About the Book: Peter Townsend, who sadly passed away in June 2009, had a long career researching an exceptional range of topics within the social sciences and campaigning against social inequalities.This reader brings together for the first time a collection of his most distinctive work, allowing readers to review changes and continuities over the past six decades, and reflect on social issues that have returned to the fore today. A particular feature of the volume is in tracing the links between empirical evidence and both social theory and social policy, and how those disciplines intersect. This reader will provide a teaching and learning resource for students in different disciplines of the social sciences and will also provide an insight into the development of one scientist's entire intellectual approach. We hope it will be a fitting memorial to his life and work.


The unprecedented scale, heterogeneity and varied usage patterns of computational grids pose significant technical challenges to any underlying file system that supports them. While grids present a host of new concerns for file access, we focus on two issues: performance and usability. We discuss the Legion I/O model and interface to address the latter area. We compare the Legion and Globus I/O models against a baseline to validate the efficiency of existent grid-based file access solutions.


Numerous initiatives are now underway to deal with the prevention, control, eradication and management of invasive alien species. A regional workshop was held in 1999 to discuss the problem in South and Southeast Asia. This publication contains the country and status reports presented at the workshop and the recommendations for action in the region.


Android is the latest and a rapid growing technology available for all the users or customers in today's market .Every Person uses smart phones to make his life luxurious. Now-a-days management of increased public transportation is one of the major issue. There are buses made available for passengers travelling distances, but not many passengers have complete information about these buses. These days Smartphone plays vital role in everyone's life. Through these Smart phones, Passenger can get complete information about buses such as accurate bus timings, correct bus numbers, GPS tracker which will improve current bus system. This application works on GPS enabled Android Phone to get exact location of bus on Google map and this data is used to update on-line bus timetable dynamically which will make easy to predict bus arrival time of bus for passengers. It will allocate bus dynamically by considering parameters such as count of persons who want to go to the same destination and number of vacant seats of bus going to the same destination. Every bus-stop will have one android application which will take mobile number and destination name as input which will be used for dynamic allocation of buses. After that server will allocate bus and calculate fare and send it to the user on specified mobile number through SMS. If there are less number of passengers than available seats then allocation will be done normally like current bus transportation system.


For 50 years, glucocorticoids (GC) are used for symptomatic treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In the last decade, results from clinical studies of treatment with GC as additional therapy to long-acting antirheumatic drugs in patients with early RA suggested also disease-modifying properties of GC in RA.
The aim of this thesis was to investigate disease-modifying properties and side effects of low-dose GC as monotherapy of patients with previously untreated early active RA in relation to clinical efficacy, general wellbeing and glucocorticoid receptors.
All 81 consecutive outpatients who participated in the clinical 2-year study had recently been diagnosed as having early RA (disease duration less than a year). According to randomization 41 patients were allocated to 10 mg prednisone orally daily and 40 to placebo. Additional therapies like analgesics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), physiotherapy were allowed in both groups and recorded. After 6 months sulphasalazine 2 gram daily could be prescribed as rescue medication only if clinically necessary. According to the study protocol clinical, biochemical and radiologic parameters were assessed. Furthermore, health assessment questionnaires for disability and general wellbeing were performed regularly and side effects documented.
In general, patients in the prednisone group experienced significant but transient clinical improvement in the first months compared to those in the placebo group. However, patients in the placebo group used twice as much additional therapies compared to those in the prednisone group. To put it the other way around, prednisone had a sparing effect on the use of NSAIDs and other additional therapies.
From 12 months on, radiological scores showed significantly less progression of joint damage (erosions and joint space narrowing) in the prednisone group compared to the placebo group.
No clinically relevant side effects were observed, except for a higher incidence of new osteoporotic vertebral fractures in the prednisone group. At the time of the design of the study, back in 1989, it was considered ethical to study RA patients with an active drug against placebo; nowadays such a study design would be unethical because we know that joint damage is an early feature of the disease and early and aggressive therapy is now advocated. Moreover, suppletion with only 500 mg calcium daily was prescribed; nowadays potent anti-osteoporotic treatment with biphosphonates inhibits the negative effects of prednisone on bone and reduce fracture rate. In our study, a non-significant reduction of bone mineral density (BMD) was observed in the prednisone group as opposed to a higher vertebral fracture rate: changes in bone structure and strength rather than diminished BMD could explain, at least partially, the higher incidence of fractures.
From our results, no significant changes were observed in the GR-expression (number and affinity) and serum cortisol levels in both groups. So, it seems unlikely that GR-expression plays a major role in the aethiopatogenesis of RA. Also, no predictive values could be found for the response on GC treatment. No correlations between GR-number, radiological scores and BMD was found.
We were able to study a unique group of early DMARD-naive patients with RA, treated with a low-dose prednisone without bias, an opportunity not likely to recur. We demonstrated a powerful disease-modifying effect of prednisone in the early phase of RA. This is in concordance with results of other recent studies in early RA. There seems to be a ´window of opportunity´ in the first 2 years of the disease in which aggressive therapy limits joint destruction over time. In this treatment we advocate a low dose prednisone, in combination with other DMARDs. Future studies should concentrate on the lowest possible effective dose in combination therapy


Kes cheese, a traditional Turkish dairy product, is commonly made in a lot of region Anatolia. It is consumed in the various parts of Turkey, especially in the western and southeastern parts. Kes cheese is commonly produced in family businesses for their needs and also by dairy processing plants for commercial purposes. Therefore, traditional producing method is not standardized. In recent years, 20-30% White cheese curd has been added to the curd of Kes cheese in order to make the product more attractive, resulting a mosaic-like structure in the final product. Traditional Kes cheese has a range of 21.60-39.31% moisture, 4.5-23.5% fat, 31.22-50.68% protein and 2.84-13.19% salt. The aim of this review is to outline manufacture and chemical, biochemical, mineral, microbial and sensorial properties of Kes cheese.


The consumer assessment of health plans survey (CAHPS) approach provides a practical and flexible yet standardized set of instruments to collect information on access to and satisfaction with health care services and delivery systems.


Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is made up of four bases: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T). Assembled in a strategic fashion, these bases code for the unique genomes of all walks of life, from viruses, to rodents, to primates. The human genome, mapped completely for the first time in April of 2003, is 3 billion bases long and contains approximately 20,000 genes.

The genome of a randomly selected individual, checked base by base, will be approximately 99.9% identical to the reference map of the human genome. The other 0.1% (roughly 3 million bases total) will contain changes in the DNA that do not match to the canonical reference genome. These changes, or genetic variants, can have biological consequence, as they can impact the shape and function of the proteins for which genes code. Genetic variation accounts for much of the visible (phenotypic) diversity – such as eye color or height – that can be observed in humans today. Such variation also plays a role in susceptibility to disease in humans.

In the last ten years, a major breakthrough in identifying the genetic changes that increase risk of disease has been genome-wide association studies (GWAS). In these studies, genetic variants (called single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs) observed in individuals with a particular trait or disorder (affected individuals) are compared to genetic variants observed in healthy (unaffected) individuals. SNPs that are observed more often in affected individuals than in unaffected individuals are associated to increased disease risk. They mark regions (called "loci", singular "locus") of the genome that can contain clues about a disease. Knowing which genes in a locus, when mutated, can increase risk of disease is a crucial first step in understanding why certain people are susceptible to disease while others are not. To date, GWAS have identified more than 7,000 loci that influence risk of disease. The primary goal of the work in this thesis is to identify genetic variants associated to risk of common disease. Finding such mutations can help identify disease-causing genes, potentially improving our ability to prevent, properly diagnose or treat illness in humans.


results. The editorial also mentioned, incorrectly, that older types of gas heaters were still being sold. The AGA standard for N02 emission by heaters was lowered to 5 ng/] in 1991, and this effectively removed the older type of blue flame flueless space heaters from the market. The only gas heaters now available are lower-N'O, types. Since 1991, under a Department of Public Works program, all heaters in New South Wales public schools have either received maintenance or have been replaced by low-N02heaters. While the AGA agrees that further research is needed to either prove or disprove any associations between these low levels of N02 exposure and morbidity, it is also important to recognise that the Australian gas industry is taking constructive steps in its own operations. Irrespective of the type of appliance chosen for heating or cooking, good ventilation in the home is essential. Low-N02 heating should eliminate any concerns for asthma sufferers, but flued heating is also available. The increased ventilation from a flue appears to provide a protective effect against respiratory illness when compared with other common forms of heating.4


Nitric oxide (NO) is an endogenously produced bioregulatory agent that also is toxic. Disturbances in NO production and regulation are known to cause central nervous system disorders and asthma among many other diseases. Iron nitrosyl complexes help to balance the beneficial effects of NO against its potentially fatal effects. This document reviews the literature devoted to structural and chemical characteristics of iron nitrosyl porphyrin complexes, bimetallic iron containing nitrosyl complexes, dinitrosyl complexes, iron nitrosyl cluster complexes, and non-heme nitrosyl complexes prepared between 1992 and 2002.


