In the current study the effects of acute or chronic exposure of dithiopyr herbicide (weed controllers) in Catfish ( Clarias garipinus ) was studied. LC50 was determined, and recorded as 460 μgl -1 . Acute and chronic effects on certain blood, growth and tissue biochemical parameters were studied as a function of exposure time. Exposure of Clarias garipinus to acute or chronic toxicity of the herbicide resulted in significant increase in glucose, total cholesterol, creatinine, uric acid and Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) in the herbicide-treated group, while aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) showed a fluctuating activities in both exposures. In contrast, there was significantly (P<0.01) lower values for liver and muscle glycogen in acute toxicity as compared with the control group. Also, in herbicide exposed fish a significant reduction in growth parameters was recorded. These alterations could be attributed to the changes in the metabolic pathways of the studied fish that meight be takes place as a secondary response in the fish to provide energy for the "fight-or-flight" reaction and to compensate the high energy demand. This study implies the importance of previous knowledge about the susceptibility of cultured fish species before using herbicides. Int J Appl Sci Biotechnol, Vol 3(2): 314-321 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ijasbt.v3i2.12686


Emerging markets trigger great expectations. Many foreign multinationals are eager to exploit the entrepreneurial opportunities potentially related to less developed but fast growing markets. This is not a new phenomenon. Multinationals from more developed countries have for long searched for opportunities in less developed markets and have dealt with the related challenges. Foreign environments with different needs and capabilities, unstable institutions and policies, stark fluctuations in the macroeconomic environment and unrealistic expectations are just some of the obstacles for 'turning potential into profits.' The history of multinational enterprises (MNEs) knows many examples of economies with these characteristics similar to modern understandings of 'emerging markets.' This special issue analyzes foreign multinationals in emerging markets from a historical perspective. It seeks to understand changes and continuities in the opportunities and challenges less developed markets presented for MNEs, and in the various ways in which their managers responded to these. Rather than relying on the 'emerging market' label, we ask (1) why managers perceived certain markets as 'emerging' and which expectations they had when investing in these markets, (2) which challenges they faced there, and (3) how they subsequently addressed them. By tracing and comparing these investments and their consequences over time (and space), we hope to shed more light on managerial decisions and understand to what extent they were shaped by the specific context or, possibly, had more of a timeless nature – with the findings ultimately intended to help inform contemporary decision-making. This introduction to the special issue describes the framework for the following six papers on foreign multinationals in emerging markets since the nineteenth century.


Background: It is evident in nursing literature that there are many factors that impede or facilitate
the use of research findings in practice. These factors should be identified if evidence-based
practice is to become a reality in clinical practice. This study surveys the perceptions of German
nurses with respect to the barriers to using research findings and facilitators in nursing practice.
Methods: A questionnaire based on implementing innovations in health care with potential barriers
and facilitators was administered to 250 nurses in a general German hospital; 87 nurses returned the
questionnaire, giving a response rate of 35%.
The four factors that influence the first two stages of Rogers's five stage model "Diffusion of
innovations" were examined. The factors, characteristics of the adopter, characteristics of the
organisation, characteristics of the innovation and characteristics of the communication, were
measured using an adapted version of the BARRIERS scale.
Results: Barriers were present in all four characteristics, but the major facilitators were found to be
in the organization and the communication. The results showed that the greatest barriers were
insufficient time on the job to read research (84%) or to implement new ideas (64%) and lack of
authority for the nurses to change patient care (64%). Both availability of time and staff hires were
facilitators at 86% in research findings.
Discussion and Conclusions
Based on the survey issues related to setting, presentation of research findings and to knowledge,
thus we can conclude that nurses of this hospital were not familiar with the term evidence-based
practice, even though they had access to computers. This lack of knowledge resulted from limited
time, lack of skills and support administration. Therefore, nurses in the health care community need
improved conditions in order to provide the appropriate care to patients and the hospital.


This research aims at determining effects of pH on akridin adsorption by montmorillonite, knowing Akridin concentration variations on the adsorption of montmorillonite, and knowing adsorption patterns following Freundlich isotherm or Langmuir isotherm.
 The sample of montmorillonite was saturated using KN03 solution and thus became K+- montmorillonite. Akridin adsorption by montmorillonite was done in three stages which were the kinetics adsorption to determine the time required in the process of akridin adsorption, the adsorption edge to determine the effect of pH on the adsorption, and adsorption isotherms to determine the effect of Akridin concentrations added to the adsorption capacity of montmorillonite. Adsorption process was carried out at pH 4, and the Akridin concentrations of 1 x 10-, 1 x 10-4, 5 x 10-4 with a medium of KN03 electrolyte of 5 mM. The measurement was carried out using UV-Vis to determine the concentration of akridin residue, while XRD was used to determine changes of space d (00l) on montmorillonite.
 The amount of adsorption capacity of montmorillonite in Akridin at pH 4 was obtained using the calculation of chemical analysis. The maximum adsorption capacity obtained in this study was 1.2 x 10-5 mof/m2. The pattern of adsorption in this study could not be categorized as following Langmuir pattern. XRD spectrum showed that there was a decrease in space d amounted to 1, 841.


The oncogenic deubiquitylating enzyme (DUB) Unp/Usp4, which binds to the retinoblastoma family of tumor suppressor proteins, was originally described as a nuclear protein. However, more recent studies have shown it to be cytoplasmic. In addition, analysis of its subcellular localization has been complicated by the existence of the paralog Usp15. In this study, we resolved this controversy by investigating the localization of exogenously expressed Usp4 (using red fluorescent protein-Usp4) and of endogenous Usp4 (using highly specific antibodies that can distinguish Usp4 from Usp15). We found that by inhibiting nuclear export with leptomycin B, both exogenous and endogenous Usp4 accumulate in the nucleus. Further, using a Rev-green fluorescent protein-based export assay, we confirmed the existence of a nuclear export signal (133VEVYLLELKL142) in Usp4. In addition, a functional nuclear import signal (766QPQKKKK772) was also identified, which was specifically recognized by importin α/β. Finally, we show that the equilibrium of Usp4 subcellular localization varies between different cell types. Usp4 is thus the first DUB reported to have nucleocytoplasmic shuttling properties. The implications of this shuttling for its function as a DUB are discussed.


AbstractResilience and the ability to mitigate the consequences of a nuclear incident are enhanced by (1) effective planning, preparation and training; (2) ongoing interaction, formal exercises, and evaluation among the sectors involved; (3) effective and timely response and communication; and (4) continuous improvements based on new science, technology, experience, and ideas. Public health and medical planning require a complex, multi-faceted systematic approach involving federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments; private sector organizations; academia; industry; international partners; and individual experts and volunteers. The approach developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Nuclear Incident Medical Enterprise (NIME) is the result of efforts from government and nongovernment experts. It is a "bottom-up" systematic approach built on the available and emerging science that considers physical infrastructure damage, the spectrum of injuries, a scarce resources setting, the need for decision making in the face of a rapidly evolving situation with limited information early on, timely communication, and the need for tools and just-in-time information for responders who will likely be unfamiliar with radiation medicine and uncertain and overwhelmed in the face of the large number of casualties and the presence of radioactivity. The components of NIME can be used to support planning for, response to, and recovery from the effects of a nuclear incident. Recognizing that it is a continuous work-in-progress, the current status of the public health and medical preparedness and response for a nuclear incident is provided.


The number of patients diagnosed with depression yearly is a growing concern among mental health advocates. Consequently, the ef ect of this ailment is detrimental to not only the patient but also family members, as well as their jobs or school. Many factors, ranging from hereditary conditions to life-altering experiences, can trigger depression, and symptoms vary between individuals. Hence, the disparity of symptoms in diagnosing depression makes it dif icult to identify early on. Fortunately, the prevalence of social media platforms has led to individuals posting updates on various aspects of their lives, particularly their mental health. These platforms now provide valuable data sources for mental health researchers, aiding in the timely diagnosis of depression. In this research, we use sentiment analysis to identify depressed tweets from random tweets. We used six natural language processing frameworks for our classification. They are BERT, XLNet, ALBERT, DeBERTa, RoBERTa, and ELECTRA. Our results show that BERT performs best with an accuracy of 99%, while ALBERT is the model with the lowest accuracy rate at 87%. This research shows that by leveraging NLP frameworks, we can successfully utilize machine learning for the early detection of depression and help diagnose individuals struggling with this ailment.


ABSTRACTQuality factor estimation and correction are necessary to compensate the seismic energy dissipated during acoustic-/elastic-wave propagation in the earth. In this process, known as Q-filtering in the realm of seismic processing, the main goal is to improve the resolution of the seismic signal, as well as to recover part of the energy dissipated by the anelastic attenuation. We have found a way to improve Q-factor estimation from seismic reflection data. Our methodology is based on the combination of the peak-frequency-shift (PFS) method and the redatuming operator. Our innovation is in the way we correct traveltimes when the medium consists of many layers. In other words, the correction of the traveltime table used in the PFS method is performed using the redatuming operator. This operation, performed iteratively, allows a more accurate estimation of the Q factor layer by layer. Applications to synthetic and real data (Viking Graben) reveal the feasibility of our analysis.


