The last decade has seen an increase in our knowledge of the archaeology of the Libyans in the western desert of Egypt. This paper considers the extent to which the Libyans possessed a metals technology. Without access to indigenous ore bodies, it has been widely assumed that the Libyans lacked any metallurgical know- how. The discovery of crucibles at Marsa Matruh and Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham has not changed this view. In this paper it is argued that the Libyans possessed a pragmatic knowledge based on the need to repair and re-work metal objects gained through trade or war. The crucibles represent material evidence for this that has been over looked by scholars with overly pessimistic conceptions of the adaptive capacities of nomadic and semi-nomadic societies. DOI:10.2458/azu_jaei_v01i1_hulin


Principles of invasion biology are brought to bear on the question of whether the medfly is established in California. Since its first discovery in 1975, the pest has been captured in the Los Angeles Basin in nine separate years including every year from 1986 through 1990. The trend has become distinct--the intervals between captures are decreasing, the numbers captured are increasing, and the area over which they are detected is expanding. In addition, appearances are seasonal and captures in recent years have occurred in many of the same cities and neighborhoods where medflies were found several years before. Evidence suggests that the medfly may be established in the Los Angeles area and that previous eradication programs did not eradicate the medfly from California. It follows that detection, exclusion, and eradication protocols may need to be reexamined.


In Barclays, the Supreme Court held that California's formulary apportionment corporate tax system does not violate the Foreign Commerce Clause because double taxation is not a certain result of such a system. While the Court came to the correct conclusion, its reasoning is erroneous, making future litigation likely.

This article argues that the Court should have clearly explained the meaning of objectionable double taxation in regards to corporations subject to both state and foreign taxation. The article further explains ways of defining what may constitute objectionable double taxtation in this context, and the remedies available to alleviate the problem. The article concludes by urging national governments to relieve subnational double taxation through bilateral agreements.


Objectives & Background Inadvertent intra-arterial cannulation (IIAC) occurs in some Emergency Department (ED) patients. Interpretation of point of care blood gas analysis (BGA) by a senior emergency physician (EP) may be used to screen for this. We conducted a prospective observational pilot study to investigate the rate of IIAC in the ED setting and to explore feasibility questions to inform a future larger study. Objectives: ▸ To assess the performance of medical students and foundation year one doctors in ultrasound (US) assessment of cannula location. ▸ To determine the time taken to complete US assessment of one cannula. ▸ To assess EP confidence in BGA interpretation. ▸ To explore whether or not venous BGA values varied by site of cannula. Methods Five medical students and FY1 doctors received a two-hour training session from an EP in US assessment of peripheral cannula location. Competence was confirmed by five observed US assessments. Data collectors performed US assessment of cannulas inserted in a convenience sample of ED patients over a two week period (83 patients). Their confidence and time taken to complete US assessment were recorded. Routine BGA obtained during cannula insertion were shown to an EP whose confidence in interpretation was recorded. Data collectors completed a survey to record their experience of various aspects of the study. Results 100% of data collectors found using ultrasound to determine the location of a cannula to be 'very easy' or 'quite easy'. Adequate US views were obtained in 94% of examinations. Mean duration of US assessment was 11 minutes 25 seconds. 87% of cannulae had a routine BGA taken and EPs were 'quite confident' or 'very confident' in their interpretation in 97% of BGAs. There was no difference in blood gas values between different insertion sites. Conclusion Junior doctors and medical students can be trained in US assessment of cannula placement. BGA is frequently performed during cannula insertion. EPs interpret BGA confidently. Insertion site does not complicate interpretation. It is feasible to use this methodology for larger studies. Figure 1 Figure 2


Purpose: Chemokine receptor CXCR2 is associated with malignancy in several cancer models; however, the mechanisms involved in CXCR2-mediated tumor growth remain elusive. Here, we investigated the role of CXCR2 in human ovarian cancer. Experimental Design: CXCR2 expression was silenced by stable small hairpin RNA in ovarian cancer cell lines T29Gro-1, T29H, and SKOV3. Western blotting, immunofluorescence, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, flow cytometry, electrophoretic mobility shift assay, and mouse assay were used to detect CXCR2, interleukin-8, Gro-1, cell cycle, apoptosis, DNA binding of NF-κB, and tumor growth. Immunohistochemical staining of CXCR2 was done in 240 high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma samples. Results: Knockdown of CXCR2 expression by small hairpin RNA reduced tumorigenesis of ovarian cancer cells in nude mice. CXCR2 promoted cell cycle progression by modulating cell cycle regulatory proteins, including p21 (waf1/cip1), cyclin D1, CDK6, CDK4, cyclin A, and cyclin B1. CXCR2 inhibited cellular apoptosis by suppressing phosphorylated p53, Puma, and Bcl-xS; suppressing poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase cleavage; and activating Bcl-xL and Bcl-2. CXCR2 stimulated angiogenesis by increasing levels of vascular endothelial growth factor and decreasing levels of thrombospondin-1, a process likely involving mitogen-activated protein kinase, and NF-κB. Overexpression of CXCR2 in high-grade serous ovarian carcinomas was an independent prognostic factor of poor overall survival (P < 0.001) and of early relapse (P = 0.003) in the univariate analysis. Conclusions: Our data provide strong evidence that CXCR2 regulates the cell cycle, apoptosis, and angiogenesis through multiple signaling pathways, including mitogen-activated protein kinase and NF-κB, in ovarian cancer. CXCR2 thus has potential as a therapeutic target and for use in ovarian cancer diagnosis and prognosis. Clin Cancer Res; 16(15); 3875–86. ©2010 AACR.


An editorial in the New York Times of 28 December 1999 praises the US Veterans Administration (VA) hospital system for publicly reporting their medical errors. The VA reported 3000 medical mistakes resulting in 700 patient deaths during the 18 months up to the start of 1999. There will be strong pressure for all US hospitals to follow this painful path of public admission of error in spite of the threat of litigation. This expectation will not stop at the borders of the USA.

Ernest Amory Codman, MD (1869–1940) has already "been there and done that". He created his own "End Result Hospital" in Boston, Massachusetts, 1911–1917 where errors in diagnosis and treatment were recorded for every patient, all patients were followed years after discharge to evaluate the end results of care, and all this was publicly reported in the hospital's annual report. For example: "Patient #18, Feb. 11, 1912. Female 38. Intermittent right-sided abdominal pain and …


into it. ° Even though control charts are introduced earlier than in most other engineering statistical texts, where it is typically thrown in at the end of the book under an SPC chapter, its insertion at the end of the unstructured multisample study chapter is awkward. ° The print quality of my particular text is marginal. Some of the pages are blurry and hard to read. ° For engineering students, the probabilitychapter is too long; it is the longest chapter of the book. If I used this book for my class, I would use only the topics that are important to the subsequent analysis chapters. ° The book does not fully capitalize on student use of software. There are detailed descriptions of how to perform calculations by hand that, because of software and calculators, no one would ever do by hand. For example, approximately Ž ve pages were dedicated to examples of how to standardize a normal random variable and look up a cumulative probability in a table in the back of the book. The bottom line is that no textbook ever has all the features that an instructor wants. However, this is the best textbook that I have seen for an introductory statistics course for engineering students and as it is only the Ž rst edition it should improve in subsequent editions. I am recommending it to my colleagues.


Full duplex (FD) communication uses the same time-frequency resource elements for uplink and downlink transmissions. Compared to half-duplex (HD) systems, this improves the effective spectrum usage, but at the cost of additional self-interference and increased co-channel interference (CCI). Promising improvements in full duplex downlink performance are well established in the literature, but the improvement in uplink is marginal or even severely degraded due to strong down-link signals. This paper focuses on managing CCI in an FD network by spatially controlling downlink and uplink transmit powers. We show that uplink performance can be improved through the introduction of downlink power control, but this slightly reduces downlink performance. We introduce a distance-based user scheduling to address this reduction. Furthermore, we have also shown that optimal overall performance can be achieved by designing appropriate uplink and downlink power control factors. We used the Matern Cluster process to model the network. The analytical results we formulated is verified by extensive Monte Carlo simulations. This work is submitted to IEEE transaction on Wireless Communications. Currently it is under review.


Abstract—The process of finding a route between the transmitter and the receiver node in the Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANets) is a renewed issue that is becoming more and more interesting to the researchers as this type of networks  grow and expand. The dynamic nature of MANET and the limited capabilities of wireless nodes in terms of memory size and battery charge are the most important obstacles to the routing (path-finding) process between nodes. In this research, we introduced a new protocol based on the well-known DSR protocol to add a mechanism that controls the RREQ Flooding process, which aims to reach more stable (life-long) routes while reducing the overhead of routing process caused by link breakage between nodes and reduce the overhead of network flooding with RREQ messages with each attempt to find a path. In this proposed mechanism, a specific group is selected from within the devices adjacent to the transmitter to be sent RREQ so that these devices are selected based on the stability evaluation criterion. The stability criterion is calculated based on three weighted factors: the speed of the node, the out-degree value (the number of adjacent nodes), and the number of tracks stored in the device memory. The proportion of devices selected is automatically changed adaptively to ensure that the expected throughput of this network is achieved. The proposed protocol was tested using simulation where results showed that ASDSR proved an enhancement in route stability about (0.13), and a decrease in the number of deleted routes by (9%), while maintaining the expected packet delivery ratio of the original DSR by about (0.86).


