INTRODUCTION
Cryptoccosis--systemic mycosis caused by Cryptococcus species--has considerably raised its incidence in the last years, mainly associated with the human immunodeficiency virus infection. It has also been described in animals, but rare cases.

METHODS
a case of a female cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) kept in the Nacional Zoo of Havana was presented. The animal came from South Africa. She began losing weight, and suffering asthenia, anorexia and breathing problems with abundant nasal secretion.

RESULTS
mycological testing of these secretions disclosed the presence of serotype B Cryptococcus gattii. Because of the origin and captive condition of the animal, it was believed that the infection had been latent for 16 months at least.

CONCLUSIONS
up to the present, in Cuba, all clinical Cryptococcus isolates were C. neoformans var. grubii, so it is considered that the infection was caught in the country of origin of the female cheetah. This is the first C. gattii isolate in Cuba from an animal coming from South Africa where this fungus is endemic.


The U.S. Department of Justice ("DOJ") yesterday announced that its Criminal Division's Fraud Section would be implementing a "pilot program" designed to provide additional guidance for prosecutors investigating potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ("FCPA") and to motivate companies to disclose voluntarily potential misconduct, cooperate with the DOJ in its investigation, and take appropriate remedial steps with respect to the companies' anti-corruption compliance policies. The pilot program expands upon earlier DOJ guidance in describing what the DOJ considers to be necessary and complete voluntary self-disclosure, cooperation, and remediation. The announcement also lists the criteria that companies must satisfy to be eligible for fine reductions and other incentives, and quantifies certain of those incentives. The DOJ's announcement makes clear that the pilot program and accompanying guidance expand on and clarify, rather than modify or supplant, existing principles of prosecution, including the Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations articulated in the United States Attorneys' Manual and in previous publicly released memoranda from the DOJ, including the so-called "Yates Memo" regarding liability of individuals, which was issued in September 2015.


BACKGROUND: The recommendation of Centers for Disease Control that hospitals must have a person trained in infection control per 250 beds has been understood as a law of all or nothing hindering implementation of hospital infection surveillance and control programs in small hospitals. Since the importance that small regional hospitals have in the Spanish Health System, the aim of this study is to describe the magnitude and characteristics of nosocomial infections (NI) in a small regional hospital in case this position needs being reconsidered. METHODS: The study was carried in Hospital de Calatayud, a small regional hospital of 122 beds belonging to Health Area III of Aragon. All the NI that occurred during 1992 were recorded by means of an uninterrupted system of prospective surveillance based on a multirecord revision. Both of the Accumulate Incidence of NI (AINI) and Accumulate Incidence of Patients with one or more NI (AINP) were calculated and the main variables associated with NI were described. RESULTS: Altogether, 298 NI were detected in 242 patients during that year. The AINI was 7.1% and the AINP was 5.8% with a mean of 1.2 (SD = 0.6) HI per infected patient. The most frequent types of NI were urinary tract infection, surgical wound infection and lower respiratory tract infection. Some pathogen microorganism were identified in 43% of NI. The microorganisms most frequently associated with NI were Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus. Mortality associated with NI was 11% and the average stay of patients with some NI was 22.9 days (SD = 22.1). CONCLUSIONS: Results point out the need for implementing hospital infections surveillance and control programs in small hospitals too.


Most asteroids and comets are thought to be remnant collisional fragments of planetesimals, the building blocks from which planets in our solar system formed around 4.5 billion years ago. Asteroids and comets from diverse regions of the planetary disk probably enriched the early Earth and other planets in minerals, water, and organic materials. In later epochs, impacts of asteroids and comets on the Earth may have abruptly altered the course of evolution and paved the way for mankind. However, mankind should now be aware that this natural process has not ceased. In particular, the current population of so-called near-Earth asteroids contains many objects that are considered potentially hazardous. On the positive side, near-Earth asteroids may prove to be valuable sources of raw materials (metals, water, rocket propellant, etc.) for future generations. I will illustrate the significance of asteroids for life on Earth and describe recent results of astronomical research into relevant physical properties of these bodies. This research may help us to better understand how harmless asteroids become hazardous and how we can prevent a catastrophic impact on our planet.


Event around us in Contemporary Nigeria points to the fact that corruption is a cankerworm that has eaten into the fabric of every facet of our national life. Public officials demand payment of ransom before or/and after performing their legitimate functions. Business people shortchange their customers through unfair dealings, while law-enforcement agents demand bribes, and collaborate with fraudulent elements in the society. Employee theft is a common occurrence in many organizations. Studies show that people perceive causes of fraud equally without significant bias to gender or religion, but that level of education, age, and income, as well as changes in marital status, have to do with their perception of fraud.Conventional thinking on the scope and delimitation of fraudulent practices center on financial or economic – related matters. Experience and reality have however dictated broadening the scope to include certain social and "victimless" offences which society does not frown at but which have grave consequences on the nation's socio-economic life. In the final analysis, the task of combating this malaise should be embraced by all the strata of society if the world is to become a better place for mankind. This Paper focuses on the conceptual framework of corruption, as well as causes and strategies to adopt in curbing this disease. It concludes on the need to adopt a multidimensional approach, which would involve both national and international agencies, in solving the problem.


Dysbiotic shifts in intestinal and pharyngeal microflora were studied in 22 normal volunteers in 9-, 14-, 105- and 520-d chamber experiments simulating some of the spaceflight factors. Two preparations were administered to prevent pharyngeal and intestinal dysbiosis: oral dry probiotic based on indigenous intestinal Enterococci and topical collagen-immobilized Lactobacterin based on indigenous intestinal Lactobacilli. Topical autopmrobiotic lactobacterin reduced the growth of opportunistic pathogens in the throat during the experiments. Oral autoprobiotic based on Enterococci reduced the content of intestinal opportunistic pathogens, supporting the high level of protecting microflora. Most of autostrains are free from pathogenicity factors, nevertheless, implementation of genetic testing of indigenous strains are reasonable.


99mTc-Technegas scintigraphy is used for evaluation of abnormality of ventilation in pulmonary emphysema. Although the abnormality of ventilation distribution is very easy to find, there is not an objective index. The evaluation is subjective and different by each radiologist. It was also difficult to compare each cases and the clinical course in the same case. The present study for quantitative evaluation has proved that excellent correlations is obtained between the mean voxel values of the lung and stage classification. Furthermore, a correlation is observed between the mean and FEV 1.0%. These deta indicate that quantitative analysis of SPECT seem to be useful to classify the clinical stage and compare the each cases. And respiratory function decreases as much as chronic pulmonary emphysema exists in the lower lung field.


Dipeptidyl-peptidase I, a lysosomal cysteine protein- ase, is important in intracellular degradation of proteins and appears to be a central coordinator for ac- tivation of many serine proteinases in immune/inflam-matory cells. Little is known about the molecular genet- ics of the enzyme. In the present investigation the gene for dipeptidyl-peptidase I was cloned and characterized. The gene spans approximately 3.5 kilobases and consists of two exons and one intron. The genomic organization is distinct from the complex structures of the other members of the papain-type cysteine proteinase family. By fluorescence in situ hybridization, the gene was mapped to chromosomal region 11q14.1-q14.3. Analysis of the sequenced 5 (cid:42) -flanking region revealed no classical TATA or CCAAT box in the GC-rich region upstream of cap site. A number of possible regulatory elements that could account for tissue-specific expression were iden- tified. Northern analyses demonstrated that the dipep-tidyl-peptidase I message is expressed at high levels in lung, kidney, and placenta, at moderate to low levels in many organs, and at barely detectable levels in the brain, suggesting tissue-specific regulation. Among im-mune/inflammatory cells, the message is expressed at high levels in polymorphonuclear leukocytes and alveolar macrophages and their precursor cells. Treatment of lymphocytes with interleukin-2 resulted in a signifi-cant increase in dipeptidyl-peptidase I mRNA levels, suggesting that this gene is subjected to transcriptional regulation. The results provide initial insights into the molecular basis for the regulation of


In recent years, much has been said about online consumer-generated feedback. Concern typically emerges regarding consumer decision-making as well as the preservation of an organization's image. Additionally, a company's financial performance can be affected by customer online ratings. The present study explores the impact of a hotel's rating and number of reviews on the value generated through online transactions. Through collaboration with consulting company Travel Click, the research team gathered a sample of 178 hotels representing various companies and brands within the United States. Research results demonstrate that TripAdvisor ratings as well as the number of reviews had positive relationship with the average size of each online booking transaction. The paper concludes with theoretical and practical implications.


