Empirical studies of sexual selection often focus on events occurring either before or after mating but rarely both and consequently may fail to discern the relative magnitudes and interactions of premating and postmating episodes of selection. Here, we simultaneously quantify premating and postmating selection in the sex-role-reversed Gulf pipefish by using a microsatellite-based analysis of parentage in experimental populations. Female pipefish exhibited an opportunity for selection (I) of 1.64, which was higher than that of males (0.35). Decompositions of I and the selection differential on body size showed that over 95% of the selection on females arose from the premating phase. We also found evidence for a trade-off between selection phases, where multiply mating females had significantly lower offspring survivorship compared to singly mated females. In males, variance in relative fitness arose mainly from the number of eggs received per copulation and a small number of males who failed to mate. Overall, our study exemplifies a general approach for the decomposition of total selection into premating and postmating phases to understand the interplay among components of natural and sexual selection that conspire to shape sexually selected traits.


The debate over Locke's theory of slavery has focused on his involvement with the Royal African Company and other institutions of African slavery, as well as his rhetorical use of slavery in opposing absolutism. This overlooks Locke's deep involvement with the Carolina colony, and in particular that colony's Indian slave trade, which was largely justified in just-war terms. Evidence of Locke's participation in the 1682 revisions to the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which removed the infamous "absolute power and authority" clause, and his knowledge of colonial affairs, when examined alongside textual evidence of the timing of the composition of Locke's theory of slavery, indicates a significant connection between the colony and Locke's work. In light of this evidence, this article suggests an interpretation of Locke's theory that stresses its character as a response to the conditions he encountered in Carolina.


The ""Essay upon Projects"" was written during the years immediately following two of Defoe's serious brushed with the law. In 1692, #17,000 in debt, he was declared bankrupt. After a brief imprisonment and during the time he subsequently spent hiding from authorities and creditors, he began work on various ""projects"" which he thought would make England a better nation and, were they approved and acted upon by the government, bring him fame and fortune. Composed piecemeal, the ""Essay"" offers a wide ranging series of proposals for radical social reform, while attempting to gain some dignity for what Defoe called, in another context, the despicable art of projecting. Among Defoe's schemes, predictable enough, was a project for the reform of his nation's bankruptcy laws, a project over which Defoe, in his own words, ""waxed hot"". Five years after he began it, Defoe published the work. By 1697, he had righted himself publicly and financially, having served as Accomptant to the Commissioners of the Glass Duty in King William's government and having profited from his brick and tile factory in Tilbury. The work represents new beginnings for Defoe as a political and literary figure, new assertions of principles, new ventures on public terrain. At its most utopian, it was an effort at charting a new future for England - a combination of social engineering and economic scheming. It is a commonplace to say of science fiction that while purporting to be about other worlds and often about future time, it is invariable about our present life on earth. Similarly, it may be said of ""An Essay upon Projects"" that although Defoe's work treated future projects and possibilities, they were very much rooted in the events of the recent past and the present. Read against the swarm of proposals published during the 1690s (usually in pamphlet form), the text seems thoroughly rooted in the efforts at attempting to solve the economic problems of the late-17th century. On the other hand, Defoe enjoyed assuming the role of a prophet, and if some of his schemes seemed to foreshadow his future developments, whether in his time or ours, he would hardly have been reluctant to take credit for his ingenuity and farsightedness.


Author(s): Goel, Mahima | Advisor(s): Nagarajan, Srikantan | Abstract: Sensory feedback plays an important role in maintaining steady and fluent speech production. So far, a majority of research in speech has focused on auditory feedback while not a lot has been done on somatosensory feedback. Thus, the current study aims to further explore the effect of vocal tract somatosensory feedback on auditory cortex activity during the process of audiomotor map learning. Due to extensive evidence for a phenomenon known as motor-induced suppression (MIS), the current study hypothesizes that cortical activity will be reduced in subjects after the establishment of learning. Using an MEG touchscreen speech synthesizer set- up, subjects heard a target vowel sound and were asked to touch a location on the touchscreen that matched the sound they heard. With each trial, subjects were given feedback in the form of the sound that corresponded to the location on the screen they touched, resulting in them eventually learning to map out each vowel sound to a target location on the screen. This set-up allowed a paradigm to test for the effect of audiomotor map learning. Then, using the NUTMEG software and Champagne source localization algorithm, data from each subject was analyzed before and after learning, as well as any potential differences between auditory and motor feedback or left and right auditory cortices were noted. Findings across all 4 conditions (left auditory cortex with auditory feedback, right auditory cortex with auditory feedback, left auditory cortex with auditory and somatomotor feedback, right auditory cortex with auditory and somatomotor feedback) in almost all the subjects found a statistically significant decrease in cortical activity following the establishment of audiomotor map learning. The current study sets up future work in which a variety of patient populations as well as different forms of feedback can be studied using a touchscreen speech synthesizing platform.


Legume rotation has allowed a consistent increase in crop yield and consequently in human population since the antiquity. Legumes will also be instrumental in our ability to maintain the sustainability of our agriculture while facing the challenges of increasing food and biofuel demand. Medicago truncatula and Lotus japonicus have emerged during the last decade as two major model systems for legume biology. Initially developed to dissect plant-microbe symbiotic interactions and especially legume nodulation, these two models are now widely used in a variety of biological fields from plant physiology and development to population genetics and structural genomics. This review highlights the genetic and genomic tools available to the M. truncatula community. Comparative genomic approaches to transfer biological information between model systems and legume crops are also discussed. unrestricted any medium, provided the original work is properly


The Joint Response Unit (JRU) in Gwent is a collaboration between Gwent Police and the Welsh Ambulance Service Trust (WAST). It was introduced in 2016 with the aim of jointly addressing and reducing demand on both organisations created by incidents attended by the police that required an ambulance and vice versa. The operation consists of an ambulance service vehicle, which is staffed by a professional paramedic and a member of the Gwent Police Special Constabulary.This evaluation is being conducted as part of the IPSCJ's national pilot programme, which is funded by the Police Transformation Fund (PTF), looking at innovative practice in the use of volunteers within policing.


ABSTRACT An in-situ tritium-deuterium gas-purification system has been constructed to produce a high-purity D-T target gas for muon catalyzed fusion experiments at the RIKEN-RAL Muon Facility. At the experiment site, the system enables us to purify the D-T target gas by removing 3He component, to adjust the D/T gas mixing ratio and to measure the hydrogen isotope components. The system is specially designed to handle the D-T gas with a negative pressure, and the maximum tritium inventory of 56 TBq (1500 Ci) is operated. The employed combination of a palladium filter and a cryotrap has demonstrated as an efficient device to purify hydrogen gas with a negative pressure. We have completed a series of muon catalyzed d-t fusion experiments at various tritium concentrations, including an experiment with a non-equilibrium D2-T2 target condition. The muon catalyzed t-t fusion process has also been studied using the tritium gas supplied free of 3He by the system.


Aalto University, P.O. Box 11000, FI-00076 Aalto www.aalto.fi Author Joonas Järvinen Name of the doctoral dissertation Dynamics of ecological interdependences between European paper & pulp and printing & publishing industries, 1950-2005 Publisher School of Science Unit Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Series Aalto University publication series DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS 44/2011 Field of research Strategic Management Manuscript submitted 8 February 2011 Manuscript revised 10 May 2011 Date of the defence 10 June 2011 Language English Monograph Article dissertation (summary + original articles) Abstract Earlier research on industry evolution has introduced a number of theoretical models of how industries evolve, and identified a number of factors driving this process. In general, however, much of the earlier topical research has focused on explaining the evolution of industries by the characteristics of the industry in question or the firms operating within it. One of the areas where little research exists is on the effects of other industries or organizational populations on the evolution of a particular industry. Thus, responding to calls for this type of research, this study aims at extending the knowledge of inter-industry or inter-population interactions both theoretically and empirically. The study builds primarily on organizational and community ecology, the only research paradigm that has systematically studied evolutionary interdependences between different types of organizational populations. Theoretically, the study introduces a novel theoretical framework of interdependences between organizational populations. In particular, the framework incorporates the view that a population niche is a multidimensional construct, and turns the basic level of analysis of interactions to the level of the niche dimension. A number of propositions are formulated of the effects of different types of niche dimension level interactions on vital rates of organizational populations. Empirically, the study examines ecological interdependences in a novel research context: the paper & pulp and the printing & publishing industries in four European countries – Finland, Germany, Sweden, and the UK – during 1950-2005. On the basis of historical narratives of the evolution of the eight separate industries, descriptive analyses of the resource flows between the industries, and the theoretical framework, hypotheses of the interdependences between the industries are formulated. By employing life-history data of the evolution of paper and pulp firms in the four countries, the hypotheses are then statistically tested. In general, the results show that paper & pulp and printing & publishing industries have affected positively on each other's vital rates. When it comes to the specific interactions between the industries in the four country setting, the results suggest that the interactions have been complex. For example, it is found that the interactions have not been bounded by geographic space, there have been differences in the strength of the interactions between the industries, and that the strength of the interactions has changed as a function of time.Earlier research on industry evolution has introduced a number of theoretical models of how industries evolve, and identified a number of factors driving this process. In general, however, much of the earlier topical research has focused on explaining the evolution of industries by the characteristics of the industry in question or the firms operating within it. One of the areas where little research exists is on the effects of other industries or organizational populations on the evolution of a particular industry. Thus, responding to calls for this type of research, this study aims at extending the knowledge of inter-industry or inter-population interactions both theoretically and empirically. The study builds primarily on organizational and community ecology, the only research paradigm that has systematically studied evolutionary interdependences between different types of organizational populations. Theoretically, the study introduces a novel theoretical framework of interdependences between organizational populations. In particular, the framework incorporates the view that a population niche is a multidimensional construct, and turns the basic level of analysis of interactions to the level of the niche dimension. A number of propositions are formulated of the effects of different types of niche dimension level interactions on vital rates of organizational populations. Empirically, the study examines ecological interdependences in a novel research context: the paper & pulp and the printing & publishing industries in four European countries – Finland, Germany, Sweden, and the UK – during 1950-2005. On the basis of historical narratives of the evolution of the eight separate industries, descriptive analyses of the resource flows between the industries, and the theoretical framework, hypotheses of the interdependences between the industries are formulated. By employing life-history data of the evolution of paper and pulp firms in the four countries, the hypotheses are then statistically tested. In general, the results show that paper & pulp and printing & publishing industries have affected positively on each other's vital rates. When it comes to the specific interactions between the industries in the four country setting, the results suggest that the interactions have been complex. For example, it is found that the interactions have not been bounded by geographic space, there have been differences in the strength of the interactions between the industries, and that the strength of the interactions has changed as a function of time.


