Vitamin K antagonists, such as warfarin, used in oral anticoagulation therapy currently represent the standard drugs for the primary and secondary prevention of stroke in non-valvular atrial fibrillation (AF), with a relative risk reduction close to 70%. Newer oral anticoagulants, such as direct thrombin inhibitors (i.e., dabigatran) and direct factor Xa inhibitors (i.e., apixaban and rivaroxaban) have been recently compared with warfarin in large randomized trials for stroke prevention in AF. The new oral anticoagulants showed, compared with warfarin, no statistically significant difference in the rate of stroke or systemic embolism in secondary prevention (patients with previous transient ischemic attack or stroke) subgroups. With regard to safety, the risk of intracranial bleeding was reduced with new anticoagulants compared with warfarin. Indirect treatment comparisons of clinical trials on secondary prevention cohorts showed no significant difference in efficacy among apixaban, rivaroxaban, and dabigatran; but dabigatran 110 mg was associated with less intracranial bleedings than rivaroxaban.


Abstract This study was designed to evaluate morphological differences between cultured and wild African catfish, Clarias gariepinus (Burchell). Fish samples were collected from the lower Benue River (axis in Makurdi), while cultured fish were obtained from the University of Agriculture Makurdi research farm. The results revealed significant sex-related variation in the fish from different environments. Significant differences were observed in all morphometric parameters measured and in three of the five meristic counts recorded. Discriminant analysis and cluster analysis of morphometric parameters showed a high divergence among the populations, hence the tested fish samples were grouped into respective environments by sex. The meristic count, however, overlapped broadly showing no divergence among the populations. The morphometric differences between the cultured and wild African catfish could have been linked to genetic differences or environmental factors or a combination of both factors.


Six seasonal measuring campaigns were performed in the period December 2000 to December 2001 in order to investigate the effects of anthropogenic nutrient enrichment on the seasonal dynamics of phytoplankton biomass and production in 3 Indonesian embayments subjected to a different degree of anthropogenic pressure. Jakarta Bay receives the highest riverine nutrient load (21260 t DIN/y), when compared to those of Lampung (5003 t DIN/y) and Semangka Bay (1378 t DIN/y). These high loads resulted in high concentrations of dissolved nitrogen, phosphate and silicate in the bay, with annual averages of 20 µM N, 5 µM P and 45 µM Si. In keeping with this, mean levels of chl-a and annual primary production were considerably higher than in the two other bays under investigation, accounting for 13 µg/l and 223 g C m^2 y^-1, respectively. Lampung Bay exhibited mean chl-a levels of 4 µg/l and an annual primary production of 89 g C m^2 y-1, whereas in the less nutrified Semangka Bay they were only 0.8 µg/l and 25 g C m^2 y^-1. The phytoplankton community was dominated by diatoms in all of the bays. The occurrence of dinoflagellates, chlorophyceae and cyanophyceae was mainly restricted to the river mouths and their surrounding waters. Evaluation of the trophic state (Marine Trophic Index TRIX) revealed that Jakarta Bay was the most eutrophied system, followed by Lampung and Semangka Bay. However, within each bay, distinct areas with different trophic levels could be distinguished, being highest near the coast. In total, spatial variability of parameters were much more pronounced than temporal variability, which is in keeping with the moderate meteorological fluctuations typical for tropical regions.


The concentration of urea in milk (MUC) has emerged as a potentially useful tool to predict urinary N excretion. Various factors may affect the relationship between MUC and urinary N excretion, including transport characteristics of urea from blood to milk and vice versa. The main objective of this study was to test whether substantial transport of urea from milk to blood exists in lactating dairy cattle. The subobjectives were (1) to assess the effects of various urea gradient levels between blood and milk on urea transport from milk to blood and (2) to test the occurrence of urea transport between different compartments of the mammary gland such as the cistern and the alveoli. Urea transport was studied in 2 multiparous lactating Holstein-Friesian cows (36.0±6.18 kg of milk/d; mean ± SD). In 3 separate trials, boluses of [(15)N(15)N]urea were injected in the cisterns via the teat canals at 20, 60, and 120 min before the 1700-h milking at various levels of MUC and of blood plasma urea concentration (PUC). In trial 1, a primed continuous infusion of urea (105 g at the start, continuing with 20 g/h) into the jugular vein started at 0500 h and stopped at 0, 1, 2, and 3h before the 1700-h milking on d 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. In trial 2, 5.5 g of urea was injected into the cisterns at 20, 60, and 120 min before the 1700-h milking on d 5, 6, and 7, respectively. In trial 3, urea fluxes were measured without an experimentally induced gradient between MUC and PUC on d 8, 9, and 10, respectively. During milking, successive milk samples were taken from first to last milk. Blood and milk were analyzed for (15)N-urea enrichment. Levels of (15)N-urea in blood increased after injection of a [(15)N(15)N]urea bolus in milk, indicating urea transport from milk to blood. Between 21.0 and 35.3% of injected [(15)N(15)N]urea in milk was recovered after 2 h. The fractional [(15)N(15)N]urea decline rate in milk varied between 0.0076 and 0.0096/min. The level of MUC, rather than the concentration gradient between MUC and PUC, appeared to affect this fractional rate of decline. Enrichment levels of (15)N-urea in milk samples within a single milking showed that urea was transported from cistern milk to alveoli milk. In conclusion, the results indicate that transport of urea from milk to blood in lactating dairy cattle occurs and that urea is transported from cistern milk to alveoli milk.


In Patriotic Cooperation, Diana Junio offers an account of a series of substantial social programs through collaboration between the Nationalist government and the Church of Christ in China that would be carried out by an organization known as the Border Service Department.


Isocitrate dehydrogenases (IDHs) catalyze the oxidative decarboxylation of isocitrate to α-ketoglutarate, and regulation of the enzymatic activity of IDHs is crucial for their biological functions. Bacterial IDHs are reversibly regulated by phosphorylation of a strictly conserved serine residue at the active site. Eukaryotic NADP-dependent IDHs (NADP-IDHs) have been shown to have diverse important biological functions; however, their regulatory mechanism remains unclear. Structural studies of human cytosolic NADP-IDH (HcIDH) in complex with NADP and in complex with NADP, isocitrate, and Ca2+ reveal three biologically relevant conformational states of the enzyme that differ substantially in the structure of the active site and in the overall structure. A structural segment at the active site that forms a conserved α-helix in all known NADP-IDH structures assumes a loop conformation in the open, inactive form of HcIDH; a partially unraveled α-helix in the semi-open, intermediate form; and an α-helix in the closed, active form. The side chain of Asp279 of this segment occupies the isocitrate-binding site and forms hydrogen bonds with Ser94 (the equivalent of the phosphorylation site in bacterial IDHs) in the inactive form and chelates the metal ion in the active form. The structural data led us to propose a novel self-regulatory mechanism for HcIDH that mimics the phosphorylation mechanism used by the bacterial homologs, consistent with biochemical and biological data. This mechanism might be applicable to other eukaryotic NADP-IDHs. The results also provide insights into the recognition and specificity of substrate and cofactor by eukaryotic NADP-IDHs.


Although US childhood obesity rates overall have been flat over the past several years, the prevalence of severe obesity has increased. An estimated 4% to 6% of all US youths are severely obese, and there�s evidence that they have a �much more adverse cardiometabolic risk profile� than their overweight and obese counterparts, according to an American Heart Association scientific statement.

The statement defines children older than 2 years as severely obese if they have a body mass index (BMI) that is at least 20% higher than the 95th percentile for their sex and age or a BMI of 35 or higher. Severely obese children have higher rates of type 2 diabetes than children with lower BMIs, and they also demonstrate early signs of vascular dysfunction and subclinical atherosclerosis (Kelly AS et al. Circulation. doi:10.1161/CIR.0b013e3182a5cfb3 [published online September 9, 2013]).


The paper investigates the response of a magnetorheological (MR) fluid based mount that combines the squeeze and flow modes in operation. The mount governing equations are introduced and the effect of system parameters on its performance is analyzed. The proposed design yields a high static and a low dynamic stiffness in the working frequency range of the mount. The overall vibration isolation characteristic of the mount is enhanced if compared to that of existing hydraulic mounts. Displacement and/or force transmissibility can be isolated or significantly reduced, in real time, by controlling the MR fluid yield stress. An embedded electromagnet is used to activate the MR fluid that can work in either squeeze or flow modes, or in both simultaneously. The results indicate that the flow mode is less effective in reducing transmissibility than the squeeze mode. However, when the flow and squeeze modes are both activated, the effect of the flow mode becomes more obvious.Copyright © 2007 by ASME


References un~ommon, ar:t unusually high number of male patients attendl~g the cli.nic with this diagnosis had presented previously WIth the same complaint. The .notes. of 103 male patients with a diagnosis of pediculosis, seen during one year, were extracted and r~~ewed.Fiftypatients had previously attended the clinic, and 53 were first attenders. The control gr0t:tP were 103 randomly selected patients attending during the same period, only 50 of whom had attended clinics previously. Of the 10~ sets of 'pediculosis diagnosed' male notes examined, those of the 50 previous clinic attenders were further checked, and 18 of these (36.0%) had had a previous diagnosis of pediculosis pubis (40 episodes in all between them) compared with 5 of 50in the control cases (10%). Of the control patients attending the clinic for the first time, none were found to have pediculosis. The average time between any 2 infestation episodes was found to be 17.7 months, which would appear to preclude immediate reinfestation or treatment failure. Thus, in this study, a patient with a diagnosis of pediculosis pubis had an increased risk of a further episode of infestation 5.1 times greater than that of the controls [ODDS ratio; 95% confidence interval 3.2 to 15.4). Reasons for this observation are invited. S M Young P G Fisk Department of Genito-urinary Medicine Leicester Royal Infirmary, Leicester, UK