OBJECTIVE
AJCC stage at diagnosis determines the treatment approach and indirectly predicts outcome in patients with colorectal carcinoma. The purpose of our study was to investigate whether there was a delay in diagnosis leading to a more advanced stage at diagnosis (which affects outcome) of patients with colorectal cancers because of distance from a referral center, after positive fecal occult blood testing (FOBT).

DESIGN
Our retrospective observational study involved all cases of colonic and rectosigmoid cancers that were referred for an endoscopic procedure after an initial positive FOBT done as a part of routine screening in asymptomatic patients.

PARTICIPANTS
Roger Maris Cancer Center and University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

RESULTS
Between the years 1996-2001, 178 subjects with biopsy-proven colon cancer and 80 patients with rectosigmoid cancer were included in our study. Pearson's correlation coefficients were constructed to look at the relationship between distance from a referral center (place where the diagnosis was made) and stage at diagnosis in patients with colonic and rectosigmoid malignancies. For the colon cancer group, the regression coefficient between AJCC stage at diagnosis and distance from the referral center was 0.013 and for rectosigmoid cancers it was 0.12. Even after stratifying distances into tertiles, the correlation coefficients did not show a significant relationship (0.04 for colon and 0.16 for rectosigmoid cancers).

CONCLUSION
Distance (of residence) from a tertiary care center does not seem to be a barrier to early diagnosis of colorectal carcinoma and primary care providers in rural settings are referring patients appropriately leading to optimal outcomes.


Species containing iodine in oxidation state six are formed by photolysis and radiolysis of aqueous iodate and periodate solutions in the following reactions: IO3–+ O–→ IO42–; IO3–+ OH → IO3; IVII+ eaq–→ IeVI and IVII [graphic omitted] I0VI+ O–(or OH). The present pulse radiolysis and laser flash photolysis study of IeVI and I0VI suggests that the predominant IeVI and I0VI species formed are IO42– and IO3 at 3 12. Redox reactions of the iodine(VI) species are fast compared with interconversion among the various iodine(VI) species. The assumed four-, five- and six-coordinated iodine(VI) species have similar spectra and decay kinetics and negative values of the standard Gibbs energy of formation. The spectrum and decay kinetics of the assumed IO3 are markedly different. Furthermore, the standard Gibbs energy of formation of IO3 is estimated to have a large positive value. Observations of reactivity of iodine(VI) towards tert-butanol and periodate suggest that reduction of iodine(VI) to iodate generally takes place by transfer of OH.


We report a 72-year-old male with past medical history of stage IV squamous lung cancer treated with radiation therapy and chemotherapy with gemcitabine/carboplatin. One year later, he presented with hemoptysis treated with another session of palliative radiotherapy. Two weeks later, patient developed aspiration pneumonia and further workup showed trachea-esophageal fistula documented by barium swallow. This case shows a rare complication of chemotherapy and radiation therapy on the setting of primary lung cancer.


Attempts to redefine equality initiatives to fit squarely within the enterprise culture serve only to mask an ongoing conceptual confusion in the area of equality management. This theoretical article attempts to show that this conceptual confusion lies within the narrowness of approaches which address labour market inequalities from both an equality of opportunity and an equality of outcome perspective. The inability of these perspectives to satisfactorily address systemic causes of labour market inequalities pulls our attention towards a more materialist approach which may be found (this side of a capitalist/patriarchal society) within an equality of condition frame of reference. This widens the perspective from which equality management can be pursued so that measures to address the differential distribution of resources, rewards, opportunities and treatment in the workplace are informed by all three equalities: opportunity, outcome and conditions. Such a theoretical approach is inevitably limited in that it only provides a framework for addressing those who are in paid employment, i.e. seeks to reform the capitalist/patriarchal system. However, by posing questions of the crucial pillars of such systems notably status, reward and with that power, the 'long' and 'radical' agendas of the equality project may once again be picked up.


The 4.4BSD file system includes a new algorithm for allocating disk blocks to files. The goal of this algorithm is to improve file clustering, increasing the amount of sequential I/O when reading or writing files, thereby improving file system performance. In this paper we study the effectiveness of this algorithm at reducing file system fragmentation. We have created a program that artificially ages a file system by replaying a workload similar to that experienced by a real file system. We used this program to evaluate the effectiveness of the new disk allocation algorithm by replaying ten months of activity on two file systems that differed only in the disk allocation algorithms that they used. At the end of the ten month simulation, the file system using the new allocation algorithm had approximately half the fragmentation of a similarly aged file system that used the traditional disk allocation algorithm. Measuring the performance difference between the two file systems by reading and writing the same set of files on the two systems showed that this decrease in fragmentation improved file write throughput by 20% and read throughput by 32%. In certain test cases, the new allocation algorithm provided a performance improvement of greater than 50%.


According to the characteristics of laser communication at sea, we propose a sort of step scanning acquisition method for maritime communication. Comparing with traditional continuous scanning method, it can get velocity, high sensitivity and large acquisition range. The proposed acquisition method is based on Yang's noisy model. Through quadrant devices, we processed the acquisition signal and set up QD model. From the simulation result of RBF neural network, we find only few errors exist.


Thyroid hormones (TH) are critical regulators of several physiological processes, which include development, differentiation and growth in virtually all tissues. In past decades, several studies have shown that changes in TH levels caused by thyroid dysfunction, disruption of deiodinases and/or thyroid hormone receptor (TR) expression in tumor cells, influence cell proliferation, differentiation, survival and invasion in a variety of neoplasms in a cell type-specific manner. The function of THs and TRs in neoplastic cell proliferation involves complex mechanisms that seem to be cell specific, exerting effects via genomic and nongenomic pathways, repressing or stimulating transcription factors, influencing angiogenesis and promoting invasiveness. Taken together, these observations indicate an important role of TH status in the pathogenesis and/or development of human neoplasia. Here, we aim to present an updated and comprehensive picture of the accumulated knowledge and the current understanding of the potential role of TH status on the different hallmarks of the neoplastic process.


Drawing on data from one-on-one and focus group interviews with high school students from schools in agricultural California, this research examines how American families negotiate what we call net time. The article explores intra-familial bargaining over time spent on the internet. Analysis pays special attention to families that prioritize capital-enhancing activities such as schoolwork and college applications. In these families, access to resources is guided by implicit social contracts between parents and children, as well as between siblings. The findings illuminate how these social contracts imply particular rights and responsibilities depending on the families' level of wiredness: highly wired, partially wired, and unwired families. Comparing the experiences of students from these three groups reveals that members of each kind of family experience a different form of net time. While youths from highly wired families enjoy individualized net time, members of partially wired families divvy up household net time. The most disadvantaged youth come from unwired families in which family members must make sacrifices for youth to obtain net time outside of the household. The examination illuminates the logics that underpin the familial negotiations over each kind of net time. Ultimately, familial social contracts over net time have the power to encourage or hinder use of net time for capital-enhancing activities.