The multivariate test of means, using the Hotelling's T2 distribution, has vast applications in many real-life situations; education inclusive. Prominent amongst them is the test of means between two groups; say treatment and control groups in tests scores given an intervention. The objective of this study was to apply the Hotelling's T2 distribution to compare the performance of mathematical science students in Kaduna Polytechnics, Nigeria in Advanced Mathematics. In specifics terms, the study wishes to determined the mean difference between the students' Advanced Mathematical abilities for treatment and control group in tests scores using three variables; Linear Algebra, Calculus I and Calculus II. The treatment intervention is an introductory algebra taught for ten weeks. In order to compare only two populations, multiple t-tests may be considered, but such analyses may result in an unacceptably high probability of Type I error. To avoid this problem, a single multivariate hypothesis testing procedure (omnibus test) serves better. This omnibus test of two group means is conducted using the Hotelling's T2 distribution. After the data analysis using the SPSS, the results have revealed that the treatment group produces better results than the control group in Advanced Mathematical abilities. Furthermore, the descriptive statistics have also affirmed that the treatment group produces better results of Advanced Mathematical performance than the control group. Moreover, this was further confirmed by the individual Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test. In general, the treatment has enhanced performance in Advanced Mathematics. Hence, the treatment in form of tutorial (In Introductory Algebra) for ten weeks, has significantly improved the performance of students in Advanced Mathematics. By extension, we conclude that the treatment (In Introductory Algebra) is effective.


This study investigates the effects of lexical tone on the Voice Onset Time (VOT) of prevocalic stops in Cantonese. It builds on literature showing how various factors affect VOT without a resultant loss in phonological contrast and also ties in a body of research on tone and consonant interaction. The specific research questions addressed are (1) Does tone have an effect on VOT in Cantonese?; (2) If so, what kind of an effect does it have?; and (3) Is this effect purely an automatic articulatory consequence of F0 modulation or is this effect also mediated by lexical tone and hence a secondary cue that contributes towards maintaining phonological contrasts between different tonal categories? To address these questions, the speech of 6 native speakers (5 male and 1 female) of Hong Kong Cantonese was examined. A total of 80 tokens of words contrasting in tone and aspiration were analyzed for each speaker for a grand total of 480 tokens. Results from an ANOVA test showed that there is a statistically significant effect (p


Fungicide resistance is a constant threat to agricultural production worldwide. Molecular mechanisms of fungicide resistance have been studied extensively in the wheat pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici. However, less is known about the evolutionary processes driving resistance development. In vitro evolutionary studies give the opportunity to investigate this. Here, we examine the adaptation of Z. tritici to fluxapyroxad, a succinate dehydrogenase (Sdh) inhibitor. Replicate populations of Z. tritici derived from the sensitive isolate IPO323 were exposed to increasing concentrations of fluxapyroxad with or without UV mutagenesis. After ten increases in fungicide concentration, sensitivity had decreased dramatically, with replicate populations showing similar phenotypic trajectories. Sequencing the Sdh subunit B, C, and D encoding genes identified seven mutations associated with resistance to fluxapyroxad. Mutation frequency over time was measured with a pyrosequencing assay, revealing sequential lineage replacement in the UV‐mutagenized populations but not in the untreated populations. Repeating selection from set time‐points with different fungicide concentrations revealed that haplotype replacement of Sdh variants was driven by dose‐dependent selection as fungicide concentration changed, and was not mutation‐limited. These findings suggest that fungicide field applications may select for highly insensitive Sdh variants with higher resistance factors if the fungicide concentration is increased to achieve a better disease control. However, in the absence or presence of lower fungicide concentrations, the spread of these strains might be restricted if the underlying Sdh mutations carry fitness penalties.


A widely adopted methodology for verifying the memory subsystem of a Chip Multiprocessor (CMP) is to verify executions of parallel test programs on the CMP against the given memory consistency model, which has been long known to be time consuming in both theory and practice. To accelerate memory consistency verification, previous approaches have to bear the cost of availability (e.g., relying on dedicated hardware supports that have not been offered by many commodity CMPs) or completeness (e.g., missing some bugs). In the meantime, the impact of parallel programs on memory consistency verification has more or less been overlooked. One piece of evidence is that few investigations have been dedicated to finding appropriate test programs enabling more efficient verification From a novel perspective of test program, we devise a practical technique called "program regularization," which can effectively reduce the computation time of memory consistency verification. The key intuition behind program regularization is that any parallel program, if being reformed appropriately, can enable efficient memory consistency verification. More specifically, for an original program, program regularization introduces some auxiliary memory addresses, and periodically inserts load/store operations accessing these addresses to the original program. With the regularized program, memory consistency verification can be accomplished in linear time (with respect to the number of memory operations) when the number of processors is fixed. Experimental results show that program regularization can significantly accelerate memory consistency verification. Last but not least, our technique, which does not rely on concrete verification algorithm or dedicated hardware support, can be smoothly integrated into existing presilicon/postsilicon verification platforms of industrial CMPs to speed up memory consistency verification.


Using the method of conformational constraint, we have designed and synthesized analogues of deltorphin I and dermenkephalin containing each of the four stereoisomers (2S,3S; 2S,3R; 2R,3S; 2R,3R) of the unusual amino acid beta-methylphenylalanine in position three. The potency and selectivity of these analogues were evaluated by radioreceptor binding assays in the rat brain using [3H]CTOP (mu-ligand) and[3H]p-C1Phe4]DPDPE (delta-ligand), and by bioassay using the mouse vas deferens (delta-receptor assay) and guinea pig ileum (mu-receptor assay) assays. The substitution of a beta-MePhe for Phe3 in deltorphin I and dermenkephalin has a large and variable effect on the bioactivities of the synthesized analogues. The synthesized analogues are somewhat less potent than the native peptides. Both [(2S,3R)-beta-MePhe3]deltorphin and [(2S,3R)-beta-MePhe3] dermenkephalin are more selective, however, and interact essentially specifically with the receptor in the binding assays and bioassays. The bioassay data in vitro of the synthesized analogues of deltorphin I and dermenkephalin follow the same general trends as the receptor binding data. These results demonstrate that topographical modifications of the side-chain conformation of critical structural moieties in a ligand can significantly modulate both the potency and receptor selectivity for ligands that have multiple sites of biological activity, and they illustrate that this approach has general application to peptide and peptidomimetic ligand design.


Arsenic trioxide is a toxic metalloid and carcinogen that is also used as an anticancer drug, and for this reason it is important to identify the routes of arsenite uptake by cells. In this study the ability of hexose transporters to facilitate arsenic trioxide uptake in Saccharomyces cerevisiae was examined. In the absence of glucose, strains with disruption of the arsenite efflux gene ACR3 accumulated high levels of 73As(OH)3. The addition of glucose inhibited uptake by ∼80%. Disruption of FPS1, the aquaglyceroporin gene, reduced glucose-independent uptake by only about 25%, and the residual uptake was nearly completely inhibited by hexoses, including glucose, galactose, mannose, and fructose but not pentoses or disaccharides. A strain lacking FPS1, ACR3, and all genes for hexose permeases except for HXT3, HXT6, HXT7, and GAL2 exhibited hexose-inhibitable 73As(OH)3 uptake, whereas a strain lacking all 18 hexose transport-related genes (HXT1 to HXT17 and GAL2), FPS1 and ACR3, exhibited <10% of wild type 73As(OH)3 transport. When HXT1, HXT3, HXT4, HXT5, HXT7, or HXT9 was individually expressed in that strain, hexose-inhibitable 73As(OH)3 uptake was restored. In addition, the transport of [14C]glucose was inhibited by As(OH)3. These results clearly demonstrate that hexose permeases catalyze the majority of the transport of the trivalent metalloid arsenic trioxide.


Volume 1: Elizabeth Hamilton, "Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education", 1801-1802, Vol 1, 413pp. Volume 2: Elizabeth Hamilton, "Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education", 1801-1802, Vol 2, 455pp. Volume 3: Louisa Hoare, "Hints for the Improvement of Early Education and Nursery Discipline", 1819, 188pp "Woman's Educational Mission: Being an Explanation of Frederick Frobel's System of Infant Gardens", 1855, 88pp. Volume 4: Harriet Martineau, "Household Education", 1849, 326pp. Volume 5: Matilda Pullan, "Maternal Counsels to a Daughter", 1855, 312pp. Volume 6: Eliza Warren, "How I Managed My Children from Infancy to Marriage", 1865, 100pp Elizabeth Blackwell, "Counsel to Parents on the Moral Education of their Children, in Relation to Sex", 1878, 104pp.


Welcome to the library research guide for the film "Blackfish" (Dir. Gabriela Cowperthwaite, 2013). This guide is designed to help you get started in conducting further research on thematic topics related to this film.


Surface organic carbon content and soil moisture (SM) represent first‐order controls on permafrost thaw and vulnerability, yet remain challenging to map accurately. Here we explored the links between surface organic soil properties and SM dynamics in the Alaska North Slope through data analysis and process‐based modeling. Our analysis, based on in situ SM and brightness temperature data from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission, indicated that the SM drydown process in Arctic tundra is closely related to surface soil organic carbon (SOC) properties. More rapid drydown was generally observed in areas with high SOC concentration (SOCC) or low bulk density. The drydown timescale derived from the SMAP polarization ratio (PR) was significantly correlated with SoilGrids surface (0–5 cm) SOCC data (R = −0.54 ∼ −0.68, p < 0.01) at regional scale. To understand the process, we used a coupled permafrost hydrology and microwave emission model to simulate changes in the L‐band PR during the thaw season. The model accounts for the variations in organic soil hydraulic and dielectric properties with SOC content and decomposition state. Model sensitivity runs showed larger L‐band PR decreases during the early thaw season in soils with higher SOCC consistent with the above analysis, whereby highly organic soils (SOCC > 34.8%) drain water more easily with a larger amount of water discharged or lost (through evapotranspiration) relative to soils with less carbon concentration (SOCC < 17.4%). Our findings indicate that satellite L‐band observations are sensitive to tundra SM and carbon properties, and may provide critical constraints on predictions of Arctic permafrost thaw and vulnerability.


