Cancer is a disease that can be treated with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Although these methods are very effective, they often result in micro-metastasis, drug resistance, and radio resistance. Disease relapse can be treated by escalating drug dosages, but this approach leads to drug resistance and drug toxicity. Complementary and Alternative Medicines (CAM) is a treatment which involves the the simultaneous administration of herbal formulations and chemotherapy, where the herbal formulations could mitigate the negative effects of chemotherapy, resulting in better outcomes. In this study, the efficacy of our formulation MAT20, a crude extract of the moringa, amla, and tulsi leaves, was investigated in terms of its cytotoxic and inflammatory properties. We hypothesized that MAT20, would induce higher HeLa cell death compared to other extracts of individual plants. Significantly lower IC50 values were found in 48 hours of exposure compared to any other individual extracts of the plant part. Also, we investigated the effects of MAT20 on the expression of COX2, a marker for inflammation on HeLa cells. Finally, to understand the mechanism of action, we studied the upregulation of the BAX gene and downregulation of the BCL2 gene by MAT20. Our study demonstrated significant cell cytotoxicity and DNA fragmentation upon the exposure of HeLa cells to the drug, substantiating our hypothesis. Treatment with MAT20 suppressed PMA-mediated induction of the COX2 gene. Our data is important for understanding the anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties of MAT20.


Background/Aim: Modern treatment for primary cancers has improved survival. Therefore, increased numbers of patients with multiple primary cancers (MPC) associated with lung cancer may be expected. The aim of the present study was to report MPC associated with lung cancer and discuss patients' characteristics and postoperative management. Patients and Methods: Overall, 973 consecutive patients who underwent surgery for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were retrospectively studied. Results: NSCLC with MPC was observed in 148 patients (15.2%). MPC comprised 24 synchronous (2.5%) and 124 metachronous (12.7%) diseases. Of the 124 metachronous patients, NSCLC was detected before cancers were detected in other organs (lung cancer first (LCF)) in 25 (20.2%) patients and subsequently in other organs after treatment (other organs, primary cancer-first (OCF)) in 99 (79.8%) patients. MPC was significantly associated with advanced age (p<0.0001) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (p=0.0040). The leading sites of MPC in patients with synchronous tumors and those with OCF were the digestive organs. In contrast, the leading site of MPC in patients with LCF was the lung. In the latter, at least two primary lung cancers were detected within 5 years as well as 5 years after surgery for the treatment of the first detected lung cancer, while primary cancers of other organs were detected within 5 years. Conclusion: Advanced age and COPD may represent a high-risk of MPCs. Therefore, we recommend careful follow-up to detect MPC in the lung as well as the digestive organs beyond 5 years after treatment of the first cancer.


Terror management theory posits that cultural worldviews function to provide protection against anxiety concerning human vulnerability and mortality and that their effectiveness as buffers against such anxiety is maintained through a process of consensual validation Two field experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that incidental reminders of one's mortality increase the need to believe that others share one's worldview In both studies, passersby on city streets were asked to estimate the extent of social consensus for culturally relevant attitudes, 100 m before passing a funeral home, 100 m after passing a funeral home, or directly in front of a funeral home In the first study, conducted in Germany, subjects were asked to estimate the percentage of Germans who shared their opinions about a proposal to change the German constitution to restrict the immigration of foreigners, in the second study, conducted in the United States, subjects were asked to estimate the percentage of Americans who shared their opinions about the teaching of Christian values in the public schools In both studies, subjects who held the minority position on the issue estimated greater consensus for their opinions when interviewed directly in front of a funeral home than when interviewed either before or after passing it


Anatase-type TiO2-based oxide gel /carbon composites were treated chemically with LiOH aqueous solution at 60 °C. The crystalline phase of treated powder was examined by powder x-ray diffraction using CuKα radiation. The main diffraction peaks may be detected as belonging to cubic LiTiO2. High-rate lithium intercalation properties of the samples were estimated in nonaqueous electrolyte including lithium ions. The composite electrodes exhibited high coulombic efficiency over 90% at first cycle and high capacities over 200 mAh g-1 after 200 cycle at large charge-discharge current density of 5.0 mA cm-2 (3.7 A g-1). The composite materials are one of the promising candidates as electrode materials for energy storage devices, such as hybrid capacitor, that require high-power operations.


Storage virtualization and data management are well known problems for individual users as well as large organizations. Existing storage-virtualization systems either do not support a complete set of possible storage types, do not provide flexible data-placement policies, or do not support per-file conversion (e.g., encryption). This results in suboptimal utilization of resources, inconvenience, low reliability, and poor performance. We have designed a stackable file system called redundant array of independent filesystems (RAIF). It combines the data survivability and performance benefits of traditional RAID with the flexibility of composition and ease of development of stackable file systems. RAIF can be mounted on top of directories and thus on top of any combination of network, distributed, disk-based, and memory-based file systems. Individual files can be replicated, striped, or stored with erasure-correction coding on any subset of the underlying file systems. RAIF has similar performance to RAID. In configurations with parity, RAIF's write performance is better than the performance of driver-level and even entry-level hardware RAID systems. This is because RAIF has better control over the data and parity caching.


COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM April 2007/Vol. 50, No. 4 5 As much as the idea of abstraction concerns the simplification of the complex, for some it is often a concept simply too complex to grasp. The cover image, for example, is a simple oval shape with a few shadowy indentations. No specific details are necessary; the owl is clearly apparent without them. In a field known for rows upon rows of literal instructions and extraneous detail, is abstraction even worth considering when the subject is computing programming and design? Jeff Kramer, dean of the Faculty of Engineering and a professor in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, wonders why it is that some software engineers and computer scientists can produce clear, elegant code while others cannot. He contends a key to the answer lies in abstraction and the programmer's comfort level with such an approach. Using wonderful examples of art images and wellknown informational examples to reveal the beauty (and power) of abstraction, Kramer speculates whether the notion is indeed teachable, suggesting university curricula should reflect the need to instill future computing professionals with adequate abstraction skills. Jeffrey A. Stone and Elinor Madigan tackle another corner of academic preparedness: the technological acumen of first-year students. At a time when more universities are encouraging the use of information and communication technologies for student learning, it appears a significant number of incoming freshmen lack the skills to survive. Indeed, they report how students' perceptions of their technical skills are woefully out of touch with reality. Their study raises questions about the role of state curricula standards. Green et al. discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Active Intrusion Prevention in securing computer networks and how it can be applied to a predictive model that may have a significant impact on detecting if and when hostile network attacks might occur. Ceri et al. examine the use of Web marts in creating technologies that enhance the accessibility of Web sites. And Dianne Hall and David Paradice illustrate the ways personal biases steal into system designs and how the use of a "debiasing" component in decision support systems may be one answer to incorporating different considerations and perspectives into the mix. Two articles this month tell of the challenges e-businesses face in meeting (and anticipating) customer support. Levent Orman explores customer support systems as the next step in business-consumer relationships. It is a step that demands the combined power of several technologies to create new organizational structures. Dorit Nevo and Michael Wade warn it is not enough to build organizational information systems that work; system designers must foresee what stakeholders expect from the system and ensure the design delivers. And, on page 26, we are pleased to present the inaugural list of ACM's distinguished members.


This investigation determined differences in
lower body strength and power between elite junior (17-20 years) and elite
senior (open-aged) rugby league athletes. Twenty junior and 25 senior athletes
performed an isometric mid-thigh pull, countermovement jump, repeated jump, and
broad jump tests during a National Rugby League pre-season. The effects of age
(junior vs. senior) and position (adjustables vs. hit-up forwards vs. outside
backs) on test results were investigated using a two-way analysis of variance.
Cohen's d effect sizes (ES) and 95% confidence intervals were calculated for
pairwise comparisons. Isometric mid-thigh pull absolute peak force was greater
for senior players compared to junior players (ES=0.88, p<.05).
Countermovement jump absolute peak power was greater for outside backs
(ES=1.12) and hit-up forwards (ES=1.23) compared to adjustables (p<.05),
greater for senior outside backs compared to junior outside backs (ES=1.53, p<.05),
and greater for junior hit-up forwards compared to senior hit-up forwards
(ES=1.00, p<.05). This research demonstrated the differences in strength and
power of rugby league athletes between playing age and position. Improving
lower body strength should be prioritised for athletic development of junior
rugby league athletes, with consideration given to requirements across
different playing positions.


This article describes a means of evaluating early years classrooms from the perspective of the child's experience. Nine key themes, such as motivation and independence, are identified as representing significant aspects of a highquality environment for learning. The manner in which these manifest themselves in relation to the three elements of the interactional triangle—the children, the adults, and their physical environment—is assessed by means of an observation schedule called the Quality Learning Instrument (QLI). The paper illustrates the design and validation of the instrument with data from a project involving observations of classroom practice in Northern Ireland primary schools and Danish kindergartens. It describes how judgments made using the instrument can be triangulated or "calibrated" against the judgments of experts not connected with the data collection. The article concludes with the argument that the instrument may be successfully used to provide a basis for external quality assessments or as a means for early years teachers to reflect on the environment for learning that they generate in their own classrooms.


