is found to strongly vary with the concentrations of both HA and CNTs. Near-infrared photoluminescence reveals that the CNTs remain individualized both in fluid and in gel states. It is concluded that the attractive forces interplay are likely weak depletion interactions and not strong van der Waals interactions which could promote CNT rebundling, as observed in other biopolymer-CNT mixtures. The present results clarify the remarkable efficiency of CNT at inducing the gelation of HA, by considering that CNTs easily phase separate as liquid crystals because of their giant aspect ratio.


Christopher Caudwell was the pseudonym of Christopher St. John Sprigg, a British journalist and professional writer who became an important philosopher and critic in the 1930's, author of "Illusion and Reality" and "Studies in a Dying Culture."In the mid-thirties Caudwell joined the Communist Party; he died in 1937 in the defense of Madrid, leaving the manuscript of "Romance and Realism" unpublished. This short but comprehensive book is a Marxist interpretation of English literature from Shakespeare to Spender. The author follows the course of English history-the end of feudalism, the age of exploration, the rise of the common man, industrialization, science- producing his particular synthesis of literature as a subjective experience (romance) and as a response to society (realism). The major writers and movements of English literature are discussed, often with brilliant observations."Romance and Realism" is important as Marxist criticism, as a reflection of the acrid definitions of the writers of the thirties (including Auden, Orwell, C. Day Lewis), and as the highly personal view of a talented critic.Originally published in 1971.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome (HPS) is a multisystem, autosomal-recessive disorder characterized by oculocutaneous albinism, platelet storage pool deficiency resulting in prolonged bleeding, and ceroid lipofuscin deposition. Affected individuals may suffer from blindness, pulmonary fibrosis, colitis, and bleeding diathesis. Although it has been reported in various ethnic groups, HPS is most common in individuals from the northwest corner of Puerto Rico, with a carrier incidence of 1 in 21.


Decision-making by a social entity is a universal experience yet virtually overlooked in consumer research (Ward and Reingen, 1990). A recent call for research to consider affiliation and separation in a social group decision-making setting supports the assertion that this area is under-researched (see Tinson and Nuttall, 2011). Exploring group as opposed to individual decision-making is of particular interest as it provides an opportunity to understand both the social context and social interaction that occurs when making consumption decisions. Although there are a plethora of studies examining the phenomena of family decision-making (e.g. Beatty and Talpade, 1994; Palan and Wilkes, 1997; Lee and Collins, 2000; Chaplin and John, 2010), exploring group consumption and consumer behaviour in an alternate social environment (e.g. amongst colleagues or peers) will generate insight and provide marketing implications for social collective decision-making. Collective decisions made by social groups can be for low or high involvement products and may include, for example, friends deciding which film to see at the cinema, which night club or restaurant to go to, or which holiday to choose. The purpose of this paper, employing a qualitative approach, is to explore the decision-making of an adolescent collective, their social interactions (including conflict and conflict resolution) and to propose an original model based on influencing strategies for social collective decisions.


Total-reflectance measurements on a number of igneous rocks and other minerals indicate that reststrahlen features may be of use for remote probes into the nature of the surfaces of the moon and planets. Varying particle size introduces effects such as reduced spectral contrast and in some cases new features that could lead to confusion in identification unless particle size is known. Short-wavelength reflectance measurements offer a method of determining particle size by remote measurements.


This study examines the relationships between student engagement, college GPA, and persistence for 6,000 students attending 18 baccalaureate-granting institutions. Data sources included student-level information from the National Survey of Student Engagement, academic transcripts, merit aid, and ACT/SAT score reports. Engagement had positive, statistically significant effects on grades and persistence between the first and second year of study for students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Equally important, engagement had compensatory effects for historically underserved students in that they benefited more from participating in educationally purposeful activities in terms of earning higher grades and being more likely to persist.


Generating expressive, naturally sounding, speech from text using a speech synthesis (TTS) system is a highly challenging problem. However for tasks such as audiobooks it is essential if their use is to become widespread. Generating expressive speech from text can be divided into two parts: predicting expressive information from text; and synthesizing the speech with a particular expression. Traditionally these components have been studied separately. This paper proposes an integrated approach, where the training data and representation of expressive synthesis is shared across the two components. There are several advantages to this scheme including: robust handling of automatically generated expressive labels; support for a continuous representation of expressions; and joint training of the expression predictor and speech synthesizer. Synthesis experiments indicated that the proposed approach produced far more expressive speech than both a neutral TTS and one where the expression was randomly selected. The experimental results also show the advantage of a continuous expressive synthesis space over a discrete space.


: The function of the stomach, pancreas, and intestine was studied in patients with chronic duodenitis without resorting to intubation. Disordered relationships between the hormones participating in the functioning of the hypophyseo-antral and entero-thyroid axis, resulting in trophic disorders in the gastroduodenal zone, are associated with characteristic shifts shown by methods of investigation other than intubation: drastically increased acid production in the presence of unchanged activity of urinary amylase before and after nutrient stimulation, combined with amylasorrhea. Diagnostic methods without intubation can earlier detect gastroduodenal diseases of dyshormonal etiology, particularly in children. Such methods may be used for initial screening, preceding more profound studies of both the hormonal status and the function of the organs of digestion.


Future high-power chip stacks with several hundred Watts of power dissipation rely on novel cooling topologies. In this paper, we are introducing dual-side convective cooling considering a lid-integral silicon cold plate in combination with an interposer with embedded fluid cavity. The cavity in the interposer is established by two back-to-back bonded interposer shells with integrated fluid channels. This approach allows the implementation of a cavity height of 240 μm at a through-silicon-via pitch of 225 μm. Interposer test vehicles are fabricated to explore the heat removal capability of three different cavity designs; Channel 2-Port, Pin-Fin 2-Port and Channel 4-Port. They are studied with respect to their thermal response on uniform and non-uniform power maps. The projected power map of a three-tier chip stack with an aggregate power dissipation of more than 600W on 4cm2 area is considered. Heat and mass transport experiments are performed. Changes from laminar to transitional flow regimes are discussed. The transition is most prominent for the pin-fin cavity, indicated by a drastic pressure drop increase above 0.15 L/min and a junction temperature drop. The 4-port design with microchannels outperformed the other designs, considering pressure drop as the relevant boundary condition. The performance difference can be large especially for non-uniform heat fluxes and needs to be studied on a case-by-case basis.


One hundred eight-two patients underwent percutaneous lumbar discectomy using a new nucleotome system. The curative and effective rates were 84.6% and 89.6% respectively, without serious complications. To overcome the difficulty of puncture and cutting the nucleus pulposus at L5-S1 interspace, an efficient approach was undertaken to drill through the iliac wing at L5-S1 using a self-designed circular drill so that the nucleotome could safely reach L5-S1 disc, the successful rate was 100%. By varying the distance and angle of puncture, it is possible to treat central type of lumbar disc herniation, thereby expanding the indications for this procedure.


Kent County Council commissioned some research in 2016 as part of an EU-funded project to better understand the current situation with the internationalisation (export activities) of local companies including barriers to exporting and the challenges faced by businesses. This follow-up report was commissioned to better understand the evolving outlook of Kent businesses relating to international trade as the UK prepares to leave the European Union. It builds on quantitative and qualitative findings from a survey on SMEs' internationalisation in October-November 2016, a roundtable of local businesses organised by Kent Business School in February 2017 and the Kent Business Summit that took place in January 2018.

The report starts with a discussion of the impact on inward and outward Foreign Direct Investments and continues with a discussion of the impact on both facets of SMEs internationalisation, i.e. exporting and importing activity. It then provides evidence on the impact of Brexit on the overall economic activity and concludes by summarising the key findings and recommendations.
A summary of the findings reveals the following important issues:
Firms and especially SMES should be aware of their position in global value chains.
Foreign exchange fluctuations are a major factor especially for SMEs that do not have the resources to hedge in the medium and long term.
Access to talent and skills could have an important effect.
Brexit could be an opportunity but this requires the development of an entrepreneurial approach that enables firms to become resilient.
Kent's economy has the necessary characteristics to develop innovation and entrepreneurship.

These findings suggest that Brexit has a negative impact but this could be mitigated with appropriate support in the following areas:
Supporting businesses to having better planning and scenario analysis.
Enabling access to talent through the retention and attraction of highly skilled labour force.
Supporting an entrepreneurial approach to business through access to funding and additional specialised support in the development of ideas.