A trade‐off between reproduction and immune function has been suggested to potentially underpin between‐individual and genetic variation in reproductive strategy, immunity and life span, with potential consequences for host and parasite dynamics. Previous studies in wild animal populations have shown that experimentally induced or natural variation in reproductive effort is negatively associated with general immune markers. Few studies, however, have tackled this question by measuring specific immune responses against prevalent pathogens, and only rarely has variation in immune measures been linked to parasite burden, making it impossible to draw conclusions about the functional relevance of covariation between reproductive effort and immune markers. We collected faecal samples in a longitudinal manner from wild female Soay sheep across late pregnancy and early lactation and measured gastrointestinal nematode faecal egg count (FEC) and worm‐specific antibody responses. Faecal egg count was highly repeatable, with c. 80% of variation due to between‐individual differences, while three isotypes of worm‐specific and total antibodies had moderate repeatability (range: 11%–43%). Females making a greater reproductive effort (those that reproduced, and especially those with heavier litters) showed a more rapid increase in FEC across the season, while non‐reproducing females and those producing lighter litters experienced lower FEC and had higher antibody levels. Associations between antibodies and FEC were complex: worm‐specific immunoglobulin (Ig) G was negatively associated with FEC, while total IgM was positively associated, emphasizing the importance of measuring both immune markers and parasite burden in ecological studies. Our results support the predicted trade‐off between reproductive effort and parasite‐specific immunity: high reproductive effort can limit the ability of individuals to defend themselves against prevalent parasites, with potential downstream consequences for fitness and parasite transmission.


This paper deals with time-domain surface-impedance boundary conditions in computational magnetodynamics considering two dual finite-element formulations and a nonlinear magnetic constitutive law. Based on the resolution of the 1-D eddy-current problem in a semi-infinite slab, the massive conducting region is accounted for by choosing a number of exponentially decreasing trigonometric basis functions covering the relevant frequency range of the application in hand. Herein the method is elaborated for the magnetic-vector-potential formulation and the magnetic-field formulation. Results for both formulations are compared and validated on 2-D linear and nonlinear test cases.


A fuzzy-H∞ control, improved with weighting functions, has been designed and applied to a novel model of a one-half semiactive lateral vehicle (OHSLV) suspension. The herein contribution resides in the development and computation of an H∞ controller with parallel distributed compensation (PDC) designed from a highly nonlinear system modelled via the Takagi–Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy approach. A fuzzy-H∞ controller is synthesized for an OHSLV T-S fuzzy model of a suspension with two magnetorheological (MR) dampers including actuators' nonlinear dynamics. The realism of results has been improved by considering the MR damper's behaviours (viscoplasticity, hysteresis, and saturation) and the handling of the phase angle of the sinusoidal disturbance, not included in other reported work. Time-domain tests remark transient time achievements, whereas precise performance criterion indices in the frequency domain are employed to assess the generated outcomes. The proposed solution complies with all performance criteria compared with a benchmark passive average suspension that fails in satisfying most of the performance criteria.


Intense competition in the online retailing arena is transforming retailing systems to include mobile commerce resulting in increasing challenges to retailers since adoption is voluntary and changing consumer expectations shaped by circumstances, norms, and the need for new technology adaptations. As consumer behaviour is easily affected by the increasing social interactions through social networking media, the human and social factors that technology adoption theories lacks were commonly added into the studies to improve predictive capabilities. Therefore, this study investigates the social dimension's effects on technology adoption by adopting the institutional theory concept i.e., isomorphism, and conducting a systematic literature review exercise basing on the PRISMA framework. Articles review found organisation adoption studies commonly adapted institutional theory, but scarcity on consumer technology adoption. Isomorphic forces (i.e., coercive pressures, mimetic pressures, normative pressures) would significantly affect technological adoption and apply to both organisational and consumer adoption because individual behaviour detects successful adoption. By understanding market isomorphic forces, retailers could use the facts to formulate marketing strategies. The systematic literature review also showed variation in technology adoption because of cultural differences, norms, demographics, etc. Market isomorphism inclusion in consumer adoption studies is scarce. Recommendation for inclusion is encouraged for further investigation into its discriminant validity and definitions.


The genetic diversity and spatial genetic population structure of the solitary bee Anthophora pauperata Walker 1871, a species endemic to St Katherine Protectorate, were studied by RAPD markers in seven wadis in the St Katherine Protectorate, South Sinai, Egypt. High levels of genetic diversity were found, mostly within rather than among wadis, but there were highly significant genetic differences among sites, unrelated to geographic distances between them. Reasons for these patterns may lie in the territoriality and mating behaviour of these bees.


A Materials Engineering Application (MEA) has been presented as a solution for the problems of materials design, solutions simulation, production and processing, and service evaluation. Large amounts of data are generated in the MEA distributed and heterogeneous environment. As the demand for intelligent engineering information applications increases, the challenge is to effectively organize these complex data and provide timely and accurate on-demand services. In this paper, based on the supporting environment of Open Cloud Services Architecture (OCSA) and Virtual DataSpace (VDS), a new semantic-driven knowledge representation model for MEA information is proposed. Faced with the MEA constantly changing user requirements, this model elaborates the semantic representation of data, services and their relationships to support the construction of domain knowledge ontology. Then, based on the ontology modeling in VDS, the semantic representations of association mapping, rule-based reasoning, and evolution tracking are analyzed to support MEA knowledge acquisition. Finally, an application example of knowledge representation in the field of materials engineering is given to illustrate the proposed model, and some experimental comparisons are discussed for evaluating and verifying the effectiveness of this method.


Recently the decoration of graphene with metallic nanoparticles by a one pot reduction of graphene oxide (GO) coupled with the synthesis of metallic nanoparticles has gained momentum. Graphene and GO have been proved to exhibit excellent biocompatibility and high antibacterial activity and hence a vast possibility lies in the utilization of GO as an antibacterial reinforcement in biomaterials and exploration of the antiseptic properties as well as the cytotoxicity of GO-containing composites. Moreover GO decorated with metal / metal oxide paves way towards an inevitable role in water purification. The use of graphene oxide as the nano scale substrates for the development of nanocomposites with metal oxides is a novel idea to obtain a hybrid which would exhibit both the properties of GO as a enthralling paper-shape material and the quality of single nano-sized metal particles. The heavy metal ions and pollutants are considered as a major problem in environmental contamination. Hence detection of trace level pollutant has become a hot topic in the present research scenario. Modified graphene oxide nanocomposites prepared using a green approach has the capacity of absorbing pollutant material ions in high efficiency and selectivity. The green synthesized nanocomposites were characterized using FTIR and UV spectroscopy and the consequence of pH and concentration on the preparation of the nanocomposites was evaluated. The efficiency of these nanocomposites towards degradation of organic dyes like methylene blue has been evaluated.


Costa Rica's economic transformation of the last 30 years included numerous liberalization measures, but a closer look reveals a strong mercantilist bias. Successive administrations adopted monetary, trade, tax, and regulatory regimes that benefited the export-oriented sectors of the economy at the expense of the overall population, particularly the poor. As a result, even though the country has enjoyed a healthy growth rate for over 25 years, the proportion of Costa Ricans living below the poverty line remains pretty much the same as it did in 1994 at around 20 percent, while income inequality is on the rise.


The low-angle X-ray diffraction pattern from fibres of reconstituted H3/H4/DNA complexes is very similar to that of chromatin and has well defined maxima at 10.6, 5.4, 3.4 and 2.6 nm. Staphylococcal nuclease digestion of reconstituted H3/H4/DNA.yields DNA fragments of length 49, 69, 100, 128, 193 and 255 b.p. as principal components. Comparison of the relative amounts of DNA fragments shows that the larger components (100 and 128 b.p.) increase with respect to the smaller (49 and 69 b.p.) as the histone to DNA ratio increases. A structural unit containing "X 65 b.p. of DNA and tetrameric (H3/H4)2 is proposed such that longer DNA fragments result from multiples of this unit. The principal nucleo-protein particle resulting from nuclease digestion contains 128/139 b.p. of DNA and has electrophoretic mobility very close to that of 'core' nucleosome. It probably represents a dimer of the basic structural unit.


Some of the first European migrating groups in Argentina in the 19th century have settled around the territory known as Pampa Gringa – this area extends in Santa Fe's plains, originating in the forming of agricultural colonies. The phenomenon of migration leaves its trail in social rhetoric, literary included. There were in Santa Fe a vast number of literary productions as well as essays that account for migration's phenomenon. Gastón Gori (1915-2004) is a representative figure of this investigative and production range. This paper will cover a journey through the part of Argentinian literature referred to migration, with a special focus in a turning point for the productions on the subject led by Gastón Gori.


Several landmark studies have provided strong support for the position that vigorous treatment of diabetes in the majority of individuals has the potential to reduce the morbidity and mortality of the disease by decreasing its chronic complications (1,2). In response, many advances have been made that include the introduction of highly successful therapies and tools such as more effective medications, blood glucose meters, insulin delivery systems, and needle sizes. Yet, despite this progress, people with diabetes can still have challenges in meeting target goals (3,4) and experience distress related to their treatment plan (5–7). Intensive therapies that have been shown to prevent or slow the progression of complications require people with diabetes to learn and maintain demanding, complex self-care routines. These therapies and routines are often met with fear and reluctance, and adhering to them can be difficult (5,7,8).