Let $\F$ be a finite family of axis-parallel boxes in $\R^d$ such that $\F$ contains no $k+1$ pairwise disjoint boxes. We prove that if $\F$ contains a subfamily $\M$ of $k$ pairwise disjoint boxes with the property that for every $F\in \F$ and $M\in \M$ with $F \cap M \neq \emptyset$, either $F$ contains a corner of $M$ or $M$ contains $2^{d-1}$ corners of $F$, then $\F$ can be pierced by $O(k)$ points. One consequence of this result is that if $d=2$ and the ratio between any of the side lengths of any box is bounded by a constant, then $\F$ can be pierced by $O(k)$ points. We further show that if for each two intersecting boxes in $\F$ a corner of one is contained in the other, then $\F$ can be pierced by at most $O(k\log\log(k))$ points, and in the special case where $\F$ contains only cubes this bound improves to $O(k)$.


Current Social Sciences rely more and more on models of »chaos« and »self-organization«. At a closer look, this is not a new paradigma but a loose collection of nature-philosophical and mathematical concepts of variable quality. Tue methodology and the sociological heuristics of these models can be determined precisely. Common feature is their difference to the classical theory of systems. Tue theories of autopoiesis, deterministic chaos and catastrophes consist of different concepts of stability. Interpreted sociologically, this results in different views on social order and in diverging theory-of-action-perspectives.


Two radiopharmaceuticals, Tc-99m-MIBI (MIBI) and Tc-99m-Tetrofosmin (Tfos), are currently used for in vivo non-invasive monitoring of the MultiDrug Resistant (MDR) status of tumours. As gliomas are highly multidrug resistant, it is expected that the tracers would be poorly retained in those cells, but the in vivo and in vitro studies to date have shown that Tfos was highly retained in malignant gliomas. The high degree of malignancy of tumour cells is linked to alterations of physiological parameters as plasma membrane potential and intracellular pH. In order to elucidate the contribution of those parameters to Tfos and MIBI uptakes in malignant gliomas, we used several glioma cell lines--G111, G5, G152, and 42 MG-BA. These cells showed to be chemoresistant with a high level of expression and activity of the Multidrug Resistant associated Protein 1 (MRP1). They also had an alkaline intracellular pH (pHi) related to the Na+/H+ antiporter (NHE-1) expression and depolarised plasma membranes (-45 to -55 mV). In spite of their chemoresistance, we have found a high accumulation of both radiotracers in gliomas, more important for Tfos than MIBI, related to the presence and activity of NHE-1. In conjunction, the uptakes of the tracers were only partially dependent upon the plasma membrane potential of the glioma cell lines, again Tfos uptake being less dependent on this parameter than MIBI uptake. In conclusion, the evidence accumulated in this study suggests that Tfos could be a suitable glioma marker in vivo.


The tractor seat is one of the important component / assembly as far as the human machine system and comfort of tractor operator are concerned .With this in view, a field survey and laboratory study were conducted of selected popular tractors and tractor seats, respectively,with particular reference to seating dimensions. Dimensions for seat pan and backrest were measured and analyzed, according to BIS recommendations. The results highlighted that seat pan width was found 10.9% less, seat height was found 15.3% in excess, no vertical adjustments and backrest width was also found 20.4% less. This may cause discomfort for smaller as well as higher percentile tractor operators. Based upon the design of mounting arrangement of different tractor seats – a common device i.e. seat base plate was developed.This plate may serve as a base for providing isolators for vibration attenuation. Also, this arrangement may be quite useful in testing of different tractor seats, under the constraints in availability of different makes of tractors at a time for experimental study or testing work. The study also highlighted that present tractor seats need minor modifications / improvements in seating dimensions as per BIS recommendations. The development of a common seat base plate may prove to be a step forward in the direction of long awaited tractor standardization. The information thus obtained can be utilized in seat design, work place lay out as well as adapted by agriculture engineers for better work environment.


Incarcerated women in the United States are largely an invisible population because of their small numbers, their involvement in less violent and serious offenses, and their neglect by most criminologists. Yet all too often prison has become a dumping ground for women who lack options for self-support, or who need drug treatment, job training, or a haven from battering. This work draws on the life stories of forty women inmates at a minimum security prison in North Carolina. It explores their lives before imprisonment, enabling the reader to understand their incarceration within the context of childhood and adolescent experiences, domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse, low education levels, and poor work histories. Lori B. Girshick relates the prisoners' views of doing time, the criminal justice system, and their own rehabilitation. She also interviews family members, friends, and social service providers to show how support networks function or fail. Girshick argues convincingly that the treatment of women in society creates circumstances that lead some of them to break the law, and she makes specific recommendations for policies that address the need for social change and for community programs designed to deter crime.


In this paper, we first analyze the semantic composition of word embeddings by cross-referencing their clusters with the manual lexical database, WordNet. We then evaluate a variety of word embedding approaches by comparing their contributions to two NLP tasks. Our experiments show that the word embedding clusters give high correlations to the synonym and hyponym sets in WordNet, and give 0.88% and 0.17% absolute improvements in accuracy to named entity recognition and part-of-speech tagging, respectively.


A study on the use of fuel wood for baking ovens of traditional bread in Kano Nigeria is carried out. Seven household bakery ovens are selected randomly in the baking quarters of the town and coded B1 to B7. Thermometer, spring balance, measuring scale pan and tape were used to measure the temperatures, masses of fuel wood, bread and dough, and the oven wall thickness respectively. Minimum and maximum energy utilization of 11.66% and 13.08% with corresponding minimum and maximum heat losses of 88.34% and 86.92% were obtained. Two channels of energy losses were identified. The first depends on the oven characteristics and the other on the baking practice that allows time lapse between oven chamber evacuation and the commencement of the baking process. Estimated oven wall thickness of 0.06m (2cm in excess of the present average of approximately 0.04m (4cm) obtained from the ovens considered for the study) was found to reduce the rate and quantities of heat lost by 33.3%. The corresponding quantities of heat energy conserved and its Naira equivalent ranged from 6.3 x 10 7 kJ to 8.6 x 10 7 kJ and N69.51.00 to N90.75 respectively. Thus large proportion of energy obtained from fuelwood is wasted in traditional ovens. Recommendations of possible improvement of efficient utilization of fuelwood in the traditional bakery ovens were made.


The rapid development in the field of mobile communication, digital signal processing (DSP) motivated the design engineer to integrate complex systems of multimillion transistors in a single chip. The integration of the transistor in a single chip greatly increases the performance of the system while reduction in system size.
Recently, there is a considerable increase in the application front in several areas of engineering and technology. Moore's law states that integration density gets doubled every two years, so the complexity of the integrated circuits also increases by keeping the used chip area constant. In order to keep pace with the levels of integration available, design engineers have developed new methodologies and techniques to manage the increased complexity in these large chips.
System-on-Chip (SOC) design is proposed as an extended methodology to this problem where pre-designed and pre-verified IP cores of embedded processors,
memory blocks, interface blocks, and analog blocks are combined on a single chip targeting a specific application. These chips may have one or more processors on chip, a large amount of memory, bus-base architectures, peripherals, co processors, and I/O channels. These chips integrates systems far more similar to the boards
designed ten years ago that to the chips of even a few years ago. The primary drivers for this are the reduction of power, smaller form factor, and lower overall cost. SOC
offers many benefits such as smaller space requirements with higher performance.


Evidence during the nineties about the response of real wages to shocks highlights that this response is substantially lower in European countries than in the United States and that there are important differences among European countries. Which are the reasons that explain these different reactions? In this paper, we apply meta-analytical techniques in order to provide a quantitative summary of the available evidence regarding the influence of labour market institutions on real wage flexibility. We find that the design of the study affects the obtained results, and that in more deregulated labour markets with a lower presence of trade unions, this response is particularly larger.


A study has been done on the relationship between anxiety and migration rate of PMN in the mouth. Subjects were dental students of University of Indonesia from the first and the third semester, consisting of 12 males and 97 females, 19-25 years old, and not suffering from any physical diseases or psychotic disorders. This study had a within-subject design with each student as his or her own control. Observation was done three times, about two months and half an hour before examintation and half an hour after examination. The result was that the migration rate of PMN 30 second (index of OMR) declines significantly just a moment before examination and recovers after examination (P<0.01). The OMR index was 0.43 well before examination, 0.23 shortly before it and 0.42 after examination. Apparently, the academic stress can temporarily inhibit some facet of the immune response showing a measurable abnormality of the index OMR. Results of this research could be useful for mental preparation of students taking examinations. Finally, this may give clue for the genesis of suggested stress related diseases which work through an immunological mechanism.