Steroids have been the essential component of transplant immunosuppression. Recently, with availability of better immunosuppressive agents, many centers have started steroid free transplant with good success rates. We analyzed the outcomes of early corticosteroid withdrawal (CSW) protocol in our living donor kidney transplant programme. We included 73 patients on CSW protocol on basiliximab + tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil and compared them with 67 recipients on similar regimen with corticosteroids (CSs). CSW group received prednisolone 40 mg on day 1, which was stopped on day 5. Outcomes were evaluated in terms of acute rejection (AR), infections, new onset diabetes after transplant (NODAT), renal function and graft or patient loss. In CSW group, 15/73 (20.5%) patients developed AR, when compared to 5/67 (7.5%) in CS group, (P = 0.02). Biopsy proven acute rejection was seen in 12/72 (16.6%) in CSW group and 5/67 (7.5%) in CS (P = 0.1). One patient in CSW group developed antibody mediated rejection. NODAT was similar (9% in CS vs. 3.7% in CSW, P = 0.09), but infections were higher in CSW group (20.5% vs. 7.5%, P = 0.02). Mean serum creatinine was similar at 6 months (1.24 ± 0.6 in CS and 1.25 ± 0.3 in CSW, P = 0.9). Graft survival was 100% and 97% (P = 0.1) and patient survival was 98.6% and 98.5% (P = 0.9) in CSW and CS groups. Early corticosteroid withdrawal with basiliximab induction was associated with increased risk of AR but did not have any effect on short term graft and pateint survival.


Background and Aims: Intraperitoneal local anesthetic is an effective analgesic approach in laparoscopic appendectomy in adults. The aim of the study was to compare the postoperative pain when intraperitoneal bupivacaine is administered alone versus the addition of dexmedetomidine to it in children undergoing a laparoscopic appendectomy. Methods: In this prospective randomized trial, 52 children were randomly allocated to Group B who received intraperitoneal bupivacaine 0.25% (2 mg/kg) or Group BD who received intraperitoneal bupivacaine 0.25% (2 mg/kg) plus dexmedetomidine (1 mcg/kg) for postoperative analgesia in children undergoing laparoscopic appendectomy. Postoperative pethidine consumption at day 1 was recorded and considered the primary outcome of the study. Patients were evaluated for pain scores at 0, 2, 4, 6, 12, and 24 h, time to first request of pethidine, sedation scores at 0, 2, 4, and 6 h, length of hospital stay, and parents' satisfaction. Chi-square, Fisher's exact, Student's t-test, and Mann–Whitney U-tests were used for analysis. Results: Postoperative visual analog scale scores were lower in Group BD at 2, 4, and 6 h (mean = 3, 3, 3, respectively) compared with Group B (mean = 4, 5, 4, respectively) (P < 0.05). Patients in Group BD had more sedation scores at 0, 2, and 4 h (P < 0.05), longer time to first rescue analgesia (P = 0.03), lesser rescue analgesic consumption (P = 0.02), shorter length of hospital stay (P = 0.02), and higher parents' satisfaction (P = 0.01). Conclusion: Adding dexmedetomidine to intraperitoneal bupivacaine provides adequate postoperative analgesia in children undergoing laparoscopic appendectomy.


Abstract This study measured impact of cool-season crops on seedling emergence, survival, and seed production of weeds common in corn and soybean. Weed dynamics were monitored in permanently marked quadrats in winter wheat, spring wheat, and canola. Three species, green foxtail, yellow foxtail, and common lambsquarters, comprised more than 80% of the weeds observed in the study. Seedling emergence was reduced by winter wheat, but not by spring wheat or canola, when compared with adjacent quadrats without a crop canopy. Approximately 10% of seedlings in spring wheat and canola developed into seed-bearing plants, but no seed-bearing plants were present in winter wheat at harvest. Common lambsquarters produced more than 1,100 seeds/plant, whereas a foxtail plant produced 85 seeds, averaged across spring wheat and canola. At harvest, new seedlings were present in all crops; thus, control after harvest will be required to prevent seed production in the fall. Winter wheat may provide an opportunity to disrupt population dynamics of weeds common in corn and soybean without requiring herbicides. Nomenclature: Common lambsquarters, Chenopodium album L.; green foxtail, Setaria viridis (L.) Beauv.; yellow foxtail, Setaria glauca (L.) Beauv.; canola, Brassica napus L.; corn, Zea mays L.; soybean, Glycine max (L.) Merr.; wheat, Triticum aestivum L


OBJECTIVE
This study was designed to evaluate the results of solitary pancreas transplantation in a protocol that uses the new immunosuppressant tacrolimus (FK) and liberally applies ultrasound-guided percutaneous pancreas biopsy to diagnose rejection.

SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA
Pancreas graft survival in patients who simultaneously receive a kidney transplant (SPK) historically has been 75% to 90% at 1 year, approaching that of cadaveric kidney transplantations. In sharp contrast, graft survival rates in patients who receive a pancreas atone (PA) have remained static over the past decade, with approximately 50% functional at 1 year. It was hypothesized that the results of PA transplantations would improve with newer maintenance immunosuppressants and biopsy techniques.

METHODS
Twenty-seven PA recipients prospectively were treated with FK-based immunosuppression (PA-FK). Percutaneous biopsy was performed for hyperamylasemia, hyperlipasemia, hypoamylasuria, or unexplained fever. One year pancreas graft survival in these patients was compared to 15 cyclosporine treated PA cases (PA-CsA) and 113 SPK recipients.

RESULTS
The 1-year pancreas graft survival rate of 90.1% in technically successful PA-FK patients was significantly better than the 53.4% rate in PA-CsA recipients (p = 0.002) and no different than the 87.4% rate in SPK recipients. The only graft lost to acute rejection in the PA-FK group was because of acknowledged patient noncompliance. Percutaneous biopsy substantially improved the diagnostic certainty in cases of suspected rejection and was associated with a low complication rate (3/178 = 1.5%).

CONCLUSIONS
Modern immunosuppression and biopsy techniques have improved the success of solitary pancreas transplantations to the point where outcome is now equivalent to that of SPKs.


A common assumption in activity recognition is that the system remains unchanged between its design and its posterior operation. However, many factors affect the data distribution between two different experimental sessions. One of these factors is the potential change in the sensor location (e.g. due to replacement or slippage) affecting the classification performance. Assuming that changes in the sensor placement mainly result in shifts in the feature distributions, we propose an unsupervised adaptive classifier that calibrates itself using an online version of expectation-maximisation. Tests using three activity recognition scenarios show that the proposed adaptive algorithm is robust against shift in the feature space due to sensor displacement and rotation. Moreover, since the method estimates the change in the feature dis- tribution, it can also be used to roughly evaluate the reli- ability of the system during online operation.


Training a convolutional neural network (CNN) to detect infrared small targets in a fully supervised manner has gained remarkable research interests in recent years, but is highly labor expensive since a large number of per-pixel annotations are required. To handle this problem, in this paper, we make the first attempt to achieve infrared small target detection with point-level supervision. Interestingly, during the training phase supervised by point labels, we discover that CNNs first learn to segment a cluster of pixels near the targets, and then gradually converge to predict groundtruth point labels. Motivated by this "mapping degeneration" phenomenon, we propose a label evolution framework named label evolution with single point supervision (LESPS) to progressively expand the point label by leveraging the intermediate predictions of CNNs. In this way, the network predictions can finally approximate the updated pseudo labels, and a pixel-level target mask can be obtained to train CNNs in an end-to-end manner. We conduct extensive experiments with insightful visualizations to validate the effectiveness of our method. Experimental results show that CNNs equipped with LESPS can well recover the target masks from corresponding point labels, and can achieve over 70% and 95% of their fully supervised performance in terms of pixel-level intersection over union (IoU) and object-level probability of detection (Pd), respectively. Code is available at https://github.com/XinyiYing/LESPS.


Perceptions of disabilities, giftedness and achievement
Michelle Ronksley-Pavia
MEd (G&T), Grad. Dip (Ed.)., Grad, Cert, BA (Hons)(Vis. Arts)
Abstract

Twice-exceptional children are generally misunderstood by those around them, particularly their teachers frequently their parents, this interferes with their achievement and the best way to explore this problem is to speak to the children and their parents/carers/significant others and record their experiences. Since the 2001 Australian Senate review into gifted education Australian schools have struggled to understand the diverse nature of gifted children even though inclusivity and equity in education have become the policies of choice for 21st Century education. There are numerous empirical studies which assess interventions and identification for twice-exceptional students however what appears absent are explorations which examine the lives and experiences of twice-exceptional children, being children first and twice-exceptional second; their experiences in the education system, at home and outside school, and their stories, to elucidate what may work and what may not work for their education. Additionally how they have been marginalised as a sub-population both of the gifted and of the disabled. Many researchers incorporate psychological and educational theory in their research but there is a deficiency in applying disability theory as a lens to examine the lived realities of children identified as T-E.
This presentation will outline Michelle's current research aimed at examining, and comparing current legislation, policies and recommended best practices in education, to the lived realities of twice-exceptional children (children who are gifted and have a disability or disabilities). Additionally parental perspectives and perceptions will be explored in the research project.


BACKGROUND
Uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) is the most common agent of urinary tract infection (UTI). The classic model of pathogenesis proposes the ascent of UPEC by the urethra and external adherence to the urothelium. Recently, the ability of UPEC to invade urothelial cells and to form intracellular bacterial communities (IBCs) has been described.

METHODS
The objective of the present study was to determine the presence of intracellular bacteria (IB) in children with UTI caused by E. coli and to characterize its virulence attributes and its relation with clinical outcomes. One hundred thirty-three children with E. coli UTI who attended a reference children's hospital between June and November 2012 were included. Urine samples were analyzed by optical and confocal microscopy looking for exfoliated urothelial cells with IB. Phylogenetic group and 24 virulence factors of UPEC were determined using multiplex polymerase chain reaction. Medical records were analyzed.