Previous research has shown that personal contacts are powerful intermediaries in transmitting job lead information for both job seekers and employers and therefore could contribute to various forms of gender inequality by, for example, providing higher-quality job leads to men than to women. The authors use a unique data set that includes information on the quality and source of individual job leads to explore whether the overall quality of job lead information depends solely on various attributes of recipients' contacts or whether job lead quality is also conditional on gender. These data are based on a diverse sample of professional, technical, and managerial workers from California. Findings indicate that the overall quality of the respondent's job leads is a product of their gender and that of the person providing the lead. In addition, net of a variety of factors, women and men with young children at home receive significantly lower-quality job leads.


The current study aimed to explore peoples' experiences of social and organisational justice, and in doing so asked three central questions. The first focused on whether there was a relationship between the different dimensions of justice, and the second on the commonalties and differences in peoples' perceptions of justice. The third question looked at whether demographic variables, as markers of social identity, were predictive of such justice perceptions. The study was quantitative in nature, and made use of a non-experimental, partially exploratory, cross-sectional design. Four hundred and eight six employees of a large South African manufacturing organisation completed a self report questionnaire containing questions about a range of biographic, domestic, financial, employment, and religious information, as well as two measures of social and organisational justice perceptions. Once preliminary analyses were carried out to ensure the psychometric properties of the measuring instruments and explore the data set, two key statistical procedures were used to answer the research questions, namely a cluster analysis and a Chi Squared Automatic Interaction Detection or CHAID analysis. Results of these analyses provided some evidence to argue that justice perceptions in different contexts, while not strongly related, cannot be seen in isolation from another, and that a more integrative or reciprocal approach to understanding different justice perceptions needs to be adopted. Further, the results of the cluster analysis demonstrated that a range of key justice concerns differentiated groups from another, including collective versus individual concerns, personal versus impersonal events, as well as concerns related to the different types of relationships that exist. Finally, the CHAID analysis provided some indication of which demographic variables were the best determinants of social and organisational justice perceptions, and the ways in which demographic variables interacted with one another in relation to peoples' experiences of justice. Part 1: Theoretical and Conceptual Background Part 2: Present Research


The reported 68%-86% overall success rates for sex reassignment surgery must be viewed cautiously; the lack of long-term follow-up studies makes these statistics misleading. There is evidence suggesting that some gender dysphoric patients benefit primarily from sex reassignment surgery. Most such patients, however, are secondary transsexuals who can benefit from various modes of psychotherapy. Sex reassignment surgery should only be considered as the last resort for a highly select group of diagnosed gender dysphoric patients. As physicians learn new ways to diagnose and treat transsexualism, either sex reassignment surgery will be abandoned as a routine treatment modality or new predictive variables for choosing suitable patients for sex reassignment surgery will be established.


We propose multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmitter power allocation which takes dissipation in the power amplifiers into account. We derive the equations of the general problem with full channel state information (CSI), discuss its challenges, and supply solutions in two special cases, namely for a multiple-input single-output channel with a linear beamformer constraint, and for a parallel MIMO channel. The proposed algorithms show substantial gains in terms of rate and total consumed power compared to previous state of the art over a wide range of parameter settings, and have low computational complexities.


Background: Mucopolysaccharidoses (MPS) are chronic progressive lysosomal
disorders (Six distinct types) which are inherited as autosomal recessive except MPS II which is inherited as X-linked recessive disorder
Patients and Methods: This study is designed to investigate a group of Egyptian
patients with MPS biochemically using screening test by electrophoretic separation of glycosaminoglycans and enzymatic assay in order to establish the diagnosis of the disorder and its subtypes, to prepare patients for enzyme replacement therapy. Also this will help in proper genetic counseling and prenatal diagnosis. Establishing a reliable rapid screening test for MPS is another aim of the study. The present study included 20 index cases suspected clinically as mucopolysaccardioses at the Medical Genetics Center, Ain Shams
University (ASUMGC).They were subjected to full history taking, thorough clinical examination, family pedigree construction, skeletal survey, abdominal ultrasound and echocardiography, quatitative assay of glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) by diemethylmethlene blue (DMB) is done.
Results: The level of urinary GAGs by two dimentional electrophoresis (DMB) test was high in all patients tested. After that the patients were subjected to 2-DEP to determine the pattern of GAGs for probable type of MPS. 11 cases (55%) showed big dermatan sulfate spot (Type I, II or VI). Seven cases (35%) showed hepran sulfate spot (Type III), 2 cases (10%) showed keratan sulfate spot (Type IV). Finally patients were subjected to enzyme analysis specific for each type of MPS to confirm diagnosis. Reaching a specific diagnosis is of
importance for genetic counseling and prenatal diognosis which is possible for all types of MPS.
Conclusion: Prenatal diagnosis was done by 2-DEP of the amniotic fluid for four mothers of affected patients of MPS. One fetus was proved to be affected with MPS III. Another fetus was affected with MPSII. The others fetuses were normal. Keywords : Mucopolysaccharidosis, Egypt. Egypt. J. Hum. Genet Vol. 9 (1) 2008: pp. 11-22


The organisation and control of the engineering product cycle is currently undergoing a drastic change and it seems probable that some of the skills being taught on our engineering courses will become obsolete. I shall briefly discuss some of the developments that we should consider in the evolution of strategies for teaching design in a way that will respond to the needs of industry . The engineer up to the 1930s was a good allrounder who could design a product for both function and production. This was because components were comparatively simple, quantities produced were relatively small and a limited range of materials and processes were available. Gradually, materials profilerated, the manufacturing processes to work them became more complex and components became more complicated. Consequently, no one person could be a total expert and effective design for production could only be brought about by employing specialists such as materials scientists and stress men.


A standard digital file format is very important for effective circulation of geophysical investigation results. The Society of Exploration Geophysicists of Japan (SEGJ) organized The Digital Standard Format Consortium and proposed a standard digital file format and web database system under the leadership of Public Works Research Institute of Japan (PWRI). The proposed standard digital format is mainly designed for the results of two-dimensional geophysical exploration methods and its format is based on XML. In the format, a two-dimensional geophysical section is represented as polygonal cells that are expressed as nodes and elements. The element is an arbitrary polygon which consists of the nodes. Physical properties are given to each node or element. Each node keeps its location. The file can contain not only geophysical property of a section but also survey line location, visualization parameter, and information about investigation as well. Activity of the Consortium includes 1) the development of a standard XML file format using a node-element model, 2) the development of Windows based graphic software, 3) the development of Web based graphic software, 4) the development of various accompanying software including a format converter supporting a standard XMF file generation, and 5) the collection of existing data and building databases. The establishment of the standard format enables us to store, share and distribute digital geophysical sections on the web. The system is expected to play an important role for the sustainable development of land and for disaster prevention through the nationwide information service on geophysical and geotechnical properties of the near-surfaces of Japan. The format can be used not only for investigations in Japan but also for any other country. We hope that the proposed format triggers the discussion and establishment of an international standard digital file format of geophysical investigations for engineering and environmental problems.


Water policy and regulation are of vital importance for unconventional gas mining, which may have large impacts on water availability and water quality. However, various studies indicate that regulators have insufficient knowledge to make informed policy decisions on unconventional gas mining. Based on this observation we conducted a study on the availability of knowledge of unconventional gas mining of attendees at the 4th and 5th Orange River Basin symposiums that are held annually in South Africa. The study focused on knowledge and perceptions of unconventional gas mining over the 2-year period from 2012 to 2013 due to important developments with regard to unconventional gas mining that took place in South Africa over this period, which could affect decision-makers' policy decisions on unconventional gas mining. Our results indicate that knowledge of this mining technique among decision-makers is limited, primarily because fact-based research is not readily available. Reliable facts on unconventional gas mining are required in order to effectively regulate this activity in South Africa. This paper argues for fact-based regulation and adaptive management as the science and technology of shale gas mining evolves.


A seismic line from the 2007 Dalders survey, Baltic Sea, has been re-processed and used along with well data as a basis for an investigation into the AVO behavior of the Faludden Cambrian sandstone reservoir. Line OP0701-260 is located in the southern part of the Baltic Sea with an approximate length of 52 km. The study profile lies within the Baltic Syneclise which is host to a significant thickness of the Paleozoic sediments. The area has been investigated for years for petroleum exploration and production. The Middle Cambrian sandstones are the most important reservoir rocks for hydrocarbon potential and CO2 storage potential in the Basin. 2D marine seismic data were acquired by Svenska Petroleum in 2007 and processed, but the existence of strong multiples, lack of good seismic image at depth and limited frequencies within the target zone were the significant reasons for reprocessing the data. In this study the seismic data are processed using processing software, Global Claritas, to create a new processing work flow by testing different processes and parameters to improve the processing workflow for a better stacked image. The final stacked image shows improvement in the signal to noise ratio and multiple removals. The improved stacked image shows strong reflections over the Cambrian interval which gives more confidence in the geological interpretation of the data. The B-9 well, which is located 82km south of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, sampled the Middle Cambrian interval, where P-wave velocity and density logs were recorded. Based on the good correlation between the seismic profile and the synthetic log especially for the Faludden sandstone, AVO modeling was performed based on the B-9 well. The response to changes in gas saturation and porosity within the reservoir sands are investigated. Hampson Russell AVO program was used to study the amplitude variation with offset at the Faludden sandstone interface in the seismic data. The results show a strong AVO anomaly is not anticipated associated with the Faludden interface. Different synthetic models were run for different petrophysical parameters to investigate how they can affect the AVO and stacked amplitude behavior of the data.