Laser-generated plasma filaments in ambient air generate acoustic pulses with characteristic emission directivity and frequency spectra. This work studies the effect of the geometrical characteristics of the plasma channel on the generated acoustic radiation. For this purpose, a model based on the classical line source is adopted, which deploys the correlation between light and sound following laser breakdown to predict the acoustic radiation of filaments in air. Through the model, the acoustic directivity and frequency spectra of plasma filaments with different lengths and plasma density distributions are studied. Preliminary results from acoustic measurements of the filament's sound radiation are presented in the frequency domain. Finally, a complete model based on the wave equation with a heat source is outlined, which allows for the estimation of the filament's acoustic radiation in the time and frequency domain at any point in space. Preliminary results from a computational simulation of a scaled model of a plasma channel are also shown, indicating that such a model can predict the directivity and spectral characteristics of filament sound sources.


Significance The separation of ions is challenging yet crucial for providing access to safe water resources as well as recovering valuable ions from water and wastewater. Yet, membranes rarely exhibit selectivity between ions of similar charge and size. We demonstrate that membranes, prepared by a fully scalable method that uses self-assembling zwitterionic copolymers, exhibit exceptional selectivity between salt anions of similar size and charge. We show that this unusual capability is derived from selective zwitterion–ion interactions occurring within the nanochannels, similarly to biological ion channels. We further demonstrate these membranes exhibit Cl−/F− permselectivity more than twice the values reported in previous studies, with applications in treating groundwater streams to prevent fluorosis and in wastewater treatment. Water filtration membranes with advanced ion selectivity are urgently needed for resource recovery and the production of clean drinking water. This work investigates the separation capabilities of cross-linked zwitterionic copolymer membranes, a self-assembled membrane system featuring subnanometer zwitterionic nanochannels. We demonstrate that selective zwitterion–anion interactions simultaneously control salt partitioning and diffusivity, with the permeabilities of NaClO4, NaI, NaBr, NaCl, NaF, and Na2SO4 spanning roughly three orders of magnitude over a wide range of feed concentrations. We model salt flux using a one-dimensional transport model based on the Maxwell–Stefan equations and show that diffusion is the dominant mode of transport for 1:1 sodium salts. Differences in zwitterion–Cl− and zwitterion–F− interactions granted these membranes with the ultrahigh Cl−/F− permselectivity (PCl-/PF- = 24), enabling high fluoride retention and high chloride passage even from saline mixtures of NaCl and NaF.


In order to reveal the mechanistic characteristics during the elliptical vibration cutting (EVC), A simplified 2-D finite element model is developed. The characteristics of the cutting forces during the EVC process are investigated by comparison with the conventional cutting. The results indicate that the lower averaging values of cutting forces can be obtained and an obvious inverse phenomenon of the thrust force is also observed during the EVC process, which may be beneficial to the chip formation. A detailed analysis of the equivalent stress distribution during the EVC process is carried out. A transient stress distribution is observed during the EVC process, the highly localized Von Mises stress in the tool-chip contact region throughout one EVC cycle may help to form a more continuous chip and lead to the ductile regime removal of brittle materials.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
A patient with hereditary spherocytosis (HS) was found not to have red cell membrane protein 4.2. This rare form of HS, or 4.2 (-) HS, stems from mutations within the ELB42 or the EPB3 genes. The patient had long suffered from a gastric ulcer and impaired liver function. He had had several dramatic episodes of gastrointestinal tract bleeding and had received numerous transfusions. An antibody against a high frequency, undefined antigen was found, creating a transfusional deadlock. We elucidated the responsible mutation and searched for an anti-protein 4.2 antibody.

DESIGN AND METHODS
Red cell membranes were analyzed by SDS-PAGE and by Western blotting. Nucleotide sequencing was performed after reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and nested PCR.

RESULTS
The not previously described mutation was a single base deletion: 949delG (CGCAECC, exon 7, codon 317) in the homozygous state. It was called protein 4.2 Nancy. The deletion placed a non-sense codon shortly downstream so that no viable polypeptide could be synthesized. The patient carried a strong antibody against protein 4.2 as shown by Western blotting.

INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS
The manifestations resulting from the mutation described were compared with the picture of HS stemming from other ELB42 gene mutations. We discuss the mechanism through which the anti-protein 4.2 antibody developed. There was no way to establish or to rule out whether the antibody participated in the transfusional deadlock found in our patient.


Background: Female pattern hair loss (FPHL) is the main cause of alopecia in women and has a debilitating impact on the quality of life. However, certain comorbid conditions causing hair loss are often masked by FPHL and may remain undetected. Hence, it is imperative to identify them to administer appropriate treatment. The necessity of laboratory tests to evaluate these comorbidities in patients with FPHL has not been established. Objectives: This study aimed to identify the frequency of comorbid abnormalities detected by laboratory tests in patients with FPHL. Methods: Routine laboratory test results of patients with FPHL, who visit our hair clinic for the first time, were retrospectively collected and analyzed. These tests assessed the serum testosterone, thyroid-stimulating hormone, free thyroxin, zinc and ferritin levels, hemoglobin, as well as antinuclear antibody (ANA), and rapid plasma reagin test results. The correlation between age and hair loss severity and the frequency of comorbidities was evaluated using subgroup analysis. Results: Among the 356 patients with FPHL, coexisting zinc deficiency, iron depletion, and thyroid abnormalities were common and present in 41.7%, 39.7%, and 11.3% of them, respectively. The rate of concomitantly increased ANA titers was relatively low (4.4%), while that of syphilis and high serum testosterone levels was extremely low (0.3% and 0%, respectively). Younger patients (<50 years) with FPHL had a higher rate of coexisting iron deficiency than patients in the older age group. Conclusion: Testing for concomitant iron depletion, zinc deficiency, and thyroid disease is recommended in female patients with FPHL.


One noticeable feature of the Malaysian tourism industry is the dependence upon ASEAN countries for its tourist arrivals. In 1985, ASEAN countries contributed about 75% to the total tourist arrivals to Malaysia. In 2000, the figure had dropped slightly to 68% and increased back to 75% in 2004. The most important providers for tourist arrivals is dominated by Singapore, followed by Thailand and Indonesia (named as ASEAN3). The ASEAN3 controlled about 96% and 97% of the total ASEAN tourist arrivals in 2000 and 2004 respectively. Due to the importance of ASEAN3 to the growth of the Malaysian tourism industry, this study has attempted to identify and analyse economic factors influencing their arrivals to Malaysia. Among these important factors were expenses while traveling in Malaysia, their income, alternative destinations, global economic and environmental crisis, and promotional campaign for visiting Malaysia. The study empirically estimated the mentioned variables utilising the Engle-Granger cointegration framework.
Findings of this study have shown that most of the coefficients estimated were statistically significant and consistent with the theoretical framework.


Glucose‐6‐phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency is common in Italy and recent biochemical and kinetic studies have demonstrated the presence of polymorphic variants associated with severe or mild enzyme deficiency. We performed a biochemical characterization of G6PD in a large number of Italian G6PD deficient men in an attempt to identify the most reliable biochemical indices for discriminating polymorphic G6PD variants and to define their distribution throughout the country. Three polymorphic G6PD variants, respectively named Mediterranean, Cagliari and Sassari, were identified. The elution profile on DEAE‐Sephadex column chromatography, substrate analogue utilization and the Michaelis constant for G6P were the most significant parameters to discriminate polymorphic variants among the variants with activity levels lower than 0.8 IU/g Hb. The distribution of the polymorphic variants, in relation to the origin of the subjects studied, differs throughout the country.


According to the age-old proverb from Plato's Republic: necessity is the mother of invention, the main motivation for creating new discoveries is the need for them. However, as well as the necessity factor, we argue that a very important aspect that influences invention and creativity is the empathy factor. This mixed methods research investigated the impact of empathy instruction on the social and emotional skills of creativity in the UK Design and Technology (D&T) classroom. Pupils in year 9 (aged 13 to 14 years) from two schools were assessed for their creativity levels using the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) both at the start and at the end of the academic school year. In the intervening period, whereas the control school continued as normal with its usual D&T lessons, the intervention school's D&T lessons were replaced by a creativity tuition kit called Designing Our Tomorrow (DOT), which involves instruction in empathising. Pupils from year 7 (aged 11 to 12 years) in a third school were given the DOT task alone and interviewed about their experiences of it. Results showed that unlike the control school, whose emotional and cognitive creative scores in fact decreased over time, the intervention school increased in its levels of emotional and cognitive creativity, as measured by the TTCT. These quantitative as well as the subsequent qualitative interview findings and pupils' portfolios suggest that creativity can be taught and particularly via instruction that advocates the importance of empathising with the subject matter. The findings are discussed in relation to the need for a holistic approach to teaching, where social, emotional and cognitive dimensions of teaching and learning are needed to complete and enhance the learning experience for the D&T classroom and beyond.


Abstract The key focus of this article is to provide an understanding about the complexities involved in global IT outsourcing and the management initiatives needed for the successful implementation of a global IT outsourcing partnership. Technological advances combined with increased globalization and competitive pressures have forced many firms to consider alternatives that will reduce organizational cost, and at the same time create and/or maintain their competitive advantage in the global market. Increasingly, the phenomenon of global outsourcing is being considered by many firms as a solution to their IT needs and problems. With increasing recognition and confidence in the programming competencies of IT workers in India and other countries, offshore outsourcing has gained increasing acceptance among U.S firms across all industries. Even though there has been a plethora of studies on domestic outsourcing of information systems, the research on outsourcing outside national borders (global outsourcing) has been scarce. One of the areas which lacks depth in the literature is in how to manage a global outsourcing partnership. Anecdotal evidence points to the fact that even the best outsourcing deals can go sour if not managed properly. In the context of global IT outsourcing, the management of the outsourcing relationship becomes even more complex because of the geographical distance and the difference in the national and organizational cultures of the client and vendor firms. This article identifies the key elements that should be considered while managing an outsourcing relationship with a foreign' vendor and the role the manager should play in a global outsourcing context.