The genetic polymorphism at four variable number of tandem repeats (D1S80, D4S43, COL2A1, D17S5) and one short tandem repeat (ACTBP2) loci was assessed by polymerase chain reaction analysis of genomic DNA obtained from blood samples of eight human populations (Japanese, Northern Han, Hui, Uygur, Kazakh, Saudi Arabian, Greek, Italian). Allele frequencies at all loci were in the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium for each population. With the exception of ACTBP2, the allelic distribution patterns for these loci revealed a marked genetic divergence among the eight populations. A dendrogram constructed by the neighbor-joining method based on the allele frequencies of the five loci suggested that the five Asian populations (Japanese, Northern Han, Hui, Uygur, and Kazakh) formed one cluster, whereas the two European populations and one West Asian population (Italian, Greek, and Saudi Arabian) formed another. The genetic relationship among these populations may have been greatly influenced by admixture as a result of the migration of individuals along the Silk Road throughout history.


For structure dynamic signals with low signal to noise ratio (SNR), Multi-scale EMD is proposed to extract useful information from signals contaminated by noise. This method is an adaptive way, and achieves better performance than traditional methods. A complex signal composed of signal and noise, which is first decompose into a series of different characteristic IMFs. Then sum of the first few IMFs including useful information and noise are further decomposed by EMD, and iterate this process for several times in order to extract useful information. The final step is deleting some IMFs obtained from the last decomposing which is considered as noise, and rebuilt the signal using the rest IMFs from different scale. This method can smooth signal effectively. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified with the numerical simulating signal, and useful information in signals is retained. It also has some superior performances such as concise computer process, robust application, etc.


Objectives
To assess the associations between smell function and adiposity and cardiometabolic measures in a nationally representative sample of US adults.

Methods
In the 2013-2014 NHANES, 3527 adults ≥40 years, completed the NHANES Taste and Smell Exam. Smell function was assessed with an 8-item odor identification test. Participants smelled and identified each odorant by selecting one of four descriptors. Smell impairment was defined as incorrect identification of ≥3 (of 8) odors. Survey-weighted linear regression models estimated cross-sectional associations of smell function with adiposity (body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC)) and cardiometabolic measures (total cholesterol, high density lipoprotein (HDL), low density lipoprotein (LDL), triglycerides, fasting plasma glucose (FPG), and systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP)). Models were adjusted for age, race, education, physical activity, self-reported health status, smoking history, and income-poverty ratio, and stratified by sex and age group (40-64 years vs. ≥65 years).

Results
In US adults ≥40 years, smell function was significantly associated with several adiposity and cardiometabolic measures in adjusted models, with significant interactions by sex and age. Compared to normal smell, smell impairment was significantly associated with higher BMI [β = 3.0; 95% CI: 0.6, 5.4)] and WC [β = 5.0; 95% CI: 0.3, 9.8] among women <65 years; conversely among men ≥65 years, smell impairment associated with lower BMI [β = -1.6; 95% CI: -3.2, -0.01)]. In adults < 65 years, smell impairment was associated with lower FPG [β = -7.9; 95% CI: -13.0, -2.6] and triglyceride levels [β = -27.0; 95% CI: -51.0, -3.7], but this was only significant among men. In older men (≥65 years), smell impairment was positively associated with higher total cholesterol [β = 12.8; 95% CI: 7.4, 18.1] and LDL [β = 18.1; 95% CI: 9.1, 27.2] ; among older women however, smell impairment was inversely associated with both total [β = -15.0; 95% CI: -25.0, -5.7] and LDL cholesterol [β = -12.0; 95% CI: -25.0, 1.2)], and positively associated with FPG [β = 15.6; 95% CI:1.5, 29.7]. No significant associations were observed with SBP or DBP.

Conclusions
In adults ≥ 40 years, smell impairment is associated with adiposity measures, and glucose and lipid levels, with differential associations by age and sex.

Funding Sources
Rutgers University, NJ.


Public auditors should reduce agency problems and improve transparency. We address the question of whether auditors should be elected by the citizens or appointed by either the legislature or the executive, and explore the influence of conducting performance audits. We construct a unique dataset at the US State level capturing differences in the institutional design of state auditing institutions. We estimate the influence of auditor characteristics on different outcome variables reflecting government performance and implement an alternative identification strategy relying on citizens' electoral decisions. We examine whether citizens use divided government - a costly mechanism to control the government - as a substitute, when other effective, but less costly mechanisms are not available. Even if the empirical results are sometimes difficult to interpret, we generally find that (1) performance audits tend to be beneficial and (2) elected auditors with a strong mandate to conduct performance audits seem to outperform other institutional arrangements.


Introduction Crowdsourcing has become an increasingly important tool to address many problems – from government elections in democracies, stock market prices, to modern online tools such as TripAdvisor or Internet Movie Database (IMDB). The CHNRI method (the acronym for the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative) for setting health research priorities has crowdsourcing as the major component, which it uses to generate, assess and prioritize between many competing health research ideas. Methods We conducted a series of analyses using data from a group of 91 scorers to explore the quantitative properties of their collective opinion. We were interested in the stability of their collective opinion as the sample size increases from 15 to 90. From a pool of 91 scorers who took part in a previous CHNRI exercise, we used sampling with replacement to generate multiple random samples of different size. First, for each sample generated, we identified the top 20 ranked research ideas, among 205 that were proposed and scored, and calculated the concordance with the ranking generated by the 91 original scorers. Second, we used rank correlation coefficients to compare the ranks assigned to all 205 proposed research ideas when samples of different size are used. We also analysed the original pool of 91 scorers to to look for evidence of scoring variations based on scorers' characteristics. Results The sample sizes investigated ranged from 15 to 90. The concordance for the top 20 scored research ideas increased with sample sizes up to about 55 experts. At this point, the median level of concordance stabilized at 15/20 top ranked questions (75%), with the interquartile range also generally stable (14–16). There was little further increase in overlap when the sample size increased from 55 to 90. When analysing the ranking of all 205 ideas, the rank correlation coefficient increased as the sample size increased, with a median correlation of 0.95 reached at the sample size of 45 experts (median of the rank correlation coefficient = 0.95; IQR 0.94–0.96). Conclusions Our analyses suggest that the collective opinion of an expert group on a large number of research ideas, expressed through categorical variables (Yes/No/Not Sure/Don't know), stabilises relatively quickly in terms of identifying the ideas that have most support. In the exercise we found a high degree of reproducibility of the identified research priorities was achieved with as few as 45–55 experts.


Electrospray-ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) readily produces stable radical cation π-dimers of the superhelicenes. Energy-resolved collision experiments reveal the dissociation of the dicationic dimer into two singly charged superhelicenes. DFT calculations indicate that open-shell dications composed of two radical cations are thermochemically more attractive than the closed-shell dimer formed by a doubly charged and a neutral superhelicene.


Recommender systems (RS) play important roles to match users' information needs for Internet applications. In natural language processing (NLP) domains, large language model (LLM) has shown astonishing emergent abilities (e.g., instruction following, reasoning), thus giving rise to the promising research direction of adapting LLM to RS for performance enhancements and user experience improvements. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive survey on this research direction from an application-oriented view. We first summarize existing research works from two orthogonal perspectives: where and how to adapt LLM to RS. For the"WHERE"question, we discuss the roles that LLM could play in different stages of the recommendation pipeline, i.e., feature engineering, feature encoder, scoring/ranking function, and pipeline controller. For the"HOW"question, we investigate the training and inference strategies, resulting in two fine-grained taxonomy criteria, i.e., whether to tune LLMs or not, and whether to involve conventional recommendation model (CRM) for inference. Detailed analysis and general development trajectories are provided for both questions, respectively. Then, we highlight key challenges in adapting LLM to RS from three aspects, i.e., efficiency, effectiveness, and ethics. Finally, we summarize the survey and discuss the future prospects. We also actively maintain a GitHub repository for papers and other related resources in this rising direction: https://github.com/CHIANGEL/Awesome-LLM-for-RecSys.