Food allergy is an increasing health problem in Western countries. Previously, it has been shown that the intensity of food allergic reactions can be regulated by regulatory T (T(reg)) cells. In addition, it has been shown that activation of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) regulates T-cell responses by induction of T(reg) cells. Therefore, we hypothesized that activation of the AhR pathway can suppress development of food allergic responses through the induction of T(reg) cells. This was investigated by using a mouse model for peanut allergy. C3H/HeOuJ mice (AhR(b)(-2)) were sensitized to peanut by administering peanut extract (PE) by gavage in the presence of cholera toxin and were treated with the prototypical AhR ligand 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) (0.6, 1.7, 5, and 15 μg/kg body weight) on days 3 and 11 orally. The functional role of CD4(+)CD25(+)Foxp3(+) T(reg) cells was investigated by depleting these cells with anti-CD25 mAb during sensitization to PE. TCDD treatment dose dependently suppressed sensitization to peanut (PE-specific IgE, IgG1, and IgG2a and PE-induced IL-5, IL-10, and IL-13, respectively). The percentage, but not the number, of CD4(+)CD25(+)Foxp3(+) T(reg) cells dose dependently increased by AhR activation in both spleen and mesenteric lymph nodes. Depletion of CD4(+)CD25(+)Foxp3(+) T(reg) cells markedly reversed the suppressive effect of TCDD on PE-specific antibody levels and PE-induced IL-5, IL-10, and IL-13 cytokine production. Present data demonstrate for the first time that activation of the AhR by TCDD suppressed the development of Th2-mediated food allergic responses. A functional shift within the CD4(+) cell population toward CD4(+)CD25(+)Foxp3(+) T(reg) cells appeared to underlie this effect. This suggests that the AhR pathway might provide potential therapeutic targets to treat food allergic diseases.


Members of the orchid genus Nigritella are widespread in European mountains, but species circumscriptions and evolutionary patterns in the genus are subjects to conflicting opinions. We analyzed a representative material of Nigritella for differentiation at nuclear and plastid marker loci. In agreement with predictions from embryological studies, diploid members of Nigritella are sexual and mostly out-crossing, whereas triploid, tetraploid and pentaploid members are apomicts. The diploid taxa were poorly differentiated in the investigated molecular markers, except for the western N. gabasiana, which was separated in plastid haplotypes. Polyploid Nigritella aggregate into three groups and within each of these groups apomictic polyploids have given rise to new species. Within the N. nigra group, the tetraploid N. nigra subsp. austriaca is somewhat differentiated from the triploid subsp. nigra at nuclear as well as plastid loci. Fusion of an unreduced egg cell from subsp. nigra with a haploid microgamete from Gymnadenia conopsea gave rise to Gymnigritella runei. Within the N. widderi group, N. archiducis-joannis is poorly separated from N. widderi in molecular markers, and the pentaploid N. buschmanniae has evolved by fusion of an unreduced egg cell from N. widderi with a haploid microgamete from a diploid Nigritella. Within the N. miniata group, N. stiriaca is somewhat differentiated from N. miniata at nuclear loci, but no other segregates of N. miniata are supported at species level. Polyploid Nigritella species accumulate genetic diversity by somatic mutations. In the widespread N. nigra subsp. austriaca and N. miniata this diversity is correlated to geography. Although some polyploids may be of recent origins, each polyploid contain genetic markers no longer encountered in diploid members of the genus. According to plastid marker data, Nigritella and Gymnadenia may constitute monophyletic sister genera. (Less)


Purpose The aim of this paper is to explore how the paradox of individualism/tribalism is brought into play and negotiated by consumers in the wake of the post-postmodern era. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on netnographic and interview data from the Greek football manager (FM) online gaming community. FM is a simulation strategy game in which players act as "real-life" managers from the screen of their computer. Findings A central paradox and a set of four supporting paradoxes are identified. These paradoxes give rise to a transitional mode of experience, which lies on the borders of reality and fantasy, and is realised both at the individual and the tribal levels. Originality/value This study makes a threefold contribution. First, it advances the understanding of the paradoxical aspects of consumption experiences in light of post-postmodern consumer culture. Second, it shows how these paradoxes are negotiated by consumers between individual and tribal levels. Third, it extends the understanding of the nature of consumption experiences through the development of the concept of the transitional consumption experience.


This history deals with the twenty-year period between 1880 and 1900, when virtually all of Africa was seized and occupied by the Imperial Powers of Europe. Eurocentric points of view have dominated the study of this era, but in this book, one of Africa's leading historians reinterprets the colonial experiences from the perspective of the colonized.


Lung cancer is the most common type of cancer and one of the leading causes of death in the world. Genetic factors play an important role in its development. PDCD6, the encoding gene for programmed cell death protein 6, may function as a tumor suppressor gene. Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) contributes about 80% to newly histologically diagnosed lung cancer patients. To explore the relationship between PDCD6 and NSCLC, we examined two single nucleotide polymorphisms(rs3756712 G/T andrs4957014 G/T, both in the intron region) of the PDCD6gene.A hospital-based case-control study was carried out including 302 unrelated NSCLC patients and 306 healthy unrelated subjects. Significantly increased NSCLC risk was found to be associated with the T allele of rs4957014 (P=0.027, OR=0.760, 95%CI=0.596-0.970). The genotype and allele frequencies of rs3756712 did not shown any significant difference between NSCLC group and controls (P=0.327, OR=0.879, 95%CI=0.679- 1.137). In conclusion, we firstly demonstrated the association between the PDCD6 gene and risk of NSCLC in a Chinese Han population.


We propose a new strategy for proactive churn management that actively uses social network information to help retain consumers. We collaborate with a major telecommunications provider to design, deploy and analyze the outcomes of a randomized control trial at the household level to evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy. A random subset of likely churners were selected to be called by the firm. We also randomly selected whether their friends would be called. We find that listing likely churners to be called reduced their propensity to churn by 1.9 percentage points from a baseline of 17.2%. When their friends were also listed to be called their likelihood of churn reduced an additional 1.3 percentage points. The NPV of likely churners increased 2.1% with traditional proactive churn management and this statistic becomes 6.4% when their friends were also listed to be called by the firm. We show that in our setting likely churners receive a signal from their friends that reduces churn among the former. We also discuss how this signal may trigger mechanisms akin to both financial comparisons and conformity that may explain our findings.


The design of transport protocols, embedded in end-systems, and the choice of buffer sizing strategies, within network routers, play an important role in performance analysis of the Internet. In this paper, we take a dynamical systems perspective on the interplay between fluid models for transport protocols and some router buffer sizing regimes. Among the flavours of TCP, we analyse Compound, as well as Reno and Illinois. The models for these TCP variants are coupled with a Drop-Tail policy, currently deployed in routers, in two limiting regimes: a small and an intermediate buffer regime. The topology we consider has two sets of long-lived TCP flows, each passing through separate edge routers, which merge at a common core router. Our analysis is inspired by time delayed coupled oscillators, where we obtain analytical conditions under which the sets of TCP flows synchronise. These conditions are made explicit in terms of coupling strengths, which depend on protocol parameters, and on network parameters like feedback delay, link capacity and buffer sizes. We find that variations in the coupling strengths can lead to limit cycles in the queue size. Packet-level simulations corroborate the analytical insights. For design, small Drop-Tail buffers are preferable over intermediate buffers as they can ensure both low latency and stable queues.


The quantity of entities in the Linked Data is increasing rapidly. For entity search and browsing systems, filtering is very useful for users to find entities that they are interested in. Type is a kind of widely-used facet and can be easily obtained from knowledge bases, which enables to create filters by selecting at most K types of an entity collection. However, existing approaches often fail to select high-quality type filters due to complex overlap between types. In this paper, we propose a novel type selection approach based upon Budgeted Maximum Coverage (BMC), which can achieve integral optimization for the coverage quality of type filters. Furthermore, we define a new optimization problem called Extended Budgeted Maximum Coverage (EBMC) and propose an EBMC-based approach, which enhances the BMC-based approach by incorporating the relevance between entities and types, so as to create sensible type filters. Our experimental results show that the EBMC-based approach performs best comparing with several representative approaches.


Objective Growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) are not mandatory for reproductive life, but data suggest their synergistic action with follicle-stimulating hormone throughout ovarian folliculogenesis. We aimed to evaluate the association of IGF-1 level on clinical pregnancy rate after ovarian stimulation, with or without intrauterine insemination, in women with GH deficiency (GHD) treated with GH replacement therapy (GHRT) at conception. Design and methods Data from 19 women with both GHD and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism referred to our reproductive medicine department were retrospectively collected. IGF-1 levels were assessed in a single laboratory, and values were expressed in s.d. from the mean. Results Amongst the seven patients receiving GHRT during ovarian stimulation, higher IGF-1 levels were significantly associated with clinical pregnancy (+0.4 s.d. vs–1.6 s.d., P = 0.03). Amongst the 24 pregnancies obtained by the 19 infertile patients, pregnancy loss was less frequent with the addition of GHRT than without (1 miscarriage out of 8 total pregnancies vs 4 miscarriages out of 16 total pregnancies). Conclusions This is the first study evaluating the association of IGF-1 level on clinical pregnancy rate in GH-treated women at conception. When taking care of female infertility due to hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, practitioners should enquire about the associated GHD and IGF-1 levels. To ensure higher clinical pregnancy chances, practitioners should aim for IGF-1 values at conception, ranging from 0 s.d. to +2 s.d., and, if necessary, could discuss initiation or increase GH treatment. Prospective studies should help strengthen our results.