The watershed transform, from mathematical morphology, is a powerful and flexible tool for segmentation. However, it does not allow a priori knowledge relating to characteristics of region boundaries to be included in the way that other approaches do. This paper introduces the locally constrained watershed transform, which includes border constraints by modifying the underlying path definition upon which the watershed transform depends. This approach maintains many of the desirable properties of the watershed transform, such as well-defined stopping conditions and efficient implementation, while offering more stable segmentation in the presence of noisy or incomplete boundaries


Although it is well believed for years that modeling relations between objects would help object recognition, there has not been evidence that the idea is working in the deep learning era. All state-of-the-art object detection systems still rely on recognizing object instances individually, without exploiting their relations during learning. This work proposes an object relation module. It processes a set of objects simultaneously through interaction between their appearance feature and geometry, thus allowing modeling of their relations. It is lightweight and in-place. It does not require additional supervision and is easy to embed in existing networks. It is shown effective on improving object recognition and duplicate removal steps in the modern object detection pipeline. It verifies the efficacy of modeling object relations in CNN based detection. It gives rise to the first fully end-to-end object detector.


Answering complex questions about images is an ambitious goal for machine intelligence, which requires a joint understanding of images, text, and commonsense knowledge, as well as a strong reasoning ability. Recently, multimodal Transformers have made a great progress in the task of Visual Commonsense Reasoning (VCR), by jointly understanding visual objects and text tokens through layers of cross-modality attention. However, these approaches do not utilize the rich structure of the scene and the interactions between objects which are essential in answering complex commonsense questions. We propose a
Scene Graph Enhanced Image-Text Learning (SGEITL) framework to incorporate visual scene graph in commonsense reasoning. In order to exploit the scene graph structure, at the model structure level, we propose a multihop graph transformer for regularizing attention interaction among hops. As for pre-training, a scene-graph-aware pre-training method is proposed to leverage structure knowledge extracted in visual scene graph. Moreover, we introduce a method to train and generate domain relevant visual scene graph using textual annotations in a weakly-supervised manner. Extensive experiments on VCR and other tasks show significant performance boost compared with the state-of-the-art methods, and prove the efficacy of each proposed component.


Processing an input signal that contains arbitrary structures, e.g., superpixels and point clouds, remains a big challenge in computer vision. Linear diffusion, an effective model for image processing, has been recently integrated with deep learning algorithms. In this paper, we propose to learn pairwise relations among data points in a global fashion to improve semantic segmentation with arbitrarily-structured data, through spatial generalized propagation networks (SGPN). The network propagates information on a group of graphs, which represent the arbitrarily-structured data, through a learned, linear diffusion process. The module is flexible to be embedded and jointly trained with many types of networks, e.g., CNNs. We experiment with semantic segmentation networks, where we use our propagation module to jointly train on different data -- images, superpixels, and point clouds. We show that SGPN consistently improves the performance of both pixel and point cloud segmentation, compared to networks that do not contain this module. Our method suggests an effective way to model the global pairwise relations for arbitrarily-structured data.


Real-time rendering and animation of humans is a core function in games, movies, and telepresence applications. Existing methods have a number of drawbacks we aim to address with our work. Triangle meshes have difficulty modeling thin structures like hair, volumetric representations like Neural Volumes are too low-resolution given a reasonable memory budget, and high-resolution implicit representations like Neural Radiance Fields are too slow for use in real-time applications. We present Mixture of Volumetric Primitives (MVP), a representation for rendering dynamic 3D content that combines the completeness of volumetric representations with the efficiency of primitive-based rendering, e.g., point-based or mesh-based methods. Our approach achieves this by leveraging spatially shared computation with a convolutional architecture and by minimizing computation in empty regions of space with volumetric primitives that can move to cover only occupied regions. Our parameterization supports the integration of correspondence and tracking constraints, while being robust to areas where classical tracking fails, such as around thin or translucent structures and areas with large topological variability. MVP is a hybrid that generalizes both volumetric and primitive-based representations. Through a series of extensive experiments we demonstrate that it inherits the strengths of each, while avoiding many of their limitations. We also compare our approach to several state-of-the-art methods and demonstrate that MVP produces superior results in terms of quality and runtime performance.


Human adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells (AT-MSC) are considered to be a promising source of autologous stem cells in personalized cell-based therapies. Tumor tracking properties of MSC provide an attractive opportunity for targeted transgene delivery into the sites of tumor formation. In the present study, we addressed whether the suicide gene introduction into human AT-MSC could produce a tumor-specific prodrug converting cellular vehicle for targeted chemotherapy. We prepared yeast fusion cytosine deaminase::uracil phosphoribosyltransferase gene-expressing cells [cytosine deaminase (CD)-expressing AT-MSC (CD-AT-MSC)] by retrovirus transduction. We explored their therapeutic potential on a model of human colon cancer in the presence of prodrug 5-fluorocytosine (5-FC). Gene manipulation of human AT-MSC did not sensitize CD-AT-MSC to 5-FC, thus overcoming the inherent disadvantage of suicide effect on cellular vehicle. CD-AT-MSC in combination with 5-FC augmented the bystander effect and selective cytotoxicity on target tumor cells HT-29 in direct coculture in vitro. We confirmed directed migration ability of AT-MSC and CD-AT-MSC toward tumor cells HT-29 in vitro. Moreover, we achieved significant inhibition of s.c. tumor xenograft growth by s.c. or i.v. administered CD-AT-MSC in immunocompromised mice treated with 5-FC. We confirmed the ability of CD-AT-MSC to deliver the CD transgene to the site of tumor formation and mediate strong antitumor effect in vivo. Taken together, these data characterize MSC derived from adipose tissue as suitable delivery vehicles for prodrug converting gene and show their utility for a personalized cell-based targeted cancer gene therapy.


The spatial distribution and magnitude of snowfall resulting from cloud seeding with silver iodide (AgI) is closely linked to atmospheric conditions, seeding operations, and dynamical, thermodynamical, and microphysical processes. Here, microphysical processes leading to ice and snow production are analyzed in orographic clouds for three cloud seeding events, each with light or no natural precipitation and well-defined, traceable seeding lines. Airborne and ground-based radar observations are linked to in-situ cloud and precipitation measurements to determine the spatiotemporal evolution of ice initiation, particle growth, and snow fallout in seeded clouds. These processes and surface snow amounts are explored as particle plumes evolve from varying amounts of AgI released, and within changing environmental conditions, including changes in liquid water content (LWC) along and downwind of the seeding track, wind speed, and shear. More AgI did not necessarily produce more liquid equivalent snowfall (LESnow). The greatest amount of LESnow, largest area covered by snowfall, and highest peak snowfall produced through seeding occurred on the day with the largest and most widespread occurrence of supercooled drizzle, highest wind shear, and greater LWC along and downwind of the seeding track. The day with the least supercooled drizzle and the lowest LWC downwind of the seeding track produced the smallest amount of LESnow through seeding. The stronger the wind, the farther away the snowfall occurred from the seeding track.


Nd, Sr, and Pb isotopic analyses are presented for plutonic and volcanic rocks from a northeast-southwest transect across the southern Coast Plutonic Complex (CPC). Plutonic and volcanic rocks have initial ϵNd of +4.2 to +8.9 and initial 87Sr/86Sr ratios of 0.702 44–0.704 83. Values of Pb isotopic ratios for the suite range from 18.23 to 19.03 for 206Pb/204Pb, from 15.43 to 15.67 for 207Pb/204Pb, and from 37.54 to 38.30 for 208Pb/204Pb. The isotopic data suggest that these rocks consist mainly of mantle-derived materials with little or no involvement of old continental material. There are no significant variations in Nd and Sr isotopic composition with rock type or age. Pb isotopic compositions are also independent of rock type and age except for 208Pb/204Pb, which, for a subset of volcanic rocks, rises slightly with decreasing age. Examined against position along the transect, the isotopic data are uniform except for a rise in initial 87Sr/86Sr toward the northeast defined by older metavolcanic rocks. Based on the Nd and Pb isotopic data, a number of igneous rocks from the southern CPC appear to have been derived strictly from partial melting of mantle material. Many intrusions, however, have isotopic compositions and t DM ages consistent with the combined effects of melting of mantle and subordinate anatexis of isotopically juvenile terranes (e.g., Wrangellia).