RESULTS
The presence of IB was detected in 49 of 133 (36.8%) samples by confocal microscopy, in 30 cases as IBC, and in 19 as isolated intracellular bacteria (IIB). Only 50% of these cases could be detected by light microscopy. Seventy-four medical records were analyzed, 34 with IBC/IIB, 40 without IB. Any virulence gene was associated with IBC/IIB. The presence of IBC/IIB was associated with recurrent UTI (odds ratio [OR], 3.3; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.3-9; P = .017), especially in children without urinary tract functional or morphological abnormalities (OR, 8.0; 95% CI, 2.3-27.4; P = .000). IBCs were associated with lower urinary tract syndrome (OR, 3.6; 95% CI, 1.1-11.8; P = .05) and absence of fever (P = .009).

CONCLUSIONS
IBCs/IIB could explain a high proportion of children with recurrent UTI.


Arctic floodplain lakes of the Mackenzie River Delta receive large inputs of dissolved organic matter (DOM) and suspended particulates from allochthonous and autochthonous sources that may drive in situ formation of transparent exopolymer particles (TEP), and represent a complex combination of substrates for aquatic bacteria. During the open-water period of 2006, we tracked abundances of free-living bacteria versus those attached to TEP and to other non-TEP particles in 3 Delta lakes representing gradients of declining river-to-lake connection times, increasing levels of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and declining total suspended solids (TSS). Total suspended bacteria (= free-living + TEP-attached + other-attached bacteria) were high in all lakes (~106 to 107 cells ml−1) compared to tundra lakes, and most cells were particle-attached, despite the high DOC concentrations. Free-living bacteria were best related to DOC concentrations, but represented only 14% of total suspended bacteria. TEP-attached bacteria were best related to TEP mass, but represented only 9.6% of total suspended bacteria. Other-attached bacteria were best related to chromophoric DOM and TSS levels, and represented 76.5% of total suspended bacteria. Bacterial densities on TEP particles increased as TEP mass declined from lakes with strong river influence to the lakes with higher autochthonous DOC. However, bacterial density on non-TEP particles declined over the same gradient as the abundance of their substrate declined. These opposing gradients in bacterial density on particles of differing origin, combined with the high abundances of other-attached bacteria, suggest that TEP colonization is driven by the mass of particles available for colonization by free-living cells within the lakes, whereas non-TEP particles may mostly enter the lake waters pre-colonized with bacteria from terrestrial or benthic sources.


Computerized X-ray microtomography (micro CT) is a powerful technique for imaging and quantification in biomedical materials research. Mapping of various tissue/implants in 3-dimension, which is not achievable with traditional histological slices, is particularly desirable in ex-vivo implant analysis. However, due to a variety of artifacts during image formation, especially the blurred interfaces due to the machine contrast transfer function and the partial volume effect, quantification based on traditional histograms is not accurate. In this work we propose a new 2-dimensional histogram and its application in the analysis of micro CT data of ex-vivo implants, which significantly improve the clarity of the definition of different phases and drastically reduced the artifacts of segmentation compared to conventional methods.


In this commentary, we argue that augmented concepts and research methods are needed to comprehend hybrid urban governance reconfigurations that benefit market actors but eschew competition in favour of deal-making between elite state and private actors. Fuelled by financialisation and in response to planning conflict are regulatory reforms that legitimise opaque alliances in service of infrastructure and urban development projects. From a specific city (Sydney, Australia) we draw upon one such reform – Unsolicited Proposals – to point to a broader landscape of hybrid urban governance, its reconfigurations of power and potential effect on cities. Whereas neoliberal governance promotes competition and views the state and private sectors as distinct, hybrid urban governance leverages state monopoly power and abjures market competition, instead endorsing high-level public–private coordination, technical and financial expertise and confidential deal-making over major urban projects. We scrutinise how Unsolicited Proposals normalise this approach. Commercial-in-confidence protection and absent tender processes authorise a narrow constellation of influential private and public actors to preconfigure outcomes without oversight. Such reforms, we argue, consolidate elite socio-spatial power, jeopardise city function and amplify corruption vulnerabilities. To theorise hybrid urban governance at the intersection of neoliberalism and Asia-Pacific state-capitalism, we offer the concepts of coercive monopoly (where market entry is closed, without opportunity to compete) and de jure collusion (where regulation reforms codify informal alliances among elites connected across government and corporate and consultancy worlds). We call for urban scholarship to pay closer attention to public–private hybridisation in governance, scrutinising regulatory mechanisms that consecrate deal-making and undermine the public interest.


Eyes excised from Xenopus embryos at stages 24 to 25 were cultured for 4 to 6 hours in a medium containing the ionophore X537A or in a control medium. The eyes were implanted either upside down or normally in host embryos at stages 28 to 30, and their retinotectal projections were mapped after metamorphosis. Treatment with X537A prevented realignment of retinal axes in eyes implanted into hosts that were capable of producing retinal axial alignment in all control eyes.


Improving efficiency within the agricultural industry is vital to maintain the food demands of the increasing population, as well the current preference for a more protein rich diet. One avenue for addressing these issues is to study animal-based growth to determine if the efficiency of the production system can be improved by increasing lean muscle mass. The aim of this thesis is to provide an alternative exploration to experimental work to provide an insight into how muscle metabolism in pigs is altered by the administration of a beta-agonist which induces muscle hypertrophy. This will be incorporated into a wider body of work to determine specific pathways to target for improving feed conversion efficiency, contributing to the necessary research into global food security.

We begin by compiling a selection of statistical methods to analyse muscle microarray data, which enables the identification of a selection of genes whose expressions are altered by the exposure to a beta-agonist. These differentially expressed transcripts are then grouped via a k-means algorithm, with log likelihood and the Bayesian Inference Criterion calculations providing an optimal selection of clusters. This results in selecting a group of 51 transcripts and partitioning them into 9 clusters, and identifying several pathways which appear key to the regulation of muscle metabolism in the presence of beta-agonist.

We have proceeded to incorporate this information into a mathematical model for glycolysis and the TCA cycle, in an effort to analyse biological hypotheses about how the promoters work. The equations describe the concentrations of metabolites within the cytosolic and mitochondrial compartments of a cell using mass balance ODEs. An initial model is presented, which is then increased in complexity, to keep up with developments in the experimental side of the overarching project.

We make use of a selection of methods to analyse the model in an attempt to determine the effects that the different parameters cause.

Through steady state analysis, we determine parameter ranges which permit positive steady states. In finding these regions, we also determine the existence of time dependent solutions, which occur when critical values of certain parameters are exceeded, and result in the build up of specific metabolites. We use asymptotic analysis to generate approximate solutions when steady states do not exist.

The model parameters of most interest are those which were identified through the microarray work, namely the upregulated transcripts of PCK2 and those within the serine synthesis pathway, the control mechanism for the first half of the TCA cycle, the proportion of GTP producing enzyme from the second half of the TCA cycle, and the flux into the glycolytic pathway.

We find that critical values for the glycolytic flux, and the GTP production parameter exist, determining whether the model lies within the steady state regime. In a large number of cases, the parameters we choose to represent the beta-agonist case push the system into the time dependent state.

The model does not exhibit any interesting behaviour when the parameter controlling the PCK2 pathway is studied, indicating that initial intuition of the key controlling reaction mechanisms were incomplete.

Whilst there are shortfalls in the model, which highlight areas for investigation, the system is set up for validation and parameter fitting when appropriate experimental data become available.

We have been able to determine specific metabolic pathways within the cell which may be of significance to improving feed efficiency.


Flying-adder frequency synthesis architecture is a novel technique of generating frequency on chip. Since its invention, it has been utilized in many commercial products to cope with various difficult challenges. During the evolution of this architecture, the issues related to circuit- and system-level implementation have been studied in prior publications. However, rigorous mathematical treatment on this architecture has not been established. In this paper, we attempt to explore and understand the signal characteristics and frequency domain behavior of this architecture through mathematical analysis. In the meantime, the underlying concept associated with this architecture, time-average-frequency, is formally introduced.