Icelandic culture has generally been considered to share many similarities to the Nordic cultures. However, the financial crisis in 2008 painted a completely different picture, with the Nordic nations faring much less worse than Iceland, which saw its banking system becoming almost entirely worthless. Looking at traditional cultural yardsticks in the vein of the most commonly used research in the field of business and organizational management, generally linked to Hofstede´s dimensional studies, one would at first glance conclude that Icelanders would have behaved in a similar manner as people in the Nordic nations. By focusing on savings ratio, it is shown that Icelanders were much more risk-seeking during the prelude of the crisis. Many nations badly hit during the 2008 financial crisis have a high level of individualism inherent in their culture. Iceland fits this scenario. Thus while general cultural characteristics may lack explanatory power regarding economic behavior of people between cultures, the individual/collective cultural dimension may provide clues of what dangers (and possible strengths) lurk within societies from a financial point of view. Such developments may affect the financial stability of nations, especially those with a high level of individualism where financial liberalization with possible abuses is occurring.


We study a fundamental question that arises in social recommender systems: whether it is possible to simultaneously maximize: 1 an individual's benefit from using a social network, and 2 the efficiency of the network in disseminating information. To tackle this question, our study consists of three components. First, we introduce a stylized stochastic model for recommendation diffusion. Such a model allows us to highlight the connection between user experience at the individual level, and network efficiency at the macroscopic level. We also propose a set of metrics for quantifying both user experience and network efficiency. Second, based on these metrics, we extensively study the tradeoff between the two factors in a Yelp dataset, concluding that Yelp's social network is surprisingly efficient, though not optimal. Finally, we design a friend recommendation and news feed curation algorithm that can simultaneously address individuals' need to connect to high-quality friends, and service providers' need to maximize network efficiency in information propagation.


Multi-layer dielectric gratings for pulse compressor in high-energy laser system must provide high diffraction efficiency. In addition, its laser induced damage property is critical for the system. Nonuniform optical near-field distribution of multi-layer dielectric gratings is one of the important factors to limit its laser induced damage threshold. Electric field distributions in the grating region and multi-layer film region are analyzed by using Fourier modal method. Effects of grating structure on peak magnitude of electric field in grating ridge are analyzed when the top layer material is HfO 2 and SiO 2 , respectively. The results show that there exists an optimum top layer thickness, at which the peak magnitude of electric field within grating ridge is a minimum. And the peak electric field in the grating ridge can be reduced by designing top gratings with high aspect ratio structure when top layer thickness is increasing. Finally, the peak electric field in the grating ridge can also be reduced when the multi-layer dielectric grating is used at big incident angle.


A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based front tracking algorithm is applied to investigate the rising behaviour of a single bubble in a vertical pipe with a stagnant or flowing viscous liquid. The ratio of the pipe diameter to the bubble equivalent diameter ( b D D / ) is varied within the range of 1.0∼10.0. The wall effects on the terminal bubble rising speed (U ) and shape are investigated under various flow conditions, which are characterised by the parameters Archimedes number ( Ar ), Bond number ( Bo ), and bulk liquid flow speed ( l U ). It is found that the terminal bubble rising speed (U ) relates to the bubble rising speed in an infinite domain ( ∞ U ) and the pipe diameter by the formula α ) / ( / ) ( D D U U U b ∝ − ∞ ∞ , whereα is an exponent relating to the bubble deformability, and it is found to be in the range of 1.0∼0.7 in this study. In addition, the effects of flowing liquid on the terminal bubble rising speed and shape are also investigated for different sized pipes. It is demonstrated that the bubble rising behaviour is significantly affected by the flowing liquid in the pipe with a small diameter. Moreover, the detailed flow field around the bubble is presented to understand the physics of bubble rising behaviour in a vertical pipe under various flow conditions.


The thesis addresses two areas of research within financial economics: empirical asset pricing and the borderline area between finance and economics with emphasis on econometrical methods. The empirical asset pricing section considers the effects of short-sale constraints on both the stock market as well as the derivatives market. Many arbitrage relations in the economy are intimately tied to the possibility to go short. One such arbitrage relation is the put-call-parity (PCP) relation that dictates a pricing relation between several derivative instruments and their underlying assets. During the latter part of the 1980s stock options could be traded in Sweden, while at the same time shorting was not permitted. The main contribution of the paper is to show that this shorting prohibition indeed implied larger deviations from PCP. Furthermore, this effect is only relevant for firms with stocks that were not shortable abroad, as firms with stocks shortable abroad did not show any deviations from PCP. The second paper investigates the asymmetries found in the momentum effect. Previous studies have found that the momentum effect is mostly due to the fact that a portfolio of loser firms tend to continue perform poorly, rather than because a portfolio of winner firms continue to do well. The explanation for this phenomenon investigated in the paper is based on the theoretical work by Diamond and Verrecchia (1985). In this model they demonstrate that the effects of restrictions on the ability to go short will have as a result that negative news are incorporated more slowly than positive news. The main contribution of my paper is to explore this hypothesis, and provide a link to the momentum effect. This has been achieved by considering Sweden during the 1980s during which the rare situation of a complete shorting prohibition was enforced. The second section of the thesis foremost addresses the CCAPM model. In the third paper the joint effect of market frictions, different utility specifications, as well as more stringent econometrical analysis, on the CCAPM are considered. Since all these remedies tend to co-exist and should not be considered on a stand alone basis, as has been the case in the previous literature. The paper also shows how several measures of misspecification available in the literature are implemented when market frictions are present. In particular, the paper presents the Hansen and Jagannathan measure with market frictions. The final paper considers L1-norm-based alternatives to the L2-norm-based Hansen and Jagannathan (1997) measure. It is well known that L1-norm methods may show good properties in the presence of non-normal distributions, for instance, with respect to heavy-tailed and/or asymmetric distributions. These methods provide more robust estimators, since they are less easily influenced by outliers or other extreme observations. The basic intuition for this is that L2-norm methods involve squaring errors, which magnifies large deviations, while L1-norm methods are based on absolute deviations. Since financial data are known to frequently display non-normal properties, L1-norm methods have found considerable use in financial economics.


This chapter presents an analysis of a point-of-use thermoelectric generator that is patented by one of the authors. The design, implementation and performance of the generator for powering electronic monitoring devices and charging batteries is discussed. This passive generator has no moving parts and relies on ambient air cooling. In one iteration it produces 6.9 W of steady state power using six Laird thermoelectric modules (Laird PB23 Series, HT8, 12) when placed on a 160°C steam pipe with a 30°C ambient environment ( Δ T of 130°C). The generator produced 31.2 volts (V) open circuit and 0.89 amperes (A) short circuit. It successfully powered two microcontroller-based security cameras, one with a wireless Local Area Network (LAN) and another with cellular connectivity. In another scenario, the generator produced approximately 6 W with a steam pipe temperature of 140°C and an ambient of 25°C ( Δ T of 115°C). This second system powered LED lights, a cellular-interfaced video surveillance system, and monitoring robots, while simultaneously trickle charging batteries. A third installation totally powered a stand-alone 3G web security camera system.