In 2000, Yi et al. proposed two proxy multi-signature schemes which enable two or more original signers to delegate their signing power to a proxy signer. Combining proxy multi-signature with identity-based cryptography, Wang et al. proposed an identity-based proxy multi-signature scheme in 2007. Their scheme is claimed to be secure in the random oracle model. However, in this study, the author shows that Wang et al.'s scheme is vulnerable to a forgery attack described in this study.


eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. Abstract: In this study, we describe the challenges of managing Himalayan rivers as a result of climate change and the industrialization and economic growth of India and China. We discuss a range of conceptual issues relevant for negotiations over the management of Himalayan rivers. We introduce the concept of multi-track diplomacy, and apply it to the case of international river management, in the context of innovations incorporated in five international treaties signed in 1996 and 1997. We examine past problems with bilateralism in international river diplomacy, in particular as an obstacle to successful agreement and the potential of more multilateral approaches. We describe the wave of Himalayan water projects being designed and constructed at the beginning of the twenty-first century, based on earlier agreements as well as new initiatives. We note the subsequent implementation problems that have arisen, and the substantial issues that need to be addressed by an expanded group of countries depending on Himalayan rivers. Finally, we consider directions in which current innovations might be extended as bases of regional cooperation, using the multi-track diplomacy framework. We suggest that an independent regulatory agency could facilitate rational development, assist in the management of substantial uncertainties about future flows, and reduce the potential for conflict. We describe the possible structure and functioning of such a new institution. Abstract In this study, we describe the challenges of managing Himalayan rivers as a result of climate change and the industrialization and economic growth of India and China. We discuss a range of conceptual issues relevant for negotiations over the management of Himalayan rivers. We introduce the concept of multi-track diplomacy, and apply it to the case of international river management, in the context of innovations incorporated in five international treaties signed in 1996 and 1997. We examine past problems with bilateralism in international river diplomacy, in particular as an obstacle to successful agreement and the potential of more multilateral approaches. We describe the wave of Himalayan water projects being designed and constructed at the beginning of the twenty-first century, based on earlier agreements as well as new initiatives. We note the subsequent implementation problems that have arisen, and the substantial issues that need to be addressed by an expanded group of countries depending on Himalayan rivers. Finally, we consider directions in which current innovations might be extended as bases of regional cooperation, using the multi-track diplomacy framework. We suggest that an independent regulatory agency could facilitate rational development, assist in the management of substantial uncertainties about future flows, and reduce the potential for conflict. We describe the possible structure and functioning of such a new institution.


In this paper we estimate a multinomial logit model of the choice of first destination. The data used is the Youth Cohort Studies for England and Wales, covering the period from 1985 to 1992. We find that whilst prior attainment has the strongest influence on the selection of academic education, participation rates into post-compulsory education have also increased for young people of average ability. The most able young people who attend a secondary modern school are likely to select education, but choosing vocational rather than academic courses. Non-whites are more likely than whites to continue in education. Interaction effects clearly show that for even the most able, the socio-economic status of parents is an important influence on the choice of destination.


In this paper, we introduce a simulation-based method to implement electricity demand response for manufacturers considering both heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and manufacturing systems. Compared with the existing literature where the demand response implementation for manufacturing system and HVAC system is usually conducted separately, this paper advances the state of the art by combining two systems together in demand response. A joint simulation model is established using ProModel and EnergyPlus. ProModel is first used to simulate the demand response for the manufacturing system to obtain the demand response actions without influencing production. After that, these actions are used as input information in EnergyPlus where the HVAC and building models are developed. The interaction between the heat generated due to manufacturing machine operation and the indoor heat demand is explored. Three different demand response strategies, i.e., 1) the baseline model that neither manufacturing system nor HVAC is considered for demand response; 2) only manufacturing system is considered for demand response; and 3) both the HVAC and manufacturing systems are considered for demand response, are presented and compared. The results show that the combined model can achieve high power demand reduction during demand response event.© 2015 ASME


Introduction MDR TB is rare in the UK, yet its incidence is rising. Although treatment is intensive, prolonged and generally costly for the patient and the treating TB centre, more TB services are offering such care. In the last 10 years, despite considerable relevant health service reorganisation, there has been no UK-based assessment of its resource implications, or guidance on how to determine this. Here we explore how routinely collected hospital data may assist in mapping service utilisation and also provide possible quality indicators of care. Methods We performed a retrospective case-control study using MDR TB patients starting treatment between 2004 and 2007. Cases were matched to drug sensitive TB controls (1:2) treated in the same regional centre using age, sex, site of disease, HIV status and year of diagnosis. Data were abstracted from hospital clinical systems and matched analysis of service utilisation was performed. Results 9 patients (8 pulmonary and 1 spinal) were included in the MDR TB and 17 (16 pulmonary and 1 spinal) in the control group. All patients completed treatment successfully. The Abstract P162 Table 1 indicates that MDR TB patients used a larger number of anti-tuberculosis drugs for longer, attended outpatients more frequently and made considerably greater use of biochemical, haematological and simple radiological assessments. However, there was no significant difference in total inpatient length of stay. All MDR TB patients reported adverse events requiring a change to medication or additional therapy to control these effects—this compared to 33% of controls (p<0.05). Drug-induced hepatitis was no more frequent (22% vs 18%, MDR vs controls, p=0.75). Some patient safety investigations, such as antibiotic drug levels and audiometry, were only performed in MDR TB patients.Abstract P162 Table 1 MDR TB n=9 Drug sensitive TB n=17 p-Value Median (range) Median (range) Inpatient total stay (days) 9 (0, 85) 0 (0, 58) 0.09 Number outpatient attendances 20 (11, 38) 8 (2, 34) 0.007 Number of anti-tuberculosis drugs 5 (4, 7) 4 (3,4) <0.001 Duration of treatment (months) 19 (16, 24) 6 (6,15) 0.001 Full blood count 17 (1, 33) 5 (0, 39) 0.01 Liver function tests 25 (6, 38) 7 (1, 37) 0.001 C reactive protein 19 (0, 31) 5 (1, 36) 0.05 Sputum Acid Fast Bacilli 3 (0, 21) 0 (0, 17) 0.12 x-Ray chest 6 (1, 9) 2 (1, 9) 0.01 CT chest 0 (0, 1) 0 (0, 3) 0.47 Conclusion MDR TB remains a highly resource-intensive area of TB care. Modern NHS data systems are capable of recording utilisation and timing of specialist tests. These simple measures can allow services to develop patient-focussed quality outcomes as well as feedback results to clinicians to improve cost-effectiveness in specialist MDR TB management.


Purpose
We sought to gain an understanding of cancer prevention and screening perspectives among patients exposed to a clinical decision support (CDS) tool because they were due or overdue for certain cancer screenings or prevention.

Methods
Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 37 adult patients due or overdue for cancer prevention services in 10 primary care clinics within the same health system. Data were thematically segmented and coded using qualitative content analysis.

Results
We identified three themes: 1) The CDS tool had more strengths than weaknesses, with areas for improvement; 2) Many facilitators and barriers to cancer prevention and screening exist; and 3) Discussions and decision-making varied by type of cancer prevention and screening. Almost all participants made positive comments regarding the CDS. Some participants learned new information, reporting the CDS helped them make a decision they otherwise would not have made. Participants who used the tool with their provider had higher self-reported rates of deciding to be screened than those who did not.

Conclusions
Learning about patients' perceptions of a CDS tool may increase understanding of how patient-tailored CDS impacts cancer screening and prevention rates. Participants found a personalized CDS tool for cancer screening and prevention in primary care useful and a welcome addition to their visit. However, many providers were not using the tool with eligible patients.


Fs-lasers are well established in ophthalmic surgery as high precision tools for corneal flap cutting during laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) and increasingly utilized for cutting the crystalline lens, e.g. in assisting cataract surgery. For addressing eye structures beyond the cornea, an intraoperative depth resolved imaging is crucial to the safety and success of the surgical procedure due to interindividual anatomical disparities. Extending the field of application even deeper to the posterior eye segment, individual eye aberrations cannot be neglected anymore and surgery with fs-laser is impaired by focus degradation. Our demonstrated concept for image-guided vitreo-retinal fs-laser surgery combines adaptive optics (AO) for spatial beam shaping and optical coherence tomography (OCT) for focus positioning guidance. The laboratory setup comprises an adaptive optics assisted 800 nm fs-laser system and is extended by a Fourier domain optical coherence tomography system. Phantom structures are targeted, which mimic tractional epiretinal membranes in front of excised porcine retina within an eye model. AO and OCT are set up to share the same scanning and focusing optics. A Hartmann-Shack sensor is employed for aberration measurement and a deformable mirror for aberration correction. By means of adaptive optics the threshold energy for laser induced optical breakdown is lowered and cutting precision is increased. 3D OCT imaging of typical ocular tissue structures is achieved with sufficient resolution and the images can be used for orientation of the fs-laser beam. We present targeted dissection of the phantom structures and its evaluation regarding retinal damage.


: A novel biological factor that stimulates the peptidase activities of multicatalytic proteinase complex (MPC) has been identified and partially purified from human erythrocytes. The stimulatory factor enhances trypsin-like, chymotrypsin-like and peptidyl-glutamyl peptide hydrolyzing activity of MPC in a dose related manner. At saturating concentration of the stimulatory factor, MPC increases the activity to a different extent (10 to 56 fold) depending on the substrate used to assay the enzyme. The stimulatory factor does not hydrolyze neither amino-blocked peptides which are used to assay MPC nor typical substrates for amino and diamino-peptidases. The stimulatory factor is characterized by a high molecular mass (300 kDa) and an extreme instability since it loses the activity at 46 degrees C in 10 min and at 4 degrees C within a week. The stimulatory activity is inactivated by incubation in acidic or alkaline media, and by treatment with protease V8, but it is relatively resistant to the action of trypsin. It has been suggested that the novel stimulatory factor herein described is a protein or a protein complex which may modulate the function and the activity of MPC by association-dissociation interaction.


Abstract Linguistic creativity is a manifestation of communities' and cultures' innovativeness. The initial results will be presented of an empirical project analysing the character and speed of the social spread of winged words and neologisms in a microblogging site, using the tools of social network analysis applied to big-scale data. Investigating the diffusion of linguistic innovation requires an approach pooling competences from human, social, and computational sciences. Such a complex systems perspective can lead to a deeper understanding of how mutual relations and communication between Internet users impact the cultural evolution of language in time and space, and the shape and dynamics of the interactions themselves, delivering quantitative estimates on the expansion of linguistic expressions and allowing the prediction of future trends and their scale.