Soft tissue sarcomas of the oral cavity are uncommon malignancies; those of smooth-muscle origin are extremely rare. Leiomyosarcomas of the tongue are very rare. Either surgery or radiation therapy with or without chemotherapy are the treatment modalities which improve prognosis. We are presenting a 32-year-old man with leiomyosarcoma of the lateral aspect of the oral tongue with neck metastasis, who was referred to our radio therapeutic oncology department after glossectomy and radical modified neck dissection. The clinical and pathologic features together with his clinical course will be discussed. Six months after chemoradiotherapy, he developed a single metastasis in his right femur, and then by features of lung metastasis he died in a few weeks, unfortunately. Iran. J. Radiat. Res., 2005; 3 (3): 143-147


In this paper, six symmetrical compounds with a donor–acceptor–donor (D–A–D) structure based on triphenylamine as a core and bridged with various spacer fragments with electron-acceptor character, such as quinoxaline, phenazine, benzo[g]quinoxaline, benzo[b]phenazine, thieno[3,4-b]pyrazine and thieno[3,4-b]quinoxaline, have been studied theoretically using two quantum methods, DFT and TD-DFT, together by considering their use in organic BHJ solar cells as potential donors of electron. Intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) interactions have been found for all of the compounds due to the electron withdrawing properties caused by the two imine nitrogen atoms in the pyrazine and the electron-donating properties of the other two amine nitrogen atoms in the two triphenylamines that compose the bridge. The ICT interactions are strengthened when the benzene or thiophene ring are fused on the pyrazine acceptor unit, which leads to a bathochromic shift of the ICT band. Moreover, our quantum calculations show that thiophene is a more appropriate ring than the benzene ring for enlarging the ICT interactions and expanding the absorption spectrum. We remark also that when a thiophene ring is fused on the quinoxaline unit in the D6 compound, a significant shift towards the near-infrared is realized, and it exhibits a maximum absorption wavelength at 690 nm compared to the other studied compounds with a threshold that is over 800 nm. This is attributed to the enhanced charge density on the acceptor spacer and narrow band gap of this compound, as revealed by our theoretical calculations. Finally, these results show that extending the conjugation of a compound based on pyrazine as an acceptor in a D–A–D structured compound can be realized by incorporating the thiophene unit in the bridge and then strengthening the ICT interactions.


The installation of forward detectors in CMS and ATLAS turn the LHC to an effective photon-photon collider. The elastic scattering of the beam-protons via the emission of photons, which can be identified by tagging the intact protons in the forward detectors, provides a powerful diagnostic of the central production of new particles through photon-photon annihilation. In this letter we study the central production of dark matter particles and the potential of LHC to constrain the cross section of this process. By virtue of the crossing symmetry, this limit can immediately be used to constrain the production of monochromatic gamma-rays in dark matter annihilation, a smoking gun signal under investigation in indirect dark matter searches. We show that with the integrated luminosity $\mathcal{L}=30~{\rm fb}^{-1}$ in LHC at center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV, for dark matter masses $\sim (50-600)$ GeV, a model-independent constraint on the cross section of dark matter annihilation to monochromatic gamma-rays at the same order of magnitude as the current Fermi-LAT and the future limits from CTA, can be obtained.


Economic growth is a goal for countries around the world in order to improve living standards, and the effect of foreign direct investments (FDI) has long been studied. There are today many theories and empirical studies regarding FDI. Many questions being studied but finding a straight answer to these have showed to be anything but easy. The results and conclusions go in different directions and much disagreement on whether or not FDI actually contributes to growth. One of the core triggers to the Chinese high economic growth pattern is attributed to FDI, this thesis investigates the same FDI impact on economic growth but with focus on sub-Sahara Africa. With the help of different theories and empirical studies we have selected our variables believing they will have a significant impact on this question. With the data collected from the World Bank database about the countries and seven different variables, a regression is created. The results show that FDI plays a part when it comes to GDP per-capita growth and also that corruption has a significant negative effect on growth rates. FDI in sub-Saharan Africa is hypothesized to mainly consist of brownfield investments as a potential explanation. The data this study uses is between 2005 and 2013, meaning the results are probably not applicable to be interpreted long-term.


The combined modality treatment consisted mainly of long-term intermittent combination chemotherapy (VCMB being in the majority) and radiotherapy combined with immunotherapy as well as Chinese traditional medicine. The patients treated with this therapy were observed in 1974-1986, till successive fifty, and followed up to January 1988. They were of the stage I, II, III and IV including 3, 10, 20 and 17 patients respectively. The complete remission rate was 54% (27/50); the partial remission rate, 40% (20/50). The total effective rate was 94% (47/50). According to the calculation of life-table, 2-year survival rate for the stage I-II (n = 13) was 76.2%; 5-year survival rate, 55.5%. For the stage III (n = 20), 2-year survival rate was 46.9%; 5-year, 18.8%. By long-term combined modality, the survival rate has obviously improved, and the possibility of cure has evidently increased.


This paper empirically explores the reason why a recent surge of foreign direct investment (FDI) to developing countries has been mainly driven by less productive firms. To this end, we present a simple model of FDI with vertical division of labor in a heterogeneous firm framework. From a theoretical point of view, in countries with low unskilled worker wages and low trade costs, firms with high productivity invest abroad and engage in international division of labor. Moreover, if trade costs have further reduced, the productivity cut-off level becomes lower and firms within the middle range of productivity will start investing in low wage countries. Our empirical analysis using logit estimation or a multinomial logit model of Japanese firms' FDI choices reveals that a reduction in tariff rates attracts even less productive vertical foreign direct investment (VFDI) firms. This result is consistent with a different definition of VFDI. Because developing countries, particularly East Asian countries, have experienced a relatively rapid decrease in tariff rates, our results indicate that the increase in VFDI through tariff rate reduction has led to the recent relative surge of FDIs in developing countries.


SCREENING FOR DIABETIC RETINOPATHY— Diabetic retinopathy is a highly specific vascular complication of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. The prevalence of retinopathy is strongly related to the duration of diabetes. After 20 years of diabetes, nearly all patients with type 1 diabetes and >60% of patients with type 2 diabetes have some degree of retinopathy. Diabetic retinopathy poses a serious threat to vision. In the Wisconsin Epidemiologic Study of Diabetic Retinopathy (WESDR), 3.6% of younger-onset patients (aged <30 years at diagnosis, an operational definition of type 1 diabetes) and 1.6% of older-onset patients (aged ^30 years at diagnosis, an operational definition of type 2 diabetes) were legally blind. In the younger-onset group, 86% of blindness was attributable to diabetic retinopathy. In the older-onset group, where other eye diseases were common, one-third of the cases of legal blindness were due to diabetic retinopathy. Overall, diabetic retinopathy is estimated to be the most frequent cause of new cases of blindness among adults aged 20-74 years. The recommendations in this paper are based on the technical review on the subject (1), which should be consulted for further information.


Purpose
Carers of people with mental health problems present with high levels of burden, poor mental well-being and feelings of disempowerment by mental health services. The purpose of this paper is to establish whether providing a psychoeducation skill programme for carers would lead to an improvement of mental well-being, reduce the levels of burden that carers sometimes feel while caring for someone with mental illness and also to increase empowerment. This paper provides a service evaluation study of an innovative carer-led psychoeducational intervention that was undertaken.

Design/methodology/approach
This programme was initiated and led by a carer who had experienced a lack of service provision to support carers and families in understanding and caring for a relative with severe and enduring mental health diagnoses. A model of co-production was adopted with the carer who led this initiative working closely with an occupational therapist and consultant psychologist in its development and delivery. Data were collected to measure the impact of the training at five different time points. The measures employed to measure outcomes were the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale, the Burden Assessment Scale and Family Empowerment Scale.

Findings
Results indicated improved well-being, reduced burden and increased family empowerment in carers who completed this peer-led carer initiative psychoeducational programme.

Research limitations/implications
This service evaluation study was conducted in a single site and in the site in which it was developed. The carer consultant who led this evaluation and development of the intervention was also the peer worker who delivered the interventions. Hence, the authors are unable to ascertain if the results reported are unique to the individual peer worker. The transferability of this programme and generalisability of the result should therefore be treated with caution and further replication of this model and research is required. This would be beneficial to be conducted in an alternative site from where it was developed, delivered by different facilitators and include a control group.

Practical implications
The evidence from this study indicates that carers are able and willing to attend a group psychoeducational programme. A high number of referrals to the programme in a relatively short timeframe indicates that there is significant demand for such a service. The implementation of the programme is relatively straightforward. The key challenges for practical implementation are to have the right carer to lead and deliver the programme and the right support system in place for them (financial and supervision). Co-production also is not without challenges, the peer worker and occupational staff need to ensure that mutually valued and respected working relationship should develop.

Originality/value
This is the first evaluation of the impact of a carer-led psychoeducation intervention for carers of people with mental health difficulties in secondary mental health services.


The electric field and potential distributions along wet nonceramic insulators are calculated using COULOMB, a three-dimensional electric field analysis program. The electric field intensification on the surface of the water droplets on a flat hydrophobic silicone rubber (SIR) sheet is analyzed. The conductivity of the water droplets is also an important factor in the electric field intensification. Under rain or fog conditions, the potential distributions influenced by the water droplets on the weathershed of the insulator are calculated. The plots of equipotential lines for a few typical cases (modeling dry-and-clean, rain, and fog conditions) are also shown.


Since the mid-1990s, enterprise resource plannig (ERP) information systems have been installed in thousands of companies worldwide. A growing number of studies and research papers show that information systems have a significant role in the sustainable economic development assuring economic competitiveness. Modern enterprise performance management shares a strong strategic and sustainable orientation of management focused on further strategic growth and business development with parallel use of information and all highly sophisticated knowledge resulting from modern enterprise information technology. The paper focuses on research findings related to information processes and their impact on overall entrepreneurship performance. The most important results show that the companies from the selected industrial segments in Slovakia have a strong focus on the application of innovation procedures and specific business information systems. The results bring the findings that business intelligence (BI) is based on information and knowledge with a high added value has a positive long-term and sustainable effect on the overall entrepreneurship performance. By application of selected management tools such as ERP, BI information systems and others, it can be achieved a higher entrepreneurship performance of industry companies in Slovakia and EU. We believe that our study presented in this paper contributes to explore a new dimension to the existing view on business information systems in industrial companies. More detailed research results are presented in this paper.