Microbiology of Raw Milk, Golfo Moatsou and Ekaterini Moschopoulou Dairy Starter Cultures, Zeynep Ustunol Recent Advances in Genetics of Lactic Acid Bacteria, Nefise Akcelik, Omer Simsek, and Mustafa Akcelik Biopreservation by Lactic Acid Bacteria, Per E. J. Saris Microbiology of Processed Liquid Milk, Ebru Senel and Ayse Gursoy Cheese Microbiology, Manuela Pintado, Adriano Gomes da Cruz and Patricia B. Zacarchenco Rodrigues de Sa Primary Biochemical Events During Cheese Ripening, A. A. Hayaloglu and P. L. H. McSweeney Microbiology and Biochemistry of Yogurt and Other Fermented Milk Products, Barbaros Ozer Development of Fermented Milk Products Containing Probiotics, Claude P. Champagne Microbiology of Cream, Butter, Ice Cream and Related Products, Hamid Ghoddusi and Barbaros Ozer Microbiology of Evaporated, Condensed and Powdered Milk, Ayse Demet Karaman and Valente B. Alvarez Functional Dairy Ingredients, Ana Raquel Madureira, Ana Gomes and Manuela Pintado Non-Thermal Processing of Milk and Milk Products for Microbial Safety, Gulsun Akdemir Evrendilek Microbiological Safety Systems for Dairy Processing, Theo Varzakas Strategies for Rapid Detection of Milk-borne Pathogens, Keith A. Lampel Current Regulations in Microbiological Control of Milk and Dairy Products, Theo Varzakas, Ilya Vladimirovich Nikolaev and Olga Vladimirovna Koroleva


We study the adsorption of a fluid in the grand canonical ensemble occurring at a planar heterogeneous wall which is decorated with a chemical stripe of width L. We suppose that the material of the stripe strongly preferentially adsorbs the liquid in contrast to the outer material which is only partially wet. This competition leads to the nucleation of a droplet of liquid on the stripe, the height h_{m} and shape of which (at bulk two-phase coexistence) has been predicted previously using mesoscopic interfacial Hamiltonian theory. We test these predictions using a microscopic Fundamental Measure Density Functional Theory which incorporates short-ranged fluid-fluid and fully long-ranged wall-fluid interactions. Our model functional accurately describes packing effects not captured by the interfacial Hamiltonian but still we show that there is excellent agreement with the predictions h_{m}≈L^{1/2} and for the scaled circular shape of the drop even for L as small as 50 molecular diameters. For smaller stripes the droplet height is considerably lower than that predicted by the mesoscopic interfacial theory. Phase transitions for droplet configurations occurring on substrates with multiple stripes are also discussed.


To develop methods of estimating sodium intake in free-living persons, we gave normal volunteers mean sodium intakes of 65, 110, and 200 mEq/day. The intake was randomly varied about each mean by an SD of 12.5% daily. Twenty-four-hour and night urinary sodium excretion were measured. Night urinary sodium excretion was also estimated by means of inexpensive quantitative and qualitative chloride titrator strips. The latter required no timed urine collection. A total of three 24-hour urine collections were necessary to differentiate the regimens with 95% accuracy. Three night urinary sodium excretory estimates by the quantitative chloride titrator provided 79% accuracy in identifying the level of dietary sodium intake. By applying the qualitative chloride titrator every other day, the dietary regimens could be differentiated with 95% accuracy. These techniques were not only useful in estimating sodium intake, but also provided a simple means of documenting compliance to sodium restriction. Patients should have no difficulty in applying these methods themselves in a home setting.


The cerebellum is an important model system to study Central Nervous System, it has a striking morphology consisting of folia separated by fissures of different lengths, and the molecules controlling the process of cerebellar development have been unclear. In this study, we report an unrecognized contribution of Dlic1 to the postnatal development of murine cerebellum. Dlic1 encodes a light intermediate chain of cytoplasmic dynein 1, it is a subunit unique to the cytoplasmic form of dynein, and how it contributes to dynein function is not fully understood. Our data show that Dlic1 deletion leads to impaired cerebellar development, foliation and fissuration, the volume of the cerebellum was evidently reduced. Consistent with the histological defects, Dlic1 knockout mice show defective motor coordination, this strongly indicates the fundamental role of Dlic1 in cerebellar development and function. Purkinje cells are located within the cerebellum and form synapses with granule cells. In Dlic1-/- mice, Purkinje cells display reduced dendritic complexity and the distribution of dynein in Purkinje cell layer is changed. We also found that Dlic1 deletion reduced the protein levels of dynein subunits and leads to the defective assembling of dynein subunits. These data indicate that Dlic1 may affect cerebellar development through affecting the normal function of dynein. Abbreviations Dlic1 cytoplasmic dynein 1 light intermediate chain CNS central nervous system MEF mouse embryo fibroblast


We introduce a class of variational wavefunctions that capture the long-range interaction between neutral systems (atoms and molecules) without changing the diagonal of the density matrix of each monomer. The corresponding energy optimization yields explicit expressions for the dispersion coefficients in terms of the ground-state pair densities of the isolated systems, providing a clean theoretical framework to build new approximations in several contexts. As the individual monomer densities are kept fixed, we can also unambiguously assess the effect of the density distortion on van der Waals interactions: for example, we obtain virtually exact dispersion coefficients between two hydrogen atoms up to $C_{10}$, and relative errors below $0.2\%$ in other simple cases.


The Country of Malaysia is not only diverse in culture and during its history, but also contains a plurality of active religious traditions. This unique lifestyle has affected modernizing transformations during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The influence of the minority religions on economic policy is a notable example. The socio-religious climate of Malaysia and its various ethnic groups have all contributed to economic and in turn political developments within the nation. This paper will explore the links of how the pluralist environment of the country has directly affected and continues to shape the social, economic, political discourse of the country. Subtle elements such as constitutional preference over one religion and the various economic policies show that the religious pluralism of Malaysia and globalising factors have had wide ranging influences on the country and its people. As such this paper will argue that in the development of Malaysia as a nation its many religious traditions have had a role to play. With arguably the minority religions being a more dominant factor that the majority Muslim community. These religions have interacted and influenced each other in developing Malaysian identity-politics and economic policy for its contemporary citizens.


This Doctoral Thesis focuses on the study of individual behaviours as a result of
organizational affiliation. The objective is to assess the Entrepreneurial Orientation of individuals
proving the existence of a set of antecedents to that measure returning a structural model of its
micro-foundation. Relying on the developed measurement model, I address the issue whether some
Entrepreneurs experience different behaviours as a result of their academic affiliation, comparing a
sample of 'Academic Entrepreneurs' to a control sample of 'Private Entrepreneurs' affiliated to a
matched sample of Academic Spin-offs and Private Start-ups.
Building on the Theory of the Planned Behaviour, proposed by Ajzen (1991), I present a
model of causal antecedents of Entrepreneurial Orientation on constructs extensively used and
validated, both from a theoretical and empirical perspective, in sociological and psychological
studies. I focus my investigation on five major domains: (a) Situationally Specific Motivation, (b)
Personal Traits and Characteristics, (c) Individual Skills, (d) Perception of the Business
Environment and (e) Entrepreneurial Orientation Related Dimensions.
I rely on a sample of 200 Entrepreneurs, affiliated to a matched sample of 72 Academic
Spin-offs and Private Start-ups. Firms are matched by Industry, Year of Establishment and
Localization and they are all located in the Emilia Romagna region, in northern Italy. I've gathered
data by face to face interviews and used a Structural Equation Modeling technique (Lisrel 8.80,
Joreskog, K., & Sorbom, D. 2006) to perform the empirical analysis.
The results show that Entrepreneurial Orientation is a multi-dimensional micro-founded
construct which can be better represented by a Second-Order Model. The t-tests on the latent means
reveal that the Academic Entrepreneurs differ in terms of: Risk taking, Passion, Procedural and
Organizational Skills, Perception of the Government, Context and University Supports. The
Structural models also reveal that the main differences between the two groups lay in the predicting
power of Technical Skills, Perceived Context Support and Perceived University Support in
explaining the Entrepreneurial Orientation Related Dimensions.


Safety-Critical Java (SCJ) is a recent technology that restricts the execution and memory model of Java in such a way that applications can be statically analysed and certified for their real-time properties and safe use of memory. Our interest is in the development of comprehensive and sound techniques for the formal specification, refinement, design, and implementation of SCJ programs, using a correct-by-construction approach. As part of this work, we present here an account of laws and patterns that are of general use for the refinement of SCJ mission specifications into designs of parallel handlers used in the SCJ programming paradigm. Our notation is a combination of languages from the Circus family, supporting state-rich reactive models with the addition of class objects and real-time properties. Our work is a first step to elicit laws of programming for SCJ and fits into a refinement strategy that we have developed previously to derive SCJ programs.


D.H., a 50-year-old married man, presented for his first office visit complaining of a "male problem," which he described as a sore on his penis that had been present for 14 days. The patient's most recent sexual encounter was with his wife 2 weeks before the office visit. He denied any penile discharge but complained of constant pain in his "private part." He also denied dysuria, frequency, past sexually transmitted diseases, and extramarital sexual encounters. His wife had no vaginal or perineal symptoms.

The patient reported first noticing a "blister" on the glans penis, which ruptured several days after forming. The pain intensified when the blister broke. He described the pain intensity as mild to moderate with no radiation, "sharp and stinging," especially when washing himself and during sexual intercourse. He had not experienced nausea, fatigue, fever, or malaise.

The penile examination revealed an uncircumcised glans penis that was inflamed, erythematous, and tender. On the glans penis was a 0.5-cm, oval, erythematous-based ulceration with some crusting. There were no vesicles associated with the lesion. No penile discharge, scrotal tenderness, or scrotal abnormalities were noted.

Herpes simplex virus (HSV) and aerobic bacterial cultures of the lesion were conducted. A DNA probe for Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhea were obtained. A complete blood diagnostic profile with rapid plasma reagin (RPR) for syphilis was also conducted. The patient was diagnosed with a …


The bedside chest radiograph represents the imaging modality of choice for diagnosis and monitoring of adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Imaging findings are strongly influenced by means of mechanical ventilation therapy. The chest radiograph is relatively insensitive and not specific for the diagnosis of complications such as pneumonia or interstitial emphysema. Computed tomography (CT) is suitable for quantitative assessment of lung compartments with respect to the degree of aeration and to tissue density values. With CT, the understanding of the underlying pathophysiology and the effects of ventilation therapy (PEEP) could be improved. The role of CT in the clinical routine is still limited due to the high risk to transport patients with ARDS.