623 Introduction: Among the different mechanisms by which cancer elude the immune system, alterations in the exppression of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) may play a crucial role by impairing the HLA molecules interaction with T and natural killer (NK) cells specific receptors. The tumor escape from host immunosurveillence could related to breast cancer progression to metastasis, recurrence and patient9s death. Loss or deregulation of HLA I expression it seems to be lost on the cell tumor surface and it might represent a mechanism for neoplastic cells to escape CTL-mediated killing, allowing tumor dissemination and metastasis. Likewise, high expression of HLA- E and - G are nonclassic HLA class I molecules at the tumor cell surface might allows them to escape -T and NK cell immune surveillance throught different pathways. Objective: Considering that deregulation of HLA expression could represent a potential mechanism to breast carcinogenesis and metastasis, the aim of the present was analyzed HLA-I, HLA-E and HLA-G immunohistochemistry expression in invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) of the breast, according anatomoclinical paramethers of agressiveness and metastatic tumor behaviour. Material and Methods: Fifty two IDC of the breast biopsies were stratified according histological differentiation (well, moderately and poorly differentiated) and to the presence of metastasis in axillary lymphonodes. HLA-I, HLA-G and HLA-E expression were performed by immunoperoxidase and the expression was quantified by computer-assisted image analyze equipament (Qwin Image Analysis System, LEICA, Wetzlar,Germany).Results: Thirty-one (59.6.%) of the 52 IDC breast biopsies presented high expression of HLA-G and 14 (26.9 %) out of 52 HLA-E overexpression. Negative expression to HLA-G and HLA-E were observed in, respectively, 21(38.9%) and 39(72.2%) out of 52 IDC breast biopsies. In contrast, 11( 21.2%) of the 52 breast biopsies presented HLA-I high expression of and 41(78.8%) of the 52 low expression. Twenty-four(41.2%) of out 52 patients had low HLA-I expression and high HLA-G expression while 11(21.2%) possessed low HLA-I expression and high HLA-E expression. Moreover, all these patients (100%) were moderately (12/24 HLA-G and 7/11 HLA-E and poorly (12/24 HLA-G and 5/11 HLA-E) differentiated breast tumor. No well-differentiated breast tumor presented this relationship among HLA-I, HLA-G and HLA-E. However, no statistic difference was found among downregulation HLA-I and HLA-G and -E upregulation expression and metastasis in axillary lymphonodes.Conclusion: These results suggest that, throught different mechanisms, the downregulation of HLA-I and the upregulation of HLA-G and -E, is associated to immune response evasion and breast cancer agressiveness.(financial support: FAPESP, CNPq and CAPES).


Substrates have critical effect on efficiency and cost of hydrogen production technology. Tradition evaluation index system which based on hydrogen production rate and conversion rate has limitation in comparing the economic value of different substrates utilized in hydrogen production system. This paper studies emergy of a fermentative biohydrogen production technology, comparing different biomass: wastewater and sewage sludge, the municipal solid waste and lignocellulosic biomass when they are used as substrates. Net emergy yield ratio, environmental loading ration and emergy-based sustainability index are measured. According to these indices, it shows an important role in reducing hydrogen production cost by developing cheap substrates. The results shows, the values of three indices were best when municipal wastewater was used as a substrate, it can reduce hydrogen production cost dramatically, obtain hydrogen and purify water simultaneously, benefit the environment protection.


The changes in the electrical properties, such as work function and resistance, of Pt thin films in the presence of hydrogen gas were studied. They were simultaneously measured with a flow-through cell at different concentrations of hydrogen gas in atmosphere containing gaseous nitrogen and that containing air. The resistance was measured by a four-terminal sensing method and the relative work function changes were measured using a field effect transistor. In both atmospheres, the resistance decreased as the concentration of hydrogen gas increased. This result was repeatable only in air because of the differences in the dynamic mechanism of increased density of electrical carriers inside the Pt film as a result of diffused H atoms. In the nitrogen atmosphere, the diffused H atoms were not easily released because of the surface barrier. On the other hand, oxygen gas reacted with H atoms at the surface and this reaction accelerated atom release into air. The work function showed repeatable responses in both atmospheres, but the response characteristics were different. The equilibrium reaction between the adsorption and desorption of hydrogen occurred at the surface in the nitrogen atmosphere, whereas the equilibrium reaction of hydrogen and oxygen to form water molecules occurred in air. The changes in work function and resistance in the presence of hydrogen were due to changes in dissociated hydrogen intensity in the bulk, as well as to the surface reactions.


: It appears the state of the art of evaluating factors VIII and IX is in its infancy. With the exception of the screening tests, the more specific methodologies are expensive, time-consuming, and require a certain amount of technical proficiency for proper performance. However, our ability to evaluate these molecules has advanced greatly since the early 1970s. Most probably the methods described in this paper will be available in the near future to all laboratories wishing to perform them, either in kit form or in a more simplified version. Meanwhile, the APTT, mixing tests, qualitative factor assays, and bleeding times may be performed by nearly any laboratory. The performance of these tests will help identify those patients who may have potentially life-threatening postoperative bleeding episodes or who are having a bleeding episode that requires diagnosis for effective treatment. It is therefore important that these tests be incorporated into our routine coagulation protocols.


: For the past one decade, biclustering has become popular data mining technique not only in the field of biological data analysis but also in other applications like text mining, market data analysis etc., with high-dimensional two way datasets. Biclustering clusters both rows and columns of a dataset simultaneously, as opposed to traditional clustering which clusters either rows or columns of a dataset. It retrieves subgroups of objects that are similar in one subgroup of variables and different in the remaining variables. Firefly Algorithm (FA) is a recently-proposed metaheuristic inspired by the collective behavior of fireflies. This paper provides a preliminary assessment of discrete version of FA (DFA) while coping with the task of mining coherent and large volume bicluster from web usage dataset. For this purpose, experiments were conducted on two web usage datasets from public dataset repository whereby the performance of FA was compared with that exhibited by other population-based metaheuristic called binary Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The results achieved demonstrate the usefulness of DFA while tackling the biclustering problem.


In fact, archives are very important tools for information retrival. Furthermore history of medicine has some gaps in current research. The main purpose of this study is to explain and make clear theoretical frameworks of oral archive of history of medicine in iran. For this purpose we use descriptive survey as research method. We show solution such as collection building, classification and preservation of archival material to establish an oral archive of history of medicine how create an informatic tools to access and retrieve information for scientific research.


Transit systems exercise complex dynamics and evolve through the interaction of various agents. The analysis of transit performance requires emulating the dynamic loading of travellers and their interaction with the underlying transit system. Multi-agent simulations aim to mimic the emergence of global spontaneous order from numerous inter-dependent local decisions. This paper presents a framework for a multi-agent transit operations and assignment model which captures supply uncertainties and adaptive user decisions. An iterative day-to-day learning process consisting of a within-day dynamic network loading loop simulates the interaction between transit supply and demand. The model requires the development and integration of several modules including traffic simulation, transit operations and control, dynamic path choice model and real-time information generator. BusMezzo, a transit simulation model, is used as the platform for implementation. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of [name organizer]


The ability of the circadian pacemaker within the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) to respond to light stimulation in a phase-specific manner constitutes the basis for photic entrainment of circadian rhythms. The neural basis for this phase specificity is unclear. We asked whether a lack of synchrony between SCN neurons, as reflected in phase misalignment between dorsomedial (dmSCN) and ventrolateral (vlSCN) neuronal oscillators in the rat, would impact the ability of the pacemaker to respond to phase-resetting light pulses. Light pulses delivered at maximal phase misalignment between the vlSCN and dmSCN oscillators increased expression of Per1 mRNA, regardless of the circadian phase of the dmSCN. However, phase shifts of locomotor activity were only observed when the vlSCN and dmSCN were phase aligned at the time of stimulation. Our results fit a model in which a vlSCN oscillator phase gates its own response to light and in turn relays light information to a dmSCN oscillator. This model predicts that the phase misalignment that results from circadian internal desynchronization could preserve the ability of light to induce gene expression within the master circadian clock but impair its ability to induce behavioral phase shifts.


The heat-labile enterotoxins of Vibrio cholerae and Escherichia coli are related in structure and function. They are oligomers consisting of A and B polypeptide subunits. They bind to gangliosides, and they activate adenylate cyclase. The toxins form two antigenically distinct groups; members of each group cross-react but are not necessarily identical. Serogroup I includes cholera toxin (CT) and type I heat-labile enterotoxin (LT-I) of E. coli. LTh-I and LTp-I are antigenic variants of LT-I produced by strains of E. coli from humans and pigs, respectively. Serogroup II contains the type II heat-labile enterotoxin (LT-II) of E. coli. Two antigenic variants designated LT-IIa and LT-IIb have been described. The binding of CT, LTh-I, LT-IIa, and LT-IIb to gangliosides was analyzed by immunostaining thin-layer chromatograms and by solid-phase radioimmunoassay. The four toxins have different glycolipid-binding specificities. LTh-I and CT bind strongly to ganglioside GM1 and less strongly to ganglioside GD1b. However, LTh-I, unlike CT, also binds weakly to GM2 and asialo GM1. LTh-I, like CT, probably binds to the terminal sugar sequence Gal beta 1-3GalNAc beta 1-4(NeuAc alpha 2-3)Gal . . ., where GalNAc is N-acetylgalactosamine and NeuAc is N-acetylneuraminic acid. LT-IIa probably binds to the same sugar sequence to which CT and LTh-I bind, with the additional contribution to binding of a second NeuAc as in GD1b and GD2. Also, LT-IIa must bind the Gal beta 1-3GalNAc . . . sequence in such a way that its binding is relatively unaffected by attachment of NeuAc to the terminal galactose residue as in GD1a, GT1b, and GQ1b. LT-IIb probably binds to the terminal sugar sequence NeuAc alpha 2-3Gal beta 1-4GalNAc . . ., as it binds to gangliosides GD1a and GT1b but not to GM1.