Aotearoa, New Zealand, is both a bicultural nation and a multicultural society, so the need to prioritise culture in design pedagogy and practice is not only palpable but well overdue within our creative tertiary institutes. Diversities are acknowledged as highly valuable within higher education, but when they are explored as non-western cultural and creative practices, they are still sidelined as optional, or as extensions to the current teleological pathways carved out within tertiary design curricula and practice. Building on the 'Indigenous Wisdom' framework outlined in the emergent design provocation Transition Design, this research introduces how an appreciation of cultural acumen can benefit, enrich, critique, and radicalise current design thinking, process and praxis. This study will discuss both Māori and Pasifika world views and ideologies and illustrate how these can enrich and enable design education. The aim of this paper is to highlight an appreciation for the reciprocity and respect imbued within kaupapa Māori and the Pasifika ideology of ta-vā (time and space) and how these considerations can enhance the discipline when they are purposefully, knowingly and respectfully imbued in design thinking and praxis. This research specifically focuses on the establishment of connections as essential to both the discipline and the teaching and learning experience. To achieve this, this study will introduce commensality, the coming together around a table to break bread and boundaries, and place it within the framework of Transition Design. Having gained an appreciation of Transition Design, Māori and Pasifika world views and ideologies, and commensality, this research will exemplify instances where students have combined these considerations to enhance their design solutions, and also where pedagogy can be used to specifically enhance teaching and learning by enabling an appreciation of cultural identity and social connectivity within the learning space.

How to cite this article:O'SULLIVAN, Nan; HAKARAIA, David. The use of Māori and Pasifika knowledge within the everyday practice of commensality to enrich the learning experience. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South v. 2, n. 2, p. 4-17, Sept. 2018. Available at: http://sotl-south-journal.net/?journal=sotls&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=42&path%5B%5D=31

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/


We introduce the difficulties in processing context switches, exceptions, and interrupts in DMR architectures. We propose ways to address these problems in a dynamic DMR (DDMR) architecture, providing methods that assure both cores detect the event, synchronize it to the same instruction, perform a secure context switch, run correct interrupt service routines, and avoid process termination. DDMR uses a time-division multiplexing (TDM) ring architecture to dynamically connect pairs of cores. We enhance this protocol to include the different message types required to handle interrupts and exceptions. We also propose a more efficient address-based, rather than TDM-based, ring architecture.


What were the contributions to American scholarship and culture made by European refugees from Nazi persecution? How did these emigres react to the experience of being strangers in the land of their refuge? In this engrossing book, Lewis Coser examines the impact of refugee intellectuals on the social sciences and the humanities in America, painting a collective portrait that sheds light not only on the accomplishments of the Europeans but also on the development of the several disciplines in America that either welcomed or rejected them. Coser explains, for example, why the emigres had more influence in the field of psychoanalysis than in psychology; why Austrian economists were more successful in America than were German economists; why only a few European sociologists made significant contributions in America. Discussing such luminaries as Bruno Bettelheim, Jacob Marshak, Hannah Arendt, Thomas Mann, Vladimir Nabokov, Roman Jacobson, Erwin Panofsky, and Paul Tillich, Coser describes their backgrounds, personalities, and careers in America, providing revealing anecdotes that help to bring these figures to life. His accounts of those who were famous in the country of their birth but never achieved eminence or a feeling of adjustment in America provide a poignant contrast. Coser concludes that the refugee intellectuals were most influential in areas of study where they filled a perceived need not previously met or in fields where they could build on already established traditions. His perceptive analysis of the European-born men and women who altered American intellectual history is an absorbing and memorable story.


Introduction: The seventh edition of the tumor, node, metastasis classification for lung cancer has been published in 2009. The aim of this study is to evaluate time trends of surgical outcomes and clinicopathologic factors in patients with pathological stage I non-small cell lung cancer according to the seventh edition of the tumor, node, metastasis classification. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the clinicopathologic characteristics of 1249 patients with pathological stage I non-small cell lung cancer from Taipei Veterans General Hospital between January 1980 and December 2006, during the three periods of 1980–1990, 1991–2000, and 2001–2006. The overall survival, disease-specific survival, and postrecurrence survival were analyzed. Results: The 5-year overall survival rates during the three periods improved significantly: 53.7, 59.9, and 69.3%, respectively (p < 0.001). The 2-year postrecurrence survival rates during the three periods improved significantly: 10.6, 25.4, and 43.2%, respectively (p < 0.001). The percentage of female patients increased during each period: 15.4, 24.9, and 32.0%, respectively (p < 0.001). The percentage of adenocarcinoma also increased during each period: 51.2, 62.2, and 74.9%, respectively (p < 0.001). Tumor size during each period was 3.2, 3.2, and 2.8 cm, tending to be smaller when diagnosed in the last period (p < 0.001). The overall survival in patients with squamous cell carcinoma and those undergoing pneumonectomy or bilobectomy did not improve over time. Conclusions: Stage migration, improved postrecurrence survival, increased frequencies of female gender and adenocarcinoma, and decreased tumor size lead to improved overall survival over the past three decades.


Dielectric measurements of nylon-6 & nylon-11 with substituted phenols p-cresol, m-cresol and o-cresol mixture in different concentrations over the frequency range from 10 MHz- 20 GHz was carried out using the Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR). By least square fit method, the dielectric parameters such as static dielectric constant (e0), dielectric constant at high frequency (e∞) and relaxation time (τ) were extracted from complex permittivity spectra at temperature range from 400C to 150C. Here we are discussing the temperature effect on these binary mixtures.


There are many literatures emphasizing the roles of service quality on the customer loyalty. Many approaches have been employed to enhance the extent of quality in service operations. The acknowledgement of operations contributing to the customer loyalty can point out in which operations should be concentrated on. Customer loyalty is proved to have relationships to the service quality. Often, service quality cannot be met all requirements or effectively adopted in all activities. The question is that which activities considered as critical ones to which contributing to customer loyalty. However, there is little guidance in the literature about critical operations have an influence on the customer loyalty. In call center environment, there are many activities involved and this is formalized comparing to other services. This paper, therefore, reports on a study that explores the critical activities contributing to customer loyalty in different call center environment. This suggests service providers ensure the quality of their service to the customers and target to the customer loyalty.


For the Love of Music presents 23 of the best interviews from Music magazine, ranging in subject from building a career to performance, and from sources of inspiration to music education. Begun as an experiment in 1978 and co-edited by Ulla Colgrass and Anne Barrett, Music magazine included critical reviews and articles, as well as interviews which gave the artists a chance to speak for themselves. Shedding light on the musicians interviewed both as performers and as private personalities, Colgrass explores the creative process in order to understand the external forces that help produce a great performer. Including interviews with composer R. Murray Schafer at a distant wilderness lake in Ontario, with pianist Glenn Gould on the telephone, and with Elly Ameling over a hasty breakfast in a noisy hotel restaurant, the volume breaks down the traditional stereotype of the aloof musician by revealing their rich and deeply personal worlds and their passion for other art forms and pursuits. For the Love of Music also contains interviews with Jon Vickers, Pinchas Zukerman, James Campbell, Erich Leinsdorf, Wynton Marsalis, Edith Wiens, Teresa Stratas, Virgil Fox, Anton Kuerti, Richard Stoltzman, Victor Borge, Maureen Forrester, Christopher Keene, Istvan Anhalt, Robert Aitken, Yo-Yo Ma, Arthur Ozolins, Kyung Wha Chung, Rivka Golani, and the Orford String Quartet.


INTRODUCTION
The superficial and deep palmar arterial arches are the main sources of blood supply to all structures in the human hand, and variations in these arterial arches are quite common. Although several studies have reported diameters and variations of these arches, to the authors' knowledge, no study has correlated such changes to handedness in adults. It is likely that dominance may play a role in arterial variations, such as those seen in the diameter or number of arteries formed in the palmar arches, much like in other areas of the human body. This cadaver study was conducted to determine any such association.

METHODS
42 formalin-fixed hands were dissected to expose the superficial and deep palmar arches. These arches were then thoroughly examined for any variations between the dominant and non-dominant hands. All cadavers were noted to be right-handed as per hospital records.

RESULTS
19 complete superficial arterial arches (right hand 14; left hand 5) were found in the 42 hands dissected.

CONCLUSION
Most complete superficial palmar arches were found in the dominant hand of the cadavers studied, and therefore, handedness may have a role to play in determining palmar arterial arch variations in humans. Due to dominance or handedness, some arteries may likely persist into adulthood while others may become obliterated, thus leading to variations. Dissection of foetal hands may help to shed more light on the persistence or obliteration of various arteries after birth. Knowledge of such variations may prove helpful for surgeons during hand surgeries.