Agricultural History Review Archaeologia Aeliana, 1st-5th series Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, now Historical Research Chetham Society Early English Text Society Economic History Review English Historical Review Historical Journal History Journal of British Studies Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society Journal of Ecclesiastical History Northern History Past and Present Publications of the Thoresby Society Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire Scottish Historical Review Studies in Church History Surtees Society Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, Ist-3rd series Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Victoria County History Yorkshire Archaeological Journal Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series AgHR AA 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 BIHR HR CS EETS EcHR EHR HJ Hist. JBS JCAS JEH NH P&P PThS RSLC SHR SCH SS CW 1,2,3


This article provides an empirical analysis of interpretive discretion in investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS). Since the late 1990s, foreign investors have brought hundreds of investment treaty claims against states, leading to numerous awards in which arbitrators have interpreted investment treaties. Arbitrators may resolve ambiguities in the treaties in expansive or restrictive ways, thereby affecting the compensatory promise of ISDS for foreign investors and corresponding risks for states. Which arbitrators have contributed most to expansive or restrictive approaches? To examine this question, data was analysed on arbitrators' resolutions of contested legal issues, such as the permissibility of parallel or minority shareholder claims and the scope of concepts of investment, fair and equitable treatment, full protection and security and indirect expropriation. The analysis allows for rankings of arbitrators and tentative descriptive findings identifying a small group of individuals as the leading contributors to expansive resolutions and one individual as the leading contributor to restrictive resolutions. The analysis reveals how interpretive discretion impacted relevant legal aspects of ISDS in its first two decades and supplements other research on ISDS arbitrator behaviour.


A way for treating general delayed systems with uncertain delays in both the numerator and the denominator is shown. The proposed procedure is demonstrated by an example. A simple controller is derived via algebraic theory and the structured singular value, which treats uncertain time delay in both the numerator and the denominator of an anisochronic system. The overall performance is verified by simulations and compared with standard tool for robust control design.


Investigations in this laboratory demonstrated that the normalized correlation accounted well for listeners' performance in binaural tasks utilizing high‐frequency stimuli for which the envelopes convey the interaural information. This outcome means that the non‐zero mean of the envelopes must be included in the computation of the correlation. Due to peripheral auditory processing analogous to rectification and low‐pass filtering, the ''internal'' representations of auditory stimuli have nonzero means regardless of their frequency. This study evaluated whether the normalized correlation computed subsequent to rectification and low‐pass filtering could account for detection data at low and intermediate, as well as high frequencies. In a four‐interval, two‐alternative task, listeners detected which interval contained a tone (between 500 Hz and 2 kHz) added antiphasically to diotic, 100‐Hz‐wide, noise (NoSπ). ''Nonsignal'' intervals contained the tone added homophasically (NoSo). Performance was measured for S/Ns between −30 and +30 dB. For all S/Ns, overall level was 70 dB SPL. Normalized correlation (unlike the correlation coefficient) described performance well, as a function of S/N and center frequency. The parameters of the rectifier and low‐pass filter required to describe the data will be discussed. [Supported by research Grant No. 5R01DC0210302, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, NIH.]


Abstract Heart rate variability (HRV) is a powerful measure to gain information on the activation of the central nervous system and is thus a strong indicator for the overall health and emotional state of a person. Currently, the gold standard for HRV analysis is the examination of R-peaks in electrocardiograms (ECG), which requires a placement of electrodes on the torso. This is often impracticable, especially for the use in daily routines or 24/7 measurements. Photoplethysmograms (PPG) are an alternative to ECG assessment and are easier to acquire, e.g. by using fitness trackers or smart watches. Nevertheless, PPG data is more susceptible to motion artifacts. Hence, goal of this work is to develop and evaluate an artificial neural network (ANN) approach to estimate the R-peak locations in complex PPG signals. Public data collections were used as benchmark to compare our ANN-based approach to state-of-the-art methods. Results show that ANNs can improve HRV estimation during motion. HRV estimations from baseline methods (decision-tree based and automatic multiscalebased peak detection) were compared with the best performing neural network (3L-GRU) using the TROIKA dataset with respect to reference parameters obtained from a manual selection of the peaks in ECG data. In most cases, the neural network based HRV estimation was closer to the reference HRV compared to baseline methods (lower μ and σ ) Also, σ is smaller for the best performing ANN approach across most HRV parameters. Inclusion of another PPG or acceleration channel did not affect HRV estimation. Although, the neural network learning approach outperforms conventional methods, the examined PPG-based HRV estimation has still accuracy limitations. Nonetheless, the proposed estimation approach opens up new directions for further improvement.


Stable isotopes are increasingly being used to unlock the wealth of information contained in specimens preserved in museum collections. However, preservation methods that employ formalin may confound ecological interpretations. To quantify the effects of formalin fixation and subsequent fluid storage in ethanol on the isotopic signatures of small mammal hair, we analyzed δ13C and δ15N values from specimens of seven rodent species that were sampled repeatedly both before and after varying lengths of formalin fixation (1–11 days) and ethanol storage (1–6 years). We supplemented these data with a 2-week fixation experiment using deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) in which no ethanol storage was employed. As expected, preservation in formalin and ethanol had no discernable effect on δ15N values. In contrast, specimen δ13C values decreased in a saturating fashion during formalin fixation and over subsequent years of fluid storage in ethanol. On the basis of models that we fit to these time series, we estimate the long-term effect of fixation and storage on δ13C values to be –0.92‰ after 4 years. This biologically relevant shift in δ13C values should be accounted for when inferring the diets of species from fluid-stored museum collections and when comparing across specimens with different preservation histories.


Reproductive output (RO) is commonly used as a proxy for reproductive effort (RE) among Brachyuran crabs and other marine invertebrates, and so far no attempt has been made to incorporate the cost of brooding into RE to obtain a more reliable estimate of reproductive invest- ment, nor to compare it along a temperature (latitudinal) gradient. We compared RO among 3 sites (ca. 20, 30 and 40° S, reflecting mean annual sea-surface temperatures of 18, 14 and 10°C, respec- tively), and the cost of brooding (oxygen provision) at those temperatures, in order to obtain a more reliable pattern of reproductive investment along an extended latitudinal gradient. A total of 187 brooding females of Cancer setosus were collected to estimate RO. Fecundity, volume and weight of the embryos, and embryo losses were also estimated. Laboratory experiments were carried out at the characteristic temperatures of those sites (acclimating females from central Chile) to determine (1) patterns of oxygen provision to the embryos, (2) patterns of brooding behavior, and (3) to quantify the cost of embryo ventilation. Optic fibers, video recording and respiration chambers were used to meet these goals. Results showed that (1) RO, (2) fecundity, and (3) volume and weight of embryos varied with latitude, and that temperature affects (1) period of embryo ventilation (oxygen provision) events, (2) flapping frequency, (3) embryo losses throughout the brooding period, and (4) cost of embryo ventilation per unit of time. While RO increased with latitude, the cost of embryo ventilation decreased with temperature, suggesting a trade-off between investment in eggs and the cost of pro- viding oxygen to the embryos at different temperatures (latitudes). This pattern may not be exclusive to Brachyuran crabs, but may also apply to other marine invertebrates since oxygen limitation during early development occurs in other brooding species.


We investigated the 4H-SiC C-face MOS interface properties around valence-band, and fabricated 4H-SiC C-face p-channel MOSFETs for the first time. For C-face p-channel MOSFETs, relatively low-temperature wet-gate-oxidation was preferable. Post-deposition-annealing for contact metal was found to degrade the C-face MOS interface around valence-band. Low-temperature (800°C) PDA in hydrogen including ambient was effective to some extent in order to suppress the degradation owing annealing. We obtained C-face p-channel MOSFET with normal FET operation by utilizing 900°C wet-gate-oxidation and 800°C PDA in He-H2 forming gas ambient.


This work addresses the device modeling challenges of production-quality, state-of-the-art, silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) processes. Differences between SOS, silicon-on-insulator (SOI), and bulk CMOS are highlighted, with emphasis on the key differences in the modeling methodology. For RF and low-power applications, SOS has distinct advantages over SOI, such as reduced parasitics, better linearity, and enhanced electrical isolation. Yet little is reported in the literature about modeling of a commercially viable SOS process. Though originally developed for SOI, it is demonstrated that the BSIMSOI model can adequately represent SOS MOSFETs, including fully and partially depleted devices. For RF switch applications, RON and COFF are captured with reasonable accuracy. An additional RF figure of merit, fT, is also reasonably well modeled, yielding peak values in the 40-50 GHz range.


Hypothetical purchase tasks (HPTs) are effective tools for evaluating participants' demand for substances. The present study evaluated the effect of task presentation on producing unsystematic data and purchasing behavior in a sample of individuals who smoke cigarettes. Participants (n = 365) were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk and randomly assigned to complete two of three HPT presentations: List (prices on one page in an increasing order), Ascending (one price per page in an increasing order), or Random (one price per page in a random order). We evaluated outcomes using a mixed model regression with a random effect for participants. We observed a significant effect of task presentation on passing the criterion assessing consistency in effects of contiguous prices (i.e., Bounce; X²(2) = 13.31, p = .001). A significant effect of task presentation on Trend or Reversals from Zero was not observed. For purchasing behavior, we observed a significant effect of task presentation on R², X²(2) = 17.89, p < .001; BP₁, X²(2) = 13.64, p = .001; ln(α), X²(2) = 332.94, p < .001; and ln(Omax), X²(2) = 20.26, p < .001; we did not observe a significant effect of task presentation on ln(Q₀) or ln(Pmax). We recommend against using the Random HPT presentation to avoid unsystematic data. While the List and Ascending presentations do not differ across unsystematic criteria or purchasing behavior, the List presentation may be preferred due to participant experience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).