Due to their extraordinary properties, Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRPs) are used in a growing number of fields (automotive, military, aircraft, aerospace, wind turbines, sport, civil infrastructure and leisure). Since the matrix in CFRPs is polymer-based, these composites have poor resistance to fire; additionally, when exposed to high temperatures, they can burn or lose their thermo-mechanical stability. Moreover, the recent huge and continuous development of CFRPs opened the question related to their disposal and total dependence on fossil resources. This thesis focussed on epoxy-based CFRPs. In more detail, commercial epoxy resins have been modified and replaced with bio-based alternatives, and short recycled carbon fibers composites have been produced.
Two new bentonite-based organoclays were prepared with low cost reactants and mild reactions conditions and used to modify the flame behaviour of a commercial epoxy resin. The epoxy-modified resin flame behaviour was evaluated by cone-calorimeter and some significant improvements with just a 3 %wt loading level of organoclay were obtained. Furthermore, the possibility to recover and reuse carbon fibers by pyrolysis of CFRPs waste was studied: a validation of the recycling conditions and the treatments required to reuse recycled carbon fibers were assessed in order to obtain clean fibers and promote fiber/matrix adhesion in epoxy composites. Recycled carbon fiber were then used in a lab-scale composite manufacturing process and comparable mechanical properties for virgin and recycled short carbon fiber composites were achieved when an optimized coupled pyrolysis/oxidative process to CFRPs waste is applied. Finally, more sustainable CFRPs have been produced and characterized coupling highly bio-based epoxy systems, appropriately modified and optimized, and recycled carbon fibers. This latter work represents the first attempt aimed at replacing petroleum- BPA-based epoxy resins and high cost short virgin carbon fibers in the future CFRPs manufacturing processes.


In 2022 twenty-five million people are expected to purchase health insurance through exchanges to be established under the Affordable Care Act. Understanding how people seek information and make decisions about the insurance plans that are available to them may improve their ability to select a plan and their satisfaction with it. We conducted a survey in 2010 of enrollees in one plan offered through Massachusetts's unsubsidized health insurance exchange to analyze how a sample of consumers selected their plans. More than 40 percent found plan information difficult to understand. Approximately one-third of respondents had help selecting plans-most commonly from friends or family members. However, one-fifth of respondents wished they had had help narrowing plan choices; these enrollees were more likely to report negative experiences related to plan understanding, satisfaction with affordability and coverage, and unexpected costs. Some may have been eligible for subsidized plans. Exchanges may need to provide more resources and decision-support tools to improve consumers' experiences in selecting a health plan.


After analysis of its educational programs showed them to be deficient, Deaconess Hospital, Evansville, IN, undertook the development of a comprehensive, systematic program of education and training. First steps were the establishment of an independent department of education and the preparation of an official position on the use and value of educational programs within the hospital.


This article aims at achieving two distinct goals. The first is to extend the existing LM test of overdispersion to the situation where the alternative hypothesis is characterized by the correlated random effects model. We obtain a result that the test against the random effects model has a certain max-min type optimality property. We will call such a test the LM test of overdispersion. The second goal of the article is to draw a connection between panel data analysis and the analysis of multiplicity of equilibrium in games. Because such multiplicity can be viewed as a particular form of neglected heterogeneity, we propose an intuitive specification test for a class of two-step game estimators.


Tax compliance costs are the costs incurred by taxpayers in fulfilling their obligations according to tax rules and regulations. In an indirect tax mechanism such as GST, compliance cost is borne by GST registered companies as tax collectors at the point of sales of goods and services from consumer on behalf of the government. Tax literatures acknowledge the fact about tax compliance costs and how they burdened registered companies. Ever since the first day of implementation of GST in April 2015, the issue of the burden of tax compliance costs borne by GST registered companies has always remained a hot discussion amongst academics, politicians and businessmen. This paper examines the GST tax compliance costs incurred by registered GST companies in meeting their obligations as tax collectors from consumers to the government. This analysis is based on the experience of countries that had earlier experiences implementing GST. This paper then concludes by presenting data on the magnitude of compliance costs that are borne by the GST registered companies in those countries. This paper also shows the steps taken by the authorities in those countries to reduce the burden of tax compliance costs borne by the companies. The findings of this paper are useful for policy makers and decision makers for improvement and strengthening of policy implementation purposes.


As stated also in the title of the paper, the analysis proposed is contrary to normative microeconomics. Therefore, we do not intend to analyze the individuals, with the intent to show if they behave correctly or wrongly, economically speaking.Our intention is to follow the logic of the individuals that act in the economic markets, led by their own rationality and the way they manage to became aware of their needs.The purpose of the paper is to determine the necessary degree of rationality so as the expectations of the individuals match the results of their actions in order to fulfill hierarhically their needs. In this matter, we will explain why Sen and Kekes are mistaken when they tie some of needs to products.We will analyze the needs, same as the institutions that pass the test of time and belong firstly to the modern individual. The thing that modifies and can be linked to products is the level of satisfaction and the standard to which these needs are satisfied.


For Lisbon, a dominant national capital and increasingly internationalized city, the last 30 years have witnessed a period of dramatic growth, modernization and dynamism. As the socioeconomic landscape has changed, so too has the political and institutional one, with a significant evolution in the nature of systems of governance to manage, respond to and lead the city through this period of intense transition. Whilst increased global and particularly European integration has been an important driver to change, critically it has been the interplay of these global forces with the role and constitution of the national state and political developments at the level of the city, region and municipality that has shaped the evolutionary path of governance change. This article analyses recent governance change within Lisbon to argue that governance transition within Lisbon is characterized by significant change with regard to the relationships between public and private sectors, but also by strong continuities with regard to the dominant role of the central state in the absence of political devolution. The result is a governance system marked by structural constraints that limit the city's capacity to deal with current strategic challenges in an integrated, coordinated and inclusionary manner.


Electrospray and laser spray mass spectra of human alpha-lactalbumin and bovine ubiquitin were studied, with an emphasis on the denaturation induced by laser spray. There were no remarkable differences in the electrospray and laser spray mass spectra for acidic and basic aqueous solutions of alpha-lactalbumin in positive and negative modes of operations. This originates from the fact that this protein is tightly folded with four disulfide bonds. For ubiquitin, however, denaturation was induced by laser spray for the positive mode of operation and the [M+nH](n+) with a maximum of n = 13 was observed, i.e., all the acidic amino acid residues are fully neutralized (protonated). In contrast, the laser-induced denaturation was not observed for the negative mode of operation, i.e., denaturation of ubiquitin is largely suppressed in the negatively charged liquid droplets. The marked difference observed in the positive and negative modes of operations for ubiquitin is ascribed to the difference in the susceptibility of side-chain/main-chain interactions in the positive-ion excess and in the negative-ion excess liquid droplets. That is, the interactions between the basic residues and main-chain amide carbonyl groups (-NH(3) (+)***O=C< or -NH(2)***O=C<) which play an important role in stabilizing the protein structures are not so affected in the negative mode of operation but are weakened in the positive mode of operation.


In the past, new global illumination algorithms have usually been designed as a single module that was responsible for the simulation of all aspects of illumination in a scene. A recently developed alternative is the design of small and specialized algorithms (lighting operators) together with an infrastructure for creating more complex algorithms by connecting these building blocks – the Lighting Network. In this paper, we discuss the benefits of the Lighting Network approach for designing new and improved global illumination algorithms. Lighting Networks not only provide a flexible infrastructure for new algorithms, they also support a better theoretic understanding of the lighting simulation process. We show that a small number of global light propagation operators already provides the basis for creating many of todays illumination algorithms. Their illumination results are converted into more suitable representations by purely local conversion operators that are specific to an illumination algorithm. Varying the composition of these operators and introducing new elements allows us to create and explore the benefits of new simulation algorithms. We demonstrate the potential of Lighting Networks with several examples, implementing a diverse set of algorithms, such as density estimation, irradiance gradients, and a composite lighting simulation.


This paper considers how the delivery of public leisure services in Britain has been affected by the imposition of Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) on the management of facilities. In particular, it focuses on the changing relationship between the central and local levels of government, theorising a tripartite local response to CCT, incorporating local statism, post-Fordist rejection of CCT and post- Fordist compliance with the aims of the central administration. The paper then discusses the actual implementation of CCT, relating the theorised responses to those witnessed in practice. This results in the delineation of a continuum of stances, ranging from pragmatic forms of local statism, such as the protection of the former direct labour force, to centrist attempts to combine the ethics of socialism with the mechanics of the market, to an outright rejection of state organisation and control. The paper concludes that although legitimate attempts have been made to protect local services, the outcome of the CCT process has undoubtedly been the regeneration of public leisure provision away from its service roots towards a market model of provision.


If the use of anti-TNF trough levels (TDM) are proposed in case of loss of response (reactive attitude), a proactive strategy has not shown in most randomized trials its interest. The aim of this study was to analyze the predictive value of a decrease of TLI in IBD patients in terms of loss of response over time.