The objective of the present study was to discuss patients with disturbances in consciousness by analyzing nursing records. Observations from clinical nurses as well as patients' responses about their care were selected from nursing records. Nursing records from one week of patient care were examined for patients who were unable to speak during hospitalization within a neuro-surgery ward of the hospital. Selected records were classified into the following eight categories: results from monitoring; results from observation; opening and moving the eyes to stimulus; movement of the limbs to stimulus; vocalization to stimulus; facial expression to stimulus; patient's response to care; and miscellaneous. Patients comprised two groups. One group encompassed eight patients with Japan Coma Scale (JCS) II and the other was a group of eight patients with JCS III. When nurses use the JCS to assess patients with disturbances in consciousness, patients who awaken to stimulus are classified as JCS II, while those who do not are JCS III. The total nursing records selected for JCS II were 1551 and 1160 for JCS III. The category of "results from monitoring" was the most selected category within nursing records and accounted for 42.8% of the JCS III group, while "results from observation" accounted for 38.4% of the JCS II group. Furthermore, results indicated that the categories of "results from monitoring", "results from observation", and "movement of the limbs for stimulus" had peaked after two to three days, and then abruptly decreased. There were only a few records for the categories of "vocalization to stimulus" and "facial expression to stimulus", both for the JCS II and the JCS III groups. Even though patients could not verbally indicate their intentions due to problems with consciousness, it is essential for nurses to pay careful attention to the details of patients' reactions.


Objective: Antioxidants play an important role in inhibiting free oxygen and nitrogen radicals and preventing their formation. There are contradictory results regarding the relationship between cigarette smoking and total antioxidant capacity of saliva. In this study, the total antioxidant capacity of saliva has been compared in normal smokers, heavy smokers and non-smokers. Material and methods: In this cross-sectional study, 28 heavy male smokers (more than one pack of cigarettes per day), 28 normal male smokers (less than one pack of cigarettes per day), and 28 male non-smokers aged 25 to 40 years old entered the study. Unstimulated saliva was collected by Spitting method. The total antioxidant capacity of saliva was measured using Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Power Assay. Descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and Tukey tests were used to analyze the data. Results: The mean total antioxidant capacity of saliva in male non-smokers was 0.0598 ± 0.08 ?mol / L, in normal male smokers was 0.049 ± 0.04 ?mol / L, and in heavy male smokers was 0.0388 ± 0.035 ?mol / L, which did not show any significant difference between the groups (P > 0.05). Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that smoking does not have a significant effect on total antioxidant capacity of saliva in smokers.
KEYWORDS
Smokers; Saliva; Total antioxidant capacity.


In recent years, the airport's influence on economic
development has become stronger. Airport economy has become the new engine of
promoting regional economic development. As a resource-based city, Dalian has
included the development of airport economy in Dalian's Development Plan,
focusing on building airport economy circle, to make airport economy as an
important section of driving regional economic development. SWOT stands for:
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. The so-called SWOT analysis is
based on the internal and external competitive environment and competitive
conditions of the situation. The main internal advantages, disadvantages and
external opportunities and threats that are closely related to the research
object are listed through investigation, arranged according to the matrix form,
and then analyzed with the idea of systematic analysis, from which a series of
corresponding conclusions are drawn. In this context, this article analyzed the
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of developing airport economy
in Dalian, and proposed the strategic choice of the development of airport
economy in Dalian.


Two-year field experiments (2008-2010) were conducted at the Didactic and Experimental Station in Timisoara. Research objects were the influence of total doses, time and spliting of nitrogen on the protein content of Annabell two row spring barley variety. The various treatments were laid down in a randomized complete block design with three replications in the climatic conditions of Timisoara. We monitored four nitrogen doses, three splits applications (% from total nitrogen doses) and two times of nitrogen application in growth stage. The experimental crop was top dressed with the following amounts of nitrogen: 40, 60, 80 and 100 kg ha-1, then at growth stage these dosages were divided (30%, 50%, 70%), and the application have been made in one-stage: two leafs and three-stages: two leafs; boot stage; soothing stage. The control variant was not top dressed. Two row spring barley has to fulfill several quality demands to be fully accepted and paid by the malting industry. The variety has to be selected by the industry, the vitality of the lot has to be high, the husk has to be uninjured and the grain protein content has to be at the proper level and as even as possible. The average data obtained after two years of study indicate an increasing in protein content with increase in split doses of nitrogen and time of (N) applications. In 2008/2009 year crop, the lowest protein content was obtained in the variants fertilized with low doses of (N) in one-stage application while in three-stages application, the increase in protein content was on average by 11,3% (N0) to 13.2% (N100). In the 2009/2010 year crop we can see that, depending on the split nitrogen doses and timing of (N) applications, we could record an amplitude of the variation between 11.1% (N0) to 13.2 % ( N100).


Objective: An understanding of the association of health literacy with patterns related to access and usage of digital technologies and preferences for sources of health information is necessary for public health agencies and organizations to appropriately target channels for health information dissemination. Design: A cross-sectional telephone survey was conducted in New York State. Health literacy was assessed using the Morris Single-Item Screener, a self-report question. A weighted analysis was conducted utilizing Stata/SE. Participants: The final sample size of New York State residents used for analysis was 1350. Results: In general, self-report health literacy did not predict digital technology use (ie, Internet and smartphone use, text messaging) but was associated with certain digital activities. People with low self-report health literacy were less likely to use search engines (P = .026) but more likely to get health information from social networking sites (P = .002) and use health-related phone apps (P = .046). With respect to health information seeking, those with lower self-report health literacy reported greater difficulty with their most recent search for health information. Furthermore, they were more likely to prefer text messages (P = .013) and radio (P = .022), 2 text-limited communication channels, to receive health information than those with higher self-report health literacy. Conclusions: While self-report health literacy does not appear to influence access to and use of digital technologies, there is a strong association with experiences searching for health information and preferences for health information sources. Public health agencies and organizations should consider the needs and preferences of people with low health literacy when determining channels for health information dissemination. They should also consider implementing interventions to develop health information–seeking skills in populations they serve and prepare information and materials that are easily accessible and understandable.


Serum protein electrophoresis is of certain diagnostic interest. We report a case of unusual electrophoresis associated with cholestatic jaundice complicating a cholangiocarcinoma. The study involved a 55-year old patient hospitalized for the exploration of cholestatic jaundice. Capillary electrophoresis showed bisalbuminemia diagnosed based on the thickening of the bottom of the albumin peak and a supernumerary peak X. Second electrophoresis with Hydragel showed the disappearance of the two above abnormalities which was the proof that bisalbuminemia was acquired and of the lipidic nature of the Pic X. In our case, the most likely cause was the presence of interfering substances such as free bilirubin (hyperbilirubinemia), lipids (hyperlipidaemia) and bile acids. Bisalbuminemia in a patient with similar electrophoretic picture should suggest the search for underlying diseases.


Recent scholarly research has suggested that the Bush Administration embraced the Precautionary Principle (PP) to formulate its policy on Iraq before the coalition invasion in 2003. The article below challenges this argument. Demonstrating the Bush Administration's antipathy – and at times hostility – to the PP in environmental politics, the article outlines the similarities and differences between usage of the PP in foreign policy debates on the one hand, and the established risk strategies of pre-emption and prevention on the other. The article examines the Bush Administration's reaction to Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme by drawing on earlier conceptual work of the PP in international affairs: an acceptance of the limits of the usefulness of intelligence assessments; an openness to alternative solutions; proportionality of response; and reversing the onus of persuasion. Based on these four strands the article argues that the Bush Administration's decision to invade Iraq was based less on the PP and more on the idea of fighting a preventive war.


This book is a compelling and balanced history of the California missions and their impact on the Indians they tried to convert. Focusing primarily on the religious conflict between the two groups, it sheds new light on the tensions, accomplishments, and limitations of the California mission experience. James Sandos, an eminent authority on the American West, traces the history of the Franciscan missions from the creation of the first one in 1769 until they were turned over to the public in 1836. Addressing such topics as the singular theology of the missions, the role of music in bonding Indians to Franciscan enterprises, the diseases caused by contact with the missions, and the Indian resistance to missionary activity, Sandos not only describes what happened in the California missions but offers a persuasive explanation for why it happened.


Adaptation and visual attention are two processes that alter neural responses to luminance contrast. Rapid contrast adaptation changes response size and dynamics at all stages of visual processing, while visual attention has been shown to modulate both contrast gain and response gain in macaque extrastriate visual cortex. Because attention aims to enhance behaviorally relevant sensory responses while adaptation acts to attenuate neural activity, the question we asked is, how does attention alter adaptation? We present here single‐unit recordings from V4 of two rhesus macaques performing a cued target detection task. The study was designed to characterize the effects of attention on the size and dynamics of a sequence of responses produced by a series of flashed oriented gratings parametric in luminance contrast. We found that the effect of attention on the response dynamics of V4 neurons is inconsistent with a mechanism that only alters the effective stimulus contrast, or only rescales the gain of the response. Instead, the action of attention modifies contrast gain early in the task, and modifies both response gain and contrast gain later in the task. We also show that responses to attended stimuli are more closely locked to the stimulus cycle than unattended responses, and that attended responses show less of the phase lag produced by adaptation than unattended responses. The phase advance generated by attention of the adapted responses suggests that the attentional gain control operates in some ways like a contrast gain control utilizing a neural measure of contrast to influence dynamics.