The livers from 6337, 12-to 16-month-old heifers slaughtered in 10 domestic abattoirs over a period of two years were examined; 368 (5.8 per cent) had gross lesions, of which 120 (1.9 per cent) had abscesses, 74 (1.17 per cent) had only scarring, and 44 (0.7 per cent) had telangiectasis (so-called 'sawdust' liver). Of the 120 livers in which abscesses were detected, 53 (44 per cent) had a single large abscess (>4 cm diameter), 44 (36.6 per cent) had a single small abscess (<4 cm), and 23 (19 per cent) had more than two abscesses; in 20 of them (16.6 per cent) the abscesses were resolving, and in 10 (8.3 per cent) the abscesses were ruptured. Forty-three (35.8 per cent) of the livers with abscesses had adhesions to the diaphragm and diaphragmatic lung lobes, three (2.5 per cent) had adhesions to other abdominal organs, 12 (10 per cent) also had scarring and two (1.7 per cent) also had lesions due to liver fluke. There was no significant association between the liver fluke lesions and the abscesses. In 46 (38.3 per cent) of the livers the abscesses were located in the mid-dorsal diaphragmatic or dorsocranial area of the liver; 28 (23.3 per cent) were adjacent to the posterior vena cava and could as a result have caused thromboembolic disease. Clinical signs attributable to the abscesses were observed in only one animal.


State-of-the-art English automatic speech recognition systems typically use phonetic rather than graphemic lexicons. Graphemic systems are known to perform less well for English as the mapping from the written form to the spoken form is complicated. However, in recent years the representational power of deep-learning based acoustic models has improved, raising interest in graphemic acoustic models for English, due to the simplicity of generating the lexicon. In this paper, phonetic and graphemic models are compared for an English Multi-Genre Broadcast transcription task. A range of acoustic models based on lattice-free MMI training are constructed using phonetic and graphemic lexicons. For this task, it is found that having a long-span temporal history reduces the difference in performance between the two forms of models. In addition, system combination is examined, using parameter smoothing and hypothesis combination. As the combination approaches become more complicated the difference between the phonetic and graphemic systems further decreases. Finally, for all configurations examined the combination of phonetic and graphemic systems yields consistent gains.


Meat patties have gained immense popularity due to its delicious and higher nutritional values. In this study, buffalo meat patties were incorporated with apple pomace powder to investigate its effect on quality and sensory parameters of the patty. For this, apple pomace powder was added to patties in different proportions 2, 4, 6 and 8 weight percent (w/w). With an increase in apple pomace powder incorporation the water holding capacity, cooking yield, emulsion stability of meat emulsion increased. After cooking the moisture content, water activity, fat and crude fibre of patties increased while as the pH decreased. The effect on textural properties like firmness, toughness and hardness of patty increased which was well supported with the images of scan electron microscope which showed the compact structure of treated patties. The instrumental colour evaluation indicated that patties turned more red and darker than the control patty. From the sensory analysis of patties only up to 6% incorporation of apple pomace powder were acceptable.


 Abstract —Main aim of test cases reduction is to achieve the same reliability and same assurance in lesser number of test cases, we all know that testing walks hand in hand with development .We all know " WHY WE CREATE TEST CASES?". keep a track on whether the end product is achieved as per the requirements ,our aim is full filled ,the model which was formed theoretically on paper matches the actual end product and is performing the task as intended by SRS(software requirement specification). Initially testing was just considered small and unimportant part of development but now this is considered to be a myth as testing consume major part of cost and time . Thus reducing it can make a better product in term of its cost as certain industries considered time and cost as an important evaluation standard of a product/product under testing(put). Making test cases are considered an initial and most important step of testing thus it is the the root /whole and soul of our testing procedure whether it is primitive manual testing and newly accepted technique ie Automated testing which make use of new software tools help in analyzing ,running and executing test cases. In this paper I would like to through light on the technique till now proposed and the best out of them which can really gives the better cost( in terms of money and time) for test suite reduction


This article considers the implications of the Troops to Teaching (TtT) programme, to be introduced in England in autumn 2013, for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and race equality. TtT will fast-track ex-armed service members to teach in schools, without necessarily the requirement of a university degree. Employing theories of white supremacy, and Althusser's (1971) concept of Ideological and Repressive State Apparatus, I argue that this initiative both stems from, and contributes to, a system of social privilege and oppression in education. Despite appearing to be aimed at all young people, the planned TtT initiative is actually aimed at poor and racially subordinated youth. This is likely to further entrench polarisation in a system which already provides two tier educational provision: TtT will be a programme for the inner-city disadvantaged, whilst wealthier, whiter schools will mostly continue to get highly qualified teachers. Moreover, TtT contributes to a wider devaluing of current ITE; ITE itself is rendered virtually irrelevant, as it seems TtT teachers will not be subject specialists, rather will be expected to provide military-style discipline, the skills for which they will be expected to bring with them. More sinister, I argue that TtT is part of the wider militarisation of education. This military-industrial-education complex seeks to contain and police young people who are marginalised along lines of race and class, and contributes to a wider move to increase ideological support for foreign wars - both aims ultimately in the service of neoliberal objectives which will feed social inequalities.


Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is a remote sensing tool that can record a large amount of accurate topographical information with a fine spatial resolution over a short period of time. It has been used increasingly for measuring ground surfaces (i.e. topographical survey) and monitoring surface movements, such as those caused by landslides. However, the capability of this technique in these applications has not been fully explored in the literature, and thus forms the focus of this thesis. A quantitative study has been carried out to investigate the major error sources that affect the accuracy of digital elevation models (DEMs) derived from TLS survey data, and the magnitude of deformation that can be detected by repeated TLS surveys, at a local scale. In this research, vegetation-induced elevation errors in TLS measurements and the ways in which they can be minimised have been investigated experimentally. The presence of short vegetation was found to be a significant limiting factor for TLS surveys of terrain surfaces, with the average grass-induced elevation error being roughly 65% of the grass height. A finer resolution scan with a lower incidence angle (greater visibility) can effectively reduce vegetation error, as will scanning the same area from multiple scanner locations. The influence of measurement errors in source data points (or a point cloud) on a triangulated irregular network (TIN) with linear interpolation has been analysed. Based on the law of error propagation, an analytical solution was derived to calculate the error variance at any location within a TIN model, due to vertical and horizontal errors in source data points. For the special case of equal and independent error variances in source data points, the maximum, average and minimum values of propagated error variance within a TIN were found to be equal to unity, a half and a third respectively of the error variance in source data points. Errors in DEMs created from the TLS data points representing four terrain surfaces of different characteristics have been quantified using a statistical resampling method. The results show that terrain surface complexity can considerably affect the accuracy of DEMs. The effects of data point density (equivalent point spacing) on the DEM errors have also been analysed. For the data point spacings (35-100 mm) considered in the analyses, the DEM errors increased almost linearly with increasing data point spacing. The results also show that the DEM errors can be decomposed into two parts: a noise-related part and a data-density dependent part. Repeat TLS surveys of some fixed objects have been carried out, to seek to empirically quantify the georeferencing-induced positional errors involved in repeated TLS surveys. The results indicate that repeated TLS surveys can measure millimetric deformations of smooth surfaces if a high georeferencing accuracy is achieved. The DEM errors, along with the georeferencing-induced positional errors, were used to infer the minimum magnitude of movements that can be measured by multi-temporal TLS surveys of rough terrain surfaces. In the case of the Newbury cutting considered in this study, the minimum level of detection was approximately 20 mm (at a 95% confidence level) for the data point spacing of 35 mm. The findings in this research can aid in assessing the fitness of TLS surveys of terrain surfaces for a particular project, and thus are of use in the survey planning. The methods presented in this thesis can be applied to analyse errors in DEMs for making more meaningful interpretations of DEMs or surface variations derived from repeated TLS surveys.


Background and Purpose— Incidence, prevalence, and mortality for stroke vary by race and ethnicity with higher rates for blacks compared with non-Hispanic whites. Little information is available regarding differences in postacute care outcomes for racial and ethnic groups after a stroke. Methods— A retrospective analysis was conducted of 161 692 patients from the Uniform Data System for Medical Rehabilitation who received inpatient medical rehabilitation after a first stroke in 2002 and 2003. Multivariable models examined the effects of race and ethnicity on length of stay, functional status, rehabilitation efficiency, and discharge setting. Results— The mean age was 70.97 years (SD=12.87), 53% were female, and 76% were non-Hispanic white. Mean length of stay was similar for all groups ranging from 17.39 days (SD=10.86) to 17.93 (SD=10.59). Non-Hispanic white patients had higher admission and discharge functional status ratings compared with patients in the minority groups (P<0.01). Differences in functional status across racial/ethnic groups were related to age (F=20.49, P<0.001); the older the comparison group, the greater the difference in functional status. Non-Hispanic whites were discharged home less often than blacks (OR=0.64, 95% CI=0.62 to 0.66), Hispanics (OR=0.58, 95% CI=0.55 to 0.62), or other minority groups (OR=0.67, 95% CI=0.57 to 0.67). Conclusions— The findings suggest racial and ethnic disparities exist in postacute care outcomes for persons with stroke.