 This was a retrospective study that included all IBD patient followed in our university hospital. Eligible patients had to have IBD treated with IFX as maintenance therapy (5mg/kg/8weeks). Patients had to be in clinical remission of the disease at inclusion with calprotectin levels < 100 µg/g stool and therapeutic levels of IFX concentration (TLI > 5 µg/ml) on IFX mono- or combination therapy. IFX levels were analyzed by ELISA (Theradiag, France). Every two months, patients were reviewed in the day hospital with fecal calprotectin, TLI and a measure of the clinical activity score (CDAI for CD and Mayo clinical score for UC). Loss of response was defined for CD as a CDAI > 220 with fecal calprotectin > 250µg/g stool and for UC as a full Mayo score > 5 with an endoscopic Mayo score > 1. Low TLI during follow-up was defined as a level below 3 µg/mL. Patients who had dose optimization based on calprotectin or TLI alone were excluded from the study.

 145 patients (65% CD, mean age 34 years, disease duration 4.5 years) were included. The mean follow-up was 66 months. 79 patients (55%) showed a loss of response. A decrease of TLI was found in 65% of patients who relapsed within 6 months versus 33% in patients in long-term clinical remission (p=0.14). The predictive value of loss of response within 6 months was moderate in the presence of low IFX levels (sensitivity: 71%, specificity: 73%; PPV: 73%, NPV: 68%). Conversely, fecal calprotectin (> 250 µg/g stools) increase was strongly predictive of loss of response within 6 months (sensitivity: 85%, specificity: 85%). The association of the two markers (decrease of TLI and/or increase of fecal calprotectin) improved the predictivity of relapse in the follow-up (sensitivity: 90%, Specificity: 89%). For the 79 patients who relapsed, for 35% (28 patients) of the cases, the rise of fecal calprotectin preceded the fall of TLI but for 25% of the cases (25 patients), apparition of low TLI preceded the rise of fecal calprotectin.

 The decrease of TLI is n moderately predictive of a loss of clinical response in the short or medium term under IFX for IBD. These results may explain the negative results of a proactive attitude based on TDM alone. A proactive strategy based on TDM and fecal calprotectin could be very interesting but needs to be confirmed.


Five experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that psychosocial stress interferes with the estrous cycle of sheep. In experiment 1, ewes were repeatedly isolated during the follicular phase. Timing, amplitude, and duration of the preovulatory luteinizing hormone (LH) surge were not affected. In experiment 2, follicular-phase ewes were subjected twice to a "layered stress" paradigm consisting of sequential, hourly application of isolation, restraint, blindfold, and predator cues. This reduced the LH pulse amplitude but did not affect the LH surge. In experiment 3, different acute stressors were given sequentially within the follicular phase: food denial plus unfamiliar noises and forced exercise, layered stress, exercise around midnight, and transportation. This, too, did not affect the LH surge. In experiment 4, variable acute psychosocial stress was given every 1–2 days for two entire estrous cycles; this did not disrupt any parameter of the cycle monitored. Lastly, experiment 5 examined whether the psychosocial stress paradigms of experiment 4 would disrupt the cycle and estrous behavior if sheep were metabolically stressed by chronic food restriction. Thirty percent of the food-restricted ewes exhibited deterioration of estrous cycle parameters followed by cessation of cycles and failure to express estrous behavior. However, disruption was not more evident in ewes that also encountered psychosocial stress. Collectively, these findings indicate the estrous cycle of sheep is remarkably resistant to disruption by acute bouts of psychosocial stress applied intermittently during either a single follicular phase or repeatedly over two estrous cycles.


We present and investigate the problem of mining scenario-based triggers and effects from execution traces, in the framework of Damm and Harel's live sequence charts (LSC); a visual, modal, scenario-based, inter-object language. Given a 'trigger scenario', we extract LSCs whose pre-chart is equivalent to the given trigger; dually, given an 'effect scenario', we extract LSCs whose main-chart is equivalent to the given effect. Our algorithms use data mining methods to provide significant sound and complete results modulo user-defined thresholds. Both the input trigger and effect scenarios, and the resulting candidate modal scenarios, are represented and visualized using a UML2- compliant variant of LSC. Thus, existing modeling tools can be used both to specify the input for the miner and to exploit its output. Experiments performed with several applications show promising results.


Coal use for generation of electricity is used extensively world-wide accounting for 40% of total power generation. Even with reductions in use over the last 10 years, coal still accounts for 20% of total electrical generation in the United States. An often-overlooked aspect of Pulverized Coal (PC) combustion is the erosion and abrasion of the coal injection nozzles. Currently there are over 300 active PC boilers in the US and over 1000 worldwide, with each boiler having 20–40 high alloy cast injectors. Due to the high velocity of PC injection and associated elevated rates of metal loss, these nozzles require constant replacement. Replacement and costs associated with loss of revenue, required scaffolding and casting can be a significant part of Operation and Maintenance (O&M) of a PC boiler. In addition to the constant requirement for thousands of replacement injection nozzles every year, combustion performance, NOx reduction, carbon conversion and general boiler efficiency will be impacted by hardware that is out of specification, if not replaced in a "timely" manner.
 Significant research in the 1980's [1] provided some insight into the loss-of-metal process during PC injection, but limitations of existing hardware and software prevented more than an empirical methodology to be developed. In parallel with the literature work and research specifically for PC coal erosion rates, generalized efforts were employed and reported [6–9]. Meng [4] summarized model development for solid particles transported by a liquid or gas as highly empirical with little commonality between the models developed by the various researchers. Meng also made specific recommendations for less empiricism in model development methodology.
 Although there are several state-of-the-art empirical models [6, 8 & 9] more recently, semi-mechanistic models have been developed to predict solid particle erosion (e.g. Arabnejad et al., [17]) and have been successfully applied to sand erosion and abrasion in pipelines. In the current study, this method is being applied to PC injection nozzles coupled to detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The intent is to quantify nozzle material loss rates, due to impacting coal particles, as a function of geometry, local velocities, and coal properties. The method used is utilizing CFD to model flow of particles and their impingement velocity with the PC nozzles. Then erosion models that are a function of impingement speed, angle, frequency and materials properties to examine erosion rates. The insight gained from the modeling will allow improved nozzle design, increased duty life, more cost-effective supply, and elevated injection velocity. In particular, low NOx coal combustion can be critically dependent on utilization of elevated injection velocities, which previous empirical models discourage.
 This paper reports on the application of the erosion equations and methods developed at the Erosion/Corrosion Research Center of The University of Tulsa for predicting solid particle erosion of a PC injection nozzle that shows details of erosion patterns and parameters that are responsible for elevated erosion tendencies in the field. RJM-International is familiar with the nozzle from various applications that are associated with Low NOx operation. The advantages of utilizing semi-mechanistic erosion equations and models coupled with CFD simulations as compared to previous empirical methods are discussed. Shortcomings of applying the existing coal erosion model is also reported along with "next steps" required to successfully apply the method to PC injection nozzle designs for much higher combustion efficiencies than existing ones.


To probe the selectivity possible in hydrophobic clusters, we have compared the cross-strand interactions of phenylalanine (Phe) and cyclohexylalanine (Cha) in a beta-hairpin peptide. We have found a preference for self-association among the aromatic residues, which provides 0.55 kcal/mol in stability relative to Cha-Cha cross-strand pair. NMR analysis of the Phe-Phe cross-strand pair indicates that it interacts in an edge-face interaction, despite the fact that it is highly solvent-exposed. The interaction geometry as well as the enthalpic and entropic values for the peptide containing the Phe-Phe cross-strand pair suggest that the preference for self-association arises from inherent differences in the nature of aromatic and aliphatic interactions in water.


A brief review is given of the causes of the main human cancers. We distinguish occupationally-incurred cancer, which arises in individuals exposed at work to varied carcinogenic chemicals and which yielded cancer at a site depending on the nautre of the carcinogen. In the context of the total incidence of cancer in the United States, occupational cancer assumes a minor quantitative role. Nonetheless, provided proper plant design and hygienic measures are developed, these cancers are totally preventable. Most of the remaining human cancers in the United States such as cancer of the respiratory tract, the digestive tract including stomach and large bowel, and in the endocrine-sensitive organs like breast, prostate, ovary, and endometrium are related to our lifestyle, namely smoking of cigarettes, and diet. The mechanism whereby lifestyle translates to certain of these diseases is presented, and recommendations for prevention are made. Considering the increasing cost of health care, it is noted that prevention is not only ethically best, but economically sound.


"Monumental Propaganda" compares the use of monuments by the Soviet Union and supporters of the Southern side in the American Civil War—in particular, the way they claimed ideological territory by proliferating statues of Lenin and Robert E. Lee, respectively. To answer the question of whether an alternative commemorative landscape might be imaginable, the essay turns to The Negro in Virginia (1940), a book devoted to the historical achievements of black citizenry in America. The book's endpapers present an illustrated map of Virginia indicating sites where black Americans played a critical historical, economic, and/or cultural role. In a book that can itself be seen as a kind of counter-monument to those extolling the Lost Cause, the map presents a vision of monuments that might have been.