Hydrogen is an alternative to conventional heavy marine fuel oil following the initial strategy of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Although hydrogen energy has many advantages (zero-emission, high efficiency, and low noise), it has considerable fire and explosion risks due to its thermal and chemical characteristics (wide flammable concentration range and low ignition energy). Thus, safety is a key concern related to the use of hydrogen. Whereas most previous studies focused on the terrestrial environment, we aim to analyze the effects of the ship's motion on hydrogen dispersion (using commercial FLUENT code) in an enclosed area. When compared to the steady state, our results revealed that hydrogen reached specific sensors in 63% and 52% less time depending on vessel motion type and direction. Since ships carry and use a large amount of hydrogen as a power source, the risk of hydrogen leakage from collision or damage necessitates studying the correspondence between leakage, diffusion, and motion characteristics of the ship to position the sensor correctly.


INTERVIEW WITH GENNADY GERASIMOVThe perpetually witty Gennady Gerasimov was the Soviet Union's foreign ministry spokesman during the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe, and he famously labeled Soviet policy toward those events the "Sinatra Doctrine." In this lighthearted but informative interview, he speaks about the genesis of the Sinatra Doctrine label, Gorbachev's attitude toward the 1989 revolutions, the "Prague group" of new political thinking, and the lessons of Sinatra for Putin's conundrum in the "near abroad."Demokratizatsiya: Tell us how the whole "Sinatra Doctrine" business came about.Gerasimov: A friend of mine, I guess it was a birthday or something, gave me this coffeetable book about Ol' Blue Eyes written by his daughter. And only by chance, looking at the index, I found something which was a big surprise . . .[Reading from book]When the Kremlin announced that it would not object if Hungary left the Warsaw Pact or if East Germany reunited with West Germany, Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady Gerasimov appeared on a syndicated TV program and said, "Frank Sinatra had a very popular song, 'I Had It My Way.' So Hungary, Poland, every other country has its own way. They decided which road to take. It's their business. And we watch, watch closely, but do not interfere." He called the new policy "The Frank Sinatra Doctrine." Said dad: "I'm honored to have my name associated with freedom of choice and people's dreams for a better life. I think it's marvelous." Vice President Dan Quayle said the Bush administration was encouraged by Mr. Gerasimov's comment, adding, "We hope that perestroika succeeds. But as they talk about the Frank Sinatra Doctrine, also remember the Nancy Sinatra doctrine in song-These Boots Are Made for Walking.'"1Demokratizatsiya: That's excellent. And just by chance? You know, I was talking with Pavel Palazchenko and I asked him the following. Nobody expected a party regional secretary from a small southern province and another party secretary from a small southern USSR republic to revolutionize the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. And yet they did. What happened? What was the source or impetus for the dramatic change in foreign policy?Gerasimov: Very simple-Sinatra. Everything returns to Sinatra. What is happening today in Kyrgyzstan? Same thing. We want it our way. What happened in Ukraine? In the latest issue of this magazine [Novae vremya, no. 10, March 2005], there's an article about the Bratislava summit. And look at this. The explanation refers also to the Brezhnev and Sinatra doctrines. It also appears in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Do you know who Carlos Fuentes is? . .Demokratizatsiya: Of course, a Mexican hard-left anti-American writer.Gerasimov: That is right, anti-American. He mentioned that "I would like to know when the Sinatra Doctrine will come to the Caribbean. If the Soviet Union is rejecting the Brezhnev Doctrine, then it's time the United States rejected the Monroe Doctrine and change it to the Marilyn Monroe Doctrine, and jump into bed with anyone."This is to show that this Sinatra Doctrine, which was born by accident-it was not prepared-has taken on a life of its own. And in Bratislava, the question also was what to do with all these countries. You know? Let them go their own way. And if you saw Putin last night talking about the events in Kyrgyzstan, he said that we're going to support what they are going to decide. It's the same thing.The bottom line of the Sinatra Doctrine is very simple-noninterference in foreign affairs. It was just a label that happened to be picked up, which I don't mind at all.Demokratizatsiya: Yes, I wrote an essay on it a while back. But what is surprising was the lack of debate among Soviet elites to counter the Sinatra Doctrine. Why do you think that is?Gerasimov: There was no debate in the Kremlin, because Kremlin and debate don't go together. Since Lenin, it was all formalities and meetings and unilateral declarations-everything was decided before that. …


The amplification and overexpression of Her2 proto-oncogene have been found to be associated with the development and progression of human breast cancer. A polymorphic valine allele at codon 655 of the Her2 gene (Her2(V655)) was suggested by some authors to be a susceptible genetic factor for the development of breast cancer. The Her2 polymorphism at codon 655 was investigated in 304 Korean women including 177 patients with breast cancer. The association between Her2 genotype and Her2 protein overexpression was also examined in breast cancers by immunohistochemistry. Her2(V655) was not associated with a significant breast cancer risk (odds ratio (OR), 1.792; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.459-6.991). The frequency of homozygous or heterozygous valine allele increased in stage 2 patients (OR, 1.67; 95% CI, 0.67-4.19), and patients in stages 3 and 4 (OR, 3.36; 95% CI, 0.85-13.42) compared to patients in stage 0. However, an association between the presence of the valine allele and the overexpression of Her2 protein could not be demonstrated. These results suggest that Her2 polymorphism at codon 655 is not associated with the development of breast cancer in Korean women. However, there is a possibility that the valine allele at codon 655 might be related to increased risk of breast cancer progression.


This thesis describes the design and implementation of InfoFinder Mobile, a user interface for search on mobile devices. The main focus of the thesis is the design of a usable user interface that accomodates the constraints that are present on today's mobile devices. A form of discount usability engineering is used, with particular focus on functionality, usability testing, and continuous use of design heuristics for evaluation. Multiple user interface designs are created and tested using paper mock-ups, and the final design is implemented as a fully functional client for the Windows Mobile platform.


Two management systems and five timing alternatives for cull cows were compared. Data were measured at intervals for cull cows on grass vs. in a dry lot from October to April. Cows in both treatments gained weight initially but average daily gain declined following the first 42 days and cost of gain generally increased for longer feeding periods. Overall, net returns for grass-fed cows exceeded those for dry lot cows for each period at and beyond 111 days. Regression results revealed average daily gain and beginning weight positively affected net returns while feed cost per gain was inversely related to net returns.


During the last decade, governments have shown increasing interest in curbing the growth of regulation by requiring that one or more regulations be removed before a new regulation can be added. We provide a comprehensive review of this innovation in regulatory policy. There are three main conclusions that flow from our analysis: First, while some governments claim this policy has made regulatory agencies more sensitive to regulatory costs, none of the countries we review has demonstrated that this policy innovation has actually led to improvements in economic efficiency. Second, all of these policies are implemented in conjunction with a requirement related to the economic impact of regulations. Typically, the economic requirement is that the costs associated with the new regulation be less than the costs associated with the regulations being removed. For existing applications, these costs have been defined narrowly, and they do not provide a good measure of the full social costs of a policy. The US appears to be adopting a markedly different approach that will consider both economic costs and benefits. Third, we find support for the hypothesis that centrist or conservative political parties are more likely to implement these policies. We argue that the requirement to remove one or more new regulations before adding a new regulation is best understood in terms of symbolic politics.


The adventures of CyberThunder (Tony) and CyberPrincess (Emma) continue in The Savvy Cyber Kids at Home: The Defeat of the Cyber Bully! While playing an online game, CyberPrincess and CyberThunder encounter a cyber bully. Throughout the book, Tony and Emma learn strategies on how to appropriately respond to a bully online. Like most important life lessons, teaching online safety begins in early childhood. The Savvy Cyber Kids are just the right playmates for preschool children and Emma and Tony speak their language. Through traditional early childhood teaching tools, this colorful book reinforces the message of online safety with pictures and rhyme. This playful tool and the Savvy Cyber Kids friends teach our children how to appropriately respond to a cyber bully before they start playing in the virtual world.


Robot as an assistant to orthopedic surgery has been over nearly 20 years. Better accuracy and repeatability can be provided to doctors, especially young under-experienced physicians, by robots. The common systems can be divided into automatic systems, semi-automatic systems, passive systems, according to the degree of automation. It can also be grouped into navigation robots, cutting guide robots, etc. based on the usage in surgeries. Various types of robots that suitable for different areas have advantages and disadvantages. This article summarizes the development history of robots in the medical field and orthopedics, describes the normal working patterns and procedures, lists and evaluates some common robot systems in the field of orthopedics, and gives some prospects for its future.


In her recent work, Nancy Folbre (2020, 2021) undertakes an ambitious effort: constructing an intersectional political economy that aims to identify the common mechanisms and logic underpinning the many wrongs that characterise capitalism. In this paper, we focus on what we deem the three fundamental theoretical pillars of her approach. First, she challenges the oppression/exploitation distinction within Marxian political economy and proposes a broader definition of exploitation that can take manifold forms. Second, she questions the Marxian concept of class, and emphasises the variety of forms of subordination and exploitation related to social identities that cannot be reduced to Marxian classes. Finally, she advocates a more comprehensive notion of the economy beyond a focus on capitalist relations of production. It is difficult to understate the theoretical relevance of these claims, which highlight the importance of various contemporary forms of injustice—of which the exploitation of workers by capitalists is only one. As a complement to the Marxian theory of exploitation and class, Folbre's approach would broaden our understanding of oppressive social relations. Yet as an alternative to Marxian political economy, it is ultimately unconvincing: a shift of emphasis to 'manifold exploitations', social groups, and the economy does not yield a gain in analytical insight but rather an impoverishment of our conceptual toolbox. The struggle against capitalism is different from the struggle against patriarchy and racism, even if the ultimate aim should be the removal of all structures of oppression and domination.