Research on adversarial robustness is primarily focused on image and text data. Yet, many scenarios in which lack of robustness can result in serious risks, such as fraud detection, medical diagnosis, or recommender systems often do not rely on images or text but instead on tabular data. Adversarial robustness in tabular data poses two serious challenges. First, tabular datasets often contain categorical features, and therefore cannot be tackled directly with existing optimization procedures. Second, in the tabular domain, algorithms that are not based on deep networks are widely used and offer great performance, but algorithms to enhance robustness are tailored to neural networks (e.g. adversarial training). In this paper, we tackle both challenges. We present a method that allows us to train adversarially robust deep networks for tabular data and to transfer this robustness to other classifiers via universal robust embeddings tailored to categorical data. These embeddings, created using a bilevel alternating minimization framework, can be transferred to boosted trees or random forests making them robust without the need for adversarial training while preserving their high accuracy on tabular data. We show that our methods outperform existing techniques within a practical threat model suitable for tabular data.


Introduction : E-learning is used in the worldwide in higher education to improve the quality of the learning experience by students; at the same time using this approach requires behavioral changes in the faculty members. One of the steps in the implementation and monitoring of e-learning, is audience analysis using techniques such as knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP). This study investigates the knowledge, attitude and faculty members' performance of Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS) on e-learning. Methods : This descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted in 2014-15 through a research-made questionnaire. Face validity was determined by expert opinion, Cronbach's alpha was measured to assess the reliability and its construct validity was investigated through exploratory factor analysis. . The questionnaire was e-mailed to all TUMS faculty members . 218 faculty members responded to the questionnaire. Results : The reliability score of the questionnaire was assessed using Cronbach alphs, and it was 0.79. Exploratory factor analysis of the attitude part of the questionnaire produced a single factor that explained 53% of the variance. The results showed the positive attitude of faculty members regarding e-learning, although their knowledge and practice scores was less than half of the total score. There wass not found any meaningful differences between knowledge, attitude and performance of the participants based on sex, rank and work experience. ANOVA test showed that the difference of scores among schools was statistically significant ( = 0.000; = 0.003 and = 0.000, respectively). Conclusion: The findings of this study showed the state of knowledge, attitude and faculty members' performance of TUMS on e-learning. Over the past years, TUMS has established suitable e-learning infrastructure such as educational websites and virtual programs as well as training workshop for faculty members. The results of this study can help the revision and improvement of the faculties' educational programs.


This study analyzed the effects that the use of crop insurance products and marketing alternatives had on the gross revenue per acre for an individual farm in Cass County. Crop insurance products and marketing strategies were analyzed individually to determine if they were effective in minimizing down side risk, and combined to determine if integration created synergies. A whole farm scenario analysis was run that included integrated strategies that implemented the same insurance coverage and marketing alternatives for each crop. Several general conclusions can be drawn for situations similar to the representative farm. When analyzed at the individual crop level, the use of crop insurance at the 65 percent level minimizes down side risk in wheat and corn, but not significantly in soybeans. Marketing alternatives generally increase the up side potential of gross revenue per acre, while doing little to minimize the down side risk. The integration of crop insurance products and marketing alternatives create a synergy at the lower levels of value at risk, where the down side risk is located. However, the use of integrated strategies does not increase the chances of achieving a cash flow breakeven gross revenue per acre over the base strategy, which did not include insurance or marketing alternatives. The breakeven level is not reached until the 70 percent level, which means that 7 out of 10 years, the farm will not cash flow. Output from the Bullock and AgRisk models are similar. This study may be used as a guide for producers and analysts in studying risk management strategies. To assist in the individual decision making process, further study will need to be done with yield data and budgets for the individual farm.


Abstract. Social vulnerability determines how natural hazards can turn into social disasters. However, large uncertainties remain on how to quantify social vulnerability in a compact and comprehensive way. A principle component analysis (PCA) combines many social indicators, such as population density or the level of education, into a single vulnerability index. Whether the individual indicators increase or decrease vulnerability is usually based on consequential reasoning or derived from previous studies. These assumptions are rarely tested for their applicability to the study area. In a case study for the Austrian federal state of Styria we observe no correlation between disaster damages and an initial vulnerability index which was based on literature-derived assumptions about the influence of each indicator and following best practices for the PCA. We show that a regression analysis of past damages can improve the interpretation of social indicators by better representing the local situation. With the results from the regression-based analysis we can improve the PCA approach and only the updated vulnerability index correlates with observed damages. This indicates that the use of a PCA-based vulnerability index requires a thorough understanding about the regionally specific influence of each indicator on social vulnerability to explain differences in disaster damages.


The aim of this bachelor thesis was to examine how the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet represented the leading characters in the reporting about the murder of Yara Alnajjar. The questions examined were: How is Yara, the perpetrators and the municipality of Karlskrona represented in Aftonbladet? How is the relationship between the leading characters of the texts constructed? And what is the relationship between the characters and the audience? To approach this we made a discourse analysis of ten texts from Aftonbladet, all related to the tragic series of events that costed Yara Alnajjar her life. The result showed that Yara Alnajjar was represented as a classic victim-hero who's only job was to be small, innocent, defenseless and to gather sympathy from the audience. And even though she had a different cultural background she became a part of "us". The female perpetrator was, in contrast to the victim, represented as a mad non-woman. Discredited through her odd behaviour which contained both evil and sad moments. Next to her was the male perpetrator who, despite also being sentenced for the murder, gathered sympathy from the audience. As well as being represented as someone in the deep regret and sadness. The municipality of Karlskrona in return was both given blame for their non-actions and forgiven despite it, since Aftonbladet considered them to have tried to help. We discovered that the media constructions in Aftonbladet were embedded with roles, archetypes and myths. It also showed that not everyone would fit into their roles so easily.


With the advance of cloud computing technology, more economic benefits have been brought to users. While satisfying the needs of users, cloud computing brings its advantages-low costs, rapid deployment and flexible scale adjustment into full play. Increasing number of data is stored in all kinds of networks with more and more companies and people using cloud computing service, thus put severe challenge on usersÂ' data security and availability. Under these circumstances, the study analyzed data security of users, and found out that data storage security attracts attentions both from private users and business users. The security challenges cloud computing has brought to us are how to prevent usersÂ' data from leaking, how to guarantee users obtain data efficiently and accurately. It introduced the research status of secure data storage under the circumstance of cloud computing. Surveys showed that experts and scholars have attached great attention to data security under this circumstance. Strategies on secure data transmission and storage based on cloud computing, including encryption and decryption processing, were also introduces in this paper. To protect user data security, structure model has been built and secure data storage system under cloud computing has also been introduced.


Olfactory communication is an important mediator of social interactions in mammals, providing information about an individual's identity and current social, reproductive, and health status. Callitrichids (i.e. marmosets and tamarins) constitute a good model for the study of olfactory communication, as they make use of a range of odour signals. Callitrichids conspicuously deposit odorous secretions, produced by specialized scent-glands, on branches in their environment, a behaviour called scent-marking. Several functions have been attributed to callitrichid scent-marking behaviour, including advertisement of reproductive and dominance status, and of identity, territorial defence, and spatial orientation and signalling of food resource location.
The present doctoral project combined behavioural and chemical information to investigate callitrichid olfactory communication. The study explored how environmental, social, and reproductive aspects might influence patterns of callitrichid scent-marking behaviour, as well as the chemical composition of scent-gland secretions and urine used to convey chemosignals. Behavioural observations, along with swabs of scent-glands, and of naturally deposited scent-marks and urine, were collected from captive groups of bearded emperor tamarins, Saguinus imperator subgrisescens, cotton-top tamarins, Saguinus oedipus, and silvery marmosets, Mico argentatus, in three British zoos. Chemical samples were analysed using headspace gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). In addition, scent-gland secretion samples were collected from a wild population of sympatric emperor tamarins and Weddell's saddleback tamarins, Leontocebus weddelli, during an annual capture-and-release programme in the south-eastern Peruvian Amazon. These samples were analysed using both in situ and laboratory-based GC-MS techniques.
I established the existence of unique chemical signatures of species, groups, sex, reproductive status, and the individual, in callitrichid scent samples, which were matched with differences in scent-marking behaviour. My results support the assumption that chemosignalling plays an important role in the advertisement of identity, reproductive state/status and dominance in this taxon. Moreover, I showed that the social context, as well as spatiotemporal aspects of scent-marking deposition, influenced scent-marking activity. Further differences in the characteristics of scent-marking deposition revealed in this study, both at behavioural and chemical levels, may reflect variable strategies of communication to ensure that signals are transmitted to the intended receivers, which is especially relevant for sympatric species.
I identified a number of putative semiochemicals (i.e. chemicals involved in communication) from the scent samples of captive and wild callitrichids. Notably, I presented results from the first use of the Torion® portable GC-MS for in situ analysis of wild mammal scent samples. In addition, I revealed differences in the chemical composition of tamarin scent-gland secretion samples between wild and captive conditions, which may indicate an effect of captivity on the chemicals produced. This study provides knowledge of mammalian olfactory communication systems, applicable to captive husbandry practices, including conservation breeding programmes of rare species.