Furthermore, providers report challenges in introducing advanced therapies for people with diabetes. A survey of physicians' attitudes found that primary care providers (PCPs) consider diabetes more difficult to treat than other chronic diseases because it requires more monitoring and medication adjustment to achieve treatment goals (9). Physicians also report that there is inadequate support for the increased time and effort required to treat diabetes patients and that neither clinics nor patients can afford what it takes for comprehensive care (9–11).

Diabetes self-management education and support (DSME/S) have repeatedly been shown to improve clinical, behavioral, and psychosocial outcomes (12–14). In addition, DSME/S are reported to reduce the onset or advancement of diabetes complications (15), improve quality of life (16,17), enhance self-efficacy and empowerment (18,19), increase healthy coping (20), and decrease the presence of diabetes-related distress (21,22) and depression (23, …


We studied the relationship between the genotype and clinical phenotype in 27 families with dominant X-linked Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMTX1) neuropathy. Twenty-two families showed mutations in the coding region of the connexin32 (cx32) gene. The mutations include four nonsense mutations, eight missense mutations, two medium size deletions, and one insertion. Most missense mutations showed a mild clinical phenotype (five out of eight), whereas all nonsense mutations, the larger of the two deletions, and the insertion that produced frameshifts showed severe phenotypes. Five CMTX1 families with mild clinical phenotype showed no point mutations of the cx32 gene coding region. Three of these families showed positive genetic linkage with the markers of the Xq13.1 region. The genetic linkage of the remaining two families could not be evaluated because of their small size.


The objective of this study is to synthesize gelatins grafted with lactic acid oligomer (LAo) and lactic acid oligomer-poly(ethylene glycol)-lactic acid oligomer (LAo-PEG-LAo) triblock copolymers and to examine their gelation behavior. The grafting ratio of LAo-grafted gelatins could be changed by the feed ratio of LAo to the amino groups of gelatin for grafting reaction, while triblock copolymers with different molecular weights of LAo were prepared. The turbidity of LAo-grafted gelatin solution increased with the increased grafting ratio, although the turbidity increase was suppressed by adding guanidine hydrochloride in a dose-dependent manner. The turbidity of LAo-grafted gelatin solution further enhanced by mixing with the solution of triblock copolymers, while the enhanced extent increased with an increase in the LAo molecular weight. A mechanically firm hydrogel was formed by mixing the LAo-grafted gelatin and triblock copolymer at the higher solution concentrations, while the compression strength of the hydrogel became higher as the grafting ratio increased. No hydrogel formation was observed in the presence of guanidine hydrochloride.


The process of resonance energy transfer (RET) in a nanostructure influenced by a vicinal, nonabsorbing third body is studied within the framework of molecular quantum electrodynamics. Direct RET and the influence of neighboring matter have been studied previously, mainly for molecules. However, a complete study or unified understanding of direct and indirect RET in nanostructures with different dimensionalities is still lacking. Therefore, there is a strong need for a complete theory that models RET for the cases of quantum wells, nanowires, and quantum dots.We construct a detailed picture of excitation energy transfer in nanostructures and how it is affected by another quantum object, which includes the derivation of quantum amplitudes based on second- and fourth-order time-dependent perturbation theories, and the derivation of transfer rates and distance dependencies, providing a complete picture and understanding of RET in nanostructures. The results of the derivations indicate that the dimensionality of the nanostructure determines the controllability of the RET rate. Furthermore, third-body mediation leads to a nonvanishing RET in the coupling of nanowire to nanowire and quantum dot to quantum dot.


Richard Jefferies was the most imaginative and least conventional of nineteenth-century observers of the natural world. Trekking across the English countryside, he recorded his responses to everything from the texture of an owl's feather and 'noises in the air' to the grinding hardship of rural labour. This superb selection of his essays and articles shows a writer who is brimming with intense feeling, acutely aware of the land and those who work on it, and often ambivalent about the countryside. Who does it belong to? Is it a place, an experience or a way of life? In these passionate and idiosyncratic writings, almost all our current ideas and concerns about rural life can be found. Richard Jefferies (1848-1887) was the son of a Wiltshire farmer. He never worked the land but made his living from writing, trekking across the countryside with his notebook. He spent much of his life struggling against poverty and tuberculosis, which would eventually kill him at the age of thirty-nine. As well as being in many ways the father of English nature writing, Jefferies also wrote the classic children's book Bevis and the apocalyptic science-fiction novel After London. Richard Mabey's introduction to his selection of Jefferies' work discusses the author's life, his views on the paradoxes of rural life and his place in the tradition of nature writers.


Clinically, the patientsshowedremarkablyconstantsymptoms and signs, with an incubation period of about three days. All ages were affected, except that no cases were seen in babies under six months. A few of the Asian crew were affected, and their symptomswere the sameas those of the Europeans. Onset was sudden, with general aches and pains chiefly in the muscles. Average peak temperatures were between 100 and 101 F., with a maximum of 102 F. Over half the cases had a non-productivecough. Every case seen showed without exception an cedematous pharynx. Duration of the illness was about 72 hours.


Epilepsia partialis continua (EPC) is characterized by focal seizures that cannot be stopped. The most common cause of EPC in children is Rasmussen's encephalitis. In this video case report, we describe an 11-year old female with continuous lingual EPC for two years. She has shown no signs of Rasmussen's Encephalitis or other neurodegenerative process and structural MRI is normal. [Published with video sequences]


Aparoscopy for urological medical procedure is a moderately ongoing careful development. A few communities have
 considerable experience of single activities, yet not many have insight with an exhaustive range. Laparoscopy started
 with nephrectomy and pyeloplasty, and has extended to accommodate a living related kidney giver program and for
 different methodology ordinarily directed open. As of late, it has included prostate urology is one of the remainder
 of the careful orders to investigate the capability of negligibly intrusive techniques used in bladder disease medical
 procedure.


In this paper, we present a case study of the mobile app and ecosystem Trafpoint. Trafpoint is a system for registering when and where people travel by public transport, using gamification in an attempt to convince more people to travel in environmentally friendly ways. We argue that the Trafpoint app is a good example of what we call "implicit participation", where user-generated data from volunteers generate valuable input for the political decision-making process. With the growth of sensors, smartphones being ubiquitous, and the growing interest in the Internet of Things, this form of participation has the potential to become very valuable for decision-makers in the coming years.


Air turbulence is perceived as a major problem for Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) in outdoor applications. Researchers report trouble with attitude holding due to the turbulence and resulting problems with quality of images transmitted by MAVs. According to the literature, short duration vertical gusts may have velocity comparable to MAV airspeed, so brief periods of flight at very large angles of attack have to be considered. In these circumstances it seems reasonable to apply the design with as high stall angle of attack as possible. In particular the flow has to be attached to control surfaces to perform effective control in order to damp air turbulence effect. Therefore an aircraft configuration was developed with cranked delta wing and propeller located inside the wing contour. To prove the value of the concept, wind tunnel experiment was undertaken, as well as flight tests programme. The prototype demonstrated ability to fly controllably at extremely high angles of attack. However few disadvantages were also noticed. For example the prototype was very sensitive to the motor settings, since every rpm change required immediate airplane trimming to maintain straight path of flight. This drawback can be eliminated by application of counter-rotating propeller. The status of the programme is presented in the paper, including the most recent results, as well as currently undertaken experiments and plans for the nearest future.


Asymmetric information between voters and legislative representatives poses a major challenge to the functioning of representative democracy. We examine whether representatives are more likely to serve long-term campaign donors instead of constituents during times of low media attention to politics. Combining data on campaign finance donations made by individuals and special interest groups with information on their preferences for particular bills, we construct novel measures of electoral and organized interests pressure that representatives face with regard to specific legislative votes. In our analysis based on 490 roll calls between 2005 and 2014 in the US House of Representatives, we find strong evidence that representatives are more likely to vote with special interests and against constituency interests when the two are in conflict. Importantly, the latter effect is significantly larger when there is less attention on politics. Thereby, we draw on exogenous newsworthy shock events that crowd out news on the legislative process, but are themselves not related to it. The opportunistic behavior seems not to be mediated by short-term scheduling of sensitive votes right after distracting events.


The application of two wavelet transforms to image compression is discussed. It is noted that the Haar transform, with proper bit allocation, has performance that is visually superior to an algorithm based on a Daubechies filter and to the discrete-cosine-transform-based Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) algorithm at compression ratios exceeding 20:1. In terms of the root-mean-square error, the performance of the Haar transform method is basically comparable to that of the JPEG algorithm. The implementation of the Haar transform can be achieved in integer arithmetic, making it very suitable for applications requiring real-time performance.


A theoretical analysis of noise in a high-power cascaded fiber amplifier is presented. Unlike the noise theory in low power communication, the noise of a high power system is redefined as the leaked output energy between pulses with coherent beat noise uncounted. This definition is more appropriate for high power usage in which the pulse energy receives more attention than the pulse shape integrity. Then the low power pre-amplifying stages are considered as linear amplification and analyzed by linear theory. In the high-power amplification stages, the inversion is assumed to recover linearly in the time interval between pulses. The time shape of the output pulse is different from that of the input signal because of different gains at the front and back ends of the pulse. Then, a criterion is provided to distinguish the nonlinear and linear amplifications based on the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) analysis. Then, an experiment that shows that the output SNR actually drops off in nonlinear amplification is performed. The change in the noise factor can be well evaluated by pulse shape distortion.