Digital photography as a non-invasive, simple, objective, reproducible, and practical imaging modality has been investigated for the wound healing assessment over the last three decades, and now has been widely used in clinical daily routine. Advances in the field of image analysis and computational intelligence techniques along with the improvements in digital camera instrumentation, expand the applications of standardized digital photography in diagnostic dermatology such as evaluation of tumours, erythema, and ulcers. A series of digital images taken at regular intervals carries the most informative wound healing indexes, color and dimension, that may help clinicians to evaluate the effectiveness of a particular treatment regimen, to relieve patient discomfort, to globally assess the healing kinetics, and to quantitatively compare different therapies; however, the extent of underlying tissue damage cannot be fully detected. This paper is an introductory review of the important investigations proposed by researchers in the context of clinical wound assessment. The principles of wound assessment using digital photography were shortly described, followed by review of the related literature in four main domains: wound tissue segmentation, automated wound area measurement, wound three dimensional (3D) analysis and volumetric measurement, and monitoring and evaluation of wound tissue changes during healing.


Summary Due to the impact of environmental pollution, the importance of producing high quality biofuels and to leverage organic waste that normally would have no use has increased over time. Through synthetic biology, it is possible to improve existing organisms to process waste that is traditionally not used for biofuel production, such as whey. With the redesign of metabolic pathways, it is possible to create connections for the implementation of new organisms that carry out functions that are normally not present in nature. From a computational point of view, metabolic pathways, which can be found in data sources as KEGG, can be converted to a graph data structure. These transformations enable the use of well-known algorithms, which enables the optimization of the analyses required to achieve the assembly of new organisms. The present work aims to design a tool for the transformation of metabolic pathways and the development of path finding algorithms that establish relevant links between compounds that are essential to the biofuel production process. As a result, a catalog of biobricks is created from the analysis of a subset of paths which can be used in the design stage of the synthetic assembly of the E. coli bacteria. The assembly's structure and functions are characterized according to the pieces used. Finally, new constructions are visualized with the goal of demonstrating and supporting the analysis processes, thus assisting people that work in the field of Synthetic Biology. Availability Pathways Analyzer is accessible at: https://gitlab.com/lvasquezcr/pathways-analyzer/


Yeasts cells isolated from dry yeast were immobilized in alginate and agarose to form beads. The fermentation of ethanol from cheese whey was optimized with respect to temperature, pH, and rpm. A comparative study was performed between immobilized and free cells to get the maximum ethanol production Results revealed that 35°C temperature, 4.5 pH and 60 rpm is the optimized condition for yeast immobilized in agarose bead. Similarly, 35°C temperature, 5.0 pH, 60 rpm is the optimized condition for yeast immobilized in alginate bead and 35°C temperature, 5.0 pH, 80 rpm is the optimized condition for the free yeast cell respectively. Immobilised cell resulted 4.25% ethanol with alginate bead whereas 4.35% with agarose bead and 4.30% with free cell after three days of incubation under optimized conditions. When the same cell immobilized beads were reused, obtained 1.8% ethanol with agarose and 1.7% ethanol with alginate bead. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/jncs.v30i0.9388 Journal of Nepal Chemical Society Vol. 30, 2012 Page:  159-164 Uploaded date : 12/20/2013


Scholars have long recognized that Soul and Body, an Old English poem that depicts a damned soul berating the body it once inhabited, was intended to serve as a spiritually prophylactic work. The soul is brutal as it enumerates the sins the body has committed, describes the body's sorry physical state, and anticipates the even greater punishment the body will experience until and beyond Judgment Day. The eschatological message of the poem is clear: don't be like the owner of this body. Instead, live a devout, religiously productive life, and, most importantly, always consider the future consequences of your actions. (1) This message is perhaps more complete in the version of the poem that survives in the Vercelli Book, Soul and Body I, which concludes with a complementary address made by a blessed soul who praises its former body for the good works it committed and essentially spells out a prescription for eschatological success. The Exeter Book's Soul and Body II, however, offers only the damned soul's diatribe, and thus leaves its audience feeling much less optimistic. (2) One of the most striking features of Soul and Body His its extensive use of bodily imagery: the gruesome state of the decaying body is described in chilling detail. (3) Little is left to the imagination as the poem recounts the systematic destruction of numerous body parts, including the hands, fingers, head, tongue, teeth, and eyes. While later medieval treatments of the body and soul theme are often this specific, if not more so, in their depiction of the horrible things that happen to the body after death, in an Anglo-Saxon context, this invocation of the fragmented, mortified body is all but unique among treatments of the body and soul theme, and within the corpus of Old English literature more generally. (4) The singularity of this description has attracted the attention of many of the poem's critics, most of whom have interpreted it in the larger eschatological context of the poem: the gruesome images are intended to serve essentially as a scare tactic designed to inspire readers to consider the implications of their earthly actions. (5) What critics have generally not attempted, however, is to understand other possible functions the decaying body might have performed in Anglo-Saxon England beyond prompting fear and disgust. Allen Frantzen, who has identified penance as a cultural context necessary for interpreting the poem's imagery, is an exception. (6) Penance, Frantzen explains, demands that the living body must serve as the site of intense physical suffering for the soul to gain access to heaven, and this requirement licenses the body's extreme mortification. Understood as such, the poem's description of decay serves as an example of the medical metaphor frequently employed in penitential texts, which, as Frantzen notes, "compares sins to wounds or disease and confession and penance to their cure." (7) Soul and Body thus employs corporeal imagery as a means of appealing to a widely recognized and religiously vital practice. In this essay, I argue that the poem's depiction of the decaying body should also be viewed in another context: Anglo-Saxon medicine, which is concerned with the restoring and maintaining the health and well-being of the physical body. While the description of the body in Soul and Body II might be largely unprecedented in the literary corpus, Anglo-Saxon medical treatises traffic almost exclusively in depictions of sick or injured bodies, often, as in the poem, in pieces. Importantly, the medical literature also acknowledges that the Anglo-Saxons were concerned about the maintenance of their physical bodies in a way that was, at least in some part, separate from the Christian focus on corporeal abnegation that is central to Frantzen's argument. For example, many medical provisions prescribe the application of salves or the consumption of animal or vegetable matter to cure not spiritual but mundane physical ailments such as headaches, stomachaches, watery eyes, or scabs. …


Introduction Parenteral nutrition associated liver disease (PNALD) is a life-threatening complication of long-term 1. PNALD can manifest as steatosis, cholestasis (each of which can lead to fibrosis and cirrhosis) and biliary complications. PN patients who develop cirrhosis have a very poor prognosis nutrition parenteral1, yet there are few studies and no guidelines on how to monitor or risk stratify in order to intervene before advanced fibrosis has developed. Method We describe the burden of PNALD in our cohort of home PN patients and identify risk factors for developing PNALD. We present preliminary data using non-invasive markers (Fib-4 score2 and Fibroscan3) to estimate stage of fibrosis, comparing them to histological staging in patients who went on to have liver biopsies, in order to evaluate their potential for monitoring progression of PNALD in clinical practice. Results 73 HPN patients were included (excluding palliative patients with metastatic malignancy and those on PN <12 months); mean age 51.2+/-16 years, median duration of PN 34 months. 69 patients had Fib-4 score calculated, 19 had Fibroscans and 7 had liver biopsies. 16.4% had cholestasis (2 of ALP/GGT/bil>1.5x ULN for 6 months), 43.8% had a Fib-4 score indicating intermediate to high risk of fibrosis (>1.3 in under 65 or >2 in over 65 year olds2). At liver biopsy, the majority (6) had advanced fibrotic liver disease, including (2) with cirrhosis. Raised Fib-4 score was associated with ESPEN classification of intestinal failure (IF)1 and short bowel (<50 cm) (see table). There was a significant correlation between fib-4 score and liver stiffness on Fibroscan (R=0.88). Patients with advanced fibrosis on histology had a liver stiffness >13 kPa and Fib-4 score >1.3/2. Fibroscan tended to overestimate fibrosis compared to histology, particularly in the presence of cholestasis. % patients ESPEN classification of IF SB length A B C D <50 cm >50 cm Fib 4 score>1.3/2 12.5 28.6 22.7 50 52.9 22.2 Cholestasis 0 14.2 18.2 35.2 11.7 20.3 Conclusion PNALD is a significant problem in patients on HPN, and is related to classification of IF and length of small bowel. Non-invasive scores may be useful to identify and monitor those at highest risk of advanced liver disease. However, further study is required to validate non-invasive scores against histology in this cohort if they are to be incorporated into clinical practice. References . ESPEN guidelines on chronic intestinal failure in adults. Pironi, et al. Clin Nutr. (2016) . Age as a Confounding Factor for the Accurate Non-Invasive Diagnosis of Advanced NAFLD Fibrosis. McPherson, et al. Am J of Gastro. Oct 2016 . Non-invasive evaluation of liver fibrosis using transient elastography. Castera, et al. J Hepatol2008 Disclosure of Interest None Declared


The wide gap in maternal mortality ratios worldwide indicates major inequities in the levels of risk women face during pregnancy. Two priority strategies have emerged among safe motherhood advocates: increasing the quality of emergency obstetric care facilities and deploying skilled birth attendants. The training of traditional birth attendants, a strategy employed in the 1970s and 1980s, is no longer considered a best practice. However, inadequate access to emergency obstetric care and skilled birth attendants means women living in remote areas continue to die in large numbers from preventable maternal causes. This paper outlines an intervention to address the leading direct cause of maternal mortality, postpartum haemorrhage. The potential for saving maternal lives might increase if community-based birth attendants, women themselves, or other community members could be trained to use misoprostol to prevent postpartum haemorrhage. The growing body of evidence regarding the safety and efficacy of misoprostol for this indication raises the question: if achievement of the fifth Millennium Development Goal is truly a priority, why can policy makers and women's health advocates not see that misoprostol distribution at the community level might have life-saving benefits that outweigh risks?