The second-order nonlinear optical response of model molecular 1:1 and asymmetric 2:1 organic [pi] electron donor-acceptor (EDA) complexes is investigated using the INDO/S sum-over-excited particle-hole-states formalism. It is found that intermolecular charge-transfer transitions in EDA complexes represent a promising approach to achieving sizable second-order optical nonlinearities. Calculated hyperpolarizabilities may be generally related to the strength of the donor-acceptor interaction in the complex, affording for a given acceptor, the largest values in the case of aminoarene donors. The large change in dipole moment that accompanies intermolecular charge-transfer transitions and the relatively low-lying charge-transfer excitation energies are the major sources of the large calculated second-order nonlinearities. The relative orientation of donor and acceptor components is also an important feature, leading to stabilization of the ground state as well as to maximization of the oscillator strength of the lowest energy charge-transfer excitation and, in turn, the NLO response. In the case of asymmetric 2:1 EDA complexes, calculated hyperpolarizability enhancements over the 1:1 complexes can be related to the red-shift of the charge-transfer excitation as well as to an increase in dipole moment change between ground and excited states. The perturbation theoretical two-level' model is a useful first approximation for predicting the second-order nonlinearmore » response of such complexes. 29 refs., 2 figs., 3 tabs.« less


Abstract Jullien's indecomposability theorem (INDEC) states that if a scattered countable linear order is indecomposable, then it is either indecomposable to the left, or indecomposable to the right. The theorem was shown by Montalbán to be a theorem of hyperarithmetic analysis, and then, in the base system RCA0 plus induction, it was shown by Neeman to have strength strictly between weak choice and comprehension. We prove in this paper that induction is needed for the reversal of INDEC. that is for the proof that INDEC implies weak choice. This is in contrast with the typical situation in reverse mathematics, where reversals can usually be refined to use only induction.


According to a widespread view, Germany's unemployment crisis is caused by rigid labour markets, low profitability and increasing international competition. We argue that this view does not provide a convincing explanation for the dramatic rise in Germany's unemployment rate since 1989, first because no distinction is drawn between the situation in the Eastern part of Germany and that in the Western part of Germany, and second because supply-side conditions in the Western part of Germany have not generally deteriorated. We argue that Germany's slump is the result of a series of adverse supply and demand shocks since unification. Supply shocks dominated in the East, demand shocks in the West. These shocks were mainly policy-induced. The adoption of an extremely overvalued exchange rate and rapid wage increases in East Germany magnified the general problems of transition, resulting in a loss of employment of more than a third and a sustained structural weakness of its economy. The wage explosion was made possible by the government's failure to create a proper institutional framework for wage negotiations. The unification shock to the East added at least 2.5 percentage points to Germany's overall unemployment rate, as measured by the OECD definition. We attribute some 1.5 to 2.5 percentage points of the present unemployment rate to the weak economic growth of the last several years and the impact of the increasing tax wedge on the wage level. Weak growth has been largely the consequence of uncoordinated, contradictory and procyclical macroeconomic policies that have been adopted since unification, while the increasing tax wedge has been mostly driven by the decision of the government to finance unification partly through the social security system. Econometric evidence suggests a structural break in aggregate wage-setting in West Germany, with increased nominal flexibility in recent years and insignificant persistent effects since the 1980s. Hence, aggregate wage setting in the Western part of Germany is highly responsive to unemployment, while in the Eastern part, it is not.


Amphora sp. was isolated from the Sfax Solar Saltern and cultivated under hypersaline conditions. It contains moderate rates of proteins, lipids, sugars, and minerals and a prominent content of bioactive compounds: polyphenols, chlorophyll a, carotenoids, and fatty acids. The analysis of fatty acids with GC/MS showed that the C16 series accounted for about 75% of Amphora sp. lipids. Saturated fatty acids whose palmitic acid was the most important (27.41%) represented 41.31%. Amphora sp. was found to be rich in monounsaturated fatty acids with dominance of palmitoleic acid. It also contains a significant percentage of polyunsaturated fatty acids with a high amount of eicosapentaenoic acid (2.36%). Among the various solvents used, ethanol at 80% extracted the highest amounts of phenols and flavonoids that were 38.27 mg gallic acid equivalent and 17.69 mg catechin equivalent g−1 of dried extract, respectively. Using various in vitro assays including DPPH and ABTS radicals methods, reducing power assay, and β-carotene bleaching assay, the 80% ethanolic extract showed high antioxidant activity. A strong antibacterial activity was checked against Gram-positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus and Micrococcus luteus) and Gram-negative bacteria (Klebsiella pneumoniae and Salmonella enterica). These results are in favor of Amphora sp. valorization in aquaculture and food and pharmaceutical industries.


The use of Multi-agent Systems/Simulations (MAS) can help to represent human- environment interactions in dealing with complex land-use problems by examining how different entities influence the process of land development. In this paper, we simulate the urban growth of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) from 1985 to 2005 using MAS. After analyzing the driving force in this area, three different types of agents are defined: residents, developers and government, in terms of their diverse characteristics in real society. Considering different even opposite demands of residents in residential development, we divide residents into two parts: new residents and existing residents. In the beginning of running this expansion model, we allocate the agents with a spatio-temporal criterion to obtain a better simulation. The preliminary result shows that multi-agent model has some advantages in simulating urban sprawl phenomenon.


A controlled system can be subjected to faults, which may cause unexpected system dynamics that prevent the system objectives to be achieved. This paper introduces the problem of structural fault-tolerance analysis of actuator, sensor, and plant faults with respect to diagnosability and recoverability conditions. Existing methods in the literature usually investigate the fault tolerance of systems separately from fault diagnosis, even if they are strongly related. The bond graph (BG) tool is an adequate tool for dynamic modeling of complex systems and performing fault detection and isolation. The innovative interest of the proposed approach is to extend the use of this tool for verification of structural recoverability conditions by exploiting the behavioral, structural, and causal properties of the BG tool. The obtained structural technique is then applied to an intelligent autonomous vehicle named RobuCar with decentralized inputs and outputs.


Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a powerful algorithm to sample latent variables from Bayesian models. The advent of probabilistic programming languages (PPLs) frees users from writing inference algorithms and lets users focus on modeling. However, many models are difficult for HMC to solve directly, and often require tricks like model reparameterization. We are motivated by the fact that many of those models could be simplified by marginalization. We propose to use automatic marginalization as part of the sampling process using HMC in a graphical model extracted from a PPL, which substantially improves sampling from real-world hierarchical models.


This study examines the opinions and attitudes of social work students towards issues of social justice. In the scope of the study, participants listed socio-economic status and political views as two factors that have the greatest bearing on 'being subjected to injustice' and stated that social workers should adopt an attitude of passive resistance against injustice. The students were found to believe that it is necessary for the state to play specific roles related to social welfare rights and to underline the political dimension of justice.


In the last decades, transparency has become a fundamental principle in international adjudication. It is usually defined as including concepts such as public access and disclosure of documents or information. Due to the high impact of the activities of international institutions on civil societies and the growing relevance of individuals as subjects of the International Community, it became evident that there was a need to: 1. make the decision-making processes of international organisations more transparent; 2. increase the accountability of the international institutions towards civil societies; 3. give access to the public to international dispute settlement mechanisms. For the purpose of this article, the third aspect, ie access to the public to international dispute settlement mechanisms, will considered. In particular, even though reference will be made to other international dispute settlement systems, the practice of international investment and commercial arbitral tribunals will be dealt with. The article will then study the role of transparency in international arbitration, highlighting three main challenges. First, the author will consider the difficult relation between transparency and confidentiality in arbitral proceedings. As this issue is extremely delicate in international commercial arbitration, this practice will be the focus of this section of the article. Second, transparency as a tool to reach a higher level of consistency in international arbitration will be discussed. This is a highly topical issue in international arbitration, as shown by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) negotiations that led to the adoption in 2014 of the Rules on Transparency in Treaty-based Investor-State Arbitration. As a matter of fact, UNCITRAL looked into the issue of amicus curiae briefs provided by the investor's home State on issue of treaty interpretation, to secure more consistent and harmonised interpretations of standards in investment arbitration. The author will explore whether consistency through transparency is desirable in international arbitration. Third, the paper will deal with the growing tendency to codify standards in international arbitration. This phenomenon is well illustrated by the current negotiations on investment and trade treaties such as the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) that provide for specific provisions on transparency relating to investor-to-State disputes. The necessity and effectiveness of this codification will be investigated.


Kinematic distributions from an inclusive sample of 1.41×10^6 charged-current ν_μ interactions on iron, obtained using the MINOS near detector exposed to a wide-band beam with peak flux at 3 GeV, are compared to a conventional treatment of neutrino scattering within a Fermi gas nucleus. Results are used to guide the selection of a subsample enriched in quasielastic ν_μFe interactions, containing an estimated 123,000 quasielastic events of incident energies 1<E_ν<8  GeV, with ⟨E_ν⟩=2.79  GeV. Four additional subsamples representing topological and kinematic sideband regions to quasielastic scattering are also selected for the purpose of evaluating backgrounds. Comparisons using subsample distributions in four-momentum transfer Q^2 show the Monte Carlo model to be inadequate at low Q^2. Its shortcomings are remedied via inclusion of a Q^2-dependent suppression function for baryon resonance production, developed from the data. A chi-square fit of the resulting Monte Carlo simulation to the shape of the Q^2 distribution for the quasielastic-enriched sample is carried out with the axial-vector mass M_A of the dipole axial-vector form factor of the neutron as a free parameter. The effective M_A which best describes the data is 1.23^(+0.13)_(−0.09)(fit)^(+0.12)_(−0.15)(syst)  GeV.