A variety of peptides active in biological pathways have been identified e.g. receptor antagonists or inhibitors of protein-protein interactions and several peptide or peptide-derived compounds are on the drug market or in clinical trials. Through the rational design or the combinatorial preparation and High-throughput screening of arrays of compounds, peptides play a pivotal role for the rapid identification of ligands, but, despite these favorable properties, they often present poorer bioavailability and lower metabolic stability respect to traditional drugs. The process of conversion of a peptide in a small molecule provides the reduction of the peptide to the minimum active sequence (MAS) testing truncated peptides from the C- and N- termini alternatively. Then the influence of individual amino acid on the biological activity is determined by systematically replacing each residue in the peptide with specific amino acids. After structure-activity relationship (SAR) of each amino acid in the sequence has been assessed, the bioactive conformational flexibility is reduced by introducing constraints at various positions. These features are used for the design of a pharmacophore model in which functional groups crucial for activity are pre-positioned. Here we propose a panoramic review of the common principles for the conversion of peptides into small organic molecules and the most interesting findings in peptide-based leads of the last decades.


Mixing dissolution, a process whereby mixtures of two waters with different chemical compositions drive undersaturation with respect to carbonate minerals, is commonly considered to form cavernous macroporosity (e.g. flank margin caves and banana holes) in eogenetic karst aquifers. On small islands, macroporosity commonly originates when focused dissolution forms globular chambers lacking entrances to the surface, suggesting that dissolution processes are decoupled from surface hydrology. Mixing dissolution has been thought to be the primary dissolution process because meteoric water would equilibrate rapidly with calcium carbonate as it infiltrates through matrix porosity and because pCO2 was assumed to be homogeneously distributed within the phreatic zone. Here, we report data from two abandoned well fields in an eogenetic karst aquifer on San Salvador Island, Bahamas, that demonstrate pCO2 in the phreatic zone is distributed heterogeneously. The pCO2 varied from less than log −2.0 to more than log −1.0 atm over distances of less than 30 m, generating dissolution in the subsurface where water flows from regions of low to high pCO2 and cementation where water flows from regions of high to low pCO2. Using simple geochemical models, we show dissolution caused by heterogeneously distributed pCO2 can dissolve 2.5 to 10 times more calcite than the maximum amount possible by mixing of freshwater and seawater. Dissolution resulting from spatial variability in pCO2 forms isolated, globular chambers lacking initial entrances to the surface, a morphology that is characteristic of flank margin caves and banana holes, both of which have entrances that form by erosion or collapse after cave formation. Our results indicate that heterogeneous pCO2, rather than mixing dissolution, may be the dominant mechanism for observed spatial distribution of dissolution, cementation and macroporosity generation in eogenetic karst aquifers and for landscape development in these settings. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The quality of SG Iron casting is fully depends on its parameters like melting of base iron, nodulisation treatment, inoculation process as well as pouring practices etc. The quality of casting checked with hardness, elongation & tensile strength also microstructure analysis. Microstructure analysis is a process to be carried out on ready castings. The main purpose of this paper is to present literature survey regarding measuring parameters of SG Iron casting process including image processing methodology for microstructure analysis of Spheroidal Graphite Iron (SGI) castings to determine the quality assessment parameters of SGI casting such as nodularity, nodule count, nodule size and percent of ferrite-pearlite. The strength and hardness of the SGI castings is dependent on these quality parameters.


Alates of the Formosan subterranean termite, Coptotermes formosanus Shiraki, collected after swarming in 2002 died within 48 h, and the cadavers were visibly infected with a fungus. Fungi were picked from the cadavers, transferred to media, and ultimately isolated to purity. The individual fungal cultures were then used to infect Formosan subterranean termite workers. A single fungal isolate, C4-B, taxonomically identified as Metarhizium anisopliae (Metschnikoff), was found to cause rapid mortality of Formosan subterranean termite alates. This is the first report of a biological control agent for termite alates. In initial experiments, C4-B was more lethal to both alates and workers compared with M. anisopliae strain ESC 1, previously marketed as the termite biocontrol agent BioBlast. Dose-response assays in which Formosan subterranean termite alates were exposed to a known concentration of C4-B spores revealed that 10(6) spores/microl killed 100% of the alates in 3 d, both 10(5) and 10(4) spores/microl in 6 d, 10(3) spores/microl in 9 d, and 10(0) spores/microl in 12 d. Assays with workers demonstrated that 10(6) and 10(5) spores/microl killed 100% of the workers in 6 d. In an experiment to test the transfer of inoculum from infected workers to uninfected nestmates, 62.8% of the workers died in 21 d when only 20% of the workers had been inoculated. Mortality of alates caused by C4-B was tested at two field sites by dispersing fungal spores on grassy lawns and collecting alates from the treated areas. Alates thus infected showed 100% mortality by day 5, whereas only 64.8% of untreated control alates from the same collection area were dead on that day.


Rapid
charging of Li-ion batteries is limited by lithium plating on graphite anodes,
whereby Li+ ions are reduced to Li metal on the graphite particle
surface instead of inserting between graphitic layers. Plated Li metal not only
poses a safety risk due to dendrite formation, but also contributes to capacity
loss due to the low reversibility of the Li plating/stripping process.
Understanding when Li plating occurs and how much Li has plated is therefore vital
to remedying these issues. We demonstrate a titration technique with a minimum
detection limit of 20 nmol (5×10-4 mAh) Li which is used to quantify
inactive Li that remains on the graphite electrode after fast charging. Additionally,
the titration is extended to quantify the total amount of solid carbonate
species and lithium acetylide (Li2C2) within the solid
electrolyte interphase (SEI). Finally, electrochemical modeling is combined with
experimental data to determine the Li plating exchange current density (10 A/m2)
and stripping efficiency (65%) of plated Li metal on graphite. These techniques
provide a highly accurate measure of Li plating onset and quantitative insight
into graphite SEI evolution during fast charge.


Subjects made lexical decisions after reading either (a) low-constraint sentence contexts that did not predict the identity or meaning of congruous targets (e.g. "Mary went to her room to look at her XXXX"), or (b) control contexts that were randomly ordered lists of words. The crucial variable was the validity of the contextual information. When the sentence contexts were incongrous with the word targets as often as they were congruous (the "less-valid environment"), the congruous contexts had a slight inhibitory effect on decision latency relative to the baseline condition. In contrast, when the contexts were always congruous with the word targets ("valid environment"), they had a large facilitatory effect on decision latency. These results suggest that (a) the effects of congruous contexts can depend on the validity of the contexts across the entire experimental session, and (b) contextual facilitation may be due in part to sentence level processes.


The Hyalella species diversity in the high-altitude water bodies of the Andean Altiplano is addressed using mitochondrial cox1 sequences and implementing different molecular species delimitation criteria. We have recorded the presence of five major genetic lineages in the Altiplano, of which one seems to be exclusive to Lake Titicaca and nearby areas, whereas the rest occur also in other regions of South America. Eleven out of 36 South American entities diagnosed by molecular delimitation criteria in our study are likely endemic to the Titicaca and neighbouring water bodies. We have detected a remarkable disagreement between morphology and genetic data in the Titicacan Hyalella, with occurrence of several cases of the same morpho-species corresponding to several Molecular Operational Taxonomic Units (MOTUs), some even distantly related, and other instances where a particular MOTU is shared by a morphologically heterogeneous array of species, including species with body smooth and others with body heavily armoured. Species diversification and incongruence between morphological and molecular boundaries within this species assemblage may be associated to the sharp changes in hydrological conditions experienced by the water bodies of the Altiplano in the past, which included dramatic fluctuations in water level and salinity of Lake Titicaca. Such environmental shifts could have triggered rapid morphological changes and ecological differentiation within the Hyalella assemblage, followed by phenotypic convergence among the diverse lineages. Factors such as phenotypic plasticity, incomplete lineage sorting or admixture between divergent lineages might lie also at the root of the morphological-genetic incongruence described herein.