Unlike traditional high-yield bond offerings, which typically entail a two-week roadshow of presentations to prospective investors, driveby offerings are announced and priced within one day. The yield spread of the average driveby deal widens versus the high-yield index in the first week and the first four weeks after issuance, while the spread of the average non-driveby deal tightens. This finding is statistically robust. Drivebys tend to come to market when the pressure to invest surplus cash is greatest. Portfolio managers who can hold out generally have an opportunity to buy the issues more cheaply in the secondary market.


Three points are addressed in this paper. First, it is claimed that the events of 11 September 2001 mark a significant change in the historical context of Post-Cold-War developments. These changes are summed up as a) the rise of non governmental and non insurrectional organizations such as Al Qaeda as war actors; b) an accentuation of the trend toward the expressivization of war; c) an imperialization of US foreign policy. Second, the possible contribution of sociological analysis to the understanding of terrorism is discussed. Third, some scenarios concerning the future long term impact of the threat of terrorism on complex societies are explored.


Identifying centralities in cities helps determine how public space is perceived and utilized in everyday life. Sustainable mobility, social sustainability and spatial justice can be examined by investigating centralities in the urban form. In this study, we investigate configurational centralities in metropolitan Copenhagen created by the road network based on space syntax analysis and active centralities of land-use patterns with a geographical approach. The purpose of the research is to present a reproducible methodology for determining the active and configurational centralities. Using this methodology, we explore the meaning of the centralities in terms of pedestrian and cyclist accessibility, as well as the role of the configurational centralities in shaping land-use patterns. The results serve as input to an analysis of their relation through Kernel Density Correlation and spatial correlation. The results of correlations indicate that areas close to the city centre and around the Finger Plan – Copenhagen's strategic development plan – tend to be more central and favourable for pedestrians and cyclists. On the contrary, central areas far from the city centre, especially in Northern Copenhagen, and areas between the axes of the Finger Plan are more car-oriented since centralities are dispersed and located around highways or road segments designed for cars. The workflow presented in this paper is provided as a set of open-source R scripts that draw largely on data from OpenStreetMap, thus enabling replications of the study for other cities.


Well into January 2012 surveys of Scottish business, in common with UK and European surveys, continued to highlight ongoing and deepening concerns as to the sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone. These, together with continuing fears of recession, with more signs of a slowdown both in the UK and internationally, forecasts of lower rates of growth in 2012, continuing consumer insecurity and pressures on household spending continued to dampen business confidence and activity. However, amongst the latest UK wide surveys there are some tentative suggestions that activity, outside the construction and retail sectors, was lowest in October/November, as reflected in the fourth quarter UK results, but has picked up since then. The latest UK PMI for January reported an increase in the service sector, at the fastest rate since March 2011. But it remains unclear if this echoes last year, with good survey figures for the first quarter, but fading later in the year as the headwinds facing the UK economy remain, or represents the first signs of a more permanent upward trend.


SUMMARY 1. The superficial muscle fibres in the proximal head of the closer muscle in the crab Eriphia belong to four distinct fibre types (I-IV). By stimulating either the 'slow' or the 'fast' axon, facilitation properties of the EJPs were investigated in eight identifiable muscle fibres which represented the four fibre types. 2. Amount, time course and frequency dependence of facilitation (f) of both 'slow' and 'fast' EJPs differed characteristically among the fibres studied, but were similar within fibres belonging to the same type. 3. In fibres receiving double excitatory innervation through the 'slow' and the 'fast' axon (type I and II fibres), the amount of facilitation of 'fast' EJPs was smaller than for 'slow' EJPs. 4. With the exception of type I fibres, there was an inverse relationship between facilitation and the size of both 'slow' and 'fast' EJPs. Facilitation increased with frequency and time of stimulation. In type I fibres, facilitation of 'slow' EJPs increased with time at low frequencies of stimulation (up to 32 Hz), but decreased at higher frequencies after an initial rise. 'Fast' EJPs in type I fibres showed little, if any, facilitation of frequencies below 8 Hz. At frequencies above 8 Hz, they were always depressed (negative values of f). 5. The functional significance of different facilitation properties is discussed with regard to the participation of different muscle fibre types in the mechanical performance of the closer muscle.


Twenty-five patients with high-risk stage II and IIIA breast cancer (>10 or more involved lymph nodes) were treated with six cycles of standard-dose chemotherapy (5-fluorouracil, doxorubicin, and cyclophosphamide) followed by high-dose chemotherapy (2.5 g/m2 cyclophosphamide for 3 days and 225 mg/m2 thiotepa for 3 days) with autologous hematopoietic progenitor cell support. The actuarial relapse free survival at 3 years is 80%; the actuarial survival at 3 years is 96%. Four patients relapsed systemically between 6 and 18 months; all four patients who relapsed had breast cancers that overexpressed Her2/neu. In contrast, none of the 21 patients who had no or borderline overexpression of Her2/neu relapsed (P = 0.00004, Fisher's exact test). Patients with high-risk stage II and IIIA breast cancer who have overexpression of Her2/neu appear to be at a high risk for relapse, even when treated with high-dose chemotherapy and autologous hematopoietic progenitor cell support.


Applications employing the actor model of concurrent computation are becoming popular nowadays. On the one hand, the foundational characteristics of the actor model make it attractive in parallel and distributed settings. On the other hand, effective investigation of poor performance in actor-based applications requires dedicated metrics and profiling methods. Unfortunately, little research has been conducted on this topic to date, and developers are forced to investigate suboptimal performance with general-purpose profilers that fall short in locating scalability bottlenecks and performance inefficiencies. This position paper advocates the need for dedicated profiling techniques and tools for actor-based applications, focusing specifically on inter-actor communication and actor utilization. Our preliminary results support the importance of dedicated actor profiling and motivate further research on this topic.


Abstract. Various semi-Lagrangian methods are tested with respect to advection in air pollution modeling. The aim is to find a method fulfilling as many of the desirable properties by Rasch andWilliamson (1990) and Machenhauer et al. (2008) as possible. The focus in this study is on accuracy and local mass conservation. The methods tested are, first, classical semi-Lagrangian cubic interpolation, see e.g. Durran (1999), second, semi-Lagrangian cubic cascade interpolation, by Nair et al. (2002), third, semi-Lagrangian cubic interpolation with the modified interpolation weights, Locally Mass Conserving Semi-Lagrangian (LMCSL), by Kaas (2008), and last, semi-Lagrangian cubic interpolation with a locally mass conserving monotonic filter by Kaas and Nielsen (2010). Semi-Lagrangian (SL) interpolation is a classical method for atmospheric modeling, cascade interpolation is more efficient computationally, modified interpolation weights assure mass conservation and the locally mass conserving monotonic filter imposes monotonicity. All schemes are tested with advection alone or with advection and chemistry together under both typical rural and urban conditions using different temporal and spatial resolution. The methods are compared with a current state-of-the-art scheme, Accurate Space Derivatives (ASD), see Frohn et al. (2002), presently used at the National Environmental Research Institute (NERI) in Denmark. To enable a consistent comparison only non-divergent flow configurations are tested. The test cases are based either on the traditional slotted cylinder or the rotating cone, where the schemes' ability to model both steep gradients and slopes are challenged. The tests showed that the locally mass conserving monotonic filter improved the results significantly for some of the test cases, however, not for all. It was found that the semi-Lagrangian schemes, in almost every case, were not able to outperform the current ASD scheme used in DEHM with respect to accuracy.