This research study was carried out to investigate the facts and establish the present state of the link between Industry and university in Pakistan especially focusing on the present scenario and current operating systems, the research study further examined the main elements impacting and manipulating on the association and potential zones of participation and collaboration. An example of 33 (male 23 and female 10) comprised of Deans and Heads of branches of the colleges and agents of Higher Education Commission). The study revealed that universities and industries had associations and connections through contact workplaces established in (HEC) Higher Education Commission. This office has so many functions like research and development (Research and Development) activities, preparing and manage visiting lectureship, training the staff, and also plan joint actions for educational planning, improvement, and as well as both can work to guide each other. Most definitely, the study further revealed that although there is mutual coordination is found at the national level but unfortunately internationally the same coordination is not found in the same spirit in Pakistan amongst commerce and universities. Moreover, this study also revealed that the coordination among these agencies plays so many functions like personal contacts, guidance function, meetings with each other, educational synergistic preparing programs, Research & Development activities, boards of trustees, panels, courses, and meetings. Thus, the linkages were influenced by numerous components which included government strategy, the executives of the college just as the industry. It was additionally discovered that there were certainly a few issues these included, absence of coordination, scarcity of funds to perform research, lack of enthusiasm on the part of employees, absence of research and development exercises, absence of required capability, conflicting venture of businesses. In addition, there was a scarcity of incubation Center, advance parks, and no basic assessment and check and balance framework. These feasible domains of cooperation covered assurance of licensed innovation, awards, gifts, donations, grants, classes/workshops, and vocation directing cooperative research and development projects, and guidance administrations.


This essay reports the research that I have carried out on Internet slash fiction based on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series. I became interested in this area when I stumbled across slash fiction on the web myself and found that I enjoyed it. As someone who studies sexuality I was intrigued by this new (to me) form of erotic fiction and began to read the academic literature in the area. As I became familiar with the main theories, I wondered how they would relate to slash fiction written about Buffy, since this series differs from many of the programmes that have been slashed in the past. There are strong female and gay characters in Buffy, emotional and relationship-based themes are directly addressed, and the interaction between vampires and humans adds an additional dimension to the plot.
In my study, I analysed both slash stories and my e-mail correspondence with the authors of Buffy slash. I come at the topic as both a slash reader and a psychologist, and I hope that I achieve a good balance between the position of mutual knowledge (as a fan) and critical distance (as a researcher) as recommended by Tulloch and Jenkins (1995). In the past, slash authors have been stigmatised by other fans and by convention organizers (Jenkins, 1992), and several of my participants felt that they had been misrepresented in previous research. I hope to be accountable in my research (Bannister et al., 1995) and to give a respectful and realistic portrayal of Buffy slash and its writers.


STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF SILVER IONS AND SILVER NANOPARTICLES ON EMBRYONIC DEVELOPMENT Martha Sharisha Johnson Old Dominion University, 2019 Director: Dr. Xiao-Hong Nancy Xu This dissertation focuses on the study of the toxicity of metal nanoparticles (NPs) and their ions on the development of zebrafish embryos, aiming to understand unique biological effects of NPs and ions, and design new in vivo assays to characterize the toxicity of these metal NPs and metal ions. Currently, the underlying molecular mechanisms of biological effects of nanomaterials are partially understood. Some studies assume that the toxic effects of NPs can be attributed to the release of their ions. We investigate the effects of silver NPs (Ag NPs) and silver ions (Ag ions) on the embryonic development of zebrafish and compare both of their biocompatibility and toxicity. By statistically comparing the distributions of normal, deformed, and dead embryos, we conclude that the Ag ions cause deformities and death of developing embryos in a concentration dependent manner, where the critical concentration of the Ag ion is 0.20 μM for chronic exposure and varies in a stage-dependent manner in acute exposures during specific developmental stages. Exposure to Ag ions influences specific types of defects in development, which are far less drastic than those caused by the purified Ag NPs with the same amount of Ag atom. Thus, we can conclude that toxicity of Ag NPs on embryonic development is not due to the release of Ag ions, but rather their own unique physicochemical properties. We also synthesized and purified spherical Ag NPs (42 nm in diameter) that are stable (non-aggregated) in egg water media. We examined the biocompatibility and toxicity of single Ag NPs in vivo at specific stages of development and the defects associated with treatment at those specific developmental stages. We then developed new imaging approaches to characterize single Ag NPs as they interact with key brain biomarkers that are significant for neurological development in zebrafish embryos. More specifically, we exposed Tg(pax2a:GFP) zebrafish embryos to various concentrations of the Ag NPs, and studied the effects of Ag NPs on the expression of the pax2a gene during treatment using fluorescent microscopy. Sublethal concentrations of the Ag NPs (0.00, 0.50, 1.00, 2.00, and 5.00 pM) resulted in a phenotypical dependent effect on embryonic development. However, we did not observe a significant decrease in expression of pax2a:GFP when exposing developing embryos to the Ag NPs. We did, however, observe that a higher dose of the Ag NPs led to severe deformities. We have further demonstrated the effects of Ag NPs on cardiac response. We found a decrease in heart-rate of both normal and deformed zebrafish, as the developing embryos were exposed to the Ag NPs. Our study also shows the dose-dependent effects of Ag NPs on eye development, where higher concentrations of Ag NPs leads to microphthalmia in developing embryos. We further studied the accumulation of Ag NPs in treated embryos. We found that each embryo accumulated a significant amount of Ag NPs in a dose dependent manner, which explains why some embryos developed normally, abnormally or resulted in embryonic death during treatment. In summary, this study demonstrates that developing zebrafish embryos can serve as effective in vivo model organism to study biocompatibility and toxicity of nanomaterials and metal ions, and can potentially lead to better design of applications to study developmental biology.


Observations of continuous radio and sporadic X-ray emission from low-mass objects suggest they harbor localized plasmas in their atmospheric environments. For low-mass objects, the degree of thermal ionization is insufficient to qualify the ionized component as a plasma, posing the question: what ionization processes can efficiently produce the required plasma that is the source of the radiation? We propose Alfvén ionization as a mechanism for producing localized pockets of ionized gas in the atmosphere, having sufficient degrees of ionization (⩾10−7) that they constitute plasmas. We outline the criteria required for Alfvén ionization and demonstrate its applicability in the atmospheres of low-mass objects such as giant gas planets, brown dwarfs, and M dwarfs with both solar and sub-solar metallicities. We find that Alfvén ionization is most efficient at mid to low atmospheric pressures where a seed plasma is easier to magnetize and the pressure gradients needed to drive the required neutral flows are the smallest. For the model atmospheres considered, our results show that degrees of ionization of 10−6–1 can be obtained as a result of Alfvén ionization. Observable consequences include continuum bremsstrahlung emission, superimposed with spectral lines from the plasma ion species (e.g., He, Mg, H2, or CO lines). Forbidden lines are also expected from the metastable population. The presence of an atmospheric plasma opens the door to a multitude of plasma and chemical processes not yet considered in current atmospheric models. The occurrence of Alfvén ionization may also be applicable to other astrophysical environments such as protoplanetary disks.


Web technologies and e-marketing provide universities new opportunities to organize more effective interactions with consumers of educational services. The educational portal of the university becomes a single point for the interaction of the university with all categories of interested persons. Modeling of the educational web portal structure based on the analysis of user behaviors, perceptions and preferences become especially relevant. The aim of the study is to analyze the processes of the effective functioning of educational portals of higher education institutions, to model their structure, and to study the possibilities of using them to improve the quality of educational services promotion. A set-theoretical approach and Web Mining technics were used for evaluation of the educational web portal abilities for effective promotion of educational services.


For extended application of marker-based plant breeding, strategies are discussed for selecting a high-degree gene-pyramided line from among progeny of a multiparentally produced heterozygous plant (root genotype). A strategy with combined use of haplo-diploidization and crossing between selected plants will be highly efficient; selection starts with haplo-diploidized plants raised from the root genotype, and in the absence of a plant with the objective marker genotype, two plants with the best complementary genotypes are crossed to produce a hybrid, which in turn is haplo-diploidized for the next round of selection. In this strategy, even a plant having as many as 20 target markers can be obtained at an almost perfect certainty in about three rounds of selection with a maximum of 200 tested plants per round. When haplo-diploidized plants are unavailable, a plant with the most promising marker genotype should be selected and self-fertilized in each generation, or in the absence of any promising plant, two plants with the best complementary genotypes are crossed for the next round of selection. In this strategy, the number of tested plants in the first two generations counts when the markers are codominant, whereas the rounds of selection counts when the markers are dominant. Of various supplementary measures for this strategy, backcrossing the root genotype with one of the donors could be useful when the donor has more than 70% of all targeted markers.