The Woodlark Rift in SE Papua New Guinea is a continental rift to the west of active oceanic spreading in the Woodlark Basin, which separates the Australian Plate to the south from the relatively anticlockwise rotating Woodlark Plate to the north. During Pliocene to Recent times the Woodlark Rift has been the setting for rapid exhumation of the world's youngest UHP rocks (Baldwin et al., 2004, 2008; Gordon et al, 2012; Little et al., 2011), and is currently one of few places on the globe where active continental breakup is occurring ahead of a propagating oceanic spreading centre. While the Woodlark Basin contains a record of oceanic spreading since ˜6 Ma (Taylor et al., 1999), and GPS data describe present-day crustal motions (Wallace et al., manuscript in review), the Neogene temporal and kinematic evolution of continental extension in the Woodlark Rift is less well constrained. We compare Characteristic magnetization directions for six formations, Early Miocene (˜20 Ma) to Late Pliocene (3 ± 0.5), with contemporaneous expected field directions corresponding to Australian Plate paleomagnetic pole locations. We interpret declination anomalies (at 95% confidence) to estimate finite vertical-axis rotations of crustal blocks with respect to a fixed Australian Plate. Temporal and spatial relationships between declination anomalies for six formation mean directions, across four paleomagnetic localities, provide new evidence to constrain aspects of the Miocene to Recent history of the Woodlark Rift.  We obtained 250 oriented core samples from Miocene to Pliocene aged rocks at four localities in the Woodlark Rift. Components of Characteristic Remanent Magnetization (ChRM) have been determined from step-wise thermal and alternating field demagnetization profiles of >300 individual specimens. A total of 157 ChRM components contribute to the calculation of representative paleomagnetic directions for six formations, which have undergone vertical-axis rotations with respect to the Australian Plate associated with development of the Woodlark Rift.  Pliocene volcanic rocks at two key localities near the northern extent of the rift record that: 1) The Amphlett Islands has experienced 10.1 ± 7.6° of anticlockwise rotation since 3 ± 0.5 Ma; 2) NW Normanby Island has undergone a 16.3 ± 9.5° clockwise rotation during the same time interval. Sedimentary rocks at Cape Vogel Peninsula on the northern coast of the mainland Papuan Peninsula, record variable anticlockwise finite rotations of 28.4 ± 10.9° and 12.4 ± 5.5° for Early and Middle Miocene rocks respectively, in contrast to a younger clockwise rotation of 6.5 ± 11.2° for Late Miocene rocks. At the Suau Coast locality, on the south eastern coast of the Papuan Peninsula, Late Miocene dikes record 22.7 ± 13.3° of anticlockwise rotation.  At the Amphlett Islands and NW Normanby localities paleomagnetic data are consistent with current GPS plate motions, suggesting the current kinematics in the rift were established by at least ˜3 Ma. The Amphlett Islands result is consistent with the rate of Pliocene sea floor spreading in the Woodlark Basin, suggesting that locality can be considered as fully on the Woodlark Plate. The clockwise rotation indicated at NW Normanby Island may record development of an incipient dextral transfer fault within an active part of the Woodlark Rift.  Time-varying declination anomalies from the Cape Vogel Peninsula suggest that rifting began there by ˜15 Ma, 7 Ma earlier than previously inferred based on stratigraphic evidence. Furthermore, paleomagnetic data from the south coast of the Papuan Peninsula suggests that early rifting extended further south, and has since contracted to where continental extension is currently accommodated north of the Papuan Peninsula.


Xeroderma pigmentosum group G (XPG) protein is a structure-specific repair endonuclease, which cleaves DNA strands on the 3′ side of the DNA damage during nucleotide excision repair (NER). XPG also plays a crucial role in initiating DNA repair synthesis through recruitment of PCNA to the repair sites. However, the fate of XPG protein subsequent to the excision of DNA damage has remained unresolved. Here, we show that XPG, following its action on bulky lesions resulting from exposures to UV irradiation and cisplatin, is subjected to proteasome-mediated proteolytic degradation. Productive NER processing is required for XPG degradation as both UV and cisplatin treatment-induced XPG degradation is compromised in NER-deficient XP-A, XP-B, XP-C, and XP-F cells. In addition, the NER-related XPG degradation requires Cdt2, a component of an E3 ubiquitin ligase, CRL4Cdt2. Micropore local UV irradiation and in situ Proximity Ligation assays demonstrated that Cdt2 is recruited to the UV-damage sites and interacts with XPG in the presence of PCNA. Importantly, Cdt2-mediated XPG degradation is crucial to the subsequent recruitment of DNA polymerase δ and DNA repair synthesis. Collectively, our data support the idea of PCNA recruitment to damage sites which occurs in conjunction with XPG, recognition of the PCNA-bound XPG by CRL4Cdt2 for specific ubiquitylation and finally the protein degradation. In essence, XPG elimination from DNA damage sites clears the chromatin space needed for the subsequent recruitment of DNA polymerase δ to the damage site and completion of gap-filling DNA synthesis during the final stage of NER.


This editorial highlights the important contributions of a group of Italian authors who are published in this special issue. Also it links this work to other outcomes from the SMOG 2009 Bologna conference including the Public Management Review special issue (Ball et al , 2010) and the Economia Aziendale Online special issue (Farneti and Ricci, 2010a). The uniting theme of the SMOG conference was to demonstrate the importance and value of social and environmental accounting research in public sector organisations. This Economia Aziendale Online special issue (Farneti and Guthrie, 2010) contributes to understanding practice in Italian public and not-for profit (NFP) organisations in a variety of ways. The SMOG conference attracted a wide range of academics across the interdisciplinary subject of sustainability. Further, it was a significant event in Europe, being one of the first to focus exclusively on sustainability management and reporting in the public and NFP sectors. The following five papers bring to the English speaking academic and practice community unique insights into how Italian organisations are handling the difficult issues associated with accounting and reporting for social responsibility, environmental matters, sustainability and gender issues. In summary, this group of papers provides insights from two perspectives. First, is what we call the prevailing top-down approach, which involves European and various government policies, international and national standards and rules and directives. The second perspective, which takes a bottom-up approach, involves exploring pilot experiences within various Italian organisations, towns and regions, experiences with social reports, environmental statements and gendered budgets which are reported in this special issue.


Seventeen bulls were used for a 12-month survey of semen quality and for the estimation of plasma progesterone and testosterone and semen testosterone concentrations. Sperm output showed two minima, in mid-winter and late summer, and the percentage of abnormal sperm was highest and their ability to survive freezing was lowest at the summer minimum. Plasma progesterone concentration was negatively correlated with the total ejaculate content of testosterone, and positively with the local average maximum daily temperature. Temperature showed a quadratic relationship with the percentage of abnormal sperm ejaculated one month later, with the minimum percentage occurring at 14.5 degrees C. Temperature also showed a quadratic relationship with the numbers of sperm in semen ejaculated two months later, with the maximum number occurring at 17 degrees C. These relationships may reflect the impaired or enhanced survival of the temperature sensitive meiotic prophase and alterations in the output of testosterone and progesterone by the testis.


Abstract. Systems for the early detection of floods over continental and global domains have a key role in providing a quick overview of areas at risk, raise the awareness and prompt higher detail analyses as the events approach. However, the reliability of these systems is prone to spatial inhomogeneity, depending on the quality of the underlying input data and local calibration. This work proposes a simple approach for flood early warning based on ensemble numerical predictions of surface runoff provided by weather forecasting centers. The system is based on a novel indicator, referred to as an extreme runoff index (ERI), which is calculated from the input data through a statistical analysis. It is designed for use in large or poorly gauged domains, as no local knowledge or in situ observations are needed for its setup. Daily runs over 32 months are evaluated against calibrated hydrological simulations for all of Europe. Results show skillful flood early warning capabilities up to a 10-day lead time. A dedicated analysis is performed to investigate the optimal timing of forecasts to maximize the detection of extreme events. A case study for the central European floods of June 2013 is presented and forecasts are compared to the output of a hydro-meteorological ensemble model.


Generating recommendations based on user-item interactions and user-user social relations is a common use case in web-based systems. These connections can be naturally represented as graph-structured data and thus utilizing graph neural networks (GNNs) for social recommendation has become a promising research direction. However, existing graph-based methods fails to consider the bias offsets of users (items). For example, a low rating from a fastidious user may not imply a negative attitude toward this item because the user tends to assign low ratings in common cases. Such statistics should be considered into the graph modeling procedure. While some past work considers the biases, we argue that these proposed methods only treat them as scalars and can not capture the complete bias information hidden in data. Besides, social connections between users should also be differentiable so that users with similar item preference would have more influence on each other. To this end, we propose Graph-Based Decentralized Collaborative Filtering for Social Recommendation (GDSRec). GDSRec treats the biases as vectors and fuses them into the process of learning user and item representations. The statistical bias offsets are captured by decentralized neighborhood aggregation while the social connection strength is defined according to the preference similarity and then incorporated into the model design. We conduct extensive experiments on two benchmark datasets to verify the effectiveness of the proposed model. Experimental results show that the proposed GDSRec achieves superior performance compared with state-of-the-art related baselines. Our implementations are available in https://github.com/MEICRS/GDSRec.


The consumed coffee powder and tea leaves of local produce were found to be able to remove substantial amounts of Cu(II) ions from aqueous solution. The characterzstics of Cu(II) uptake on these beverage waste were systematically investigated. It was found that the Cu(II) uptake was dependent on pH, metal concentration, physical nature of substrate and ionic strength. Competing ions/molecules such as Pb(II) and surfactant such as Triton X-lOa interfere in the uptake of Cu(II). The degree of uptake increases with pH and the pH range for maximum uptake was found to be 5 7 for both wastes. Metal concentration dependent assumed a Langmuir Isotherm. The results obtained were found to be conszstent with the mechanzsms that Cu(II) uptake was due to specific ion adsorption via chelation and some degree of ion-exchange reaction.