BACKGROUND Although traditionally considered a medical subspecialty, dermatology has rapidly evolved over the past two decades to encompass a wide variety of cutaneous surgical procedures. OBJECTIVE The study was carried out to evaluate the status of dermatologic surgery practice and skin cancer treatment in Canada. METHODS In 2003, 550 practicing Canadian dermatologists were surveyed. RESULTS Two hundred fifty-one dermatologists responded to the questionnaire, with the majority practicing in an urban part-time academic, part-time private setting. Statistics are presented on the types and demographics of dermatosurgical and cosmetic procedures performed, as well as on the specific dermatosurgical therapies used in the treatment of various cutaneous malignancies. CONCLUSIONS The survey provides a current picture of dermatologic surgery practice and skin cancer treatment in Canada. The data suggest that Canadian dermatologists are further embracing surgical and cosmetic procedures.


We investigate the behavior of the chiral condensate in lattice QCD at finite temperature and finite chemical potential. The study was done using two flavors of light quarks and with a series of β and ma at the lattice size 24×122×6. The calculation was done in the Taylor expansion formalism. We are able to calculate the first and second order derivatives of ψψ in both isoscalar and isovector channels. With the first derivatives being small, we find that the second derivatives are sizable close to the phase transition and that the magnitude of ψψ decreases under the influence of finite chemical potential in both channels.


Managers require measures spanning multiple enterprises to increase supply chain competitiveness and to increase the value delivered to the end-customer. Despite the need for supply chain metrics, there is little evidence that any firms are successfully measuring and evaluating interfirm performance. Existing measures continue to capture intrafirm performance and focus on traditional measures. The lack of a framework to simultaneously measure and translate interfirm performance into value creation has largely contributed to this situation. This article presents a framework that overcomes these shortcomings by measuring performance across multiple firms and translating supply chain performance into shareholder value.


These new workshops are for babies who are not yet walking and their grown-ups, and take place on the 3rd Monday of each month.


Sway magnetometry, which monitors body movement at the hips, was compared with two commercial force platforms to determine its sensitivity in identifying differences in stability between eyes opened and eyes closed. Sway path length and area were examined. All devices showed an ability to distinguish between stability with eyes opened and eyes closed on repeated testing. The magnetometry system using path length analysis was most sensitive and was able to detect an increase in sway with eyes closed compared with eyes open for individual tests with 97% confidence (mean [+/- SD] path length Romberg Coefficient, .76 +/- .13). Standing on a rubber base caused destabilization of posture. Sway magnetometry is seen as a potentially useful tool in quantification of body sway to aid the clinician in assessment of balance in the dizzy patient.


A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for Award
of the Degree of Master of Public Administration of Mzumbe University


The desire to increase fuel efficiency and reduce carbon dioxide emissions of vehicles has led to an increased use of vehicles equipped with lean-burn engines, such as diesel and lean-burn gasoline engines. This type of engine uses excess oxygen when compared to the amount required to stoichiometrically combust fuel. A serious disadvantage of this type of engine, however, is the increased emission levels of nitrogen oxides. These airborne pollutants are toxic for hu- mans when inhaled and are harmful to the environment. They are therefore subject to increasingly strict environmental regulations, which motivate the au- tomotive industry to innovate in order to decrease the nitrogen oxide emission levels of new engines and vehicle designs. An important method to accomplish this is the after-treatment of exhaust gas with the help of catalytic converters. Owing to the composition of the exhaust gas of lean-burn engines, however, the reduction of nitrogen oxide emission obtained with standard three-way catalysts (TWC) is nevertheless insufficient. One type of catalytic converter that might be used to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions of vehicles with lean-burn engines below the regulated maximum is the Lean NOx Trap (LNT). In addition to the platinum used in TWC's, LNT catalytic converters use barium as active catalytic material. This gives the LNT the ability to store a certain amount of nitrogen oxides on its catalytic surface. The operating principle of a LNT catalyst is the temporary storage of the nitrogen oxides emitted during a time period of lean operation and a brief switchover of the engine to rich operation which produces exhaust gas containing excess reductants the reduce the stored nitrogen oxides to nitrogen, thereby regenerating the trap. This periodic operation requires active control of the engine to determine how and at which time instant to switch to rich operation. Model-based design methods can be used to derive estimation and control algorithms for LNT in a systematic manner. These methods require a dynamic model of the LNT of limited complexity, which describes the dynamics of the LNT that are essential to estimation and control and which is referred to as a control-oriented LNT model. Such a model can be obtained by two routes. The first route is to empirically determine the structure of the control-oriented LNT model from the observed behavior and tune the parameters of the model using vehicle test data. This approach has two disadvantages: it requires knowledge of the LNT dynamics to determine the right model structure and the vehicle tests required to tune the parameters are expensive and time-consuming. There is an alternative route provided we have a LNT model at our dis- posal based on physical laws, physical constants and the reaction constants of the elementary reaction steps which determine the kinetics of the chemicals reactions in the LNT. This type of model is referred to as a first-principles mo- del. Such a model can be obtained by combining existing physical knowledge with laboratory tests designed to determine the kinetics of elementary reacti- on steps. This alternative route means systematically deriving control-oriented models from the first-principle model using model reduction methods. These methods determine which parts of the first-principle model are relevant for esti- mation and control and help to arrive at a control-oriented model by reducing the first-principle model in such a way that it retains only these parts. This thesis examines the reduction of the complexity of LNT models using model reduction methods. First, the relation between detailed first-principle models and existing control-oriented models is explored. The essential simplifi- cation steps that link both model types are 1) the simplification of the kinetics and 2) the compression of the information on the axial spatial concentration profiles for gas-phase species and species on the catalyst surface into a limited number of states. A link can be established between parts of both models using a re-modeling approach in which assumptions with a physical interpretation are used to mathematically derive the control-oriented model from the first-principle model. The existing control-oriented model also contains relations that are em- pirical, however, and these cannot directly be related to the first-principle model using a re-modeling approach. The compression of the axial spatial concentration profiles was approached using existing model reduction methods known as projection methods. Two types of projection methods were used. The Balanced Truncation method uses an energy norm to quantify the energy transfer from model inputs to model states and from model states to model outputs. States which are associated with limited energy transfer from the input to the output are then truncated, removing them from the model. The Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) method exploits correlations between the states of a dynamic model that occur if the model is simulated to redefine the state-space so that only states with limited correlation are retained in the model. It was found, however, that these methods perform poorly for models that are similar to the LNT model. The reason for this poor performance is that the dynamics of the LNT model are characterized by nonlinearity of the kinetics, the occurrence of traveling wave phenomena and large changes in time in the magnitude of species concentrations. One contribution of this thesis is the adaptation of POD algorithms to impro- ve their performance for systems which exhibit wave phenomena on a bounded domain, such as the LNT catalyst model. This was accomplished by inclu- ding phase information in the basis-functions used in the POD method. Data- correlation methods and extrapolation were used to gather information on the dominant features of the traveling wave from simulation data. This information was then used to construct the basis-functions. Next, we have considered simplification of the kinetic part of the LNT mo- del. A large number of different schemes exist to accomplish simplification of complex kinetic models. In this thesis lumping methods are examined, in parti- cular an approach whereby Quasi-Steady-State (QSS) and Partial Equilibrium (PE) assumptions are used to lump species. The effect of lumping on mass conservation and on the positive invariance of kinetic models is discussed. A requirement for the derivation of reduced order models using lumping methods the definition of an expansion relation. We determine under which conditions such a relation exists. Furthermore, in this thesis we take two steps towards a practical implementation of lumping methods. First, a method is developed to retain positive invariance of species concentrations in lumped models, when the expansion relation is approximated using polynomials. This method is based on existing results of function approximation using Sum-of-Squares polynomials. Next, a greedy-type algorithm is proposed to select QSS and PE relations so that the expansion relation can be obtained as the symbolic solution to a set of algebraic equations. A possible application of LNT models is the goal-oriented optimization of LNT operation. The application of model reduction as a part of goal-oriented optimization procedure is investigated. The techniques used for simplification of kinetic mechanisms are extended to spatially distributed models and applied to a test-case model similar to LNT models. It was found that application of model reduction methods during optimization is possible although it requires careful tuning of the model reduction accuracy versus the accuracy of the optimization algorithm. This thesis finally illustrates the difficulties with a straightforward applica- tion of existing model reduction methods to LNT models. The essential part of LNT models are convection-reaction equations required to model changes in species concentrations along the catalyst axis. A number of steps have been taken towards making these methods more suitable in practice for reduction of convection-reaction equations. However, a number of fundamental theore- tical problems remain, such as error control, and closely related to this, the preservation of stability and positive invariance of concentrations.


Toxoplasma gondii is an intracellular parasite of worldwide distribution that causes reproductive disorders in animals and man. Warm-blooded animals constitute the intermediate hosts, get tissue cysts and disseminate the disease when contaminate the pasture with feces containing oocysts. Domestic and wild feline are the definitive hosts. The objective of the study was to determine the seroprevalence of T. gondii in ewes belonging to a commercial farm located in the Central Highlands of Junin, Peru, using the Indirect Immunofluorescent Antibody Test (IFAT). A total of 387 sera were collected from ewes of various ages at shearing time in March 2002. The detected seroprevalence was 65.9 ± 4.7% (255/387). Seroprevalence increased according to age (p<0.05).