Dengue continues to be a significant health burden for individuals living in its endemic region. One of the strategies to reduce this burden requires targeting the vector agent, Ae. aegypti, in which intracellular bacterium Wolbachia has proven to be attractive in achieving this aim. Using Wolbachia-infected (WI) mosquitoes to wipe out the Wolbachia-uninfected (WU) ones comes with a maternal-inherited advantage known as cytoplasmic incompatibility, but Wolbachia itself exerts some fitness cost to their host. Also, the effect of imperfect maternal transmission from the WI mosquitoes could be a factor. Despite the successful introduction of WI Ae. aegypti mosquitoes at a small scale, how the method works and the likelihood of success at a larger scale is not fully understood. In this study, we analyze the invasive prospects of Wolbachia by developing a model that introduces the WI mosquitoes into a wild-type Ae-aegypti population. We study the interactions between key parameters (host fitness and imperfect maternal transmission) that determine whether WI mosquitoes will be suppressed or will dominate. Our analyses show a reproduction fitness threshold exists above which the WI mosquitoes will always dominate, and below which WI mosquitoes may co-exist with the non-Wolbachia infected mosquitoes. We show that cytoplasmic incompatibility alone is not enough for WI mosquitoes to dominate as both its fitness and the possibility of mixed offspring play a critical role. In the absence of WI mosquitoes with greater fitness than the wild-type mosquitoes, small introductions of WI mosquitoes will not lead to invasion. However, under the same circumstances, stable co-existence of both types of mosquito is possible. Hence direct killing of wild-type mosquitoes combined with Wolbachia introduction might be an effective strategy in the fight against dengue.


This paper provides a closed-form solution to the geolocation problem arising in the generation of digital elevation models (DEMs) via both stereo and interferometric synthetic aperture radar techniques. The proposed solution is found with no approximations in an arbitrary Cartesian reference system, thus efficiently allowing the generation of DEMs in a chosen cartographic projection. Moreover, it is amenable of an easy and precise sensitivity analysis that exploits the full three-dimensional nature of the problem, thus being particularly useful when high-squinted and/or crossed-track acquisitions are considered.


obJective The authors' aim in this paper is to prove the feasibility of resting-state (RS) functional MRI (fMRI) in an intraoperative setting (iRS-fMRI) and to correlate findings with the clinical condition of patients pre- and postoperatively. methods Twelve patients underwent intraoperative MRI-guided resection of lesions in or directly adjacent to the central region and/or pyramidal tract. Intraoperative RS (iRS)–fMRI was performed pre- and intraoperatively and was correlated with patients' postoperative clinical condition, as well as with intraoperative monitoring results. Independent component analysis (ICA) was used to postprocess the RS-fMRI data concerning the sensorimotor networks, and the mean z-scores were statistically analyzed. results iRS-fMRI in anesthetized patients proved to be feasible and analysis revealed no significant differences in preoperative z-scores between the sensorimotor areas ipsi- and contralateral to the tumor. A significant decrease in z-score (p < 0.01) was seen in patients with new neurological deficits postoperatively. The intraoperative z-score in the hemisphere ipsilateral to the tumor had a significant negative correlation with the degree of paresis immediately after the operation (r = - 0.67, p < 0.001) and on the day of discharge from the hospital (r = - 0.65, p < 0.001). Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis demonstrated moderate prognostic value of the intraoperative z-score (area under the curve 0.84) for the paresis score at patient discharge. the parameters, significant of the


Abstract: The diagnostic accuracy of AI/RHEUM, an experimental expert system for support in the diagnosis of rheumatic diseases, was assessed using a collection of data in a cohort of 1,570 consecutive outpatients of a Dutch rheumatological clinic. Computer diagnoses based on these data and diagnostic predictions made by rheumatologists were compared with reference diagnoses that had been obtained by consensus of rheumatologists after 6-12 months follow-up. Performance of the tested version of the AI/RHEUM knowledge base is presented by various methods. Sensitivity varied between 29% and 100% for different rheumatological diseases. Average sensitivity and specificity for all 26 diagnoses present in the knowledge base were 67% and 98%, respectively. Performance according to the level of confidence indicated that 78% of the "definite", 65% of the "probable", and 33% of the "possible" conclusions made by AI/RHEUM were in agreement with the reference diagnoses. These results approximated the predictions made by rheumatologists after a single, initial examination. The system was less accurate than it had appeared in previous evaluation studies with complex clinical cases. The AI/RHEUM knowledge base needed refining to diagnose early rheumatic complaints. This study further illustrates the need for objective and informative parameters for expressing accuracy of diagnostic support systems.


HARRIET ELIZABETH FISHER: The Chinese Inquisition: Xi Jinping's War on Corruption
Under the direction of Gang Guo

 An integral part of Chinese political life is the rampant corruption that infests every level of Chinese government. China's current leader, Xi Jinping, has initiated a hardline anti-corruption campaign that, for the first time in history, has targeted both low-level officials (small flies) and high-level officials (big tigers). This thesis is concerned with the factors that have motivated Xi to initiate these unprecedented reforms. I have identified three potential motivations: office, policy, and legitimacy. The office motivation refers to Xi's attempt to consolidate his own power as leader of China, as well as the power of his political faction, represented by how many positions of power they hold. Xi may also be trying to achieve a policy goal in one of three areas: monetary policy, policy concerning economic development, or policies to bolster legitimacy. Finally, legitimacy is concerned with the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, which has deteriorated with the spread of corruption. I posit that Xi is driven by all three motivations, which I seek to prove by doing a survey of the media concerning the general situation surrounding the "swatting" of little flies, as well as a series of case studies, one for each of the big tigers that have been caught in Xi's campaign.
 Through this analysis, I have arrived at two conclusions. First, based on the evidence collected, Xi is driven by all three motivations, as they are all interconnected. Secondly, as to the specific kind of policy Xi is trying to adopt, there is evidence for the initiation of economic development policies and legitimacy policies, although there was no mention of monetary policy. Unfortunately, these results are only speculation at best. The study of corruption is notorious for its inherent lack of transparency; this fact, coupled with the Chinese government's lack of transparency, make Chinese corruption particularly difficult to study with any measure of certainty. Thus, we cannot discern what has motivated Xi to initiate his anti-corruption campaign, and may never know.


In this study, the energy balance approach was used to estimate evapotranspiration (ET) of red pepper plots managed with four different irrigation strategies (100, 70, and 40% of ET, and rainfed) with drip irrigation systems in the sub-humid Bafra Plains located in northern Turkey. In order to calculate components of energy balance, hyper-spectral reflectance, infrared surface temperature, and net radiation data were measured using nadir-looking hand-held proximal sensing devices over the experimental plots. Additionally, soil moisture levels were monitored frequently with a well-calibrated neutron moisture meter and a soil water budget approach was used to calculate actual ET values. Current findings revealed that the response of red pepper crops to water stress offered a significant opportunity to detect different levels of spectral reflectance, surface temperature, and net radiation. Furthermore, statistical comparisons revealed significant relationships between measured and estimated daily ET (r = 0.92 and RMSE = 0.83) and cumulative ET (r = 0.99 and RMSE = 43.98) values. Estimation errors for daily and cumulative ET using the energy balance algorithm were 27% and 14%, respectively. Overall, present results indicated that the energy balance algorithm with field level remotely sensed data had a great potential to estimate ET of red peppers at plot scale.


This article aims to demonstrate how electricity generation, through renewable sources of energy, can contribute to mitigate the current trend of increasing the emissions of greenhouse gases in the supply to Brazilian electric market. The supply is analyzed taking into account the two big national subsystems: national grid and the isolated systems, which supply electricity to the Amazonian Region, including big cities such as Manaus and Porto Velho. The former is mostly supplied by hydropower generation and with an increasing role played by natural gas while the latter is basically supplied by diesel and fuel oil generation. Preliminary analysis signalize that the introduction renewable energy projects on the national grid will create small impact on the economic performance of the projects. By the contrary, the impact can be significant on the internal rate of return. of projects in the two other markets.


Abstract Longitudinal next-generation sequencing of cancer patient samples has enhanced our understanding of the evolution and progression of various cancers. As a result, and due to our increasing knowledge of heterogeneity, such sampling is becoming increasingly common in research and clinical trial sample collections. Traditionally, the evolutionary analysis of these cohorts involves the use of an aligner followed by subsequent stringent downstream analyses. However, this can lead to large levels of information loss due to the vast mutational landscape that characterizes tumor samples. Here, we propose an alignment-free approach for sequence comparison—a well-established approach in a range of biological applications including typical phylogenetic classification. Such methods could be used to compare information collated in raw sequence files to allow an unsupervised assessment of the evolutionary trajectory of patient genomic profiles. In order to highlight this utility in cancer research we have applied our alignment-free approach using a previously established metric, Jensen–Shannon divergence, and a metric novel to this area, Hellinger distance, to two longitudinal cancer patient cohorts in glioma and clear cell renal cell carcinoma using our software, NUQA. We hypothesize that this approach has the potential to reveal novel information about the heterogeneity and evolutionary trajectory of spatiotemporal tumor samples, potentially revealing early events in tumorigenesis and the origins of metastases and recurrences. Key words: alignment-free, Hellinger distance, exome-seq, evolution, phylogenetics, longitudinal.