Bilateral central vestibular pathways (CVP) send signals from the vestibular nuclei to the cerebellar, brainstem, and cortical areas that are involved in processing graviceptive signals. Whereas the estimated direction of gravity is accurate when upright, systematic angle-dependent errors can occur when roll-tilted: over-estimations at small and very large roll angles (E-effect) and roll under-estimation at medium-sized roll angles (A-effect). Acute lesions along the CVP frequently lead to deviations of the subjective visual vertical (SVV). Whereas SVV errors in upright positions have been well characterised, changes in the A- and E-effect and in SVV precision due to lesions along the CVP have not been studied in roll-tilted positions. We report on a series of patients with CVP lesions and compare SVV measurements in different roll orientations (0°, ±45°, ±90°) in the sub-acute state (4–33d) with follow-up ~4 months later. In an upright position, 5/6 patients showed SVV deviations in the sub-acute state; in 3 patients deviations were ipsilesional. When rolltilted, 4/6 patients showed increased SVV errors. In all patients, the pattern of SVV errors could be explained by combining an SVV offset in an upright position with body-position-dependent errors when roll-tilted, being larger on the ipsilesional side and smaller on the contralesional side or vice versa. SVV precision was decreased in 4 patients. After 4 months, verticality perception was either improved (n = 1) or within normal range (n = 2) in terms of accuracy and precision in 3/4 patients. These results show that lesions along the CVP result in altered estimates of the direction of gravity in the entire roll plane, which can improve within a few months due to central compensation. At the time, accuracy had normalised in upright positions, estimated direction of gravity when roll-tilted could still be erroneous. Assessing the SVV in roll-tilted positions may reveal more subtle deficiencies and may hence support continuation of balance physiotherapy.


GAN vocoders are currently one of the state-of-the-art methods for building high-quality neural waveform generative models. However, most of their architectures require dozens of billion floating-point operations per second (GFLOPS) to generate speech waveforms in samplewise manner. This makes GAN vocoders still challenging to run on normal CPUs without accelerators or parallel computers. In this work, we propose a new architecture for GAN vocoders that mainly depends on recurrent and fully-connected networks to directly generate the time domain signal in framewise manner. This results in considerable reduction of the computational cost and enables very fast generation on both GPUs and low-complexity CPUs. Experimental results show that our Framewise WaveGAN vocoder achieves significantly higher quality than auto-regressive maximum-likelihood vocoders such as LPCNet at a very low complexity of 1.2GFLOPS. This makes GAN vocoders more practical on edge and low-power devices.


Abstract Making sense of new technologies and their associated risks entails lay people in utilizing various modes of reasoning and making use of a range of interpretative resources at hand to interrogate evidence. Such sense making is accomplished collectively in ways that are sometimes playfully inventive, and which have regard to ideas of accountability and morally acceptability. In practice, such bricolage-like processes appear to have certain similarities with the work of everyday scientific investigation. This paper examines these processes of lay practical reasoning by adopting an analytic stance that is concerned with examining the fine detail of what people demonstrably do in accomplishing such work. It draws on data generated by number of reconvened discussion groups, which formed a component part of the recent public debate in the UK about the possible commercialization of genetically modified crops.


Long-range chemical communication takes place over micrometer distance within different biological organisms and biomimetic chemical micro-compartments). A proper model for studying this phenomenon could rely on three features, namely (i) the compartmentalization of chemical information (using microfluidics), (ii) a stable emitter of periodic chemical signals inside compartments (Belousov–Zhabotinsky oscillating reaction) and (iii) a suitable spatio-temporal monitoring of the emitted chemical signal. In this paper we study chemical transmission across the interface between two immiscible liquids, eventually in the presence of lipid, by local electrochemical probing. We show that chemical information is transmitted either by direct transfer of redox active species and or by interfacial electron transfer. Insights obtained by electrochemical measurements, together with numerical simulations, are then used to transpose the communication across a phospholipid bilayer among oscillators compartmentalized in liposomes and dispersed in a water medium. The procedure for the successful generation of these cell-like compartments through microfluidics is reported here for the first time.


The presence of bacteria in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) results in the inflammation of the meninges, a condition known as meningitis. The aim of the study is to determine the prevalence of bacteria, which causes meningitis and their susceptibility pattern. This study, which was prospective and cross sectional involved patients with suspected symptoms of meningitis.1504 patients seen at the various facilities in University of Benin Teaching Hospital were involved in the study. CSF samples obtained from patients were incubated on chocolate, blood, and McConkey agar at 370c for 24hrs. Isolates were identified using the protocol of Cowan and Steel. Sensitivity test was done on Mueller-Hinton agar by the disc diffusion method of Bauer and Kirby using the Mcfalan method. The isolates varied in their susceptibility to the various antibiotics. Ofloxacin, ceftazidime amoxicilin clavulanate and gentamycin showed good antibiotic activity while cefuroxime, ceftriaoxone, cloxacillin, showed poor activity. Oxacillin showed the poorest activity. Despite the low infection rate, bacterial meningitis still remains a medical emergency and suggestions were advanced to control the occurrence. Keywords: meningitis, infection rate, susceptibility pattern, cerebrospinal Nigerian Medical Practitioner Vol. 63, No. 5-6,2013


An experimental prototype is built to study the application of using the thermoelectric cooler (TEC) to extract water from air for daily consumption. This paper presents the experimental evaluation of parameters that influence the amount of water, which can be collected from condensation of water vapour in the air on the cooled surface. The investigation examines the power supply to the TEC and the air flow over the cold surface on the amount of condensate collected. Over a 3-h period with an average relative humidity of 77 %, the largest amount of water extracted from the air is about 50 mL for a cold surface area of 579.6 cm2. With an average power consumption of 89 W, the prototype produces condensation at 5340 kWh/kL. Although the prototype is currently not cost effective, the usage of TEC is promising as there is ample room for prototype improvement.


Transparent exopolymer particles (TEP) are considered to be generated abiotically from dissolved extracellular polysaccharides released mainly by phytoplankton. TEP may affect the aggre- gation rate of particles and therefore influence the flux of organic carbon to the deep ocean. The role of NO3 - limitation in the production of TEP by the marine diatom Chaetoceros calcitrans was investi- gated. C. calcitrans was grown in batch cultures with different initial nitrate concentrations (25, 75, 150, 250 and 450 µmol l -1 ). Nitrate affected the production of TEP in 2 distinct ways. The initial spe- cific growth rate and maximum concentration of biomass (as estimated by chlorophyll a, cell number, total particulate carbon or total particulate nitrogen) reached in every culture was directly dependent on the initial NO3 - concentration. Maximum TEP concentration followed this trend, and was signifi- cantly linearly correlated with several biomass-related variables and with the initial NO3 - concentra- tion. However, despite the general trend of direct covariation between TEP concentration and phyto- plankton biomass, NO3 - has a more specific effect. A close examination of the exponential phase shows that the net production of TEP per biomass was higher in N-limited cultures. In the N-sufficient cultures, during Day 2, there was even a decrease in the concentration of TEP per unit of biomass with respect to the inoculum. Our results support the hypothesis that, under N-limitation, a large pro- portion of the photosynthetically fixed carbon is channeled to TEP. The concentration of carbohydrate in the particulate fraction (PCH) was larger in N-limited cultures. The effect was clearer during expo- nential growth. In this phase there was a good agreement between the response of TEP and PCH to N limitation. Unlike TEP, PCH decreased sharply during the stationary and senescent phases. The decrease of PCH was associated with an increase in dissolved organic carbon and an increase in the number of bacteria in the cultures.