Fruit firmness, a quality quantitative trait, has long been established as a key textural property and one of the essential parameters for estimating ripening and shelf life of apples. Loss of firmness, also referred to as fruit softening, is undesirable in apples and represents a serious problem for growers in many countries. This results in the reduction of apple shelf life and in turn influences its commercialization. Low firmness impacts negatively on the sensory values of juiciness, crunchiness and crispness. Fruit firmness is affected by the inheritance of alleles at multiple loci and their possible interactions with the environment. Identification of these loci is key for the determination of genetic candidate markers that can be implemented in marker assisted selection and breeding for trees and/or cultivars that can yield firmer fruits with economic value. In turn, this technique can help reduce the time needed to evaluate plants and new cultivars could become available faster. This review provides an overview of quantitative trait loci (QTL), including additional putative QTLs that we have identified, and genes associated with firmness and their importance to biotechnology, the breeding industry and eventually the consumers. Keywords : Malus x domestica , ethylene, fruit quality, multigenic traits, texture African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(10), pp. 996-1003, 6 March, 2013


The number of laundry industry has been increasing rapidly which influences the amount of detergent usage in the washing process. Generally the laundry industries dump their wastewater directly to environment without any treatment. Phosphate contained in detergent shall accumulate in the environment then finally would cause eutrofication where the water body becomes rich of dissolved nutrient which effects the dissolved oxygen contained in water body. One of wastewater treatment methods is adsorption. Two different kinds of adsorbents were applied in this investigation namely activated carbon and natural zeolite. Synthetic laundry wastewater was used in order to control the phosphate concentration. The objective of this experiment was to study the removal of phosphate concentration of each adsorbent filled in adsorption column by using circulation method. The column has 1 inch of diameter, 50 cm of height, and 50 ml/minute of flowrate. The concentration of phosphate was varied between 2-8 mg/l whereas the adsorbent height in the column was varied between the ranges of 10-40 cm. The size of both adsorbents was 10 mesh. It was found that the natural zeolite was superior to remove the phosphate compared to activated carbon. The highest phosphate removal of 90% was obtained by using 40 cm of natural zeolite height in the adsorption column when make use the phosphate concentration of 2 mg/l.


Using a GARCH model the paper sought to test the hypothesis that price volatility of key Sub Saharan Africa primary commodity exports, have not changed over the past four decades. Whilst crude oil, aluminium, cocoa and six others have not experienced significant change in price volatility over the period, nine other major commodities recorded changes. Efforts need to be made to extensively diversify the portfolio of agricultural commodity exports by including new products of which price volatilities in the past decades have been reduced. This is crucial for countries that depend on up to three primary commodities for the bulk of their foreign exchange earnings. Other measures such as value addition can also help in reducing impacts of unfavourable price movements.


In this paper we develop a product life-cycle model that studies a set of strategic choices facing manufacturers as they design the joint product/service bundle for a product which may require maintenance and repair support after its sale. The choice parameters of interest include the product price, the quality of after-sales service and the price to be charged for the after-sales service. We adopt a competitive, game-theoretic as opposed to single-firm optimization framework, where there is competition for the provision of after-sales service between the manufacturer and an independent service operator. The product price and the service quality/price are characterized by an equilibrium to a sequential game. The resulting outcome is applied to support the valuation of alternative product designs in explicit consideration of the tradeoff between profit from product sale and from the provision of after-sales service. The model can also be used to evaluate the asset value of a firm's customer base.


There has been a high expectation for the derivative action, which was introduced into China in 2005 when the Company Law 1993 was extensively amended, to play an important role in corporate governance in China. But this expectation may not be fulfilled, because, among other things, the Law does not provide for how derivative actions should be financed. By way of a comparative study, this article investigates what rules are appropriate for derivative action funding in China. The general conclusion is that the common law indemnity order is inherently defective, because it entails that judges impose financial obligations on a company before the merit of an underlying claim is ascertained. The American contingent fee is most favourable and the established rules could be reformed to make the arrangement neutral so as to discourage frivolous litigation. Lastly, the special barrier of filing fees in China has to be cleared in order for derivative actions to be actually taken.


This paper describes the validation of a Lagrange-Rayleigh-Ritz technique for the mathematical modeling of mass loaded panels for active control studies. The validation has been carried out by comparing the results produced by a Lagrange-Rayleigh-Ritz model with the results produced by a finite-element model and experimental data. Attention was focussed on a simply supported panel with a lumped mass constrained to its surface to simulate the presence of equipment mounted on the panel and twin piezoelectric patches bonded to the panel, working as sensors and actuators. The design of the experimental rig is described in detail, and a test campaign was carried out to obtain a set of transfer functions characteristic of this plant. The experimental data are then used to validate the predictions of the mathematical model. In particular, it was demonstrated that the Lagrange-Rayleigh-Ritz model was able to reproduce accurately the dynamics of the plant requiring a relatively small number of degrees of freedom.


This paper presents a survey of Synthetic Aperture Radar-based techniques that are used to extract bathymetric features or create bathymetric maps. With standard techniques, realization of a bathymetric map is currently very expensive. Indeed, the best results are achieved by onboard multi-beam sonars but measurement campaigns are very expensive and time-consuming especially for large coverage or remote areas. SAR-based imaging methods can help to reduce the costs and improve the coverage of bathymetric data. To achieve the needs of the marine renewable energy sector, two main approaches to perform the extraction of bathymetric information exist: current-based method and wave-based method. For each of them, we will discuss their applicability and their quality.


Diisopropyl fluorophosphate (DFP) effectively inhibited proteolytic activity in preparations of partially purified Streptomyces albus enzyme used to lyse cell walls of Group A streptococci. Lysis of non-trypsinized Group A cell walls with DFP-treated S. albus enzyme released a soluble protein fraction containing antigenic type-specific M protein, a carbohydrate fraction consisting of Group A and a small amount of A-variant polysaccharides, and a dialyzable fraction. The similarities of the products of DFP-treated S. albus enzyme lysis of streptococcal cell walls to those released by phage muralytic enzyme furnish additional evidence of the close relationship of these wall lysins. In view of small differences in electrophoretic mobility, immunodiffusion, and chemical composition, it is suggested that Group A streptococcal cell wall polysaccharide dissolved by DFP-S. albus enzyme consists of a spectrum of molecules having the same immunological determinants but differing in content of conjugated mucopeptide.


»Prozessorientierte Mikro-Makro-Analyse. Ein methodologischer Vergleich von Elias und Bourdieu«. Both Norbert Elias and Pierre Bourdieu argue that both the research question and social theory should guide methodology and methods. Both theorists argue that any social theory should keep in mind the importance of macro-level structures; in micro-level interactions and social change. In order to fully grasp patterns of social change, social scientists would require a complex causal processed-oriented micro-macro-analysis. Because in research practice, it is almost never possible to implement the full methodology, both Elias and Bourdieu used a short-cut by using a six-step methodology, consisting of (1) self-reflexivity and detachment; (2) an explaining of the theoretical perspective; (3) a reconstructing of the figuration's/field's socio-genesis; (4) a reconstructing of the micro-level; (5) a reconstructing of the macro-level; and (6) a theoretical synopsis. By using an example on local variation of economic practices, the paper illustrates this six-step methodology and concludes with further questions for future research.


The premise of scientific and technical experiments was to evaluate the behaviour during storage of the 2 cultivars of plums ('Stanley' and 'Anna Spath'). Fruits were held after the harvest period of about 7-45 days, depending on cultivar, storage spaces, storage of the resort, where the experiments were subsequently taken and kept in cold conditions (t = 35 0 C; UR-95%) over a period of 30 days in cold storage of Belciugatele Teaching Station, located inside of Moara Domneasc�� farm. After removal from storage were made determinations regarding: the recorded quantity and quality of the losses of fruit during storage; the chemical evolution of the main components of plums during storage; The drip irrigation was started from March 20, water was given 4 hours per day. The amount of water needed are between 300 and 700 m 3 /ha. Among the tested cultivars, Anna Spath performed best, which was ranked on the first place with 2,26 % total loss without loss by spoilage.


Mobile manipulation capabilities are key to many new applications of robotics in space, underwater construction, and service environments. This article discusses the ongoing effort at Stanford University for the development of multiple mobile manipulation systems and presents the basic models and methodologies for their analysis and control. This work builds on four methodologies we have previously developed for fixed-base manipulation: the operational space formulation for task-oriented robot motion and force control; the dextrous dynamic coordination of macro/mini structures for increased mechanical bandwidth of robot systems; the augmented object model for the manipulation of objects in a robot system with multiple arms; and the virtual linkage model for the characterization and control of internal forces in a multi-arm system. We present the extension of these methodologies to mobile manipulation systems and propose a new decentralized control structure for cooperative tasks. The article also discusses experimental results obtained with two holonomic mobile manipulation platforms we have designed and constructed at Stanford University.


A modified Monod equation was successfully applied to describe the maximum specific growth rate of Listeria innocua in a broth model in the presence of various concentrations of sodium lactate or NaCl. The combined effects of temperature and pH were assessed by translating the parameters of the modified Monod equation mu(m), alpha, and p') as functions of pH and/or temperature. As a result, the area in which the growth rate could be predicted was extended to include as a variable not only the salt concentration but also pH and temperature. The number of parameters needed to describe the experimental data was thereby reduced from 48 to 4 (NaCl) and from 42 to 5 (sodium lactate). The decline in the goodness of fit that accompanied the reduction in the number of parameters was within statistically acceptable ranges. The resulting model was compared with a polynomial fit, and it was proposed that the former was more suitable for the purpose of this study. The broth model for sodium lactate was evaluated with Bologna-type sausages. Because of the "worst-case" design of the broth model, it was necessary to reestimate one or all parameters to obtain a good description of the growth rate of L. innocua in the meat product. However, the simplicity of the model and the practical usefulness of its parameters offer considerable prospects for its use in predictive microbiology.