Fresh water : the essence of life is a beautifully and sometimes starkly depicted look at the current state of our Earth's freshwater ecosystems. This latest publication in the CEMEX Conservation Book Series will alert readers to key issues concerning fresh water: its resources, its uses (and abuses), and its future. With precise, scientific analyses, Fresh water presents a detailed and thoughtful explanation of these issues, and goes on to provide possible resolutions to them.


Progressive Planning "front matter," p. 3 in most issues: "Reprinting and distribution of portions of this magazine for non-commercial purposes are encouraged."


Low turnout is a growing concern among the industrial democracies. Compulsory voting has achieved very high turnouts in several countries, but it has been mostly neglected as a solution to the problem of low turnout elsewhere. This thesis considers the usefulness of compulsory voting for industrial democracies. I argue that, for it to be useful, compulsory voting must be effective on two levels. First, compulsory voting must be effective in increasing turnout. Second, the high turnout resulting from compulsory voting must improve the total utility of the people-defined here as the well-being of the people-otherwise compulsory voting will not ultimately be useful. Rational choice models are constructed and operationalised in order to describe, explain and evaluate compulsory voting. Although data analysis is undertaken for a range of industrial democracies in order to test these rational choice hypotheses, the major focus of this research is on Australia, which has achieved very high turnout levels (around 95% of the registered voters) since the introduction of compulsory voting for federal elections in 1924. Furthermore, by examining the case of Australia, this thesis determines the conditions and necessary adjustments for compulsory voting to work effectively in practice. Finally, compulsory voting is tested with rational choice theory and data analysis on the actual industrial democracies in order to see whether this system is applicable under globally varying conditions. The conclusion of the analysis is that compulsory voting seems to be useful for several industrial democracies in theory and also seems to be workable in practice. However, some subjective judgement needs to be introduced for a full cost-benefit analysis to be made about compulsory voting.


We initiate the study of novel thermal dark matter (DM) scenarios where presentday annihilation of DM in the galactic center produces boosted stable particles in the dark sector. These stable particles are typically a subdominant DM component, but because they are produced with a large Lorentz boost in this process, they can be detected in large volume terrestrial experiments via neutral-current-like interactions with electrons or nuclei. This novel DM signal thus combines the production mechanism associated with indirect detection experiments (i.e. galactic DM annihilation) with the detection mechanism associated with direct detection experiments (i.e. DM scattering off terrestrial targets). Such processes are generically present in multi-component DM scenarios or those with non-minimal DM stabilization symmetries. As a proof of concept, we present a model of two-component thermal relic DM, where the dominant heavy DM species has no tree-level interactions with the standard model and thus largely evades direct and indirect DM bounds. Instead, its thermal relic abundance is set by annihilation into a subdominant lighter DM species, and the latter can be detected in the boosted channel via the same annihilation process occurring today. Especially for dark sector masses in the 10 MeV–10 GeV range, the most promising signals are electron scattering events pointing toward the galactic center. These can be detected in experiments designed for neutrino physics or proton decay, in particular Super-K and its upgrade Hyper-K, as well as the PINGU/MICA extensions of IceCube. This boosted DM phenomenon highlights the distinctive signatures possible from non-minimal dark sectors.


WordNet is a large lexical database of English language, in which, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are grouped into sets of cognitive synonyms (synsets). Each synset expresses a distinct concept. Synsets are interlinked by both semantic and lexical relations. WordNet is essentially used for word sense disambiguation, information retrieval, and text translation. In this paper, we propose several automatic methods to extract Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-related data from Princeton WordNet. We, then, add these extracted data to our Persian WordNet. The advantage of automated methods is reducing the interference of human factors and accelerating the development of our bilingual ICT WordNet. In our first proposed method, based on a small subset of ICT words, we use the definition of each synset to decide whether that synset is ICT. The second mechanism is to extract synsets which are in a semantic relation with ICT synsets. We also use two similarity criteria, namely LCS and S3M, to measure the similarity between a synset definition in WordNet and definition of any word in Microsoft dictionary. Our last method is to verify the coordinate of ICT synsets. Results show that our proposed mechanisms are able to extract ICT data from Princeton WordNet at a good level of accuracy.


The BED capture enzyme immunoassay (BED CEIA) for recent infection was developed for the estimation of HIV-1 incidence in a population from a single cross-sectional survey. To evaluate performance, we applied the assay to specimen sets obtained from a longitudinal cohort study, the AIDSVAX B/B vaccine trial, in which there was an independent and conventional measure of observed incidence. The BED CEIA was performed on specimens obtained during follow-up for seroconversion conducted every 6 months for 3 years. There was excellent agreement between the observed and BED-estimated incidence for all the intervals. The cumulative, annualized incidence observed in the cohort was 3.10 new infections per 100 person-years (95% CI, 2.57-3.63). The corresponding BED-estimated incidence was 2.91 (2.30-3.53). We also estimated the effect of varied prevalence on a fixed incidence. Because some specimens from persons with longer-term infection are classified as recent by the assay, this can inflate the incidence estimate. We quantify this effect and discuss potential mitigation by excluding certain specimens on clinical grounds, by relying on trend differences rather than absolute incidence estimates, by secondary confirmatory testing, or by analytic adjustments for misclassification. Cross-sectional HIV incidence estimation circumvents many of the drawbacks associated with longitudinal cohort studies, but there are test-specific limitations that should be considered in the design of population surveys.


Summary 1. Many aspects of human behaviour impact on ecological systems. Ecologists therefore need information on changes in these behaviours and are increasingly using methods more familiar to social scientists. 2. Understanding patterns of wildlife harvesting is important for assessing the sustainability of harvests. Interviews are commonly used in which informants are asked to summarize their activities over a period of time. However, few studies have investigated the reliability of such data, the usefulness of interviews for monitoring trends, and how their information content can be maximized. 3. We carried out rapid assessment interviews with villagers in Madagascar about the quantity, timing and spatial patterns of crayfish Astacoides granulimanus and firewood collection. We compared the results with information from daily interviews with the same informants. We used mixed models to investigate how accurately people reported their activities in the rapid assessment interviews, and estimated the probability of detecting a change in harvesting from two such interviews using a Bayesian approach. 4. The interviews provided reliable information on quantities, effort, and the spatial pattern of harvesting. Simulations suggested the interviews would detect changes in catches and harvesting effort with reasonable power; for example, a 20% change in the amount of time spent crayfish harvesting could be detected with 90% power. Power is higher when the same informants are questioned in repeat interviews. 5. Synthesis and applications . Ecologists are increasingly using social techniques and it is vital that they are subject to rigorous testing to ensure robustness in trend detection. This study suggests that interviews can be used to monitor changes in harvesting patterns by resource users, but whether the power is adequate will depend on the needs of the study. To maximize the power of interviews, informants should be interviewed independently and the same informants interviewed in subsequent years.


This study is a kind of applied phenomenology, or more precisely, of applied phenomenological hermeneutics. I argue that phenomenologists hardly analyze concrete phenomena but prefer to engage in theoretical debates, and therefore I call for more applied studies. The case of a patient who suff ered a cerebral hemorrhage is used in order to reconstruct how she slowly regained everyday sense-connexions. The case is very interesting as the patient was rather disoriented when waking up from an artificial coma of several weeks, and it took her many years to fully recover. The goal of this paper is to describe some aspects of this process from a subjective perspective as well as from a participant observer's viewpoint. The data used for this chapter mainly stem from in-depth qualitative interviews. The structures of the life-world of Alfred Schutz are used to analyze the processes of sense constitution. Th is proves helpful but the data also suggest a revision of Schutz's analyses in some respects.


A 68-year-old female presented with a 2-week history of jaundice, generalized itching and weight loss in 2006. On physical examination, she was deeply jaundiced; however, other clinical examinations were completely unremarkable. Liver function tests (LFTs) were deranged: serum alkaline phosphatase 407 U/L (35 - 104), serum aspartate transaminase 57 U/L (0 - 31), serum alanine transaminase 184 U/L (0 - 37), and serum total bilirubin 4.3 mg/dL (0 - 1). Abdominal CT revealed a 4.8 cm × 3.5 cm mass in the pancreatic head. ERCP revealed a high-grade stricture in the distal CBD. An internal biliary stent was placed in to the CBD stricture. Patient's symptoms relieved after biliary stenting. Serum CA 19-9 was elevated at 1,568 U/mL (0 - 37). Due to high suspicion for pancreatic cancer, patient underwent pylorus-sparing pancreaticoduodenectomy. Histopathology was benign and showed perilobular lymphoplasmacytic infiltrate, periductal fibrosis and phlebitis that was consistent with autoimmune pancreatitis. Patient was started on oral prednisone that was eventually replaced with azathioprine. Serum IgG4 was 53 mg/dL (1 - 291) after starting steroid treatment. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4021/jmc891w


Vacuum requirements for electron storage rings are most demanding to fulfill, due to the presence of gas desorption caused by large quantities of synchrotron radiation, the very limited area accessible for pumping ports, the need for 10-9 torr pressures in the ring, and for pressures a decade lower in the interaction regions. Design features of a wide variety of distributed ion sublimation pumps (DIP) developed at SLAC to meet these requirements will be discussed, as well as NEG (non-evaporable getter) pumps tested for use in the Large Electron Positron Collider at CERN. Application of DIP to much higher pressures in electron damping rings for the Stanford Linear Collider will be discussed.