Objective The aim of the study was to compare effect of goal-directed fluid replacement using plethysmography variability index (PVI) guidance versus liberal fluid regimen in elective laparoscopic bariatric surgery on pulmonary oxygenation and gastrointestinal, cerebral, and renal function. Materials and methods This randomized-controlled trial included 60 consecutive patients who were 20-40 years of age with BMI greater than 40 scheduled for elective laparoscopic bariatric surgery between June 2010 and December 2011. Patients were randomized into ′liberal fluid′ (LF) or ′goal-directed′ (GD) fluid infusion group. All patients received 500 ml lactated Ringer′s solution then 1-2 ml/kg/h in the GD group or 6-8 ml/kg/h in the LF group. A 5-min bolus infusion of 200 ml of 6% hydroxyl ethyl starch was administered, if PVI goes above 14, urine output less than 0.5 ml/kg/h, heart rate greater than 100/min, or decreased systolic blood pressure less than 20% of baseline value. This colloid bolus was repeated until 20 ml/kg is reached then lactated Ringer′s solution was used for further boluses. The primary outcome measures were length of hospital stay, postoperative hypoxemia assessed by PO 2 /FiO 2 ratio, and serum lactate level. Results Intraoperatively, lactate level and volumes of infused Ringer′s lactate and hydroxyl ethyl starch were significantly lower in the GD group (P < 0.001). PVI was significantly higher in the GD group (P < 0.001). Intraoperatively, lactate level and urine output were significantly lower in the GD group (P < 0.001). Postoperatively, the GD group showed significantly lower urine output (P < 0.001) and shorter time to recovery (P < 0.001) to first bowel movement (P < 0.001) and to resume normal diet (P < 0.001). Hypoxemia, diuresis, and fatigue were significantly more frequent in the LF group. No significant difference was seen in other postoperative complications. Conclusion Goal-directed, PVI-guided intraoperative fluid replacement significantly improved clinical outcome compared with liberal fluid intake. PVI guidance provides a sensitive and accurate determinant of fluid responsiveness and allowed for lower fluid intake. We recommend GD intraoperative fluid replacement with PVI and arterial blood gases (ABG) guidance in morbidly obese patients undergoing laparoscopic bariatric surgery.


Hard spheres are one of the most fundamental model systems in soft matter physics, and have been instrumental in shedding light on nearly every aspect of classical condensed matter. Here, we add one more important phase to the list that hard spheres form: quasicrystals. Specifically, we use simulations to show that an extremely simple, purely entropic model system, consisting of two sizes of hard spheres resting on a flat plane, can spontaneously self-assemble into two distinct random-tiling quasicrystal phases. The first quasicrystal is a dodecagonal square-triangle tiling, commonly observed in a large variety of colloidal systems. The second quasicrystal has, to our knowledge, never been observed in either experiments or simulations. It exhibits octagonal symmetry, and consists of three types of tiles: triangles, small squares, and large squares, whose relative concentration can be continuously varied by tuning the number of smaller spheres present in the system. The observed tile composition of the self-assembled quasicrystals agrees very well with the theoretical prediction we obtain by considering the four-dimensional (lifted) representation of the quasicrystal. Both quasicrystal phases form reliably and rapidly over a significant part of parameter space. Our results demonstrate that entropy combined with a set of geometrically compatible, densely packed tiles can be sufficient ingredients for the self-assembly of colloidal quasicrystals.


Why does venture capital work in some countries but not in others? This clinical study of the first German venture capital firm examines the difficulties of creating a venture capital market in a bank-based financial system. The analysis identifies the problem of creating appropriate governance structures to protect investor returns. It exposes the difficulties of established banks - not to mention government - to devise venture investment strategies. It identifies the availability of high quality entrepreneurs as a critical complement. And it provides a reinterpretation of the hypothesis of Black and Gilson (1997), arguing that the existence of an active stock market is a necessary, but by no means sufficient condition for the development of venture capital.


Borrelia burgdorferi, the causative agent of Lyme disease in humans, is maintained in a complex biphasic life cycle, which alternates between tick and vertebrate hosts. To successfully survive and complete its enzootic cycle, B. burgdorferi adapts to diverse hosts by regulating genes required for survival in specific environments. Here we describe the first ever use of transposon insertion sequencing (Tn-seq) to identify genes required for B. burgdorferi survival in its tick host. We found that insertions into 46 genes resulted in a complete loss of recovery of mutants from larval Ixodes ticks. Insertions in an additional 56 genes resulted in a >90% decrease in fitness. The screen identified both previously known and new genes important for larval tick survival. Almost half of the genes required for survival in the tick encode proteins of unknown function, while a significant portion (over 20%) encode membrane-associated proteins or lipoproteins. We validated the results of the screen for five Tn mutants by performing individual competition assays using mutant and complemented strains. To better understand the role of one of these genes in tick survival, we conducted mechanistic studies of bb0017, a gene previously shown to be required for resistance against oxidative stress. In this study we show that BB0017 affects the regulation of key borrelial virulence determinants. The application of Tn-seq to in vivo screening of B. burgdorferi in its natural vector is a powerful tool that can be used to address many different aspects of the host pathogen interaction.


This study was undertaken to investigate the effects of urbanisation on the river flow regime and
water quality. The links between environmental changes represented by rainfall and Urban
Extent (URBEXT) with the changes in the river flow, river temperature and dissolved oxygen
were explored. This thesis focuses on the following question "does urbanisation has an effect on
the river water quantity and quality changes?". Two urbanising catchments in the United
Kingdom, the river Ray at Water Eaton and the river Cut at Binfield were selected for this study.
As a comparison, nearby similar sized rural catchments, the river Enborne at Brimpton and the
river Winterbourne at Bagnor were also selected.
There was no significant time-trend of rainfall found in all urban and rural catchments in all
aggregations (annual, summer and winter). For river flow, positive time-trends were found in the
two urban catchments in all aggregations with the exception of no significant trend was found in
the winter in the river Cut at Binfield. The log-log regression analysis found that in the two urban
catchments, URBEXT alone had a strong positive relationship with the changes in mean annual
flow. When climate variability is included, the URBEXT signal was amplified. Contrasting results
were found in all rural catchments where there was no significant evidence of time-trend in the
river flow.
Increasing temperature and dissolved oxygen values were found in all aggregations in the river
Ray, while in the river Cut these values increasing only in the winter. URBEXT had a significant
positive relationship with temperature and dissolved oxygen in the river Ray. When rainfall and
river flow are included, the URBEXT signal was reduced. This study also found a strong positive
relationship between river flow and the increase of dissolved oxygen value in the river Ray. On
the contrary, there was no significant time-trend in temperature and dissolved oxygen was found
in all rural catchments.
Urbanisation was found to be a potential driver of the increase in river flow, which might lead to
detrimental rather than beneficial effects. Nevertheless, the effect on water quality was
somewhat spurious and showed mixed results. Despite not showing any significant trend, the
present temperature and dissolved oxygen values in the more natural environment of rural
catchments still showing a better state.


This paper addresses the problem of supervised classification of remote sensing images in the presence of incomplete (nonexhaustive) training sets. The problem is analyzed according to two different perspectives: 1) description and recognition of a specific land-cover class by using single-class classifiers and 2) solution of multiclass problems with single-class classification techniques. In this framework, we analyze different one-class classifiers and introduce in the remote sensing community the support vector domain description method (SVDD). The SVDD is a kernel-based method that exhibits intrinsic regularization ability and robustness versus low numbers of high-dimensional samples. The SVDD technique is compared with other standard single-class methods both in problems focused on the recognition of a single specific land-cover class and in multiclass problems. For the latter, we properly define an easily scalable multiclass architecture capable to deal with incomplete training data. Experimental results, obtained on different kinds of data (synthetic, hyperspectral, and multisensor images), point out the effectiveness of the SVDD technique and provide important indications for driving the choice of the classification technique and architecture in the presence of incomplete training data.


Background: Any deviation from the standard posture is considered a postural alteration; although this is not necessarily considered a disease, it may substantially affect the quality of life of surgeons. The aim of this study was to evaluate backbone alignment and posture in surgeons and physicians in order to identify and quantify the positioning of body segments and investigate possible postural alterations. Methods: Thirty subjects participated in the study group (CI) and corresponded to the following inclusion criteria: physician, aged 30–60 years, with at least 2 years of surgical practice and performing 4 weekly surgeries lasting 2 h each. The comparative group (CL) included 32 clinical physicians, in the same age range as the CI group. The control group (CO) included 33 non-physicians in the same age range as the CL and CI groups, who satisfied the following exclusion criteria: chronic muscle-skeletal pain or acute intense pain, diagnosis of or sequelae from orthopedic, rheumatologic, or respiratory disease, or prosthetic use. Re sults: We observed a high incidence of postural changes in the CI group, including varus thrust, hyperextension, lumbar hyperlordosis, and more foot support in the heel, and other misalignments. The results indicate that the activities of surgeons may be considered as a risk for the musculoskeletal system. Because the specialty of plastic surgery is particularly surgical, the risk is even higher in these surgeons. Conclusions: Surgical activity provokes progressive postural changes in surgeons and may reduce useful time in the profession and hinder the quality of life.