Computation fluid dynamics (CFD)is widely used to simulate blood flow in vascular systems. Most of the studies focus on identification of reasons behind the cardiovascular disorders. In this study, magnetic resonance angiography data belonging to a patient were used to obtain brain vasculature solid model. This model prior to CFD simulations was evaluated in terms of surface quality and critical region was identified to be investigated. After CFD analysis, the regions with low and high velocity vector fields, pressure, contours and wall shear stresses (WSS) were obtained. The effect of shape and orientation of vessels was observed. It was seen that increased blood velocity increases the pressure and WSS especially in narrow regions.


Objectives Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death from gynecological cancer for women. The standard treatment consists of an extensive cytoreductive surgery followed with adjuvant chemotherapy. This study aims to identify the common postoperative complications as well as to define predictive factors of their occurrence. Methods This study was conducted at Hôtel-Dieu University Hospital in Lebanon between October 2017 and October 2018. All patients older than 18-year-old who underwent cytoredcutive surgery for ovarian cancer were followed up from the postoperative admission in the intensive care unit till discharge from hospital or at least for 30 days. Correlations between perioperative characteristics and complications were searched and analyzed. Results 40 patients were included. The mean age was 55 years old. The mean surgical complexity score was 5. Major complications have occurred in 32% of cases. They were associated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy (p = 0.009), elevated surgical complexity (p = 0.037), need for intraoperative transfusion and stay at intensive care unit more than 48 hours (p = 0.05). Complications were infectious, hemodynamic, pulmonary, digestive and surgical. Need for parenteral nutrition was significantly correlated with longer operative time and neoadjuvant chemotherapy. No correlation was found between occurrence of complications and the following parameters: age, stage, APACHE II score, Charlston Comorbidity index and preoperative albuminemia. Conclusions Cancer stage, neoadjuvant chemotherapy, high surgical complexity, need for transfusions, delayed extubation and stay at intensive care unit more than 48 hours were predictive factors of higher postoperative morbidity in patients receiving cytoreductive surgery for ovarian cancer.


The Elusive Celt departs from previous work in the wider ethnomusicological field about traditional Irish music within its home contexts and the English-speaking main destination countries of Irish emigration, by adding a central and eastern European perspective on perceptions of Irish musical culture and images of «the Celtic» Specific attention is given to influences of recent European history on these perceptions. Detailed ethnographies of community music-making contexts in six different countries from the Baltic to the Bosphorus, along both sides of the former Iron Curtain, introduce the reader to cultural intimacies of local community musicians with a long-term dedication to playing traditional Irish music. The emerging images differ widely from common stereotypes. The reader gains an insight into processes of how musical and extra-musical detail is communicated between local native Irish and non-Irish musicians at these locations, for which Rina was able to draw on her knowledge of different European languages.


Post-earnings-announcement drift (PEAD) is one of the most solidly documented asset pricing anomalies. We use the controlled conditions of an experimental lab to investigate whether earnings autocorrelation is the driving cause of this anomaly. We observe PEAD in settings with uncorrelated and correlated earnings surprises, implying that earnings autocorrelation is not a necessary condition for PEAD. It rather is a moderator, as the PEAD is stronger when earnings surprises are serially correlated. We further show that market prices underadjust to fundamental value changes, and that trading strategies can profitably exploit the PEAD. Besides offering new results regarding the PEAD-phenomenon, we thus provide a proof-of-concept for the ability of experiments to generate valuable insights into this asset pricing anomaly.


Abstract:  When modeling the acceleration and deceleration of drivers, there are three characteristic time constants that influence the dynamics and stability of traffic flow: The reaction time of the drivers, the velocity adaptation time needed to accelerate to a new desired velocity, and the numerical update time. By means of numerical simulations with a time‐continuous car‐following model, we investigate how these times interplay with each other and effectively influence the longitudinal instability mechanisms for a platoon of vehicles. The long‐wavelength string instability is mainly driven by the velocity adaptation time while short‐wavelength local instabilities arise for sufficiently high reaction and update times. Furthermore, we investigate the relation between large update time steps and finite reaction times as they both introduce delays in the reaction to the traffic situation. Remarkably, the numerical update time is dynamically equivalent to about half the reaction time, which clarifies the meaning of the time step in models formulated as iterated maps such as the Newell and the Gipps model. Furthermore, with respect to stability, there is an optimal adaptation time as a function of the reaction time.


The Web and other digital technologies are bringing unprecedented changes to the ways in which enterprises carry out their business, and heightening the nature and degree of competition they face. This paper reports upon an interviewbased survey which investigated changing business models in the commercial print industry. It explores the fundamental reasons some of these new Web-based models are failing. Key factors include the complex and highly changeable nature of print workflows: these mandate a high degree of human involvement, which failing Web-based models have excluded. It discusses some of the ways in which the adoption of different forms of digital technology is changing the customersupplier relationship and introducing new uncertainties into it, and concludes with a discussion of the need for software to provide management support, in the broadest sense, for complex, changeable inter-organisational workflows.


Watch the VIDEO of the presentation. In March 2016, the ESAC initiative brought together offsetting users from all over Europe to discuss principles and mechanisms of a new business model, currently referred to as offsetting ( http://esac-initiative.org/activities/offsetting-workshop-2016/ ). Participants agreed upon a "Joint Understanding of Offsetting". The document most importantly includes the claim for agreements to lead to a "pay as you publish" model, meaning that institutions should be billed only for those articles published by their authors rather than making prepayments or pay lump sums, which still include reading or access fees. Subsequently, offsetting users like the Max Planck Digital Library, JISC, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) or the Netherlands started using the Open APC Initiative to aggregate data from offsetting big deals ( http://treemaps.intact-project.org/apcdata/offsetting/ ). The collection already provides insights on the allocation of offsetting publications over a publisher's journal portfolio, which allows predictions not only on the popularity of journals among researchers in terms of preferred places for publications, but also for a "pay-as-you-publish-model". Currently the publication data from the Springer offsetting pilot participants ("Springer Compact") show a distribution of publications over not even the half of Springer's journal fleet. The conference contribution analyses the data together with bibliometric information and subscription based usage statistics in order to draw conclusions for a truly publication based open access business model in terms of re-implementing individual choices made by authors, price sensitivity, price setting, and market competition. It will be discussed, how offsetting contributes to the desired large-scale open access transformation, as outlined by the Open Access 2020 initiative ( http://oa2020.org/ ).


Erabutoxins a and b are neurotoxins isolated from venom of a sea snake Laticauda semifasciata (erabu-umihebi). Amino acid sequences of the toxins indicated that the toxins are members of a superfamily consisting of short and long neurotoxins and cytotoxins found in sea snakes and terrestrial snakes. The short neurotoxins to which erabutoxins belong act by blocking the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor on the post synaptic membrane in a manner similar to that of curare. X-ray crystallography and NMR analyses showed that the toxins have a three-finger structure, in which three fingers made of three loops emerging from a dense core make a gently concave surface of the protein. The sequence comparison and the location of essential residues on the protein suggested the mechanism of binding of the toxin to the acetylcholine receptor. Classification of snakes by means of sequence comparison and that based on different morphological features were inconsistent, which led the authors to propose a hypothesis "Evolution without divergence."


The article proposes an economic-mathematical model for determining a comprehensive risk assessment of the investment project of the enterprise which are based on the approaches of A. Nedosekin. The model is built using fuzzy logic and takes into account the probability of occurrence of each of the identified risks and the level of impact of each of them on the project. The probability of risk is set by experts in the form of points and converted into linguistic terms, and the level of influence of each of them on the project – the ratio of benefits and is determined using Fishburne scales. The proposed Project Risk Model consists of the following stages: formation of initial data using expert opinions; construction of a hierarchical project risk tree; determination of weight coefficients (Fishburne weights) of project risks; selection and description of membership function and linguistic variables; conversion of input data provided by experts from a score scale into linguistic terms; recognition of qualitative input data on a linguistic scale; determination of a complex indicator of investment project risks; interpretation of a complex indicator. The developed model allows managing the risks of the project to maximize the probability of its successful implementation, to compare alternative projects and choose less risky, to minimize the level of unforeseen costs of the project.


Zero-shot learning (ZSL) aims to recognize unseen image categories by learning an embedding space between image and semantic representations. For years, among existing works, it has been the center task to learn the proper mapping matrices aligning the visual and semantic space, whilst the importance to learn discriminative representations for ZSL is ignored. In this work, we retrospect existing methods and demonstrate the necessity to learn discriminative representations for both visual and semantic instances of ZSL. We propose an end-to-end network that is capable of 1) automatically discovering discriminative regions by a zoom network; and 2) learning discriminative semantic representations in an augmented space introduced for both user-defined and latent attributes. Our proposed method is tested extensively on two challenging ZSL datasets, and the experiment results show that the proposed method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods.