In lively text and more than 250 photographs, most in color, Margolies brings to life the new style of lodging that sprang up to serve the automobile traveler, from auto camps and mom-and-pop tourist cabins early in the century to today's familiar motel chains. Along the way, he highlights many of the services and amenities - the decor, the swimming pools, the restaurants, and the pulsating signs - used to lure motorists into the nearest Kozy Kottage. He has discovered motels both marvelous and bizarre: log cabins, teepees, and even railroad freight cars transformed into sleeping cars. And he explores how the image of the motel in America has evolved - from seedy shacks to picturesque courts to today's antiseptic but very comfortable way stations. Throughout, Margolies combines his signature photographs of hostelries past and present with rare postcards, vintage brochures, and other amusing artifacts. Home Away From Home is a surprising and entertaining look at an omnipresent phenomenon, a nostalgic tour of sleepless nights and sweet dreams along the highways and byways of America.


In an inpatient setting, 67 and 70 patients with psoriasis living in contaminated and uncontaminated with radionuclides territories respectively were studied in the time-related course of some qualitative indices of immunity. Significant deviations from the norm were recordable, especially in those patients residing in the contaminated with radionuclides tcrritiry. Combined treatment involving the use of dibazol and hepatoradioprotective diet in the experiment group of psoriatic patients proved to be significantly more effective than in patients of the control group who were treated by the generally accepted method.


Deep learning has shown great promise in the domain of medical image analysis. Medical professionals and healthcare providers have been adopting the technology to speed up and enhance their work. These systems use deep neural networks (DNN) which are vulnerable to adversarial samples; images with imperceivable changes that can alter the model's prediction. Researchers have proposed defences which either make a DNN more robust or detect the adversarial samples before they do harm. However, none of these works consider an informed attacker which can adapt to the defence mechanism. We show that an informed attacker can evade five of the current state of the art defences while successfully fooling the victim's deep learning model, rendering these defences useless. We then suggest better alternatives for securing healthcare DNNs from such attacks: (1) harden the system's security and (2) use digital signatures.


Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Background: Arrhythmogenic left ventricular cardiomyopathy (ALVC) is an under-characterized phenotype of arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy involving the LV ab initio. ALVC was not included in the 2010 International Task Force Criteria for arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy diagnosis and data regarding this phenotype are scarce. Methods: Clinical characteristics were reported from all consecutive patients diagnosed with ALVC, defined as a LV isolated late gadolinium enhancement and fibro-fatty replacement at cardiac magnetic resonance plus genetic variants associated with arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy and of an endomyocardial biopsy showing fibro-fatty replacement complying with the 2010 International Task Force Criteria in the LV. Results: Twenty-five patients ALVC (53 [48–59] years, 60% male) were enrolled. T wave inversion in infero-lateral and left precordial leads were the most common ECG abnormalities. Overall arrhythmic burden at study inclusion was 56%. Cardiac magnetic resonance showed LV late gadolinium enhancement in the LV lateral and posterior basal segments in all patients. In 72% of the patients an invasive evaluation was performed, in which electroanatomical voltage mapping and electroanatomical voltage mapping-guided endomyocardial biopsy showed low endocardial voltages and fibro-fatty replacement in areas of late gadolinium enhancement presence. Genetic variants in desmosomal genes (desmoplakin and desmoglein-2) were identified in 12/25 of the cohort presenting pathogenic/likely pathogenic variants. A definite/borderline 2010 International Task Force Criteria arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy diagnosis was reached only in 11/25 patients. Conclusions: ALVC presents with a preferential involvement of the lateral and postero-lateral basal LV and is associated mostly with variants in desmoplakin and desmoglein-2 genes. An amendment to the current International Task Force Criteria is reasonable to better diagnose patients with ALVC.


The damage to tourism caused by a crisis or disaster may not only have serious implications for a national economy but also threaten the livelihoods of many in the destination. The monitoring of crisis indicators could allow intervention to minimise the crisis and offers a chance of protecting tourism for the benefit of all stakeholders. This paper evaluates the role of crisis indicators in sustainable tourism development, and shows why this is closely connected to issues in sustainable tourism. The author challenges the conventional classification of crises and suggests that grouping them according to their triggers is more useful in predicting and managing a potential crisis. Empirical data gathered during interviews with senior Malaysian public and private sector representatives highlight some of the practical issues associated with the identification and monitoring of appropriate indicators. The paper concludes that the new classification allows crisis management to be more cost-effective and may also be a key to indicator development for other aspects of sustainable tourism. The travel trade may hold the key to indicators of market trends, but there would be issues in obtaining the necessary information for reasons of confidentiality.


Objectives: To evaluate the experience with the flexible bronchoscopic management of airway foreign bodies (FB) in children (age ≤ 16 years). Design: All pediatric bronchoscopies performed in the Pavillon B of Abderrahman Mami Hospital of Ariana from 2002 through 2014 with confirmed FB were reviewed. FB removed by flexible bronchoscope, techniques used and complications were analyzed. Results: Of the 76 children with FB, the flexible bronchoscope allowed FB extraction in 15 children. It was used as first line to extract the FB in 6 patients, in 6 patients in whom the rigid bronchoscopic procedure was unsuccessful and in 3 patients in whom the rigid bronchoscopy failed to visualize the FB. In two children, extraction failed and removal was made by bronchotomy in one case and by rigid bronchoscopy in the other one. FB were non-organic in 8 cases, among them 3 head scarf pins. Flexible bronchoscopy was performed through an endotracheal tube in 14 children under general anesthesia. In the other child, the procedure was accomplished under local anesthesia. The extraction instruments employed included baskets forceps and biopsy forceps. No major complications occurred, only one children developed laryngeal edema that resolved with medical therapy. Conclusions: Flexible bronchoscopic extraction of pediatric FB can be performed safely with minimal risks and complications. In our experience, it was successful in 88% of cases. Nevertheless, we caution that it must be performed by an experienced bronchoscopist in the operating room and in the presence of a trained anesthetist.


Understanding the survival capacity of forest trees to periods of severe water stress could improve knowledge of the adaptive potential of different species under future climatic scenarios. In long lived organisms, like forest trees, the combination of induced osmotic stress treatments and field testing can elucidate the role of drought tolerance during the early stages of establishment, the most critical in the life of the species. We performed a Polyethylene glycol-osmotic induced stress experiment and evaluated two common garden experiments (xeric and mesic sites) to test for survival and growth of a wide range clonal collection of Maritime pine. This study demonstrates the importance of additive vs non additive effects for drought tolerance traits in Pinus pinaster, and shows differences in parameters determining the adaptive trajectories of populations and family and clones within populations. The results show that osmotic adjustment plays an important role in population variation, while biomass allocation and hydric content greatly influence survival at population level. Survival in the induced osmotic stress experiment presented significant correlations with survival in the xeric site, and height growth at the mesic site, at population level, indicating constraints of adaptation for those traits, while at the within population level no significant correlation existed. These results demonstrate that population differentiation and within population genetic variation for drought tolerance follow different patterns.


Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent of directors breaching the reporting requirements of the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and the Corporations Act in Australia. Further, it seeks to assess whether directors in Australia achieve abnormal returns from trades in their own companies. Design/methodology/approach - Using an event study approach on an Australian sample, abnormal returns for a range of situations were estimated. Findings - A total of 13 (seven) per cent of own-company directors trades do not meet the ASX (Corporations Act) requirement of reporting within five (14) business days. Directors do achieve abnormal returns through trading in shares of their own companies. Ignoring transaction costs, outsiders can achieve abnormal returns by imitating directors' trades. Analysis of returns to directors after they trade but before they announce the trade to the market shows that directors are making small but statistically significant returns that are not available to the market. Analysis of returns to directors subsequent to the ASX reporting requirement up to the day the trade is reported shows that directors are making small but statistically significant returns that should be available to the market. Research limitations/implications - Future research should investigate the linkages between late reporting by directors and disadvantages to outside shareholders and the implementation of internal policies implemented to mitigate insider trading. Practical implications - Market participants should remain vigilant regarding the potential for late/non-reporting of directors' trades. Originality/value - Uncovering breaches of reporting regulations are particularly important given that directors tend to purchase (sell) shares when the price is low (high), thereby achieving abnormal returns.


Conventional methods of classification from remotely-sensed images seldom discriminate accurately among the land cover categories that are relevant in ecological applications. In the present study, we apply an image segmentation technique to a high-spatial-resolution (13.5cm), digitized, aerial, colour-infrared photograph of an annual grassland and subsequently identify land cover categories through field inspection and linear canonical discriminant analysis of the image. We show that per-segment statistics can be used to discriminate among four land cover categories bunch grasses, dense cover of annuals, sparse cover of annuals and bare ground while conventional per-pixel statistics produce low separabilities for the same categories. We also show that soil disturbances by pocket gophers (Thomomys bottae) can be identified and they are significantly concentrated in areas covered by bunch grasses at the time of image acquisition. We conclude that image segmentation and linear canonical discriminant analysi...