Trust management in large-scale distributed systems is an important enabling factor in the operation of these systems. In this paper, we discuss trust management in a Grid operating system, called XtreemOS. The paper presents the trust model underlying XtreemOS and discusses its underlying elements. We demonstrate how the trust services can be used to establish trust in a XtreemOS-based Grid and propose a couple of solutions for terminating trust. We also discuss the different alternative designs for the model and pros and cons of each alternative. Finally, we provide an overview of the design, implementation and performance evaluation of the trust services.


Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the cost-effectiveness of a long-term, nurse-led, multidisciplinary programme of home/clinic visits in preventing progressive cardiac dysfunction in patients at risk of developing de novo chronic heart failure (CHF). Methods: A trial-based analysis was conducted alongside a pragmatic, single-centre, open-label, randomized controlled trial of 611 patients (mean age: 66 years) with subclinical cardiovascular diseases (without CHF) discharged to home from an Australian tertiary referral hospital. A nurse-led home and clinic-based programme (NIL-CHF intervention, n = 301) was compared with standard care (n=310) in terms of life-years, quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) and healthcare costs. The uncertainty around the incremental cost and QALYs was quantified by bootstrap simulations and displayed on a cost-effectiveness plane. Results: During a median follow-up of 4.2 years, there were no significant between-group differences in life-years (−0.056, p=0.488) and QALYs (−0.072, p=0.399), which were lower in the NIL-CHF group. The NIL-CHF group had slightly lower all-cause hospitalization costs (AUD$2943 per person; p=0.219), cardiovascular-related hospitalization costs (AUD$1142; p=0.592) and a more pronounced reduction in emergency/unplanned hospitalization costs (AUD$4194 per person; p=0.024). When the cost of intervention was added to all-cause, cardiovascular and emergency-related readmissions, the reductions in the NIL-CHF group were AUD$2742 (p=0.313), AUD$941 (p=0.719) and AUD$3993 (p=0.046), respectively. At a willingness-to-pay threshold of AUD$50,000/QALY, the probability of the NIL-CHF intervention being better-valued was 19%. Conclusions: Compared with standard care, the NIL-CHF intervention was not a cost-effective strategy as life-years and QALYs were slightly lower in the NIL-CHF group. However, it was associated with modest reductions in emergency/unplanned readmission costs.


The compositions of the essential oil of Heracleum platytaenium Boiss. aerial parts, grown in Turkey were determined by GC-MS. Twenty-two compounds (95.24 %) were determined. The major compounds in the oil were found to be octyl acetate (85.53 %), octyl hexanoate (3.06 %), (Z)-4-octenyl acetate (1.60 %) and octyl octanoate (1.24 %). The antimicrobial activity of essential oil extracted from H. platytaenium against various yeast and bacteria species using the disc diffusion method was investigated during the present study. The extract exhibited strong antimicrobial activity against Candida glabrata with inhibition zones varying between 12-32 mm. In contrast, the growth of all the tested bacteria were not affected by the extract. In conclusion, this study confirms that H. platytaenium essential oil could be considered as a natural anticandidal source.


Demographic projections indicate that there will be an increase in the number of elderly people over the next century. This has major implications for the caring sector as requirements for care increase with age. Nutrition has a vital role in the maintenance of health and quality of life. However, nutritional care may have a low priority in some long-term care settings. A higher than expected prevalence of low body weight and inadequate dietary intake in long-term care has raised concern due to the morbidity and mortality associated with it. This study aimed to examine the nutritional status of elderly NHS continuing care residents, assess the nutritional adequacy of the diet offered and consumed and examine the environment where they ate. The information collected suggests that similar anthropometric trends appear to exist between elderly groups in different geographical areas such as decreasing weight and body mass with age but, absolute values differ. This suggests that the reference data available may be inappropriate. The study group appeared leaner and more muscular than the reference. The prevalence of nutritional status varied from 11-24% depending on the criteria used. This prevalence appears high compared to free living elderly and either similar or lower than other elderly long-term care groups. The lack of a gold standard definition for undernutrition and appropriate reference percentiles has important implications for screening and identifying undernutrition. Energy consumed was inadequate compared to the EAR and ETEE, this may explain the prevalence of undernutrition and the inadequate nutrient content of the diet. Intakes may have been influenced by various social and environmental factors, which may have placed the group at nutritional risk. Conclusion The group seem at risk of undernutrition from lack of nutritional screening, inadequate diet and various environmental factors. The group was leaner but more muscular than community reference groups and the prevalence of undernutrition was higher than community free-living elderly. Further research is required on appropriate reference percentiles, criteria for identifying undernutrition and environmental risk factors. Recommendations Various recommendations were made to the Health Board and Trust Management Teams which required multi-disciplinary input and change in aspects of nutritional care. Recommendations included: redesigning menus making them more appropriate for the elderly (both nutritionally and culinary); implementation of nutritional screening; nutritional education of ward staff; vitamin D supplementation; environmental improvements; identifying, recording and taking account of residents' meal, snack and drink preferences. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.).


In this study, the author examine the market timing ability of individual investors in the US. The analysis is based on data gathered by the American Association of Individual Investors asset allocation survey during a period that spans more than 30 years. Individual investors correctly time the market during the full sample period and during sub-periods based on different market conditions. TOPIC: Style investing Key Findings • Self-directed investors outperform investors that relay on professional financial advisors. • A sample of individual investors show good market timing skill during a 30-year period. • Timing ability is positive during bear and bull market conditions.


With the Zebiak-Cane model, the contribution of the location and spatial pattern of initial error in sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) to uncertainty in El Nino predictions is investigated using an approach based on conditional nonlinear optimal perturbation (CNOP), which seeks to find the initial error (i.e., the CNOP error) that satisfies a given constraint and that causes the largest prediction error at the prediction time. The computed CNOP error of SSTA has a dipole pattern in the equatorial central and eastern Pacific. The initial error from the equatorial central and eastern Pacific tends to grow more significantly than those from other locations. Because of the contribution of annual mean states the location of the initial error plays an important role in the error evolution; e. g., the shallow annual mean thermocline in the eastern Pacific favors feedback between the thermocline and sea surface temperature. Meanwhile, the specific dipole structure of the initial error is also crucial for optimal error growth. Even with the same magnitude as the CNOP error, random initial error in the equatorial central and eastern Pacific does not evolve significantly over time. Initial errors of SSTA with a similar spatial pattern to the CNOP error (i.e., the dipole pattern of SSTA error) give rise to larger prediction errors than those without similar spatial pattern do. Consequently, the magnitude of the prediction error at the prediction time depends on the combined effects of the location and spatial pattern of the initial error. If additional observation instruments are deployed to observe sea surface temperature with limited coverage, they should preferentially be deployed in the equatorial central and eastern Pacific.


Respite care is currently disregarded as an essential component of palliative care despite interest on the part of Government and others to support home based end of life care and to increase access for people with chronic degenerative conditions. During the last 2 years an East London hospice has delivered an updated model of respite care that recognises and responds to new emerging groups of users and seeks to enable more people to remain at home during their illness. A new, nurse led service, headed by a nurse consultant, has been established which delivers planned respite care. The service proactively seeks to support people with non malignant conditions including young adults undergoing transition from children to adult services. This shift results in time being given to a multi professional review of the patient and carer's needs as a basis for establishing an updated care plan, designed to enrich the patient's life and maintain their function and wellbeing. Access to other hospice services is also made available. It is particularly effective when the patient is admitted in a relatively stable state and can consider / negotiate different approaches to care in a safe environment. Seven beds are now open to provide this care. Development of this new model has required a different culture of care, development of staff skills and new working relationships within and outwith the hospice. The service has been well used (average occupancy 80%). Review of activity data reveals a higher than average use of these beds by people with non cancer conditions (47%) and increasing utilization of young people undergoing transition (12 episodes). User satisfaction is high and the impact of care, measured through SKIPP is positive. Carer feedback, via focus groups indicates that the service is a vital one & suggestions about improvements will help inform service development plans.