SUMMARY The Ethiopia/Afar hotspot has been frequently explained as an upper mantle continuation of the African superplume, with anomalous material in the lower mantle under southern Africa, rising through the transition zone beneath eastern Africa. However, the significantly larger amplitude low velocity anomaly in the upper mantle beneath Ethiopia/Afar, compared to the anomalies beneath neighboring regions, has led to questions about whether or not alongstrike differences in the seismic structure beneath eastern Africa and western Arabia are consistent with the superplume interpretation. Here we present a new P-wave model of the hotspot's deep structure and use it to evaluate the superplume model. At shallow (< ∼400km) depths, the slowest velocities are centered beneath the Main Ethiopian Rift, and we attribute these low velocities to decompression melting beneath young, thin lithosphere. At deeper depths, the low velocity structure trends to the northeast, and the locus of the low velocity anomaly is found beneath Afar. The northeast-trending structure with depth is best modeled by northeastward flow of warm superplume material beneath eastern Africa. The combined effects of shallow decompression melting and northeastward flow of superplume material explain why upper mantle velocities beneath Ethiopia/Afar are significantly slower than those beneath neighboring East Africa and western Arabia. The superplume interpretation can thus explain the deep seismic structure of the hotspot if the effects of both decompression melting and mantle flow are considered.


Abstract Objective This study aims to determine the efficacy of multifetal pregnancy reduction (MFPR) in improving obstetrical outcomes for trichorionic triplet gestations. Study Design Retrospective cohort study of patients with multiple gestations delivered by a single maternal-fetal medicine practice from 2005 to 2016. We compared patients with trichorionic triamniotic triplet gestations who underwent MFPR to those with an ongoing triplet pregnancy (TT), as well as primary dichorionic diamniotic twin gestations (DD). Logistic regression analysis was used to control for any differences at baseline. Results There were 42 patients in the MFPR group, 43 women in the TT group, and 693 women in the DD group. Comparing MFPR to TT, the likelihood of preterm birth < 34 weeks was similar (31.0 vs. 39.5%, adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 0.63, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.21, 1.87). There were no differences in gestational age at delivery, pregnancy loss < 24 weeks, or the likelihood of all, none, or at least two babies surviving to discharge. Mean birth weights were significantly higher and cesarean delivery rates lower for MFPR (2,128 vs. 1,836 g, p = 0.028 and 69 vs. 86%, aOR: 0.25, 95% CI: 0.06, 0.94) as compared with the TT group. MFPR had significantly worse outcomes than DD. Conclusion In trichorionic triamniotic triplet pregnancies, our study suggests that obstetrical outcomes may not be as dramatically improved with MFPR as seen in older studies.


Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has stimulated a wide range of medical image-based diagnosis and treatment in fields such as cardiology and ophthalmology. Such applications can be further facilitated by deep learning-based super-resolution technology, which improves the capability of resolving morphological structures. However, existing deep learning-based method only focuses on spatial distribution and disregards frequency fidelity in image reconstruction, leading to a frequency bias. To overcome this limitation, we propose a frequency-aware super-resolution framework that integrates three critical frequency-based modules (i.e., frequency transformation, frequency skip connection, and frequency alignment) and frequency-based loss function into a conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN). We conducted a large-scale quantitative study from an existing coronary OCT dataset to demonstrate the superiority of our proposed framework over existing deep learning frameworks. In addition, we confirmed the generalizability of our framework by applying it to fish corneal images and rat retinal images, demonstrating its capability to super-resolve morphological details in eye imaging.


The classification of nonstationary signals in a noisy environment is a difficult task. In this paper a modified version of S-Transform technique has been proposed for classification of power signal disturbances. The S-Transform is a signal processing technique which is used for visual localization, detection, pattern classification. S-Transform has good ability in gathering high frequency signals and suppressing the lower frequency signal. The S-Transform has been used to extract features from the nonstationary power disturbance signals.The extracted features are fed as the input support vector machine classifier for power signal disturbance pattern classification. To enhance the pattern classification accuracy the extreme learning classifier has been proposed and comparison results has been presented.


BACKGROUND
Nursing homes (NHs) provide care to a complex patient population and face the ongoing challenge of meeting resident needs for specialty care. A NH telemedicine care model could improve access to remote specialty providers.

INTRODUCTION
Little is known about provider interest in telemedicine for specialty consults in the NH setting. The goal of this study was to survey a national sample of NH physicians and advanced practice providers to document their views on telemedicine for providing specialty consults in the NH.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
We surveyed physician and advanced practice providers who attended the 2016 AMDA-The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine Annual Conference about their likelihood of referral to and perceptions of a telemedicine program for providing specialty consults in the NH.

RESULTS
We received surveys from 524 of the 1,274 conference attendees for a 41.1% response rate. Respondents expressed confidence in the ability of telemedicine to fill existing service gaps and provide appropriate, timelier care. Providers showed the highest level of interest in telemedicine for dermatology, geriatric psychiatry, and infectious disease. Only 13% of respondents indicated that telemedicine was available for use in one of their facilities.

DISCUSSION
There appears to be unmet demand for telemedicine in NHs for providing specialty consults to residents.

CONCLUSIONS
The responses of NH providers suggest support for the concept of telemedicine as a modality of care that can be used to offer specialty consults to NH residents.


We propose a method for classical simulation of finite-dimensional quantum systems, based on sampling from a quasiprobability distribution, i.e., a generalized Wigner function. Our construction applies to all finite dimensions, with the most interesting case being that of qubits. For multiple qubits, we find that quantum computation by Clifford gates and Pauli measurements on magic states can be efficiently classically simulated if the quasiprobability distribution of the magic states is non-negative. This provides the so far missing qubit counterpart of the corresponding result [V. Veitch et al., New J. Phys. 14, 113011 (2012)] applying only to odd dimension. Our approach is more general than previous ones based on mixtures of stabilizer states. Namely, all mixtures of stabilizer states can be efficiently simulated, but for any number of qubits there also exist efficiently simulable states outside the stabilizer polytope. Further, our simulation method extends to negative quasiprobability distributions, where it provides probability estimation. The simulation cost is then proportional to a robustness measure squared. For all quantum states, this robustness is smaller than or equal to robustness of magic.


The United States Government and the Indonesian Government have agreed on a treaty to reduce deforestation called the TFCA Sumatra Program (Tropical Forest Conservation Action-Sumatera). Development of community forests is expected to reduce the rate of deforestation. However, the pattern of effective community forest management to be applied in reducing the rate of deforestation in Sumatera was unknown, especially in the TFCA program in Bengkulu. The study was conducted in Air Sulau Village and Kayu Ajaran Village, South Bengkulu Regency. The respondents selection was conducted by purposive sampling. This study aimed to analyze the pattern of community forest management in the TFCA Sumatera in Bengkulu. The data was collected using observations, interviews, and literature study. The analysis was performed using descriptive-qualitative and quantitative methods. The results showed that the pattern of development community forests in the TFCA program in Bengkulu was agroforestry with predominantly agricultural crops such as rubber. Meanwhile, woody plants such as albizia have just been developed on community forest enterprises in Bengkulu, combined with seasonal crops such as cassava and maize, or with herbs like turmeric and ginger. Based on the fund sources, the community forest pattern in TFCA Sumatera in Bengkulu belongs to the community forest pattern with full subsidy. Keywords: Community forests, TFCA-Sumatera, agroforestry, development patterns


The impact of a stroke and the individual neuronal regeneration capacity varies highly from patient to patient. In this context, a consistent scoring method is very desirable to quantify the motion impairment and to evaluate the result of rehabilitation. Traditional internationally recognized clinical scores (e.g. Barthel Index, Berg Balance Scale, etc.) are widely used but fail to assess the functional mobility or to assist clinicians in the planning of personalized therapy. For this reason, a new score (the ReHabX score) has been developed, which evaluates 6 functional gait motion criteria, namely "trunk movement", "arm movement", "leg movement", "gait speed", "gait fluency", and "stability/risk of falling".

The gait of 59 stroke patients was measured using motion capture technology, and evaluated by a team of medical experts using the ReHabX score. 168 parameters (so-called "features") were identified and extracted from each measurement. This list of features included conventional gait metrics, discretized joint angles, and non-traditional gait parameters designed to represent specific pathological gait characteristics.
Due to the good reliability and normal distribution of the scorings, a linear model was chosen for the reconstruction of the clinicians' ratings from the features.
By a stepwise multilinear regression algorithm, features which allowed the reproduction of the functional scores provided by the medical experts were selected.

For each scoring criteria, 3 to 6 features were inserted in the corresponding linear model.
The accuracy of the numerical models was evaluated using both the traditional measures of the goodness of fit, and a novel technique. In this context, a novel so-called "bubble plot" was developed, which allows the visualization of the level of agreement among the raters together with the comparison of the numerical scoring with the average medical score. It was thereby shown that the determination of the individual criteria using the gait features accurately corresponds to the reliability of the medical experts.

The numerical scores obtained are a valuable contribution to the diagnostics of motion impairment that ensure objectivity and reproducibility. They may support the creation of a personalized therapy and speed-up the post-stroke recovery process.


The ultimate goal in robotics is to create machines which are more independent and rely less on humans to guide them in their operation. There are many sub-systems which may be present in such a robot, one of which is path planning — the ability to determine a sequence of positions or configurations between an initial and goal position within a particular obstacle cluttered workspace. Many classical path planning techniques have been developed, but these tend to have drawbacks such as their computational requirements; the suitability of the plans they produce for a particular application; or how well they are able to generalise to unseen problems. In recent years, evolutionary based problem solving techniques have seen a rise in popularity, possibly coinciding with the improvement in the computational power afforded researches by successful developments in hardware. These techniques adopt some of the features of natural evolution and mimic them in a computer. The increase in the number of publications in the areas of Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Genetic Programming (GP) demonstrate the success achieved when applying these techniques to ever more problem areas. This dissertation presents research conducted to determine whether there is a place for Evolutionary Approaches, and specifically GA and GP, in the development of future path planning techniques. Simon Kent i March 1999 Evolutionary Approaches to Robot Path Planning


The high computational expenditure of the least squares boundary residual method restricts its application to certain problems. It is therefore necessary to utilize the inherent simplicity of special cases together with convergence-optimization criteria in order to reduce computational time and storage requirements. The problem of the coaxial-to-circular waveguide junction is presented as an illustrative example of how this is performed. A selection criterion is also suggested to determine the optimum weighting factor.