Introduction: Many patients in deprived regions die or get irreversible lesions due to the lack of medical facilities and governmental hospitals or lack of emergency services. Managing the inter hospital transition system not only helps reduce the dangers and costs, but also leads to modifying the health and medical systems in country. The present study aimed to investigate the factors related to transferring patients to university-run hospitals in Kohgiluyeh and BoyerAhmad province during 5 years. Materials and Methods: The present study is a retrospective descriptive study done by methods of process in which the research population , all of the inter hospital transitions of patients referring to university-run hospitals in province, the number of special care beds and physicians during 5 years were investigated. The sampling method was based on census, tools used for collecting data were registry and archival documents filled by the supervisor. Data were investigated by descriptive analysis and correlation coefficient statistical test. Results: Findings have shown that during 5 years from March 2009 to February 2013, totally 4635 transition cases were requested on behalf of physicians and among the hospitals in the province, Rajaee hospital had the most frequent transition with 1922 cases and Shahid Beheshti had the least frequent transition with 518 cases (α=0.05). There was a significant correlation between the number of transitions and the number of specialists and MDs (P= 0.001). The most common cause of transition is inadequacy of Thoracic, vascular and neurology and lack of special care beds and specialized sections. Conclusion: The results of this study suggested that increasing and implementing more specialists could not simply effect on decreasing transitions to the outside, but also planning to provide the required specialists and fitting the number of physicians, hospital facilities and other specialized facilities with the needs of a region, acculturating to change the patients' attitudes, increasing the physical and improvement spaces of health centers was strongly effective on the patients' morale decreased their negative attitude toward the inability of health centers of the province in providing high quality services and also prevented from wasting human and economy forces of organizations and imposing the heavy costs and implications resulting from transitions.


The mandibles of 78 Hereford cross Friesian steers all showing a full complement of temporary teeth were examined both visually and by radiography to determine whether it was possible to differentiate their various ages. All but one animal were slaughtered at the same weight (1020 lb-464 kg) and their ages at slaughter ranged from 1 year 3 months to 1 year 9 months. Differences were found between the mean ages for stages of resorption of the first temporary incisor roots, stages of first permanent incisor root formation and stages of second incisor crown formation, as determined by radiographic inspection. The results indicated that the age of a group of animals could be defined, but the age range within each development stage meant that it was not possible to define the age of individual cattle.


The paper assesses the costs and benefits of active international reserve management (IRM), shedding light on the question of how intense should IRM be for an emerging market. In principle, an active IRM strategy could lower real exchange rate volatility induced by terms of trade shocks; provide self insurance against sudden stops; reduce the speed of adjustment of the current account; and even allow for higher growth if it fosters exports ("mercantilist" motive). The message of the report is mixed – management of reserves is not a panacea. The mercantilist case for hoarding international reserves, as an ingredient of an export led growth strategy, is dubious. Done properly, IRM augments macro economic management in turbulent times, mitigating the impact of external adverse shocks and allowing for a smoother current account adjustment. These benefits are especially important for commodity exporting countries, and countries with limited financial development.


PURPOSE
To provide guidance on quality management for electronic brachytherapy.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The task group used the risk-assessment approach of Task Group 100 of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine. Because the quality management program for a device is intimately tied to the procedure in which it is used, the task group first designed quality interventions for intracavitary brachytherapy for both commercial electronic brachytherapy units in the setting of accelerated partial-breast irradiation. To demonstrate the methodology to extend an existing risk-analysis for a different application, the task group modified the analysis for the case of post-hysterectomy, vaginal cuff irradiation for one of the devices.

RESULTS
The analysis illustrated how the TG-100 methodology can lead to interventions to reduce risks and improve quality for each unit and procedure addressed.

CONCLUSION
This report provides a model to guide facilities establishing a quality management program for electronic brachytherapy.


Welcome to Rachel Ashwell's world: as beautiful as it is comfortable, as inspiring and spontaneous as it is practical and personal. In this book, Rachel shares her inspirations and her humour, celebrates the charm of the old and battered, and demonstrates time and again how interiors touched with Rachel's magic transcend fashionable trends, extending a calming, personal welcome to all. In this new book, Rachel takes us to homes in the US - from a shabby shack on Malibu's oceanfront to a ranch on the wide, open spaces of Texas and to the wooded hills of the Catskills - and in the UK - from a houseboat and a city townhouse to a centuries-old manor house deep in the country, and Rachel's own London apartment. All the houses, regardless of their size or location, embody Rachel's ethos and share the same qualities: a respect for beautiful objects from the past, an extravagant sense of comfort, an eye for the unexpected and that signature touch of bling. All are inviting, artistic, soulful, inspired and inspiring, beautiful, gentle, considered and, in their own way, perfectly imperfect.


Fission track analysis as a geochronological, and more recently a palaeothermal technique is a lengthy process, often complicated by problems of track recognition. While recent developments in computerized track counting systems should lead to improved efficiency, they still rely on transmitted light as the principal means of track detection, and do not deal with the problem of track recognition. We present here some preliminary results using confocal scanning laser microscopy (SLM) of a study of fission tracks in apatite from the Fish Canyon tuff, and show how the technique can lead to improvements in track identification. Defects formed in solids as a result of the spontaneous fission of the heavy nuclide 238U are called fission tracks (Silk & Barnes 1959) and are found in a number of geologically important uranium-bearing phases including micas, titanite, zircon and apatite. The analysis of fission tracks has, until quite recently, been primarily concerned with age determination where it has proved useful in both the earth sciences and archaeology (Fleischer et al. 1975). More recently, the recognition that at elevated temperatures the tracks become unstable and ultimately anneal (Naeser 1981; Green et al. 1986), has led to the study of track lengths, especially in apatite, where track annealing occurs over the hydrocarbon maturation window temperature. (Gleadow et al. 1983). Although the study of fission track length data promises to be a useful tool in evaluating palaeotemperatures in some sedimentary basins (Gleadow et al. 1983, 1986; Green 1989), the measurements involved in both track counting and


OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the results of the kangaroo mother method in Brazil. METHODS: A prospective cohort study comparing 16 units that have or do not have the second phase of the kangaroo mother method: eight were national centers of excellence for the kangaroo mother method (study group) and eight were part of the Brazilian Neonatal Research Network (control group). A total of 985 newborn infants with birth weights of 500 to 1,749 g were enrolled. Multivariate analyses employed multiple linear regression and Poisson regression with robust adjustment. RESULTS: The adjusted analysis (controlled for birth weight, gestational age, Score for Neonatal Acute Physiology Perinatal Extension II, Neonatal Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System, and maternal age and educational level) demonstrated that mean length of hospital stay (p = 0.14) and intercurrent clinical conditions in the intermediate or kangaroo unit were equal for both groups. Weight (p = 0.012), length (p = 0.039) and head circumference (p = 0.006) at 36 weeks' corrected gestational age were all lower at the kangaroo units. The kangaroo units exhibited superior performance in relation to exclusive breastfeeding at discharge (69.2 vs. 23.8%, p = 0.022). CONCLUSIONS: The evidence suggests that the humanization strategy adopted by the Brazilian Ministry of Health is a safe alternative to conventional treatment and a good strategy for promoting breastfeeding.


The Beginnings of a Soviet Policy towards Afghanistan, 1917 –1919 By the 1880s Afghanistan had definitely fallen under a British influence, and it subsequently served as a buffer zone between the British and Russian empires. However, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 shattered the reality of Afghanistan being effectively closed for Russia, and it opened prospects for the new Soviet government to establish direct ties with the Afghans. This study explores the beginnings of a Soviet policy towards Afghanistan between 1917 and 1919. It concludes by arguing that while this Soviet policy might have been initially driven by defense and security concerns, offensive intentions soon prevailed, with the Soviets striving to weaken the positions of Britain, their main rival in the region, and to spread the Bolshevik Revolution further across Asia. Keywords: Afghanistan, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, Central Asia, Bolshevik Revolution


In this paper passive Infrared sensor "PIR" based security system is introduced. With this sensor we can save power, and effective management at low cost and requires small memory space.


The proliferation of boxing manuals in the last quarter of the eighteenth century
reflected both a revival of interest in a long standing sporting entertainment and a desire
of some participants and observers to record the essential elements of this martial
"science". While this term had been used in conjunction with similar activities for over
half a century, and while training had been undertaken by professional fighters for at
least as long, it was only now that contemporaries believed a full understanding had
been achieved of the importance of "wind" (endurance), "bottom" (courage), and
"science" (technique). This paper explores a number of texts where authors discussed
these essential components of boxing performance, analysed the strengths and
weaknesses of contemporary fighters, and highlighted the favourite stances and
techniques of each individual, often in considerable depth and with an apparent
understanding of basic mechanics. Whether written by fighters or by "Amateurs", the
men who backed combatants in the prize ring and took instruction from them in the
gymnasium, these manuals display a uniformity of agreement in their articulation of
boxing "science", and in their ancillary discussions of training regimes, which is not
surprising given the limited and exclusive circle that surrounded professional fighters.
As this cadre of sportsmen subsequently extended their sporting interests, many
pugilistic training methods, with some sports specific amendments, became the standard
modes of preparation for other gambling focussed activities such as rowing and
pedestrianism and they remained substantially unaltered for the first half of the
nineteenth century.


Web surveys are frequently based on samples drawn from panels with large amounts of nonresponse or haphazard selection. The availability of large-scale consumer and voter databases provides large amounts of auxilliary information for both panelists and population members. Sample matching, where a conventional random sample is selected from a population frame and the clos- est matching respondent from the panel is selected for interviewing, is proposed. It is shown that under suitable assumptions (primarily ignorability of panel membership conditional upon the match- ing variables), the resulting survey estimates are consistent with an asymptotic normal distribution. Simulation results show that the matched sample estimators are superior to weighting a random sub- sample from the panel and have a similar sampling distribution to simple random sampling from the population. In an example involving the 2006 U.S. Congressional elections, estimates using sample matching from an opt-in Web panel outperformed estimates based on phone interviews with RDD samples.