KANDID is an advanced EMG decision support system dedicated to the support of the clinical neurophysiologist during EMG examinations. It has facilities for test planning, automatized and structured data interpretation, EMG diagnosis, explanation, and reporting. In a prospective European multicenter field trial, the agreement levels between clinical neurophysiologists and KANDID's diagnostic statements were measured under ordinary clinical EMG practice. KANDID was assessed in 159 individual patient EMG examinations by nine clinical neurophysi-ologists at seven different EMG laboratories. The reasoning of KANDID was considered understandable for the examiners in 80-90% of cases. The agreement level for the electrophysiological states of muscles and nerves between KANDID and the individual examiners was, on average, 81%. The corresponding diagnostic agreement with KANDID was, on average, 61%. A pronounced interexaminer variation in the agreement level related to the different EMG centers was observed. All Danish and Belgian examiners agreed with KANDID in more than 50% of their cases with regard to the EMG diagnosis, while the English examiners were in agreement with KANDID in 50% or less of their cases. These differences were possibly due to differences in epidemiology, examination techniques, control material, and examination planning strategies. It is concluded that it is possible to transfer systems like KANDID out of their development sites and apply them successfully if they can be locally customized by the clinical end users via editors. 0 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.


Due to the love for art and demand for courses, a group of nursery department students from a university of science and technology have found that most kindergarten language courses commenced in kindergartens guide children through learning with the use of Chinese phonetic symbols or text-based flashcards. However, the combination of art and language will enable children to engage in hands-on art creation to achieve language learning in a pleasant manner. Therefore, the process of incorporating clay creation in language learning and teaching involves entering the kindergarten teaching site to implement specific aesthetics practices. With middle-grade children from a kindergarten in Tainan City as teaching targets, 60-minute clay creative language teaching was commenced every week. The teaching topics include: I Am A Teeth Model, I Am A Healthy Child, Collect Trees and Do It Together, which were implemented for a period of four weeks. Of the twelve children in total, nine were boys and three were girls aged between four years old and before the age for entering elementary school. The action research, coupled with the research and education site were adopted to continue to reflect on actions, act on the reflections, and explore the clay creative intervention of language teaching. In addition, feasible courses were planned to deepen children's impression of language learning through clay creativity. With the identities of the homeroom teacher and the observer actually involved in teaching activities, through observations, records, reflective notes, and other methods, the course of teaching was recorded by incorporating clay creativity and children language teaching in order to fully present the actual course of teaching. Research results show that during the process of language learning, the children fully turned their ideas into action through hands-on clay play and freely created the faces of vocabulary created out of their own imagination, thus enabling the children to quickly familiarize and understand the vocabulary, enhancing their memory for the language, eliciting the children's creativity, enabling them to improve hand flexibility and observation, and further inspiring their art talent and giving them a sense of honor from works created. It is a type of aesthetic teaching that is both educational and entertaining.


Baroque opera was invented on a deathly premise: reviving a tradition of sung ancient tragedy that had in fact never existed. Modern historiography has struggled with the notion of origins, focusing on relationships among the surviving textual sources to make sense of the proliferation of theatrical subjects. These relationships remain important—but there is also reason to delve deeper into the "haunted" status of early opera. With respect to three central works on the subject of Agrippina and her son Nero (Nerone fatto Cesare, Noris-Perti, Venice 1693; Agrippina, Noris-Magni, Milan 1703; and L'Agrippina, Handel-[Grimani], Venice 1709), the haunted status of performances was made explicit, both in the drama and in contemporary poems dedicated to the main singers.
 Using terminology associated with the "spectral turn" in the humanities, this essay argues for rethinking operatic genealogies through the lens of hauntological intertextualities. In contrast to traditional theories of compositional influence, this study adopts a non-linear historiographical approach to performance genealogies, embracing text, music, and discourse about opera itself. Contesting the use of the concept of "origins" with respect to both the birth and subject matter of baroque opera, I argue that the genre developed as an already haunted narration.


The aim of this research was to develop a teaching material of descriptive writing by using cooperative teaching model with think-pair-share type based on its validity, practicality and effectiveness. Three items of the analysis covered a content feasibility analysis, language analysis and layout analysis. The method of this study was research and development approach with Defining, Designing, Developing, and Disseminating (4-D) model. Instrument of this research used the observation sheets, field notes, questionnaire, interview form and focus group discussion. The result of research showed that developing teaching material for descriptive writing lesson by using think pair share model can be a good product. This teaching material product has been valid and feasible and has been passed the content analysis, language analysis, layout analysis and practical by experts'judgment and empirical studies. After doing some trial of this product can be concluded that the product was more effective to improve students' descriptive writing skill and can be more practical for Indonesian Language teachers of elementary school to use that. This product was expected become a prefer choice by teachers in the implementation of descriptive writing lesson for the fourth grade students of elementary school level.


The efficacy of neem product (phytopesticide FWB) was compared with perfekthion against sucking pests of cotton (jas- sids, thrips and whiteflies). Perfekthion proved to be more toxic but its effect lasted for 4 days only while neem product (FWB) was less toxic but its effect lasted for 6 days. Moreover, neem product is much safer and non-polluting.


BRIDGES Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science Mirror curves are present in ethnical art, as Tamil threshold designs or Tchokwe sand drawings. Historically, they are to be found in the art of most peoples surrounding the Mediterranean, the Black and Caspian Seas, in the art of Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Moors, Persians, Turks, Arabs, Syrians, Hebrews and African tribes. Highlights are Celtic interlacing knotworks, Islamic layered patterns and Moorish floor and wall decorations. In this paper mirror curves are considered from the point of view of geometry, tiling theory, graph theory and knot theory. After the enumeration of mirror curves in a rectangular square grid, and a discussion of mirror curves in polyominoes and uniform tessellations, the construction of mirror curves is generalized to any surface.


This thesis lies at the junction of migration control and refugee protection. As asylum is a migration-related matter, it can be difficult for States to dissociate it from the fight against irregular immigration. Asylum, as a measure for protecting refugees and other persons in need of international protection, may thus easily come into conflict with policies and practices derived from strict border control considerations. This thesis concentrates upon this tension and aims, primarily, to investigate - with a specific focus on the European Union (EU) geographical context - whether the implementation of bilateral agreements linked to the readmission of irregular migrants can hamper refugees' access to protection, understood here as the combination of the right to non-refoulement and an individual's right to have access to asylum procedures and effective remedies before return. The material content and the normative scope of these protection standards is thus analysed through the lens of international refugee and human rights law and in respect of the traditional rules of treaty interpretation.
The central objective of this thesis is to develop the concept of agreements linked to readmission by broadening – to my knowledge, for the first time - the scope of legal analysis to the multifaceted framework of bilateral cooperation arrangements connected to the readmission of irregular migrants from the EU to third countries of
origin or transit. This encompasses written accords employed to facilitate the forced return of undocumented migrants from the territory of an EU Member State (standard readmission agreements and diplomatic assurances on the fair and humane treatment of the deportee, especially if formalized within MoUs), and those agreements for technical and police cooperation that are de facto utilized by EU Member States to divert migrants back to the ports of departure before they arrive to the destination country.
In order to fully understand the real impact of bilateral agreements linked to readmission on refugee rights, it is necessary to acknowledge that the study of legal texts alone will not suffice in gaining a sufficiently comprehensive approach. Rather, equal attention has also to be accorded to the implementation of the law, and, as a result, a number of case studies have been incorporated as an integral element of the methodological framework. This thesis concludes that the text of agreements linked to readmission does not seem to raise per se issues of incompatibility with core refugee rights. However, in situations of informal border controls, massive arrivals, public emergency, and pre-arrival maritime interceptions, the enforcement of these bilateral agreements can de facto hamper refugees' access to protection. Therefore, this thesis will make a number of recommendations as a platform for further discussion among legal scholars and policy-makers.


The good clinical result of lung transplantation is constantly undermined by the high incidence of infection, which negatively impacts on function and survival. Moreover, infections may also have immunological interactions that play a role in the acute rejection and in the development of chronic lung allograft dysfunction. There is a temporal sequence in the types of infection that affects lung allograft: in the first postoperative month bacteria are the most frequent cause of infection; following this phase, cytomegalovirus and Pneumocystis carinii are common. Fungal infections are particularly feared due to their association with bronchial complication and high mortality. Scrupulous postoperative surveillance is mandatory for the successful management of lung transplantation patients with respect to early detection and treatment of infections. This paper is aimed to address clinicians in the management of the major infectious complications that affect the lung transplant population.


Sleep fragmentation (SF) is a common condition among pregnant women, particularly during late gestation. Gestational perturbations promote the emergence of adiposity and metabolic disease risk in offspring, most likely through epigenetic modifications. Adiponectin (AdipoQ) expression inversely correlates with obesity and insulin resistance. The effects of SF during late gestation on metabolic function and AdipoQ expression in visceral white adipose tissue (VWAT) of offspring mice are unknown. Male offspring mice were assessed at 24 weeks after dams were exposed to SF or control sleep during late gestation. Increased food intake, body weight, VWAT mass, and insulin resistance, with reductions in AdipoQ expression in VWAT, emerged in SF offspring. Increased DNMT3a and -b and global DNA methylation and reduced histone acetyltransferase activity and TET1, -2, and -3 expression were detected in VWAT of SF offspring. Reductions in 5-hydroxymethylcytosine and H3K4m3 and an increase in DNA 5-methylcytosine and H3K9m2 in the promoter and enhancer regions of AdipoQ emerged in adipocytes from VWAT and correlated with AdipoQ expression. SF during late gestation induces epigenetic modifications in AdipoQ in male offspring mouse VWAT adipocytes along with a metabolic syndrome–like phenotype. Thus, altered gestational environments elicited by SF impose the emergence of adverse, long-lasting metabolic consequences in the next generation.