Management studies must be conducted to realize the full potential of white lupin (Lupinus albus L.) as a grain crop for the southeastern USA. This experiment examined planting date, row spacing, and seeding rate effects on grain and biomass yield of spring-sown white lupin. In 1991 and 1992, field studies were conducted in northern Alabama on a Wynnville fine sandy loam (fine-loamy, siliceous, thermic Glossic Fragiudult), in central Alabama on a Hiwassee sandy loam (clayey, kaolinitic, thermic Typic Kanhapludult), and in southern Alabama on a Lucedale fine sandy loam (fine-loamy, siliceous, thermic Rhodic Paleudult). Treatments included three planting dates, three row spacings (17.5, 35, and 70 cm), three seeding rates (17.5, 35, and 52.5 seeds m -1 ), and two cultivars (Primorsky and Ultra). Prevailing weather allowed only one planting date in northern Alabama in 1991 and 1992. In the second year of the study, only one and two plantings were successful in central and southern Alabama, respectively. Grain yields averaged 551 kg ha -1 in 1991 and 604 kg ha -1 in 1992. Grain and biomass yield was always highest in northern Alabama. Planting date affected grain and biomass yield the most in central and southern Alabama in 1991. Decreased row spacing increased grain yields as much as 10 kg ha -1 per unit decrease in spacing. Grain yields increased as much as 19 kg ha -1 for every unit increase in seeding rate. Principal component analysis of yield components created factors branch, seed mass, and mainstem, which accounted for 57, 23, and 14% of the original variance, respectively. Factors branch and mainstem were highly correlated (r > 0.75) with grain and biomass yield. Seed mass and mainstem were highly correlated with harvest index (r > 0.65). For the southeastern USA, high yields in spring-sown white lupin will require (i) early seeding, (ii) narrow row spacing, and (iii) high seeding rates.


Thyroid dysfunction is a disorder commonly encountered in pregnancy, most often diagnosed prior to conception. The primordial concern regarding its diagnosis is to avoid the occurence of maternal-fetal complications, which are inescapeable objectified in case of decompensation of the thyroid function. There are numerous debates on the management of thyroid disorders during pregnancy,  especially regarding the establishment of a threshold for the correction of hypothyroidism and the pharmacological strategy in case of hyperthyroidism. Recent studies have estimated that targeted investigations of thyroid function in groups at risk for developing such pathology, have omitted approximately 40% of hypothyroidism in pregnant women and therefore it was initiated the concept of applying a universal screening to facilitate early diagnosis of this condition and to establish a prompt therapeutic behavior.


Naturally occurring mutations involving the nervous system have provided virtually all of our current understanding of the genetic regulation of neural development (Caviness and Rakic, 1978). The difficulty of isolating the corresponding genes, however, has precluded a molecular analysis of these mutants. Insertional mutagenesis, induced by microinjection of DNA into fertilized ova to produce transgenic animals, provides a molecular tag that marks the site of the mutational event. In this article, we describe a transgenic neurological mutation, designated wocko (Wo), which disrupts the development of the inner ear. These mutant mice display a dominant behavioral phenotype that consists of circling, hyperactivity, and head tossing, reminiscent of the shaker/waltzer class of mutants, and they display a recessive homozygous sublethal phenotype. Anatomical analyses showed that both structural and neural components of the vestibular system were disrupted, while analyses of mutant fetuses showed that these morphological abnormalities were due to aberrant development. Although low levels of transgene expression were detected using a sensitive PCR assay, several nonmutant pedigrees that contain the same construct also expressed the transgene in the inner ear, suggesting that low levels of transgene expression alone were not responsible for the wocko phenotype. Because the integrated transgene provides a marker to clone the wocko mutation, the analysis of this mutant will give unique insight into the molecular genetics of inner ear development and into a broad class of neurological mutations that affect the inner ear.


We report the synthesis and characterizations of Poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) modified P2O5-CaO-SiO2 gel bioglass. Three kinds of PEG with different molecular weight (400,6 000,10 000) were used in the preparation and their influence on the nanostructure of the resultant gel bioglasses was investigated. Due to the excellent aqueous solubility and compatibility of PEG with the inorganic P2O5-CaO-SiO2 components, no phase separation was detected in the hybrid gel glasses under scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observation. FT-IR spectra indicate that hybridization between the organic and inorganic part was successfully achieved at the molecular level. SEM images and N2 adsorption-desorption experiments show that, among the three samples, S6 000 is the most promising candidate for bone scaffold material, because of its hierarchical pore structure, high porosity and surface area.


The development of foreign economic activity of the Eurasian states led to the introduction of rail and ferry transportation. It is important to note that the current normative documentation does not fully cover the issues of transporting combined trains by sea. This can lead to a violation of the traffic safety of both the railway ferry and the transport of containers as part of combined trains by sea. In this connection, we investigated the dynamic loading of a container as part of a combined train when transported by a railway ferry. To ensure the stability of the container relative to the frame, we suggested an improvement of the load-bearing structure of a flat wagon. Additionally, we suggested the use of a viscous linkage between containers with the aim of reducing their dynamic load. To justify the suggested solutions, we carried out a mathematical modelling of the container dynamic load. The calculation was performed in MathCad. Due to the fact that the container has its own degree of freedom when transported by sea, the accelerations were separately determined for the supporting structure of the flat wagon and for the container. We found that the total amount of acceleration that acted on the container was 3.57 m/s2 (0.36 g) and on the load-bearing structure of the wagon was 2.47 m/s2 (0.25 g) which were, respectively, 38% and 23% less than the acceleration values in the typical scheme of their interaction. To determine the fields of acceleration distribution relative to the load-bearing structure of a flat wagon with containers, we carried out computer modelling of their dynamic load. The maximum percentage of discrepancy between the accelerations obtained by mathematical and computer modelling was 17.7%. The study will contribute to the creation of recommendations for the safe transport of combined trains by sea, as well as to increasing the efficiency of combined transport through international transport corridors.


Habitat information is important to biodiversity conservation and research. Extracting bacterial biotope entities from scientific publications is important to large scale study of the relationships between bacteria and their living environments. To facilitate the further development of robust habitat text mining systems for biodiversity, following the BioNLP task framework, three sequence labeling techniques, CRFs (Conditional Random Fields), MEMM (Maximum Entropy Markov Model) and SVMhmm (Support Vector Machine) and one classifier, SVMmulticlass, are compared on their performance in identifying three types of bacterial biotope entities: bacteria, habitats and geographical locations. The effectiveness of a variety of basic word formation features, syntactic features, and semantic features are exploited and compared for the three sequence labeling methods. Experiments on two publicly available BioNLP collections show that, in addition to a WordNet feature, word embedding featured clusters (although not trained with the task‐specific corpus) consistently improve the performance for all methods on all entity types in both collections. Other features produce various results. Our results also show that when trained on limited corpora, Brown clusters resulted in better performance than word embedding clusters did. Further analysis suggests that the entity recognition performance can be greatly boosted through improving the accuracy of entity boundary identification.


Fluid mechanics is a major bottleneck in many mechanical engineering programs. "ME 311: Fluid Mechanics I," a course taken by third-year mechanical engineering and civil engineering students at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona), is characterized by high enrollment and high repeat rates. During 2007-2014, approximately one-third of ME 311 students received repeatable grades (D, F, or Withdrawal), with another third receiving C's. In an effort to improve student performance in ME 311, the authors implemented a series of new pedagogical strategies during 2015-2016. The new strategies were introduced in stages and featured the use of McGraw-Hill Connect, an online assignment and assessment platform, as well as dedicating more class time for engaging activities. Faculty from the Department of Mechanical Engineering Department and Department of Psychology & Sociology at Cal Poly Pomona collaborated to measure student academic performance through the use of concept inventories, exam scores, and overall course grades, while student perceptions of the course were examined using surveys and focus groups. The concept inventories and surveys were administered at the beginning and end of the course to determine the extent to which students' knowledge of the subject matter and opinions changed during a quarter. Connect was introduced in Fall 2015 and Winter 2016; each quarter, one experimental section (with Connect) and one control section (without Connect) were taught, with other aspects of the course remaining the same. For Fall 2015, scores on the concept inventory indicated that the experimental section appeared to learn more throughout the course, and the repeat rate was much lower (23.5% for the experimental section versus 38.9% for the control section). For Winter 2016, the experiment was repeated with a different instructor. The difference between the experimental and control sections' performance on the concept inventory was not statistically significant, but the repeat rate was lower for the experimental section (26.7%) compared to the control section (38.7%). For Spring 2016, both sections were required to use Connect and the instructor experimented with a more engaging pedagogy. In the experimental section, class time was dedicated to discussing concepts and worked examples – as recommended by student focus groups in a prior quarter – with no derivations of equations. Instead, derivations were discussed in videos created by the authors that could be watched outside of class. In the control section, class time was used in a similar manner as previous quarters and included derivations. The experimental section performed better on exams and the repeat rate was much lower (20.0% for experimental versus 44.1% for control). For all three quarters, the attitudinal surveys indicate that students in the experimental sections felt more positively toward the course compared to the control sections, although the difference between the two sections varied by quarter. The results from this study suggest that the use of Connect and dedication of more class time to worked examples have the potential to positively impact student performance in fluid mechanics courses.