Coccolithophores are calcifying marine phytoplankton that through the fixation of inorganic carbon into calcite and particulate organic carbon play a fundamental role in global carbon cycles. As the CO2 concentration of the surface ocean increases through the anthropogenic release of CO2 by burning fossil fuels both a decrease in pH (ocean acidification) and a increase in dissolved inorganic carbon (ocean carbonation) are taking place. To understand the impact of these ocean changes on coccolithophores it is essential that we rapidly increase our knowledge of the cellular processes underlying coccolithophore physiology. This doctoral thesis focuses on the cellular and molecular processes involved in the transport of Ca2+, inorganic carbon and H+ in relation to calcification and photosynthesis in the coccolithophore species Emiliania huxleyi. The thesis comprises 7 chapters: Chapter 1 is a general introduction to coccolithophore cellular biology and global carbon cycling; Chapters 2-6 are a combination of publications and data chapters; Chapter 7 provides a synthesis of the results placing the presented data into context of coccolithophores in a changing ocean, highlighting future research areas.
Chapter 2 is a published review of the current literature on the molecular aspects of calcification in coccolithophores. It identifies key gaps in our knowledge of coccolithophore cellular biology and presents new hypotheses for the transport of substrates to the site of calcification. Chapter 3 investigates some of the proposed hypotheses by examining the role of several candidate Ca2+, H+ and inorganic carbon transport genes in calcifying and non-calcifying cells of E. huxleyi, using quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR. The data provides strong evidence that a putative HCO3- transporter (AEL1), a Ca2+/H+ exchanger (CAX3), a vacuolar H+-ATPase pump (ATPVc/c') and a gene encoding for a coccolith-associated protein, GPA, play key roles in E. huxleyi biomineralization. CAX3 and AEL1 were chosen for further analysis and were successfully cloned and expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Human Embryonic Kidney cells (HEK293) respectively (Chapter 6). However complete characterization of CAX3 and AEL1 was unsuccessful. CAX3 failed to complement the Ca2+ sensitive phenotype of a S. cerevisiae mutant, with further expression in a Ca2+ sensitive Escherichia coli mutant resulting in a lethal phenotype. The investigation of HCO3- transport in HEK293 cells expressing AEL1 gave negative results, potentially due to the poor localization of AEL1 to the plasma membrane. The data highlights the importance of developing genetic transformation techniques in coccolithophores to reduce the dependency of using foreign expression systems for the characterization of genes.
The influence of the individual carbonate system components (CO2, HCO3-, CO32- and H+) on coccolithophore physiology and genetic response is relatively unknown. Chapter 4 disentangles the individual carbonate system components investigating their influence on calcification, particulate organic carbon fixation and gene expression in E. huxleyi. It identifies, for the first time, the genetic basis of a carbon concentrating mechanism (CCM) in coccolithophores, with the transcription of multiple CCM associated genes up-regulated at low concentrations of HCO3- and CO2. Physiological data combined with expression data indicates that calcification does not function as a CCM under carbon limitation and is instead reduced to allow the redistribution of inorganic carbon from calcification to photosynthesis. Furthermore, the data confirms previous studies that the substrate for calcification is HCO3- and that growth and organic carbon fixation rates are primarily influenced by CO2.
The recent sequencing of the E. huxleyi genome has provided vast quantities of genetic data that requires detailed analysis to realise its full potential. Chapter 5 analyses the genome for calcification and photosynthesis related transport genes discovering that E. huxleyi has a diverse range of inorganic carbon, Ca2+ and H+ transporters, from classical plant, animal and bacterial families. The presence of multiple Na+/Ca2+ exchangers, a family of almost exclusively animal transporters indicates that coccolithophores have the potential to use both H+ and Na+ electrochemical gradients to drive secondary transport. Furthermore the identification of green algal CCM genes may provide a strong basis for investigating the evolution of CCMs in eukaryotic algae.
The data presented in this thesis provides a significant step in our understanding of coccolithophore physiology at a cellular and molecular level. It offers a solid platform for future research in coccolithophore cell biology an area of research that is essential to comprehend the role of coccolithophores in gobal carbon cycling and how they will respond and adapt to future ocean changes.


Nowadays embedded computers have many processor cores. Because of high computation power and low power consumption, the multicore processor platforms are a good support for mobile robot applications. Many tasks are running in parallel in different cores. In real time environment load balancing and scheduling may be a problem for the operating system. The majority of algorithms in embedded system applications are not parallelized because of resources like memory, processors, communication channels and peripherals. The tasks are blocked while they are waiting for these resources. The quality of parallelization can be measured with the Amdahl formula. In this paper the presented application — fuzzy rule interpolation method also called FIVE (fuzzy interpolation based on vague environment) — the tasks are easily divided in parallel tasks. The application itself is also a good support for analyses of multiprocessing and conclude the advantages or disadvantages. This method is lightweight enough to run on embedded systems for mobile robots. The FIVE method allows to describe complicated behavior of a mobile robot in relatively simple way. The parallelized tasks are then implemented on the Parallella microcomputer with 2+16 processor cores. The FIVE method runs on the 16 Epiphany cores which is like a coprocessor. The paper analyses based on the Amdahl law the limitation of parallelization in multiprocessing environment.


Kurdish studies are generally defined and conducted according to a topic or geographic location, namely, within the Middle East. Research procedures used to handle different issues as well as develop concepts and hypotheses have become important, since most of the current theories lack practical approaches when conducting studies on the Kurds. Relying on specific examples, published sources as well as the author's personal fieldwork and insights, the article establishes a critique of bias, problems and solutions in research goals and methodologies in the field of Kurdish studies. The article underlines the importance of problemoriented research, notably addressing the questions who, where, when, how and why. Furthermore, it shows the way in which the personality of the researcher, as well as the fluctuations and constraints encountered during the fieldwork, influence the methodology. Finally, it emphasises the practical and theoretical challenges dealt with by the researcher due to the political aspect of the Kurdish question, which encompasses orientalist, imperial, or national interests.


Taking cultural aspects into account is seldom mentioned as a success factor in implementing Six Sigma. In this paper, we elaborate on the implications of implementing and applying Six Sigma in countries with different national cultures, especially in those with non-American cultures. Based on two longitudinal case studies, we show how to take cultural aspects into account when implementing Six Sigma, and also, how implementing Six Sigma influences the local national culture of the company. We argue that taking different aspects of national cultures into account when implementing Six Sigma within a global organisation will enhance understanding, cooperation and performance of the organisation.


In the 1990s, various countries had a different approach to the problems related to prisoners' labor. In the United States, the concept of prison labor could survive only in such developed states as New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts which could cope with the burden of keeping unproductive prisons. Under the impact of the penal reform and upon the adoption of new penal legislation in these states, the old American tradition of labor prisons gave way to a new standard which implied that convicted offenders had to learn different crafts while in prison but they were excluded from the public labor market when at large. The new industrial program, which was thus engendered, has significantly contributed to spreading the reformist functions of prison labor. Organized prison labor had always been strongly supported by penal reformers in the north of the United States but, in the mid-1980s, as the penal reformers moved away from that part of the United States, the concept of organized prison labor no longer had a significant political and legislative impact. The influence of penal reformers and the idea of instituting convict labor (but without competition in the labor market) had a strong influence on government politicians both at the federal and state government levels. The reformers endeavored to ensure the prisoners' welfare and enable all prisoners to work and participate in the labor market as competitive workforce, both by leasing their labor and through the sale of final products on the free market.


A central question in the study of democratic governance concerns the conditions under which voters make informed choices at the ballot box. I exploit the staggered implementation of an electoral reform in a U.S. state to study the effects of electoral institutions on voter information and political accountability. I find that all-mail elections cause an increase in turnout in municipal elections and a decrease in ballot roll-off on statewide ballot measures in presidential election years in some counties, which is largely consistent with my argument that voters gather more information about politics when voting by mail. Further, there is strong evidence that vote-by-mail results in a decrease in taxing and spending in municipalities. The institution has less conclusive effects on municipal accountability audit outcomes. Using data from the Catalist voter file I show that these results cannot be explained by changes in the composition of the electorate caused by vote-by-mail.


Smart Grid applications are imposing challenging requirements of security and reliability on the N-way communication infrastructure being designed to support multiple grid applications. These challenges stem from the increasing incorporation of distributed renewable energy sources on to the grid, the rising deployment of electric vehicles, and active consumer participation into power grid operations, all of which communicate with the utility control center with varying degrees of priority and security. To address these challenging requirements, we propose SeDAX, a SEcure Data-centric Application eXtensible platform for Smart Grid applications. SeDAX implements scalable, resilient and secure data delivery and data sharing in a wide area network. The platform can scalably handle high volumes of data generated by both applications and sensors. The SeDAX architecture has as its basis a Delaunay Triangulation (DT) network. The properties of the DT graph are leveraged to scalably support secure data-centric (or information-centric) group communication. The primary goals of this platform are to support communication resilience and data availability. The key functional blocks of the SeDAX platform are: (1) a geographic hash forwarding algorithm that operates over the DT graph (DT-GHF), and (2) a DT-based data replication scheme. The forwarding and replication schemes are scalable and cost effective in terms of communication overhead and memory. We describe the design details of the SeDAX platform and present empirical results on the performance of SeDAX as compared with other geometric-based alternatives such as Geographic Hash Table (GHT) forwarding and Content Addressable Networking (CAN). The operation of SeDAX is illustrated in the context of implementing demand response, a known Smart Grid application.


A new and innovative experimental setup for investigating borehole integrity issues is presented. The setup comprises an X-ray transparent high-pressure cell with separate and independent controls on pore pressure, confining pressure, and casing pressure. This allows the setup to mimic a scaled down wellbore system, hence setting ground for studies at realistic field conditions. X-ray computed tomography (CT) is used to provide 3D visualization and quantification of both stress-induced fractures and debonding of the cement sheath (from casing and formation) at in-situ conditions. The pressure cell accommodates a steel tube at the center simulating the well casing which is cemented to a surrounding rock. Each concentric layer of material within the cell, i.e., the inner steel tubing, the surrounding rock and the confining sleeve, can be separately pressurized through dedicated ports in the cell's endcaps. In this work, the setup and the results from some of the initial tests carried out are reported. The application of different amounts of pressure to the inner and outer casing induces fractures in the cement and surrounding rock formation. Results show the evolution of radial cracks in the cement sheath and the sandstone with increased casing pressure, with and without confining and pore pressure. The findings indicate fundamental differences between the outcome of the experimental results where pore and confining pressures are applied in addition to only the casing pressure which has been the conventional approach in this type of studies so far. By applying pressure difference between the well and the rock formation, geometry and permeability of the stress-induced fracture network can be analyzed. The measured parameters, together with the geometry of the cracks recorded in these experiments provide a consistent and valuable input for numerical simulations and set the ground for addressing remediation and mitigation challenges.