Engineering has traditionally been taught by specialists as a series of separate courses, and it has been assumed that graduates will be able to integrate the knowledge and understanding gained from these diverse courses as required to undertake real world design projects. However students often experience difficulty seeing how the separate courses are related. There is therefore a need to integrate the various fundamental engineering courses to highlight the relationship between them in a complete civil engineering design project. A final year course at the School of Engineering, Griffith University entitled 'Integrated Design Project' has been developed to address this issue. This incorporates various fundamental courses such as project management, geotechnical engineering, structural analysis, concrete and steel structural design, to name a few. In addition, practising professionals as well as academics act as advisors for this course to ensure practicality of real life problems. This paper discusses in some detail the steps involved in the development of the curriculum, the contents, the conduct and delivery process, the assessment of the project undertaken by the students and the relevant feedbacks from students' evaluation. The first offering of this course in 2004 was successful in enhancing students' understanding of relationships between different courses through the completion of the design project. Continuous improvement of the design project with more realistic features will go a long way towards students being better equipped to deal with practical engineering problems.


The invention described in this review (WO2013030218) relates to compounds based on the quinazolin-4-one scaffold, their process of preparation and applications to inhibit the ubiquitin-specific protease 7 (USP7), a deubiquitinating enzyme (DUB), which is considered a potentially important new drug target for treating cancer and immunological disorders. Data are presented indicating that these small-molecule compounds are useful as selective and reversible inhibitors of USP7 in vitro and also in a cellular context, although the panel of other enzymes tested was limited. The synthesis strategy allows for the generation of a considerable variety of compounds, although similar properties of selective USP7 inhibition were reported for other related compound classes, thereby increasing the complexity of the patenting process. However, structural patterns that contribute to the selectivity of USP7 and other DUB enzyme inhibition are starting to emerge. Practical implications involve the treatment of cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, immunological disorders, diabetes, bone and joint diseases, cardiovascular diseases and viral and bacterial infections. The quality of these findings and a comparison to other compound classes with similar properties, as well as the potential for further development toward clinical exploitation are discussed.


Abstract : This final report provides the results of the Modeling of Embedded Human Systems (MEHS) project. The goal of the work was a new approach to modeling embedded human systems; that is, systems where components are both human and computational. These systems are unique since the differences in time for a computational controller, as opposed to a human-centric controller, will require special consideration for system-wide feasibility and stability. Our approach focused on several research areas for modeling the interaction and control of such systems for robust behavior, determining the key abstractions for defining families of such systems, and developing a methodology for simulating, exercising, and potentially verifying these models based on the known qualities of the human, computational, and physical components. Our approach leveraged results from control of distributed vehicle systems, system stability and controllability, modeling, controller synthesis, and real-time systems.


The Shortened Dental Arch (SDA) comprise of anterior and premolar teeth with missing posterior occlusal units. According to various literature resources the masticatory apparatus perform effectively in the presence of these teeth, however on the contrary other literary work states that the presence of molars is important for mastication. This is not necessarily the case as the evidence available to support this requirement is weak. As the SDA functions over time, occlusal instability has been noted. The treatment options for SDA vary among clinicians and are also based on patient's personal choice and aesthetics. The aim of this review is to determine the oral functionality, masticatory efficiency, prosthodontic considerations, patient comfort and other treatment options available for the SDA patient. This was carried out through a review of the Medline and Cochrane Library databases Inclusion criteria included clinical or experimental trials and review documents published between 2005 and 2016.


A complementary frequency selective surface (CFSS) can be formed on the basis of Babinet's principle. It consists of an array of slots separated from an array of dipoles by a thin dielectric substrate. This study shows that by adding an extra layer of dipoles to a CFSS capacitance can be added to the structure, which leads to a decrease in its resonant frequency. This new structure is called a dipole-slot-dipole metasurface (MTS) and it has unit-cell dimensions of λ/10 × λ/10 × λ/333, where λ is representing the free space wavelength. The dipole-slot-dipole MTS has been fabricated and measured. The study also reports on its equivalent circuit; and the effects of the length of the dipoles on the added layer and their alignment on the pass band resonant frequency of the dipole-slot-dipole MTS.


The origins of DNA replication (ori) in simian virus 40 (SV40) and polyomavirus (Py) contain an auxiliary component (aux-2) composed of multiple transcription factor binding sites. To determine whether this component stimulated replication by binding specific transcription factors, aux-2 was replaced by synthetic oligonucleotides that bound a single transcription factor. Sp1 and T-antigen (T-ag) sites, which exist in the natural SV40 aux-2 sequence, provided approximately 75 and approximately 20%, respectively, of aux-2 activity when transfected into monkey cells. In cell extracts, only T-ag sites were active. AP1 binding sites could replace completely either SV40 or Py aux-2. Mutations that eliminated AP1 binding also eliminated AP1 stimulation of replication. Yeast GAL4 binding sites that strongly stimulated transcription in the presence of GAL4 proteins failed to stimulate SV40 DNA replication, although they did partially replace Py aux-2. Stimulation required the presence of proteins consisting of the GAL4 DNA binding domain fused to specific activation domains such as VP16 or c-Jun. These data demonstrate a clear role for transcription factors with specific activation domains in activating both SV40 and Py ori. However, no correlation was observed between the ability of specific proteins to stimulate promoter activity and their ability to stimulate origin activity. We propose that only transcription factors whose specific activation domains can interact with the T-ag initiation complex can stimulate SV40 and Py ori-core activity.


Performance in behavioral tasks is influenced by temporal expectations shaped by the temporal structure of the task. Such implicit temporal preparation is reflected in slow brain potentials and electroencephalographic oscillations and is attributed to interval timing mechanisms that probably depend on intact basal ganglia function. We investigated implicit timing in Parkinson's disease using a choice reaction task with two temporally regular stimulus presentation regimes, both including occasional deviant interstimulus intervals. Control subjects, but not patients, demonstrated temporal preparation in the form of an adjustment in time course of slow brain potentials to the duration of the interstimulus interval. However, in both groups, timing perturbations were accompanied by a slow brain potential amplitude drop at the time of expected stimulus occurrence, demonstrating intact representation of time in patients. In patients, oscillatory activity in beta and alpha bands showed attenuated preparatory desynchronization and reduced postmovement event-related synchronization, reflecting abnormal engagement and disengagement of sensorimotor and parietal areas. The results demonstrate profoundly deficient temporal preparation with preserved encoding of temporal information, a dissociation that may be explained by impaired dopamine-dependent motor learning. The results are discussed in the context of recent work on oscillatory activity in the basal ganglia.


Although the political will to protect areas of the ocean in marine protected areas lagged far behind governments' willingness to protect ecologically or culturally important terrestrial areas, marine protected areas and systems of marine protected areas have emerged into the political agendas of governments throughout the world, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, and, as of June 2003, the European Union. However, the creation of marine protected areas and systems of MPAs requires countries to sacrifice potentially beneficial uses of those areas, such as fishing and mineral extraction. Creation of MPAs and systems of MPAs thus involve political choices and policy promotion, and a country's choice of legal vehicle and political priorities can suggest implications regarding the eventual scientific and ecological success of its national system of MPAs. This paper examines the legal and political rhetoric that three countries - the United States, Canada, and Australia - have used to justify their national systems of MPAs and explores the potential ramifications of that rhetoric and the policy chooices behind it for the scientific and ecological success of each of their systems. Because each system is relatively new, measurements of success may have to wat for several years. Nevertheless, some distinctions are already striking. The United States, for example, is pursuing its national systems of MPAs based on a non-binding legal policy to promote economic goals, suggesting that the scientific and ecological value of its system will readily fall victim to changing political priorities and national pressures. Canada, in contrast, has put in place substantial national culture and national pride policies that will serve to reinforce its bioidiversity goals for its system of national marine conservation areas. Finally, Australia has committed fully to the protection of marine biodiversity for biodiversity's sake, suggesting that its national system of MPAs, as has already been evidenced in the history of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, will enjoy considerable scientific validity.


A myriad of images inundates us daily with sequences from a more or less proximate reality, leaving us with the task of negotiating our responses to these representations that empathically seek our attention. The images that we encounter arrive in various forms on various platforms: advertising photographs, surveillance images, selfies, pictures of war or citizen photographs… In the midst of this new and dynamic representational landscape, independent activist groups and photographers documenting injustices around the world have become more prevalent, taking advantage of accessible means of photographic capture and of the possibility for immediate sharing of images with the world. Palestine is one of the places where injustices happen on a daily basis, leaving Palestinians with few and unequal means to respond with a counter narrative. This new online reality with its social media platforms has its own limitations but it is now an important part of their resistance, with photography being used as a form of protest. Citizen and independent photographers, such as Janna Tamimi and the Activestills group, are using these online channels to attest to injustice and oppression themselves, regardless of the presence of the photojournalist as a witness. The professional stance of photojournalists and their objective observations are assumptions that have been fading out, motivating non-professionals from Palestine, and other places, to disseminate imagery with the hope to be seen and to be heard.

Keywords: Citizen Photography, new media, Palestine, protest, social media


In this letter, we report the feasibility study of converting an ordinary off-shelf charge-coupled device (CCD) imaging sensor into a multispectral imaging instrument, using the multispectral bruises detection as an example. The resulting handheld device is capable of producing in real-time multiple pixel-registered images centered at different wavelengths in a single exposure, thereby providing overwhelming operational convenience. The results are advantageous for the development of a handheld narrowband multispectral imaging video camera for image guided medical surgery.