Fatty acid binding proteins (FABPs) carry fatty acids (FAs) and other lipids in the cellular environment, and are thus involved in processes such as FA uptake, transport, and oxidation. These proteins bind either one or two ligands in a binding site, which appears to be inaccessible from the bulk. Thus, the entry of the substrate necessitates a conformational change, whose nature is still unknown. A possible description of the ligand binding process is given by the portal hypothesis, which suggests that the FA enters the protein through a dynamic area known as the portal region. On the other hand, recent simulations of the adipocyte lipid binding protein (ALBP) suggested a different entry site (the alternative portal). In this article, we discuss molecular dynamics simulations of the apo-intestinal-FABP (I-FABP) in the presence of palmitate molecule(s) in the simulation box. The simulations were carried out to study whether the FA can enter the protein during the simulations (as in the ALBP) and where the ligand entry site is (the portal region, the alternative portal or a different domain). The analysis of the simulations revealed a clear difference between the ALBP and the I-FABP. In the latter case, the palmitate preferentially adsorbed to the portal region, which was more mobile than the rest of the protein. However, no ligand entry was observed in the multi-nanosecond-long simulations, in contrast to ALBP. These findings suggest that, although the main structural motif of the FABPs is common, the fine details of each individual protein structure grossly modulate its reactivity.


We fabricated multicore MgB2/Fe wires with much higher packing density and J c than powder-in-tube (PIT)-processed wires by internal Mg diffusion (IMD). Mg cores in the composite were uniformly cold worked into fine filaments by room-temperature groove rolling and drawing. After cold drawing, short specimens were heat treated at various temperatures from 550 to 800degC. During heat treatment, Mg reacted with a B(+SiC) layer forming a dense reacted layer inside an Fe sheath, which is composed of a MgB2 major phase and some minor impurity phases. Interestingly, the 7-core wire added with 5 mol% SiC heat treated at 600degC below the Mg melting point showed an apparent reaction forming a MgB2 layer and a fairly large amount of unreacted Mg inside a reacted MgB2 layer, suggesting that such formation is induced by solid-state reaction at the interface. On the other hand, almost all samples heat treated above 650degC showed MgB2 phase formation by typical liquid Mg infiltration producing a hollow at the center. The highest J c at 8 T and 4.2 K obtained for the multicore wire was 1.1 times 105 A/cm2 achieved by the addition of 5 mol% SiC and heat treatment at 600degC for 1 hr, which is slightly higher than the highest J c of the monocore wire (1.0 times 105 A/cm2) achieved for the wire added with 5 mol% SiC and heat treated at 670degC for 3 hr. The temperature of 600degC was lower than the melting point of Mg, suggesting that solid-solid reaction also forms a MgB2 layer in IMD. The small B layer thickness made it possible for Mg atoms to diffuse throughout the B layer at this low temperature.


This paper is to develop a mathematical model for hybrid solar parabolic trough concentrator (PTC) systems. The model is for estimation of energy outputs, losses and efficiencies of various parts of the system which operates under different climate condition, diverse configurations and a range of loading conditions. Automated system optimization can be quickly obtained by trying numerous different system configurations. In hybrid PTC system, photovoltaic cells are also installed on the receiver pipes. Solar energy is directly converted to electricity by photovoltaic cells. The working fluid circulating in the receiver pipes is for solar thermal purpose as well as to cool down the temperature of solar cells. The overall yield of the system is increased and therefore capital cost is reduced. A detailed analytical model simulating a hybrid PTC system has been developed by modelling and integrating sub-components into one model and a simulation software has been developed. The software is a valuable design tools for engineers whenever they are designing hybrid PTC systems, which are likely feasible in application to densely populated city with sub-tropical climatic conditions in southern part of China. System performance has been tested with a set of initial parameters and preliminary results have been produced.


1 - The Mar Menor, with an area of 135 km2, is the largest coastal lagoon in the Western Mediterranean. The ecological value of the Mar Menor lagoon and associated wetlands has been recognised in a series of rules and resolutions, at regional, national and international level. However, several hydrological and land-use changes in the Mar Menor watershed are threatening the conservation of the Mar Menor as a result of urban and tourist developments and the intensification of agriculture. As a result, an initial eutrophication process is affecting the ecological functioning of the lagoon and the tourist activities. Several BAU (Business As Usual) and PT (policy-target) scenarios have been defined, characterised and simulated using hydrological and integrated watershed models developed for the Mar Menor site.
2 - The load of nutrients into the lagoon constitutes a key issue for all relevant scenarios for Mar Menor. Under the BAU scenario of urban and tourist development, it is expected a high rise in resident and seasonal population, which would lead to a 50% increase in the average annual load of nutrients and would further promote the eutrophication process in the lagoon. The management option of re-use of agricultural drainages would allow around a 10% reduction in nutrient loads into the Mar Menor lagoon. The recovery of wetlands constitutes a better option to reduce DIN load into the lagoon, as compared with the management option of re-use of agricultural drainages, since the achieved reduction in total nutrient loads doubles the one achieved by the re-use of agricultural drainages. As revealed by the cost-effectiveness analysis, the optimisation of wetlands for nutrient removal seems to be also more efficient compared to the re-use of agricultural drainages, with unitary costs around four times lower.
3 - The results obtained confirm the usefulness of the applied methodological approach for the overall understanding of coastal lagoons and the provision of practical inputs for the decision making process.


Dietary glycemic load, the mathematical product of the glycemic index (GI) of a food and its carbohydrate content, has been proposed as an indicator of the glucose response and insulin demand induced by a serving of food. To validate this concept in vivo, we tested the hypotheses that 1). portions of different foods with the same glycemic load produce similar glycemic responses; and 2). stepwise increases in glycemic load for a range of foods produce proportional increases in glycemia and insulinemia. In the first study, 10 healthy subjects consumed 10 different foods in random order in amounts calculated to have the same glycemic load as one slice of white bread. Capillary blood samples were taken at regular intervals over the next 2 h. The glycemic response as determined by area under the curve was not different from that of white bread for nine foods. However, lentils produced lower than predicted responses (P < 0.05). In the second study, another group of subjects was tested to determine the effects of increasing glycemic load using a balanced 5 x 5 Greco-Latin square design balanced for four variables: subject, dose, food and order. Two sets of five foods were consumed at five different glycemic loads (doses) equivalent to one, two, three, four and six slices of bread. Stepwise increases in glycemic load produced significant and predictable increases in both glycemia (P < 0.001) and insulinemia (P < 0.001). These findings support the concept of dietary glycemic load as a measure of overall glycemic response and insulin demand.


Purpose- The purpose of this paper is to examine the key factors of success and difficulties that Emirati businesswomen face in the private sector within UAE cultural context. Design/Methodology/approach- This research is an exploratory one, it is designed to explore factors of success; difficulties and challenges Emirati businesswomen face when they start-up their own business in UAE. A questionnaire was designed, which included most factors of success and failure. A total of 100 Emirati female entrepreneurs were selected and asked to explain the factors that cause their success and the type of challenges they have experienced. Of them, 75 were completed and returned back. Findings: The study found out that there are four factors cause success for female entrepreneurs in UAE. These are: Economic and technological development, Flexible enterprise policies, Good education and Spiritual support. The most crucial one is the spiritual support. On the contrary, the major hurdle, among others, women entrepreneurs' experiences is that they received support from government institutions; nevertheless, it is below their level of aspiration In addition, the study found out that Emirate male and female entrepreneurs exhibit different entrepreneurs' traits when running their business. Research limitations/implications- Questionnaires were mainly distributed in Dubai and Ajman Emirates, the opinion of other Emirati women entrepreneurs located in other Emirates needs to be investigated. To give a clear picture, future studies should target business women who are located in other Emirates. Practical implications- The results of this study will help decision and policy makers to provide facilitates for Emirati business women to ensure that they take a crucial role in economic development. Originality/value-This study is contributed to and enhances the knowledge on the key factors to success; and the challenges female entrepreneurs face to start-up and run their own business.


The tumor suppressor p53, a transcription factor activated in response to various stresses, promotes apoptosis and cell cycle arrest. PML, the protein product of the promyelocytic leukemia gene (PML), also acts as a tumor suppressor and is believed to act upstream of p53 to regulate its activity. De Stanchina et al. investigated the role of PML in cellular senescence and discovered that PML functioned as a direct p53 target. The authors used Western analysis to show that, in mouse embryo fibroblasts, the expression of p53 and PML was stimulated by oncogenic Ras. Stimulation of PML expression by Ras or in response to DNA damage depended on the presence of p53, and transfer of p53 into mouse and human cells lacking p53 increased the expression of PML mRNA and protein. Regions of the PML gene that contained putative p53 response elements (REs) enabled p53 to activate a heterologous gene reporter. Mutational analysis indicated that this sensitivity depended on REs. Moreover, electrophoretic mobility-shift analysis indicated that p53 bound to PML REs in vitro, and chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis indicated that p53 bound to the PML gene of cells expressing oncogenic Ras. Cells in which PML was suppressed (with short-hairpin RNA) showed specific defects in p53-mediated cell cycle arrest, senescence, and apoptosis (but not in some other p53 effects). Thus, PML appears to function as a direct target and an effector of p53. The authors discuss scenarios in which these data can be reconciled with previous research suggesting that PML acts upstream of p53. E. de Stanchina, E. Querido, M. Narita, R. V. Davuluri, P. P. Pandolfi, G. Ferbeyre, S. W. Lowe, PML is a direct p53 target that modulates p53 effector functions. Mol. Cell 13, 523-535 (2004). [Online Journal]


ABSTRACTAir pollutants produced in environments have many detrimental impacts on human health. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common worldwide respiratory disease. The aim of this study was to estimate the association between the load of particulate matters and the prevalence of COPD in Ahvaz, southwest of Iran, during 2009–2013. This epidemiological and used-model study was performed in Ahvaz. Particulate matter equal or less than 10 micro meters (PM10) was monitored by Ahvaz Environmental Protection Agency (AEPA). Sampling was performed hourly during the study period in 4 stations. In this study, 175200 (4 × 24 × 365 × 5) samples of air were taken and collected. Sampling and analysis were performed according to EPA guideline. We utilized the relative risk values and baseline incidence measures by the WHO (Middle East) drawn from Health Effects Association of Particulate Matter. Finally, prevalence of COPD attributed to particulate matter exposure was calculated by Air Q model. According to our findings, the prevalence of COPD attributed to particulate matters decreased during 2009–2013 and followed a decreasing trend. Accordingly, the yearly prevalence of COPD during the period 2009–2013 were 121, 111, 94, 102, and 98, and the yearly average PM10 concentrations during the same period were 313.72, 281.98, 288.38, 278.12, and 242.29 µg m–3, respectively. Although the average of 5-year study was higher than WHO and NAAQS values, a descending trend for COPD indicates that the level of PM10 was diminished from 2009 to 2013. Therefore mitigating air pollutant particularly PM10 as one of the main hazards could be possibly led to remarkable decrease in the rate of mortality and morbidity particularly COPD attributed to PM10.