In the research field of the cultivation theory focus has shifted from TV in general to studying specific genres instead. It is proposed that there are similarities in otherwise different shows and that these shows give it´s voyeurs a solution to their problems. The purpose however of this study is to investigate how the myth about the good life is posed in Tv3´s supply. The theories used in this study are closely linked by their meaning. Narrative talks about the fact that texts, video in this case, contain stories. Ideology is the set of visions and beliefs one person has on the world and myth makes social, historic and cultural decided power orders in to facts. All of these are used with a qualitative semiotic analysis which studies signs in texts, pictures and more. It searches for a deeper meaning in the content and with this method can we see what Tv3 says to its voyeurs. Through our material Tv3 states that success is in terms of either achieving our dreams or to have so much money that you don't have to look at the price tag. It´s however the individual's responsibility for both their success and their failure and upon failure the individual should do whatever it takes to fix it, often with help by experts in the field. When it comes to love and the search for the right person, this is part of the good life but it is not the most important part. Although a good life is based on individual responsibility, the individual is so also given directives on how this should be done by the society. An important part of this is society's various power structures and the authorities that constitute them. These authorities, often in the judiciary, represent the good life and the individual's goal. To get to the top of the hierarchy, the individual must play a game in which tactical moves and strategies are of importance, the game of life. Our findings propose that all responsibility lies on the individual, even if society is influencing an individual's decision. Success is seen in terms of achieved dreams, money and love. How to reach this is not relevant since all means are permitted, life is a game after all. Society stands for the moral bit and its power structures. But with the help of it, the individual may find its target. It is society that provides the map to the individual, the compass to finding the good life.


Ion mobility mass spectrometry (IM-MS) allows separation of native protein ions into "conformational families". Increasing the IM resolving power should allow finer structural information to be obtained and can be achieved by increasing the length of the IM separator. This, however, increases the time that protein ions spend in the gas phase and previous experiments have shown that the initial conformations of small proteins can be lost within tens of milliseconds. Here, we report on investigations of protein ion stability using a multipass traveling wave (TW) cyclic IM (cIM) device. Using this device, minimal structural changes were observed for Cytochrome C after hundreds of milliseconds, while no changes were observed for a larger multimeric complex (Concanavalin A). The geometry of the instrument (Q-cIM-ToF) also enables complex tandem IM experiments to be performed, which were used to obtain more detailed collision-induced unfolding pathways for Cytochrome C. The instrument geometry provides unique capabilities with the potential to expand the field of protein analysis via IM-MS.


Chief Education Evangelist at Google, Inc. Jaime evangelizes the power and potential of the web, technology, and Google tools as enabling and supporting capabilities in pursuit of creating powerful learning models. In eight years at Google, Jaime was part of the original team that launched Google Apps for universities, launched Google Apps into K12, and helped get Chromebooks off the ground and into schools. Today he is responsible for working across all internal teams that impact education, and he works with educational organizations around the world, helping them find ways to improve the quality of education through the use of technology.


Evidence supports that migraine is a complex pain condition with different underlying mechanisms. We aimed to quantify potential associations between demographic, migraine-related, and psychophysical and psychophysical variables in women with migraine. Demographic (age, height, and weight), migraine-related (intensity, frequency, and duration), related-disability (Migraine Disability Assessment Scale, Headache Disability Inventory), psychological (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale), and psycho–physical (pressure pain thresholds -PPTs-) variables were collected from a sample of 74 women suffering from migraine. We calculated adjusted correlations between the variables by using a network analysis. Additionally, we also calculated centrality indices to identify the connectivity among the variables within the network and the relevance of each variable in the network. Multiple positive correlations (ρ) between PPTs were observed ranging from 0.1654 (C5-C6 and tibialis anterior) to 0.40 (hand and temporalis muscle). The strongest associations within the network were those between migraine attack frequency and diagnosis of chronic migraine (ρ = 0.634) and between the HDI-E and HDI-P (ρ = 0.545). The node with the highest strength and betweenness centrality was PPT at the second metacarpal, whereas the node with the highest harmonic centrality was PPT at the tibialis anterior muscle. This is the first study applying a network analysis to understand the underlying mechanisms in migraine. The identified network revealed that a model where each subgroup of migraine-related, psychological, and psycho–physical variables showed no interaction between each variable. Current findings could have clinical implications for developing multimodal treatments targeting the identified mechanisms.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between language and total number of citations found among documents in journals written in English and other languages. We selected all the journals clustered together in the Journal Citation Reports 2014 under the subject category "Veterinary Sciences" and downloaded all the data registered between 19942013 by Web of Science for the journals that stated publishing documents in languages other than English. We classified each of these journals by quartile and extracted information regarding their impact factor, language(s) stated, country of origin, total number of documents published, total number of reviews published, percentage of documents published in English and the quartile in which each journal ranked. Of the 48,118 documents published by the 28 journals analyzed, 55.8% were published in English. Interestingly, although most of the journals state being multi-language, most documents published in quartile 1 journals were in English (an average of 99.2%), while the percentage was 93.1% in quartile 2 journals, 62.1% in quartile 3 journals and 27.4% in quartile 4 journals. We also confirmed that citation distribution in these journals was highly skewed. The results of this study suggest that journals should consider adopting English as the main language as this will increase citation counts and the impact factor of the journal.


An abstract of the dissertation of Abdullah Alfaiz for the Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Studies presented December 8, 1995. Title: Urgent Care Center Location: An Empirical Analysis of Their Locations in Relation to Demographic, Socioeconomic, and Land Use Factors. A Case Study of Portland, Oregon. Urgent Care Centers (UCCs) are a recent innovation in the American system of health care delivery. The number of UCCs has increased significantly in recent years. Many researchers point out that the rapid growth of UCCs is expected to escalate during the next few decades. This growth will create more competition among providers of these facilities in the health care market, and the competition could lead to an uneven distribution of UCCs within cities. While health officials and planners are interested in attracting more patients by expanding UCC services, they are often unfamiliar with the factors that go into site selection decisions. Understanding the factors influencing UCC location is crucial to explaining why UCCs cluster in certain urban areas, while other areas are under-served. It is also important for providers who want to enhance accessibility of special population segments to UCC locations. This study uses the Portland metropolitan area as a case study. Due to the 2 lack of access to providers' propriety data, the specific problem targeted here uses publicly available data as a proxy for providers' data to determine the factors influencing UCC location. The essence of this research is to show how these factors explain and predict existing locations of UCCs and to find out how well this publicly available data explains UCC providers' locational behavior. Most of the data for this study is provided by Metro of Portland. Other data are collected utilizing surveys and data from different public agencies and published reports. Logit analysis is used to find out which factors explain existing UCC location. The empirical findings of this research substantiate the existence of a strong relationship between the location of UCCs and land use factors. This study highlights the complexity and importance of understanding the factors influencing the location of UCCs. It rejects prior arguments that UCC location is influenced by some demographic and socioeconomic factors, while it introduces land use factors as the major determinants of UCC location. However, the this study concluded that land use factors influence considered a rare phenomena that should be carried out for future research and that demographic factors may still have an indirect effect on UCC location.


Cloud computing enables the paradigm of data outsourcing. However, to protect data privacy, sensitive cloud data have to be encrypted before outsourced to the commercial public cloud, which makes effective data utilization service is a challenging task. Even though searchable encryption techniques allow users to securely search over encrypted data through  keywords, they support only Boolean search and are not yet sufficient to meet the effective data utilization need that is inherently demanded by large number of users and huge amount of data files in cloud. Hence it is necessary to allow multiple keywords in the search request and return documents in the order of their relevance to the keywords. The works on searchable encryption focused on single keyword search or Boolean keyword search and the result produced by them are rarely sorted. An effective method proposed for this challenging problem is privacy-preserving search over encrypted cloud data. This method establishes a set of strict privacy requirements for such a secure cloud data utilization system through MRSE. Among various multi-keyword semantics, this method chooses the efficient similarity measure of "coordinate matching". Then according to Top K Query method the sorted results are produced. The privacy is preserved by the chunk of data stored in a various server's. Then further improvisation is taken to introduce low overhead on computation and communication in future.


Eurasian Union and Russian World have recently been the most important, although hardly compatible concepts of Russian geopolitics. Though they became entirely common terms of reference in contemporary political discourses, bear no officially defined ideological meaning. There is clear contradiction that Russia enters into the Eurasian Economic Union (as of the 1 January 2015) on equal basis with other countries and at the same time propagates the ideas of the Russian World, which supports dominance of Russian language and Russian nationalism as an unquestionable priority.Nevertheless, there exists popular discourse in the Russian blogosphere, which attempts to combine 'Eurasian Union' and 'Russian World' into persuasive ideological narrative. In this paper I try to analyse the main arguments of this public debate, its chief commentators and the instruments of creating public discourse surrounding these notions. Significantly enough, the sites that provide platform for this discussion in the Internet have an image of serious international academic institutions or governmentally sponsored think tanks (which they are not). Clearly, bloggers who initiate this discussion on such sites (existing not only in Russia, but over whole post-Soviet space) aspire of some leverage in political decision making, they imitate closeness to Kremlin, which makes their statements seemingly weightier. Central authorities, instead, try to distance themselves from these discussions and bloggers. They do not acknowledge their existence on the official web-sites and do not enter into discussions, probably fearing the Web 2.0 discussions as charged with dissident potential per se. I am hypothesizing that bloggers try to find the common denomination for the notions of Eurasian Union and Russian World and governmental official try to intentionally distance themselves from clearly formulated ideological statements, because any clarification means constrain and necessity to follow certain path. Now Kremlin has all irons in the fire and refuses to arrest the meaning of key political concepts


This chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics offers an economic theory of how the law of agency and partnership facilitates economic transactions using these two devices. Agency and partnership help us broaden the traditional, simplified Coasian dichotomy between contract, used in situations of low transaction costs, and the firm, used in situations of high transaction costs. Although economists tend to view "agency" solely from the perspective of "agency costs," from a legal point of view, the fundamental aspect of agency law that distinguishes it from contract is that agency involves relationships among three parties: the principal, the agent, and the third party with whom the agent interacts. Agency law both facilitates contracts between principals and third parties, by allowing intermediaries to bind principals to those contracts, and protects third parties against unwanted harms caused by the use of agents. The key to understanding the law of agency is that the tripartite nature of the agency relationship enables any two of the parties to collude against the other. The primary economic purpose of agency law is to enhance the benefits of agency the deterring such collusion.
The law of partnership takes a step beyond agency because it involves multiple principals who jointly own assets. Partnerships facilitate contracting by enabling the pooling of resources in the joint pursuit of a business enterprise. Although economists recognize firms such as partnership as a "nexus of contracts," the law of partnership focuses on the problems caused by the fact of multiple owners. Multiple ownership complicates both the agency law concerns with contracting with third parties and protecting those third parties from harm, because partners are in some sense principals and in some sense agents of the partnership as an entity. Moreover, multiple ownership of property implies shared control over that property, and thus requires rules of internal governance and management. Shared ownership also creates the possibility of misappropriation of jointly owned property by one of more partners and disputes about what counts as joint property. The multiple owner aspect of partnership creates collusive possibilities beyond those in simple agency. Partners can collude against other partners or the partnership, can collude with third parties against the partnership, or can collude against a third party. The primary economic purpose of partnership law is to enable partners to realize the benefits of joint ownership while minimizing the costs associated with these more complex forms of collusion.