Despite their paradigmatic status in the modern philosophy of emotions, cognitive theories have been criticized for failing to provide a satisfactory account of affectivity in emotions. I agree with much of this criticism, but I argue that an amended cognitive theory can overcome the flaws of the two main theories, strong cognitivism and componential cognitivism. I argue that feeling cannot be reduced to the evaluative content of emotion and attitudinal mode of holding it as strong cognitivists suggest. Typical emotional feelings are induced by either propositionally explicable or biologically "hard-wired" evaluations instead of being involved in the latter. We, then, face the challenge of explaining why the feeling and the evaluative construal that figure into an emotion are aspects of the same state, unlike occasional feelings and thoughts that happen to occur in us at the same time. I propose that evaluative content and feeling are different kinds of representations of the formal property of an emotional object. This is a second-order property that is ascribed to every individual object of a particular emotion-type in virtue of its perceived first-order properties and that is experienced as a property of those objects in a state of emotion. Evaluative content involves a conceptual representation of the formal property while feeling represents its inherent affective quality.


This article aims to review critically literature published mainly within this millennium on the new and emerging applications of silymarin, the polyphenolic fraction from the seeds of Silybum marianum and its main component silybin. Silymarin and silybin used so far mostly as hepatoprotectants were shown to have other interesting activities as e.g., anticancer and canceroprotective. These activities were demonstrated in a large variety of illnesses of different organs as e.g., prostate, lungs, CNS, kidneys, pancreas and others. Besides the cytoprotective activity of silybin mediated by its antioxidative and radical-scavenging properties also new activities based on the specific receptor interaction were discovered--e.g., inhibition and modulation of drug transporters, P-glycoproteins, estrogenic receptors, nuclear receptors and some others. New derivatives of silybin open new ways to its therapeutic applications. Pharmacology dealing with optically pure silybin diastereomers may suggest new mechanisms of its action.


Lameness affects dairy cows worldwide and is usually associated with pain. Behavioral differences in lame compared to non-lame tie-stall-housed dairy cows might be less pronounced than in free-stall-housed, since the principle demands to a cow's locomotor system and thus the impact of lameness on behavior seem to be lower in tie stalls. Behavioral differences between lame and non-lame cows might be used to estimate the impact of lameness on the well-being of tied dairy cows. In the current study, lame cows were categorized as locomotion scoring between 2.25 and 3.25 on a 1–5 scale. The aim was to compare the eating, rumination and lying behavior of lame cows against non-lame tied dairy cows, in order to draw conclusions on the association of lameness, behavior and well-being in tied dairy cows. The eating and rumination behavior of 26, the lying behavior of 30, and the relative upright and lying activities of 25 matched case-control pairs were analyzed, considering the matching criteria farm, breed-type, and parity-group. Lame cows had fewer [mean of the pairwise differences (case–control) (meandiff) = −2.6 bouts, CI95% (−3.8–−1.4) bouts, p = 0.001], but longer lying bouts [meandiff = 26.7 min per bout, CI95% (10.1–43.4) min per bout, p = 0.006]. The lying time was shorter [meandiff = −64.7 min, CI95% (−104.4–−24.9) min, p = 0.006] in lame cows compared to their non-lame controls. Lame cows had a shorter eating time [meandiff = −27.7 min, CI95% (−51.5–−4.0) min, p = 0.042] and spent a larger proportion of their upright time ruminating [meandiff = 7.2%, CI95% (3.2–11.1)%, p = 0.001] instead of eating. The results of the current study indicate that the eating, rumination, and lying behavior of lame tied dairy cows is altered. These findings indicate that slight and moderate lameness (locomotion score between 2.25 and 3.25 on a 1–5 scale) are likely to be associated with an impaired well-being in affected tied dairy cows. This underlines the need to continuously reduce the lameness prevalence and severity in tied dairy herds.


The global burden of disease attributable to mental illness is high, and as a result people with serious mental illness are at greater risk of indicators of social exclusion, such as poverty, homelessness and social isolation. Since deinstitutionalisation began in the 1960s, a variety of housing and support models have been used for this group. "Housing first" models are proving superior to "continuum of care" models in achieving positive housing outcomes and improving indicators of social exclusion. Housing first programmes are also believed to be more effective as they offer consumers choice, are not contingent on treatment, and are, therefore, empowering and philosophically compatible with harm reduction and recovery approaches. The physical and social environments have also been found to influence housing satisfaction and well-being outcomes for this group, but are often poorly measured or inadequately defined in the few studies which have been conducted. As little recent New Zealand research has examined housing, support and environmental effects for people with serious mental illness, this twelve-month prospective cohort study provides a more current account of the experiences of this group. Thirty six participants were recruited from a group of people with serious mental illness referred to the Comcare Housing Service for assistance to obtain independent, community-based housing. An examination of the variables influencing housing and overall well-being ratings was conducted. Peace and Kell"s (2001) sustainability framework, outlining four categories of resources required for this group to maintain housing, was also evaluated. The results demonstrate the success of housing support in improving outcomes for people with serious mental illness, particularly in terms of improved housing quality and satisfaction, and residential stability. They also provide further evidence that this group have high rates of homelessness and are frequently in situations where they are at risk of homelessness. The physical environment appeared to have little influence on housing satisfaction or other wellbeing measures, however, the social environment seemed to play a role in higher ratings on these outcomes. Participants rehoused by Comcare Housing reported higher housing


Application of any measurement requires reliable error estimates; this is particularly the case when meteorological observations are assimilated into numerical weather prediction models. Radio occultation measurement errors vary considerably between different observations. It is therefore desirable to estimate these errors dynamically on a profile‐to‐profile basis. In this study it is demonstrated that fluctuations in the full spectrum inversion (FSI) log amplitude can be mapped into profiles of error standard deviations for FSI retrieved bending angles on a profile‐to‐profile basis without using any external data. The performance of this technique is assessed by applying it to simulated GPS radio occultation signals sampled at 50 Hz with both severe additive noise and significant phase noise. In both cases, good agreement between predicted error profiles and the "true" error profiles is achieved. Comparisons between power spectra of predicted errors and "true" errors also show good agreement. However, a small part of the simulated signals is distorted by aliasing due to the downsampling to 50 Hz, which affects bending angles retrieved for a narrow range of impact parameters. For these bending angles, the predicted errors are too small as compared with the "true" errors. This shows that the proposed technique cannot predict errors related to poor signal acquisition.


In zebrafish, as in other vertebrates, an initially singular eye field within the neural plate has to split during morphogenesis to allow the development of two separated eyes. It has been suggested that anterior progression of midline tissue within the neural plate is involved in the bilateralization of the eye field. Mutations in the recently identified silberblick (slb) gene cause an incomplete separation of the eyes. During gastrulation and early somitogenesis, the ventral midline of the central nervous system (CNS) together with the underlying axial mesendoderm is shortened and broadened in slb embryos. While in wild-type embryos the ventral CNS midline extends to the anterior limit of the neural plate at the end of gastrulation, there is a gap between the anterior tip of the ventral CNS midline and the anterior edge of the neural plate in slb. To investigate the cause for the shortening of the ventral CNS midline in slb we determined the fate of labeled ventral CNS midline cells in wild-type and slb embryos at different stages of development. In slb, anterior migration of ventral CNS midline cells is impaired, which indicates that migration of these cells is needed for elongation of the ventral CNS midline. The anterior shortening of the ventral CNS midline in slb leads to medial instead of bilateral induction of optic stalks followed by a partial fusion of the eyes at later developmental stages. The analysis of the slb phenotype indicates that anterior migration of midline cells within the neural plate is required for proper induction and subsequent bilateralization of an initially singular eye field. These findings may therefore provide a starting point in elucidating the role of neural plate morphogenesis in positioning of the eyes.


We study the computational complexity of $c$-Colored $P_\ell$ Deletion and
$c$-Colored $C_\ell$ Deletion. In these problems, one is given a
$c$-edge-colored graph and wants to destroy all induced $c$-colored paths or
cycles, respectively, on $\ell$ vertices by deleting at most $k$ edges. Herein,
a path or cycle is $c$-colored if it contains edges of $c$ distinct colors. We
show that $c$-Colored $P_\ell$ Deletion and $c$-Colored $C_\ell$ Deletion are
NP-hard for each non-trivial combination of $c$ and $\ell$. We then analyze the
parameterized complexity of these problems. We extend the notion of
neighborhood diversity to edge-colored graphs and show that both problems are
fixed-parameter tractable with respect to the colored neighborhood diversity of
the input graph. We also provide hardness results to outline the limits of
parameterization by the standard parameter solution size $k$. Finally, we
consider bicolored input graphs and show a special case of $2$-Colored $P_4$
Deletion that can be solved in polynomial time.


Preparation matters in negotiation. While plea bargaining is a criminal lawyer's primary activity, the value of this skill is discounted by law schools and training programs. A systemic model can be used to improve plea bargaining skills. This Article offers a prep sheet for both prosecutors and defense attorneys and explains how each element of the sheet specifically applies to the plea bargaining context. The prep sheet is designed as a learning tool so that the negotiator can learn from the sheet and then make their own. The sheet highlights important considerations such as understanding the interests and goals of the parties, the facts of the case, the law, policies behind the law, elements of an agreement, how to communicate with the other parties, and more. The serious power imbalances and constraints inherent in the plea bargaining process make preparation crucial. Alkon and Schneider urge lawyers, scholars, and clinicians to become part of the ongoing conversation so that the practice of law can be improved for the benefit of all.