Modeling of heat exchangers using true bond graphs with temperature and rate of change of entropy as power variables is presented. Techniques used for modeling of irreversabilities and compressible flows are shown. The results of two and three lump models are compared with experimental results, with the agreement between these low order models and the experimental results being good. This paper shows how well a three lump model (6th order) can predict the dynamics of an actual reversal of flow. Heat exchanger response to mass flow rate oscillation is presented.


The notion of identity lies at the heart of many career theories, yet the concept is not well or consistently defined within the literature. This programme of doctoral research aimed to explore two specific variants of career related identity: occupational prototypes and possible selves. The first study gathered data from psychology students (n=24) through focus groups. Participants described their prototypical representations of members of four occupations (social worker, primary teacher, clinical and occupational psychologists). A content analysis revealed that these were detailed and multidimensional. Additionally, the data provided forty items for a self-report measure to assess the degree of match between an individual's possible self and an occupational prototype (PS to OP Match), used in Study 2. The second study examined the associations between possible self salience, PS to OP Match, and career goals and motivation for female psychology students (n=87). The results revealed significant, moderate correlations between possible self salience and both career goals and career motivation, and a significant weak correlation between PS to OP Match and career motivation. No evidence was found for an association between PS to OP Match and career goals. In Study 3, the data collected in the first study were subject to a second analysis (classic grounded theory) to identify the characteristics symbolised by the features of the occupational prototypes described. A framework of occupational identities was developed which reflected participants' conceptualisations of these occupational identities. The framework incorporated four intrapsychic dimensions (successful, cool, cultured and intellectual) and four intrapsychic dimensions (warm, energetic, fun and conventional). In the fourth and final study, the responses of four career practitioners to the framework were explored using grounded theory. The semi-structured interviews revealed that the participants drew on stereotypes and preconscious cognition when thinking about careers. The practitioners found it uncomfortable to engage with conceptualisations of occupations which were constructed through stereotypes and preconscious cognitive processing, but despite this discomfort, felt that career conversations based on the framework could add value to clients. The results of the research programme make a contribution to the theoretical understanding of the nature of perceptions of occupational identities, provide empirical evidence about the impact that possible selves may have on career development, and offer a new framework of occupational identities which can be used to raise awareness of preconscious thoughts in career practice.


Efficient initiation of large-volume chemical lasers may be achieved by neutron induced reactions which produce charged particles in the final state. When a burst mode nuclear reactor is used as the neutron source, both a sufficiently intense neutron flux and a sufficiently short initiation pulse may be possible. Proof-of-principle experiments are planned to demonstrate lasing in a direct nuclear-pumped large-volume system; to study the effects of various neutron absorbing materials on laser performance; to study the effects of long initiation pulse lengths; to demonstrate the performance of large-scale optics and the beam quality that may be obtained; and to assess the performance of alternative designs of burst systems that increase the neutron output and burst repetition rate. 21 refs., 8 figs., 5 tabs.


ABSTRACT: This deceptively simple case is intended for use as early as the first day of an M.B.A. core accounting course or as a focused review for an undergraduate accounting course. It achieves three primary objectives: accelerating student learning about the statement of cash flows, emphasizing the importance of both the cash flow statement and the income statement in valuation and capital markets, and introducing the three primary financial statements as an integrated system. The case also features the use of the direct method of presenting operating cash flows, both as a pedagogical tool and to allow interested instructors to increase their focus on that method. We have found that students benefit from the early integration of the cash flow statement, as well as the ability to clearly understand how operating cash flows are similar to—and different from—net income. Finally, the case provides an optional managerial accounting module for instructors who teach a course that integrates financial and mana...


OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Enhancing Patient Safety for hospitalized patients is a priority for healthcare facilities, providers, and federal funding agencies. Multidisciplinary partnerships in clinical and translational research better defines the scope of complex patient-safety issues, and is part of more effectively developing interventions. The discipline represented by engineering-trained partners brings valuable perspective to patient safety problems through their training background in human factors and systems analysis. The objective of this education program was to create and implement a collaboration between engineering students and clinical providers. Through the Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, a multidisciplinary partnership was created, to identify contributing factors, and suggest novel solutions, to key patient safety problems using an ethnographic research approach. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: The collaboration was formed between the following Johns Hopkins (JH) groups: (1) The Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR), (2) The Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety, (3) The JH Hospital Clinical Engineering Services, (4) The Homecare Group, (5) The Masters of Science in Engineering Management Program at the Whiting School of Engineering, and (6) The JH Hospital Risk Management. All 6 provided representation to contribute to the planning, structure, and implementation of the project. The initial cohort was 24 masters students enrolled in the JHU Whiting School of engineering, and included 46% men, 54% women, and 75% international students. Students were placed in teams of 2–3 to work on 9 distinct patient safety concerns, as provided by the Armstrong Institute as priority. Potential clinical hosts from the appropriate clinical departments were vetted for feasibility and scope before students were assigned to them. Students and clinical hosts were oriented to the process. The students then spent 3–6 hours a week, for 7 weeks, observing and interacting with patients and health professionals at their specific clinical sites, conducting ethnographic research under the guidance of their hosts. Ethnographic research is the systematic investigation of a culture or system; in our application, teams were looking at the environment, culture, and its contributing factors, with respect to patient safety issues. Teams made observations, then formulated hypothesis and collected data relevant to what systems factors may be contributing to the patient safety issue. Following data collection and analyses, teams made recommendations for culture and/or systems shifts that could impact change and improve patient safety. Ethnography research process training is a tenet of the training undertaken by all Masters of Science in Engineering Management Students. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: At the end of the 7-week project, each team generated a comprehensive report suggesting potential solutions for each problem, and gave presentations on their findings to their peers, clinical hosts, and JHU steering committee representatives. Requirements on the student side included a midterm, final presentation, and report. Both students and site leaders submitted mid- and final program evaluations. Based on follow-up survey data, 71% of students said that the course may impact their career choice, 57% said the collaboration changed the way they viewed themselves, and 28% elected to continue working or were planning to work with their site in some fashion after the course ended. Nearly 60% of students believed additional funding or resources would benefit the course and 71% thought they would benefit from more or similar experiences with their clinical partners. Furthermore, 85% wanted to see the course expanded. Of the clinical hosts, 71% said that students added value, 86% believed students changed their perspective on their problem, unveiled new areas of investigation, and improved or likely would improve patient safety in their department. Seventy-one percent of hosts were actively acting on the students' findings, and over 86% shared findings with their colleagues. Following the 7-week program, 2 teams also presented their findings to committees within the hospital departments, 2 patient-safety projects are being continued with engineering teams, and 2 new collaborative projects have been initiated. Based on the popularity of this program with the students, hosts, and teaching faculty, this will be implemented within the engineering curriculum for a second time next year. Additional outcomes data collection are currently ongoing, and we plan to continue to monitor and analyze results. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: In its first year our engineering collaboration exceeded expectations. Engineering students and clinical providers successfully worked toward tangible solutions that were directly applicable to patient care. Furthermore, interactions were both personally and professionally beneficial for students while simultaneously adding value to clinical hosts. Beyond the collaboration, this initiative allowed for secondary connections between engineers and clinicians that are also have great potential for resulting in translational innovation. Despite the overwhelming success of this project, it highlighted the need for increased resources for sustainability. Our pilot highlighted a role for funding with regards to: (1) students in the execution of their projects (eg, transportation to sites, prototype materials); (2) clinical hosts, particularly protecting time to interact with and lead student teams; (3) the Armstrong Institute—to aid the identification and prioritization of high impact, patient safety projects; and (4) the ICTR for staff to facilitate placements, student orientation to the hospital setting, and program execution and maintenance. Ultimately, this collaboration addressed an unmet need for the clinical providers as well as the engineering students: thus, all partners agree that (1) the impact of this pilot would be greatly magnified by more time, longer duration, and additional resources; and (2) this collaboration could provide a useful model for approaching other complex health care problems. In terms of larger and longer-term impact, engaging engineers at the training level together with clinicians provides early exposure, and could potentially prime them to continue collaborations with clinical and translational science, across their careers. Student Research Assistant Acknowledgements: The authors thank Manik Arora, Alexandra Morani, and Thomas Cornish -- Johns Hopkins University.