Studying Western papermaking in its main aspects and variations, and both critically evaluate and systematically structure the acquired information, will provide those in paper conservation and allied fields the necessary knowledge to better understand this complex and diverse substrate. The main types of paper that appear on the conservation workbench are analysed. A classification of paper types is given. Next, the steps in the papermaking process and the traces they leave behind are described systematically. The papermaker's considerations and choices in making paper are described. For this the role of rag sorting in the papermaking process, how the Hollander beater extends the papermaker's possibilities, the transition to new fibre sources, and the effects on paper properties of fillers and coatings are investigated. Studying its fibre composition reveals the inherent properties of paper. The use of polarisation microscopy combined with the λ-retardation plate is described and recommended for obtaining a clear and fast sample analysis. Six simpler and less hazardous micro-chemical stains to determine the composition of paper were investigated. It emerged that only one produced a satisfactory result. The traditional tests, with all their drawbacks, continue to prove their worth. A systematical expansion on the paper typologies involves describing the paper types under four major properties: pulp sort, sizing, surface structure, and the range of paper weight. Due to the potential implications for collection management a closer research into the pulping method of wood pulp types, due to the possible negative ageing properties of acidic-pulped pulp types is proposed.


This paper aims to identify the role of digitalization and infrastructure in two fast-growing Asian economies, namely India and the People's Republic of China (PRC), within the growth framework from1990 to 2019 by using panel 2SLS and the NARDL technique. The results show that internet and mobile density (a proxy for telecommunication infrastructure/ digitization), expected years of schooling (a proxy for human capital), foreign direct investment inflow, gross capital formation, per capita electricity power consumption (a proxy for electricity infrastructure), research and development expenditure, and the consumer price index have a positive impact on the per capita GDP of India and the PRC. Further, the study reveals that the PRC extracts relatively more from these growth-promoting factors than India, probably indicating greater allocative efficiency. The results imply the need to enhance the digitization movement in both economies and transform the population into human resources so that the higher research and development expenditure can exert the greatest possible positive effect on economic performance.


The first, Framework for Therapy, describes the treatment planning process and psychosocial adjustment to physical disability. The second looks at the evaluation and treatment of sensation, motor control, and the Rood, Bobath, Brunnstrom and P.N.F approaches to treatment. Part three, a very useful section, includes photographs and clear instructions on joint measurement and specific muscle testing over the whole body, followed by treatment techniques. The activity section concentrates on activity selection and analysis, and then adaptation. There follows an interesting section on Biofeedback, which refers to the process of making a sensory signal available to the patient in order that he may shape his own behaviour. These devices are being incorporated into therapeutic programmes by OTs in America.


A culture of trust leads to better use of knowledge and human skills, so important
in an economy based on knowledge, innovation and change. Polish society is characterized
by a culture of distrust, and this atmosphere translates into interpersonal
relationships in companies. The challenge is therefore to recognize the conditions
for building and strengthening organizational trust. Trust is related to personal reliability,
which means respecting moral norms and the rights of others. Focusing on
the company-employee relationship, in this paper the author has set herself the goal
of recognising how – in the context of ethical standards – the culture of trust is
shaped in companies in Poland. The introductory – theoretical – part of the study
looks at the role of trust in the functioning of an organization. The empirical part
includes the available research on moral standards and trust in Polish enterprises.
The summary points to the conclusions of the analysis undertaken.


This is the story of how a large research facility of broad European and global interest, the European Spallation Source (ESS), ended up in the small university town of Lund in Sweden. This happened in spite of the fact that a number of influential European countries were at one time or another competitors to host the facility. It is also a story about politics which attempts to illustrate how closely intertwined politics and science are, and how the interplay between those interests affects scientific progress. ESS became an arena for individual ambitions and political manoeuvring. The different stakeholders, in their striving to ensure that their own interests were realised, in various ways and with different degrees of success over the years, have influenced the key decisions that, during the already 30 year history of ESS, have driven the course that this project has taken. What emerges is that the interests of the stakeholders and the interests of the project itself are frequently not in harmony. This imposes challenges on the management of large research facilities as they have to not only navigate in the scientific landscape, which they often are more familiar with, but also in the political landscape. This story is therefore an attempt to shed light on the role of managers of large research facilities and the often delicate balancing act they have to perform when trying to comply with the different and often conflicting stakeholder interests. What is especially worthwhile examining, as we do in this paper, is the role that individuals, and the interaction between individuals, have played in the process. This shows that the focus of stakeholder theory on organisations, rather than the people in the organisations, needs to be redirected on to the individuals representing those organisations and their inter-relationships. At the same time it is clear that the developing field of stakeholder management theory has not emerged into the consciousness of science facility managers or their governing bodies and is far down the list of priorities of researchers who use the facilities.


Purpose: To evaluate and characterize the 3D dose reconstruction algorithm of a new commercially available system for patient specific IMRT QA. Methods: champalimaud The new Octavius 4D system and its accompanying software (Verisoft) by PTW were evaluated for the dose reconstruction accuracy. OCTAVIUS 4D measures the dose in the isocenter. The phantom rotates synchronously with the gantry by means of an inclinometer and a motor. The collected measurements are then reconstructed to a 3D dose volume for comparison with the calculated dose in the phantom. In this study, we evaluated the 3D dose reconstruction algorithm of the system using a series of tests. Dose distributions for various field sizes, orientations, shapes and combination of fields were calculated using the Pinnacle TPS on the phantom and the respective DICOMRT dose exported to the Verisoft. Example of these fields included 3×3cm2 to 25×25cm2, wedged fields, AP/PA arrangements, as well as lateral fields and IMRT fields. The respective measurements were performed and comparisons were made based on gamma index, profiles and isodose distributions. Results: The 3D gamma index ranged from 88.3 to 99.9%. Individual dose planes (axial, sagittal, and coronal) were also evaluated and their gamma was within the 3D gamma range. The new system independent of angular dependence as it rotates with gantry and the measuring array is at constant SAD and perpendicular to the beams axis. Conclusions: The new phantom for patient specific IMRT QA in this study can effectively be used for clinical use. The ability of the software to compute 3D dose distribution from all measurements taken is powerful tool that aids the physicist to evaluate the verification plan by providing 3D information not available from other commercial systems. This work has been partially funded by an education grant from PTW.


The residual stresses induced in fiber-reinforced functionally graded composites cooling down from the processing temperature are determined with concentric cylinder model and analytical solutions of inhomogeneous governing equations for displacement components, which include particular solution and general solution of the corresponding homogeneous equations. The analytical solutions presented here are general for power-law variations of the elastic moduli of the functionally graded matrix. With a power exponent, analytical expressions for the residual stresses of fiber-reinforced functionally graded composites can be obtained. By changing the power exponent and the coefficient of the power terms, the solutions obtained here could be applied to fiber-reinforced functionally graded composites with different properties. The results show that the large difference exists between functionally graded composites and common-used composites consisting of two phases of homogenous materials. The variation of matrix modulus and fiber percentage have a great deal of effects on the residual stresses in functionally graded composites.


This paper analyses the problem of the application of Islamic criminal law in Nigeria. Though Nigeria is constitutionally a secular state, Islamic religion more than any other seeks to cast a no mean shadow on the governance of the country. In a proselytist posture, Islam vows to dip the Koran in the Atlantic. From the fight over constitutional establishment of Sharia Court of Appeal in the late 1970s, through the heydays of OIC (organization of Islamic Conference) controversies in the 1980s, to the tension over Islamic banking and jurisdictional matters in relation to judicial authority of Sharia courts recently, Islamic praxis in Nigeria had really generated some national heat. It is needless to mention the faceless agitations of the members of Boko Haram sect by which mayhem had been unleashed on thousands of innocent lives and property. One question however remains salient. Are all these religious-oriented struggles in tandem with the features of state secularity principle provided for in Nigerian Constitution? Is secularity a liability rather than an asset in the socio-political processes of the Nigerian multi-religious state? This paper seeks to address just one of these scenarios, namely, the adoption of Sharia criminal law in much of Northern Nigeria today, and juxtapose it with the implications it has on the principle of state secularity and democracy in Nigeria. Key w ords: Sharia, Criminal Law, State Secularity, Nigerian Constitution, Human Rights, Islam


A spin battery concept is applied for the dynamical generation of pure spin current and spin transport in p-type silicon (p-Si). Ferromagnetic resonance and effective s-d coupling in Ni80Fe20 results in spin accumulation at the Ni80Fe20/p-Si interface, inducing spin injection and the generation of spin current in the p-Si. The pure spin current is converted to a charge current by the inverse spin Hall effect of Pd evaporated onto the p-Si. This approach demonstrates the generation and transport of pure spin current in p-Si at room temperature.