Although there seems to be a broad consensus among economists that purely floating or completely fixed exchange rates (the so-called corner solutions) are the only viable alternatives of exchange rate management, many countries do not behave according to this paradigm and adopt a strategy within the broad spectrum of exchange rate regimes that is limited by the two corner solutions. These intermediate regimes are characterized by significant foreign exchange market interventions of central banks and a certain degree of exchange rate flexibility. We develop a new empirical methodology that identifies three different forms of floating on the basis of a central bank's intervention activity: pure floating (no interventions), independent floating (exchange rate smoothing), and managed floating (exchange rate targeting). Our cross-country study shows that exchange rate targeting is at least as important as exchange rate smoothing. Subsequently we present a monetary policy framework in which central banks use the exchange rate as an operating target of monetary policy. We explain the mechanics of interventions and sterilization and we explain why a central bank has an interest of controlling simultaneously the exchange rate and the short-term interest rate. We derive the monetary policy rules for our two operating targets from a simple open economy macro model in which the uncovered interest parity condition and the Monetary Conditions Index play a central role.


Abstract:This article argues that María Lugones's articulation of decolonial feminism, as a theory and potential political praxis, both disappears Blackness and subjugates African American women—their scholarship, their language, and the materiality of their Black "flesh"—within the same subordinate position the coloniality of gender decries. Expanding Hortense Spillers's concept of "pornotroping," this article puts into relief the ideological and rhetorical investments in deploying the figure of the Black woman to institute an argument about gender, but only to erase this figure from the political and affective registers of its theorization. This essay argues that Lugones's theorization of decolonial feminism effectively reifies the libidinal dynamics it denounces: turning Africans into captives, into commodities for use and abuse. It questions the camouflaging and decontextualization of Black feminist interventions that consider the singularity of antiblack violence as a model for thinking about violence as a phenomenological and ontological global order, critiquing the category of gender incipit to the process of enslavement and colonialism that ushers in the very modernity that decoloniality frames itself against.


Children learn about the world around them by listening, making observations and interacting with others. Picture books can provide both teachers and students a tool with which readers can examine and evaluate the ways in which they see the world and relate to others. The utilization of children's picture books with themes of social justice in the primary classroom can be an excellent tool to help teachers create space for their students to grapple with social justice issues in an age-appropriate manner. The goal of this study was to analyze award-winning children's picture books that have been identified as having themes of social justice in order to ascertain the messages present in each book and consider whether these messages can inspire social activism within the classroom and school community.


New experimental equilibrium data of the reaction of dimethyl carbonate (DMC) and phenol to methyl phenyl carbonate (MPC) and the subsequent disproportion and transesterification reaction of MPC to diphenyl carbonate (DPC) are presented and interpreted in terms of the reaction equilibrium coefficients. Experiments have been carried out in the temperature range between 160 and 200 °C and for initial reactant ratios of DMC/phenol from 0.25 to 3. By employing activities instead of "only" mole fractions in the calculation of the reaction equilibrium coefficients, the influence on the reactant ratio DMC/phenol on the derived equilibrium values for the reaction of DMC to MPC could be reduced, especially for temperatures of 160 °C. The activity based equilibrium coefficient for the transesterification reaction from MPC with phenol to DPC and methanol is constant within experimental uncertainty and, therefore, largely independent of the initial reactant ratio DMC/phenol at temperatures of 160 and 180 °C. The temperature dependence of the equilibrium coefficients Ka,1 and Ka,2 has been fitted by applying the well-known Van't Hoff equation, resulting in the expressions ln Ka,1 = −2702/T[K] + 0.175 and ln Ka,2 = −2331/T[K] − 2.59. It has been demonstrated that these equations have fair, in the case of ln Ka,1, and excellent, in the case of ln Ka,2, predictive capabilities, even for experimental conditions that deviate significantly from those used in this study. Hence, it is expected that the derived temperature dependent correlations for Ka,1 and Ka,2 based on activities can be used in reactive distillation models to assess different process configurations in the manufacture of DPC starting from DMC and phenol.


People with diabetes mellitus (DM) represent a population group that is at high risk of developing a poor prognosis for COVID-19.Having diabetes can lead to serious illness, ICU stay, and death from COVID-19.The current study included 150 participants with diabetes, 100 of whom had COVID-19 (46 males, 54 females), and 50 had diabetes only (28 males and 22 females), aged between 37 and 69 years. The current situation is in the isolation center for people infected with the Corona virus at Al-Hussein Teaching Hospital and Shatrah General Hospital in Thi-Qar Governorate.The study included the impact of COVID-19 infection and its effect on pancreatic function.The results of the current study recorded a significant increase in fasting blood glucose concentration and cumulative glucose concentration in diabetic patients infected with Covid-19 virus compared to diabetic patients only by gender, the results also indicated an increase in fasting glucose and cumulative glucose levels in both male and female COVID patients compared to only diabetic patients. The concentration of pancreatic hormones also increased significantly in both male and female patients infected with Covid-19 virus compared to diabetic patients. According to age groups and BMI, cumulative and fasting glucose concentrations did not register a significant difference according to age groups, while according to BMI, cumulative and fasting glucose concentrations increased in patients with normal weight. Trypsin concentration increased significantly in the first age group, while glucagon increased in the second age group. Trypsin and glucagon did not score a significant difference according to BMI


An attempt was made to compare the Se and Hg abundance's in liver, kidneys and blood after simultaneous intraperitoneal injections of inorganic mercury (as HgCl2) and SeO2 or organic Se-compound (i.e. seleno-cystine, seleno-methionine or selenodiglutathione). Instrumental neutron activation analysis was applied as the analytical method due to the advantages of both its sensitivity and chemically non-destructive procedure. No neurological or other lesion symptoms of Hg and Se intoxication were found. Especially high concentrations of Hg and Se in liver and blood were found after simultaneous i.p. injections of HgCl2 and Se-compounds. Moreover, significantly high abundance's of Se and Hg in liver and blood were found after simultaneous injections of seleno-methionine and HgCl2. On the other hand, only for kidneys the Hg content after the single injections of HgCl2 was considerably higher in comparison with the simultaneous injections of Hg and Se. We suggest that Se-compounds protects against renal lesions by decreasing the concentration of Hg in kidneys. Hg2+ ions are bounded by selenohydryl groups of the metabolites of injected Se-compounds. Moreover, the binding yield of Hg2+ ions with the metabolites of Se-compounds depends upon the chemical form of injected Se-compounds.


A study was conducted during the period of October 2013 to May 2014 at Pedstock Investments, Harare, Zimbabwe. The primary objective of the study was to assess growth and yield performance of new Israeli hybrid tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) varieties against Nemo-Netta variety under Zimbabwe conditions. The experimental was laid in a Randomized Complete Block Design with four treatments replicated four times. Treatments consisted of Israeli varieties (72061, 72205 and 79272) and Nemo-Netta as a control. Seedlings were transplanted at a spacing of 30cm x 1m in-row and interrow respectively and spacing between blocks was 50 cm. Data was analyzed using GenStat 14th edition and means were separated using Least Significant Difference (LSD) at 5% level of significance. There were no significant differences (P > 0.05) in stem thickness and distance between clusters among tomato varieties. There were significant differences (P < 0.05) in leaf area, days to maturity, shelf life and total fresh yield among varieties. Variety 79272 had the highest leaf area (131.2 m2) but was not significantly different from variety 72205 (127.1m2) whilst variety 72061 had the lowest leaf area (115.6m2) but was not significantly different from Nemonetta variety (116.3m2). Nemo-Netta took the shortest time to maturity (65.25 days) followed by variety 72061 (68.5 days) whilst variety 79272 took the longest time to maturity (90.25 days) followed by variety 72205 which was intermediate (70.25 days). Variety 72205 had the highest yield (153.6t/ha) followed by variety 79272 (134.6t/ha) which was not significantly different from Nemonetta variety (129.1t/ha). Variety 72061 produced the highest yield (116.5t/ha).  Variety 72205 had fruits with the highest shelf life (25.5 days) followed by Nemonetta variety (23.75 days). Variety 72061 had the shortest shelf life (20.25 days) followed by variety 79272 which was intermediate (21.25 days).  Results of this study show that Israeli tomato variety 72205 is better than Nemo-Netta variety in terms of yield and shelf life. Therefore farmers are recommended to grow 72205 and variety 79272 though further research is recommended in terms of diseases tolerance and other quality parameters


The 22 October issue presents the wildly improbable coincidence of containing both a letter about parapsychology and "spontaneous cases" (p. 436) and a "spontaneous case." For on page 463, as part of my comments on the 1965 Nobel Laureates in Medicine or Physiology, there appears the phrase "The operator 'loses'. . .," though what I had actually written was "The operator 'closes'...." Now since I happen to have some doubts about the validity of the operator concept, doubts that I certainly would not consciously have wished to introduce on this happy occasion [though I did voice them earlier in Science 144, 816 (1964)], this strange error can be explained only as a Freudian slip by a member of the editorial staff of Science acting under the telekinetic influence of an author's psyche.