In 2008 all Bachelor of engineering study programs at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) have been adopted to the "Conceive – Design – Implement – Operate" approach. As part of the necessary changes it was decided that all seven study programs should have a cross disciplinary project or a design build project on each of the first four semesters. In this paper the four projects in the civil engineering study program are described along with a brief description of the entire study program. The aim is to provide additional information and documentation to accompany an exposition where students present their projects. Learning outcomes, training and assessment of personal, professional and social engineering skills are described from a project point of view. Progression of engineering skills is discussed from a study program perspective. The interrelation between the various elements to the final learning outcome is discussed with respect to the concept of the study program as it is today. Barriers for reaching the ultimate goal, that all students become "engineers who can engineer" at a high technical level, are identified and discussed. It is concluded that the study program has all the potential to prepare students to cope with the challenges in engineering practice, but it also shows that the degree of success depends on the amount of barriers along the way.


Humanoid and walking robots have been widely developed and their use in human environments is not far out of reach. The main problems in practical applications of machine walking are energy consumption, complex control and design, and high cost. The main feasible indoor application of a walking machine is that of a humanoid robot as a companion, nurse, guide, or information desk or reception clerk. In a smart object system environment, such as a smart house where all objects are interconnected, a humanoid robot can provide services for the centralized host or gateway server of the house. It is a mobile system already equipped with sensors, controllers, manipulators (hands) and a communication system. From the features of humanoid robots and of the smart object systems, a new direction of research could emerge embracing parts of both fields. In the interest of furthering the capabilities of walking robots, we designed an approach to further the capability of walking robots. We built a four-legged passive-dynamic walking machine with its inner and outer legs connected rigidly two by two, making it equivalent to a biped machine in terms of dynamics. We conducted our experiments with two different knee designs. Both mechanisms were designed in an attempt to create a simpler and easier-to-adjust knee-locking mechanism. We conducted a series of experiments in which we counted the steps the walker made while walking down an incline and compared the results achieved with the two different knee-locking mechanisms. We also performed a walking cycle investigation of a person walking casually down the same slope used for the walker experiments, calculated the average time intervals within one cycle and made a comparison between the test subject and our walker.


We present the discovery of two new dwarf galaxies, Andromeda XXI and Andromeda XXII, located in the surroundings of the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies (M31 and M33). These discoveries stem from the first year data of the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey, a photometric survey of the M31/M33 group conducted with the Megaprime/MegaCam Wide-Field Camera mounted on the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope. Both satellites appear as spatial overdensities of stars which, when plotted in a color-magnitude diagram, follow metal-poor, [Fe/H] = −1.8, red giant branches at the distance of M31/M33. Andromeda XXI is a moderately bright dwarf galaxy (MV = −9.9 ± 0.6), albeit with low surface brightness, emphasizing again that many relatively luminous M31 satellites still remain to be discovered. It is also a large satellite, with a half-light radius close to 1 kpc, making it the fourth largest Local Group dwarf spheroidal galaxy after the recently discovered Andromeda XIX, Andromeda II, and Sagittarius around the Milky Way, and supports the trend that M31 satellites are larger than their Milky Way counterparts. Andromeda XXII is much fainter (MV = −6.5 ± 0.8) and lies a lot closer in projection to M33 than it does to M31 (42 versus 224 kpc), suggesting that it could be the first Triangulum satellite to be discovered. Although this is a very exciting possibility in the context of a past interaction of M33 with M31 and the fate of its satellite system, a confirmation will have to await a good distance estimate to confirm its physical proximity to M33. Along with the dwarf galaxies found in previous surveys of the M31 surroundings, these two new satellites bring the number of dwarf spheroidal galaxies in this region to 20.


The paper investigates theoretically and empirically the role of courts for contract enforcement in transition agriculture. We develop a theoretical model, based on the costs and benefits of court enforcement that captures the boundary between contracts to be judged as court "enforceable" and "not-enforceable" and, simultaneously, identifies the threshold of taking legal action. The empirical analysis based on a survey of 306 Polish hog farmer conducted in 1999 strongly supports our model.


Early secure stability of an implant is important for long-term survival. We examined whether micromotion of implants consistently would induce bone resorption and formation of a fibrous membrane and thereby prevent osseointegration. One micromotion implant was inserted into one of the medial femoral condyles in ten sheep. The micromotion device consists of an anchor bearing a PMMA implant and a PE plug. During each gait cycle the PE plug will make the PMMA implant axially piston 0.5 mm. After 12 weeks of observation the bone specimens were harvested and a post-mortem control implant was inserted into the contra-lateral medial femoral condyle. Histomorphometrical evaluation showed that the surface on the implant observed for 12 weeks was covered by fibrous tissue. The control implants were covered by lamellar bone. No difference was found with respect to the volume fraction of lamellar bone in a 1 mm zone around the implants. This study indicates that implant micromotion is sufficient to induce bone resorption and formation of a fibrous membrane.


This paper intends to give a short overview of the urban traffic safety situation in Sweden. The focus will be on what type of accidents are most common in this environment and what affects the number of these accidents and their severity. Also the principles of the Swedish assessment models for this area will be presented and discussed, especially the modelling of safety on links (streets) in the network.


D-amino acids are currently paid attention to as new physiologically active substances. Foodstuffs and beverages containing D-amino acids are a matter of interest. Until now, the profiles of D-amino acids have not been reported in natural and fermented teas except theanine. In this study, an off-line 2D-HPLC method combining a Gemini C18 column and a CHIRALPAK® IC-3 column or a self-prepared poly(MQD-co-HEMA-co-EDMA) monolithic capillary column was employed for the separation and detection of D-amino acids in tea samples with the co-existence of a large amount of L-amino acids. The free amino acid fractions in longjing, black, oolong, and pu-erh tea samples were separated and collected after pre-column derivatization using 9-fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl (FMOC) chloride in the reversed-phase mode, and then were concentrated and separated to D- and L-forms on a chiral column. Among them, the D-form of isoleucine (Ile) (1.0–1.6%), alanine (Ala) (0.1–0.8%), phenylalanine (Phe) (0.1–0.4%), valine (Val) (0.2–0.3%), serine (Ser) (0.1–0.2%), aspartic acid (Asp) (0.2%), and proline (Pro) (0.1%) were detected in longjing and oolong teas. Differences between natural tea and fermented tea in the profiles of D-amino acids as well as the total amino acids were also observed. The results provided useful information for the bio-function research of D-amino acids in tea.


The influence of the elevation of seawater temperature on the relationship between growth and viability of corals and various physiological parameters of their symbiotic zooxanthellar populations was examined for two hermatypic species, the scleractinian coral Stylophora pistillata (Esper) and the hydrocoral Millepora dichotoma (Forskal). Elucidation of this linkage between seawater temperature and the physiological status of these reef-building organisms was facilitated by a combination of our unique, high-resolution, computer-controlled set up and direct monitoring techniques. At 34°C, zooxanthellar densities in M. dichotoma colonies decreased significantly; whereas, those in S. pistillata colonies increased. These different responses of the two species are probably an expression of their different tolerance mechanisms to elevated temperatures. For both species, chlorophyll a concentrations increased at 34°C, while those of chlorophyll c decreased. Elevation of seawater temperature above 26°C caused decrease in calcification rates. Our study indicates that 31.1°C is the critical point for the zooxanthellae-host association, and further temperature elevation may bring the animal host into the lethal range of survival.


This essay is a contribution to the study of provincial janissaries through the case of Crete. After a brief survey of the history of the janissary corps as the wider framework within which the janissaries of Crete have to be studied, the essay focuses on them, resolving the confusion between janissaries and other military groups, discussing the differences between imperial and local janissaries, and offering an explanation as to why various sources exaggerate the number of janissaries while officially they were relatively few. Finally, it is argued that, from a socio-economic point of view, the janissaries must be seen as inclusive and expansive urban and rural networks that placed their members at an advantageous position over others through legal privilege and access to funds.


Background. Chronic pancreatitis is one of the main risk factors for pancreatic cancer. In acute and chronic pancreatitis, oxidative stress is thought to play a key role. In this respect, the recently described mitochondria-targeted antioxidant SkQ1 effectively scavenges reactive oxygen species at nanomolar concentrations. Therefore, we aimed to characterize the influence of SkQ1 on tissue injury and pain in acute and chronic pancreatitis. Methods. Both acute and chronic pancreatitis were induced in C57BL/6 mice by intraperitoneal cerulein injections and treatment with SkQ1 was carried out by peroral applications. Hyperalgesia was assessed by behavioral observation and measurement of abdominal mechanical sensitivity. Blood serum and pancreatic tissue were harvested for analysis of lipase and histology. Results. SkQ1 did not influence pain, serological, or histological parameters of tissue injury in acute pancreatitis. In chronic pancreatitis, a highly significant reduction of pain-related behavior (p < 0.0001) was evident, but histological grading revealed increased tissue injury in SkQ1-treated animals (p = 0.03). Conclusion. After SkQ1 treatment, tissue injury is not ameliorated in acute pancreatitis and increased in chronic pancreatitis. However, we show an analgesic effect in chronic pancreatitis. Further studies will need to elucidate the risks and benefits of mitochondria-targeted antioxidants as an analgesic.