In the 1960s and 1970s, El Salvador's reigning military regime instituted a series of reforms that sought to modernize the country and undermine ideological radicalism, the most ambitious of which was an education initiative. It was multifaceted, but its most controversial component was the use of televisions in classrooms. Launched in 1968 and lasting until the eve of civil war in the late 1970s, the reform resulted in students receiving instruction through programs broadcast from the capital city of San Salvador. The Salvadoran teachers' union opposed the content and the method of the reform and launched two massive strikes. The military regime answered with repressive violence, further alienating educators and pushing many of them into guerrilla fronts.In this thoughtful collaborative study, the authors examine the processes by which education reform became entwined in debates over theories of modernization and the politics of anticommunism. Further analysis examines how the movement pushed the country into the type of brutal infighting that was taking place throughout the third world as the U.S. and U.S.S.R. struggled to impose their political philosophies on developing countries.


This inquiry, which involved use of a teacher survey and classroom observations, was designed to explore how teachers use the practice of reading aloud. This small case study, of one urban elementary school in Alaska, also set out to examine how teachers view the practice of a read-aloud. Studies have identified a number of effective components of a read-aloud. This study found teachers in agreement on some important reasons to read aloud and the components of a read-aloud that they value. The teachers in my inquiry appear to value reading aloud and they all share similarities in how they use the read-aloud practice. All of the teachers agreed that the three most important reasons to read aloud are: for enjoyment, to expose students to texts that they may not read otherwise, and to promote a love of literature and/or reading. Most of the teachers rated two components in particular as very important: animation and expression, and modeling fluent reading.


The mandible is the largest bone in the human skull. It holds the lower teeth in place, it assists in mastication and forms the lower jawline. The mandible is composed of the body and the ramus and is located inferior to the maxilla. The body is a horizontally curved portion that creates the lower jawline. The rami are two vertical processes located on either side of the body; they join the body at the angle of the mandible. At the superior aspect of each ramus, the coronoid and condylar processes articulate with the temporal bone to create the temporomandibular joint which permits mobility. Other than the ossicles of the ear, the mandible is the only skull bone that is mobile, allowing the bone to contribute to mastication.During development, the first pharyngeal arch forms two processes that eventually fuse at the mandibular symphysis to form the mandible. At birth, the mandibular symphysis is composed of fibrocartilage. Within one year of life, the symphysis fuses and a subtle ridge remains at midline on the anterior surface of the body.


A compact, orientable 3-manifold M is called hyperbolic if int M admits a complete hyperbolic structure (Riemannian metric of constant curvature − 1) of finite volume. Any hyperbolic 3-manifold M is irreducible, and each component of ∂M is an incompressible torus. Let f: M → N be a proper, continuous map between hyperbolic 3-manifolds. By Mostow's Rigidity Theorem [8], if f is π1-isomorphic then f is properly homotopic to a diffeomorphism g: M → N such that g | int M: int M → int N is isometric. In particular, the topological type of int M determines uniquely the hyperbolic structure on int M up to isometry, so the volume vol (int M) of int M is well-defined. This Rigidity Theorem is generalized by Thurston[11, theorem 6·4] so that any proper, continuous map f:M → N between hyperbolic 3-manifolds with vol(int M) = deg(f) vol(int N) is properly homotopic to a deg(f)-fold covering g:M → N such that g | int M: int M → int N is locally isometric.


The dielectric properties of Sb2O3-doped (Ba0.732Sr0.26Nd0.008)TiO3.004 ceramics fabricated by conventional solid state method were investigated. The structure was identified by X-ray diffraction method and scanning electron microscope was also employed to observe the surface morphologies. It is confirmed that Sb2O3-doped (Ba0.732Sr0.26Nd0.008)TiO3.004 ceramics exhibit perovskite structure and with increasing Sb2O3 content Ba6Ti17O40 (space group C2/c (15) ) forms as a secondary phase. The experimental results reveal that the addition of Sb2O3 into (Ba0.732Sr0.26Nd0.008)TiO3.004 ceramics reduce the dielectric constant and Curie temperature due to the substitution for A/B-sites with Sb3+ ions. The standing voltage increases with increasing Sb2O3 content while the dielectric loss and resistivity initially decrease and then increase with the increase of Sb2O3 concentration. The temperature dependence of dielectric properties at different frequencies was studied as well. It indicates that the tetragonal-cubic phase transition peak is suppressed as the Sb2O3 content increases and the peak value reduces with the increase of frequency.


It is estimated that almost 40% of the world's energy is consumed by buildings' heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. This consumption increases by 3% every year and will reach 70% by 2050 due to rapid urbanisation and population growth. In Darwin, building energy consumption is even higher and accounts for up to 55% due to the hot and humid weather conditions. Singapore has the same weather conditions but less energy consumption, with only 38% compared to Darwin. Solar radiation can be defined as electromagnetic radiation emitted by the Sun and the Darwin area receives a large amount of solar radiation; building energy consumption can be reduced hugely if this radiation is blocked effectively by analysing appropriate shading devices. This study investigated the influence of different types of shading devices on the cooling load of a town hall building located in Darwin, Australia, and proposed the optimal shading device. The results showed that the horizontal fins led to a 5% reduction in the cooling load of the building. In contrast, adding a variation to the device angles and length increased the savings to 8%. The results demonstrated that the overhangs were more efficient than the fins, contributing 9.2% energy savings, and the cooling reduction savings were increased to 15.5% with design and length variations.


Abstract. Active Wake Control (AWC) is a strategy for operating wind farms in a way to maximize the overall power production and/or reduce structural loading on the wind turbines. Many recent studies indicate that this technology, and more specifically the so-called wake redirection approach to AWC, have a significant potential for increasing the annual energy production by up to a few percentage points. The current state-of-the-art approach is to optimize AWC for a range of static wind conditions, which is expected to perform sub-optimally in real-life due to the continuous variations of the wind resource and the very slow yaw dynamics of the turbines. Recent work has addressed this variability in a robust design setting with the focus on maximizing the energy capture (robust AWC). This paper continues on this line of research, and develops a dynamic robust AWC strategy that aims to optimize the balance between maximum power production (requiring increased level of yawing) and minimum loads on the yaw drive (requiring limited yaw motion). It is shown with a realistic case study that the developed dynamic robust AWC can result in a large reduction of the loading on the yaw drive while at the same time improving the overall power gain, as compared to the conventional nominal AWC.


In An Open Book, this veteran of five marriages, innumerable friendships, practical jokes, horses, love affairs, and intellectual obsessions tells his own story in his own way. It is direct, unadorned, complete--and wonderful reading. Here is Huston on stage for the first time at age three, dressed in an Uncle Sam suit; in the ring at eighteen, boxing for small purses; selling his first short story to H.L. Mencken; down and out in London; acting in Greenwich Village; going to Hollywood to work for Jack Warner as a writer; directing his first picture, The Maltese Falcon; filming dangerous combat scenes in the Aleutians and in Italy; and making over forty years worth of movies, from Key Largo to The Man Who Would Be King. And the stories behind those movies are often as exciting as the movies themselves, featuring such notables as Hemingway, Selznick, Sartre, Hepburn, Monroe, Flynn, Welles, Gable, Bogart, Clift, and Brando. An Open Book is alive with John Huston's presence: his boldness and daring, his candor and style, and the spontaneity with which he followed his dreams to their ultimate destination, the well-deserved acclaim of a world enchanted by his work.


| Summary | Background. Platelet-derived indices have a well-established correlation with the differential diagnosis of thrombocytopenia in adult-based research. These indices include mean platelet volume, platelet distribution width, and platelet-large cell ratio. Objective. To determine the values of platelet-derived indices in a pediatric population with diagnoses of thrombocytopenia and their etiologic correlation. Materials and methods. Analytic observational diagnostictest study. The population for this analytical study was pediatric patients between 6 months and 18 years of age who had thrombocytopenia (<100x10 9 /L). The study period was 18 months long. Results. Of 54 subjects, 18 (33.3%) were diagnosed with idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, and 36 (66.7%) were diagnosed with acute leukemia. Mean age was 7.4 years and 6.8 years for immune thrombocytopenic purpura and acute leukemia, respectively. Mean platelet distribution width values for immune thrombocytopenic purpura and acute leukemia were 15.08 fL and 10.73, respectively. Mean MPV for immune thrombocytopenic purpura and acute leukemia was 11.7 fL and 9.8 fL, respectively. Mean platelet-large cell ratio was 38.26% and 24.97% for idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and acute leukemia, respectively. Differences in these three distinct platelet indices between idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and acute leukemia were statistically significant (p=0.00). The area under the ROC curve for platelet-derived indices showed that they were adequate for defining the causes of thrombocytopenia. MPV and platelet-large cell ratio had an area under the curve of 0.89 and 0.88, respectively, while platelet size deviation width had an area under the curve of 0.903. Conclusions. Platelet-derived indices could be useful in the initial approach for the differential diagnosis of pediatric patients with thrombocytopenia.