Picasso's interest in ceramics arose briefly at the turn of the century and later, between 1945 and 1973, ran parallel to, sculpture, and engraving. In his sixties, Picasso tackled ceramics again, attracted by the material's potential, by the way its plastic properties allowed him to adapt it to his imagination. A number of skilled ceramists lived near his home in Vallauris, including the Ramie family, whose Madoura workshop produced the vast majority of the Spanish artist's work. This volume presents 61 ceramic pieces by Picasso that range from unfired clay to ceramics fired at high temperature and porcelain decorated with paint and enamel. All of the works are illustrated in color, including plates, dishes, vases, bottles, and zoomorphic jugs; wall, floor, roof tiles, and fragments of brick handled and metamorphosed by the artist's hand. Also included are pieces that are sculptures in their own right. Some items are enameled or painted, others incised or engraved, while the function of still others was transformed through the magical power of the artist. Picasso succeeded in giving Mediterranean ceramics new impetus, in tune bot his genius and 20th century art.


tSCBR-seq is a T-cell tailored plate-based single-cell RNA sequencing protocol with superior mRNA capturing efficacy and dynamic range of gene detection. This was achieved through a series of chemical modifications of the original SCBR-seq protocol published by Soumilon and colleagues [1]. The performance of the protocol was also demonstrated in the article "Proliferation-competent Tcf1+ CD8 T cells in dysfunctional populations are CD4 T cell help independent" [2].


PURPOSE
To investigate the role of the leukocyte adhesion molecules CD18 and intercellular adhesion molecule (ICAM)-1 in the development of choroidal neovascularization (CNV).

METHODS
Laser photocoagulation was used to induce CNV in wild-type C57BL/6J mice and species-specific counterparts with targeted homozygous disruption of the CD18 or ICAM-1 gene. Expression of CD18 and ICAM-1 after laser injury was assessed by immunostaining. CNV responses were compared on the basis of en masse volumetric measurements obtained by confocal microscopy 2 weeks after laser injury and by determination of fluorescein angiographic leakage at 1, 2, and 4 weeks after laser injury.

RESULTS
The site of laser injury showed upregulation of ICAM-1 and invasion by CD18-positive leukocytes within 1 day of laser injury. Significantly fewer lesions exhibited fluorescein leakage defined to be pathologically significant in CD18-deficient mice at weeks 1, 2, and 4 weeks and in ICAM-1-deficient mice at 1 and 4 weeks, compared with the control. There were a significantly greater number of lesions without fluorescein leakage in CD18-deficient mice than in the other two groups at all time points. The volume of CNV in CD18- and ICAM-1-deficient mice was significantly less than in wild type.

CONCLUSIONS
These data suggest a nonredundant role for leukocyte adhesion to vascular endothelium in the development of laser-induced choroidal neovascularization.


Visually evoked potentials were used to determine the spatial contrast response function of the visual system and the visual acuity of the pigeon. The spatial contrast response describes the relationship between the contrast in a pattern of vertical stripes, whose luminance is a function of position, and the amplitude of the visually evoked response at various spatial frequencies for a given temporal frequency (pattern reversal frequency); it indicates how particular spatial frequencies are attenuated in the visual system. The visually evoked responses were recorded using monopolar stainless steel electrodes inserted into the stratum griseum superficiale of the optic tectum; the depth of penetration was determined on the basis of a stereotactic atlas. The stimulus patterns were generated on a video monitor placed 75 cm in front of the animal's eye perpendicular to the optic axis. The spatial contrast response function measured at 10% contrast and 0.5 Hz reversal frequency shows a peak at a spatial frequency of 0.5 c/deg, corresponding to 1 degree of visual angle, and decreases progressively at higher spatial frequencies. The high-frequency limit (cut-off frequency) for resolution of sinusoidal gratings, estimated from the contrast response function, is 15.5 c/deg, corresponding to a visual acuity of 1.9 min of arc.


Optical properties of InGaN/GaN multi-quantum-well (MQW) structures with a nanolayer of Ag/SiO2 nanoparticle (NP) on top were studied. Modeling and optical absorption (OA) measurements prove that the NPs form localized surface plasmons (LSP) structure with a broad OA band peaked near 440-460 nm and the fringe electric field extending down to about 10 nm into the GaN layer. The presence of this NP LSP electrical field increases the photoluminescence (PL) intensity of the MQW structure by about 70% and markedly decreases the time-resolved PL (TRPL) relaxation time due to the strong coupling of MQW emission to the LSP mode.


—As CNNs are increasingly being employed in high performance computing and safety-critical applications, ensuring they are reliable to transient hardware errors is important. Full duplication provides high reliability, but the overheads are prohibitively high for resource constrained systems. Fine- grained resilience evaluation and protection can provide a low-cost solution, but traditional methods for evaluation can be too slow. Traditional approaches use error injections and essentially discard information from experiments that do not corrupt outcomes. In this work, we replace the binary view of errors with a new continuous domain-specific metric based on cross-entropy loss to quantify corruptions, allowing for faster convergence of error analysis. This enables us to scale up to large networks. We study the effectiveness of this method using different error models and also compare with heuristics that aim to predict vulnerability quickly. We show that selective, fine-grained protection of the most vulnerable components of a CNN provides a significantly lower overhead solution than full duplication. Lastly, we present a framework called HarDNN that packages all these solutions for easy application.


Some dinoflagellates with benthic habits are related to ciguatera intoxication by fish consumption, especially in tropical areas. In the Mexican Caribbean, ciguatera is relatively common, but only one paper seems to have been published on the subject, and there are very few publicactions on phytoplankton and benthic microalgae. Material collected along the coast of the State of Quintana Roo with phytoplankton net (54 mm) and directly from sediment and epiphytes of macroscopic plants, was searched for toxic and other associated dinoflagellates. Samples were studied by light and scanning electron microscopy. Morphological characters were useful for species identification, but eventually physiological, ecological and molecular characters could also be used. Three species of Gambierdiscus, related to the production of ciguatera toxins, were identified: G. belizeanus, G. toxicus and G. yasumotoi. They are distributed in shallow coastal areas, including coastal lagoons.


In an earlier paper, one of us drew attention to tube-like microproblematica as unusual, but potentially valuable, environmental and stratigraphic indicators in British Jurassic lagoonal deposits (Andrews 1986). In this note we develop the theme of the earlier paper by describing tube-like microproblematica in Upper Palaeozoic rocks, the Lower Oil-Shale Group of Dinantian age, in West Lothian, Central Scotland. It is suggested that shallow-lagoonal environments have been important habitats for small infaunal worms during much of Phanerozoic time. The Oil-Shale Group rocks mainly represent deposition of fluvio-deltaic and non-marine lagoonal sediments and the lithologies are dominated by sandstones, shales and dolostones. Although occasional, thin, marine horizons occur (e.g. the Pumpherston Shell-Bed), fossil assemblages are dominated by fish remains, bivalves, gastropods, conchostracans, spirorbid worms, ostracodes, cyanobacteria, calcareous green- and phytoplanktonic-algae, representing a non-marine fauna and flora. Tube-like microproblematica have been known from the Lower Oil Shale Group of West Lothian for almost a century (Cadell 1906; Carruthers 1912; Greensmith 1960; Loftus 1985). They occur in the Queensferry Beds of Mitchell and Mykura (1962) including dolostones (the 'Bogwood Limestones' of Loftus 1985) some ten metres below the Burdiehouse Limestone, the base of which divides the Upper and Lower Oil Shale Groups (Francis 1983). The tubes are seen at two localities, beds 1 and 68 of Maddox and Andrews (1987, Fig. 4) on the southern foreshore of the Firth of Forth at South Queensferry [NT 140 785], and beds 1 and 52 on the southern foreshore of the Firth of Forth near Hopetoun . . .


Grafting is the most used propagation method in viticulture and is the unique control strategy against Phylloxera. Nevertheless, its practice remains limited mainly due to inconsistent graft success and difficulties in predicting graft compatibility responses of proposed scion–rootstock combinations, slowing down the selection of elite rootstocks. Aiming to identify optimal phenotypic parameters related to graft (in)compatibility, we used four clones of two grapevine cultivars that show different compatibility behavior when grafted onto the same rootstock. Several physiological parameters, internal anatomy of the graft union, chlorophyll fluorescence, and pigment contents of homo- and heterografts were monitored in a nursery-grafting context. The measurements highlighted enhanced performance of the heterografts due to rooting difficulties of Vitis vinifera homografts. This suggests that in viticulture, homografts should only be used as compatibility controls regarding qualitative attributes. By observing the internal anatomy of the union, we found that grapevines might require longer times for graft healing than anticipated. While Affinity Coefficients were not informative to assess incompatibility, leaf chlorophyll concentration analysis proved to be a more sensitive indicator of stress than the analysis of chlorophyll fluorescence. Overall, we conclude that graft take correlated best with callus formation at the graft junction three weeks after grafting.


Cloud computing has become an important means to speed up computing. One problem influencing heavily the performance of such systems is the choice of nodes as servers responsible for executing the clients' tasks. In this article we report how complex networks can be used to model such a problem. More specifically, we investigate the performance of the processing respectively to cloud systems underlaid by Erdős–Rényi (ER) and Barabási-Albert (BA) topology containing two servers. Cloud networks involving two communities not necessarily of the same size are also considered in our analysis. The performance of each configuration is quantified in terms of the cost of communication between the client and the nearest server, and the balance of the distribution of tasks between the two servers. Regarding the latter, the ER topology provides better performance than the BA for smaller average degrees and opposite behaviour for larger average degrees. With respect to cost, smaller values are found in the BA topology irrespective of the average degree. In addition, we also verified that it is easier to find good servers in ER than in BA networks. Surprisingly, balance and cost are not too much affected by the presence of communities. However, for a well-defined community network, we found that it is important to assign each server to a different community so as to achieve better performance.