This paper presents a position based visual tracking system of a redundant manipulator using a Kinect camera. Kinect camera provides 3-D information of a target object, therefore the control algorithm of the position-based visual servoing (PBVS) can be simplified, as there is no requirement to estimate a 3-D feature point position from the extracted image and the camera model. The Kalman filter is used to predict the target position and velocity. This control method is applied to a calibrated robotic system with eye-to-hand configuration. The stability analysis has been derived and real-time experiments have been carried out using a 7 DOF PowerCube manipulator from Amtec Robotic. The experimental results of both static and moving targets are presented to demonstrate and to verify the proposed position based visual tracking system performance.


Abstract Andriamihajarivo, T.H., P.P. Lowry II & G.E. Schatz (2016). Endemic families of Madagascar. XIV. A new restricted range species of Pentachlaena H. Perrier (Sarcolaenaceae) from central Madagascar. Candollea 71: 167–172. In English, English and French abstracts. Pentachlaena vestita Andriam., Lowry & G.E. Schatz (Sarcolaenaceae) is described as a new species from open, frequently burned vegetation on quartzite substrate on Mt. Ambatolahinanahary in central Madagascar. It can be distinguished from Pentachlaena latifolia H. Perrier, which it most closely resembles, by several foliar characters including leaf size and venation, and especially by the presence of a dense stellate-strigose indument on the inflorescences, flowers, and fruits, and which almost totally obscures the abaxial leaf surface. A description of the new species is accompanied by a line drawing and photos taken in the field, along with a preliminary assessment of its risk of extinction following the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria, which indicates a status of "Endangered".


Even though gene therapy made its way through the clinics to treat a number of human pathologies since the early years of experimental research and despite the recent approval of the first gene-based product (Glybera) in Europe, the safe and effective use of gene transfer vectors remains a challenge in human gene therapy due to the existence of barriers in the host organism. While work is under active investigation to improve the gene transfer systems themselves, the use of controlled release approaches may offer alternative, convenient tools of vector delivery to achieve a performant gene transfer in vivo while overcoming the various physiological barriers that preclude its wide use in patients. This article provides an overview of the most significant contributions showing how the principles of controlled release strategies may be adapted for human gene therapy.


Abstract The North Anatolia region in Turkey contains a large amount of high-calorie lignite coal deposits of the Eocene age. In this study, distribution of the environmentally significant element contents of Eocene coals, enrichment factors of these elements, and relation between total organic carbon and these elements were investigated. Contents of environmentally harmful elements, such as Mo, V, B, Se, and S contents of the Amasya-Boğaköy and Bolu-Salipazari, are found to be lower than that of average concentrations of Turkish coals, whereas Cu, Pb, Zn, Ni, Co, and S contents of the Kastamonu-Aspiras and Cu and Zn contents of Amasya-Yeniçeltek coals are higher than those of Turkish coals. Statistical evaluations were performed on environmentally significant elements and total organic matter values of coals from all the fields. In the Amasya-Kastamonu coals, Cr-V, As-S, and B-TOC element pairs show positive correlations, whereas Th-TOC, Cu-TOC, and B-Cu element pairs show negative correlations. Except for S-Cu element correlation resembling the Amasya field, the Bolu field does not display any similarity to any of the fields. On the basis of enrichment factor calculation, it is found that Eocene coals are enriched with Cr, Ni, Co, Cu, Mn, As, V, Hg, and Th.


Layout generation methods provide alternative solutions whose feasibility and quality must be evaluated. Indices must be used to distinguish the feasible solutions (involving different criteria) obtained for block layout to identify s solution's suitability, according to set objectives. This paper provides an accurate and descriptive analysis of the geometric indices used in designing facility layout (during block layout phase). The indices studied here have advantages and disadvantages which should be considered by an analyst before attempting to resolve the facility layout problem. New equations are proposed for measuring geometric indices. The analysis revealed redundant indices and that a minimum number of indices covering overall quality criteria may be used when selecting alternative solutions.


When remelting aluminium scrap, metal losses due to dross generation is a common problem. Reduction of these losses will give substantial economic and environmental benefits. Dross is generated when aluminium metal oxidizes and films of oxide envelope molten metal. When a cold metal object is immersed in a melt, the heat of the melt around this is transferred so rapidly into the object that a shell of melt often solidifies to the surface of the object. When scrap with low bulk density is charged to a melt, solidification of melt on the cold scrap prevents melt from entering the cavities in the bulk of the scrap, and the bulk density remains low. Thus the scrap tends to float on the melt surface. Submersion of this scrap is important to avoid oxidation and subsequent dross generation. One solution to this is to roll scrap to a strip and feed it into the melt. This system has been examined by studying feeding of a continuous, thin aluminium plate into molten aluminium. Also, the effect of lacquer was considered, as well as feeding the plate into a launder with melt flowing along the surface of the plate. An analytical, one-dimensional, steady-state model has been developed to describe the melting and the melting mechanisms. It is based on a shell solidifying on the plate surface and a gap introducing a thermal resistance 1/hg between the shell and the plate. The thermal resistance 1/hl of the boundary layer of the melt is included. Depending on these resistances, the initial temperature of the plate and the melt temperature, a shell will form, and the plate will penetrate a distance P into the melt before it melts away. An experimental apparatus was designed and constructed to feed aluminium plate from a coil into a melt bath at a specified velocity. The plate could be withdrawn rapidly to "freeze" the situation like it was below the melt surface. The penetration depth P of the plate could be measured and shell formation observed. More than 200 experiments were performed, and by comparing the penetration depth at different feeding velocities and melt temperatures to model predictions, the two heat-transfer coefficients hl and hg could be determined by curve fitting. They agree reasonably well with values found in the literature and calculated from boundary-layer theory. In a few experiments, the plate feeding was recorded on video tape, and the cross section of some plates was studied in a microscope. Feeding of somewhat thicker plates was also tried. This gave valuable background information for comparing the experiments to the model. We believe that snap-off of the plate due to low mechanical strength around the melting temperature may affect the measurement of the penetration depth of the plate. Attempts were also made to measure the temperature in the plate by attaching thermocouples to its surface. The obtained temperature profiles in the plate were compared to the model predictions, but the method needs improvement. A criterion for formation of a shell is formulated and tested against experimental observations. Qualitative agreement is achieved. Even if there is no shell formation, it seems that there will be an air film with thermal resistance 1/hg. This indicates that the melting rate will be independent of whether a shell is formed or not. Two additional models with only one heat-transfer coefficient are also developed in order to challenge the main model. From this analysis it is found that the use of two heat-transfer coefficients is necessary to describe the system. The model should be of direct interest when feeding rolled scrap into molten aluminium. Improvement of the model can be attained by reconsidering the assumptions made, but then numerical methods must undoubtedly be applied. These new models should include the snap-off mechanism.


We investigate the first law of thermodynamics in the case of the (2+1)-dimensional BTZ black holes and Kerr-de Sitter spacetimes, in particular, we focus on the integral mass formulas. It is found that by assuming the cosmological constant as a variable state parameter, both the differential and integral mass formulas of the first law of black hole thermodynamics in the asymptotic flat spacetimes can be directly extended to those of rotating black holes in anti-de Sitter and de Sitter backgrounds. It should be pointed that these formulas come into existence in any dimensions also.


The thesis investigates how political actors remade key aspects of Europe's economic landscape after World Wars I and II. The first and the second case deal with the borders of the Polish state; the third case investigates German reparations after World War I; the fourth case looks at the internal processes of the American administration in dealing with Germany's reconstruction after World War II.
The thesis argues that actors remade Europe's economy by using cognitive artefacts, such as cartographic maps, statistical tables or accounting procedures. Because cognitive artefacts are explicit where written and spoken statements are vague, they complement and expand the textual and verbal record. One of the consequences is that we gain a different perspective of the performance of political actors, which leads to a re-evaluation of diplomacy after World War I. It has received a largely negative appraisal so far. That seems rather disproportionate if due consideration is given to cognitive artefacts.
Moreover, the analysis of cognitive artefacts shows that the results actors achieved, were not solely outcomes of rationality or policy discourse. Actors used maps, statistical tables etc to develop jointly ad hoc ways of reasoning that were synthetic, open-ended and considerably nuanced. Therefore, the thesis proposes cognitive artefacts as an analytical framework for political agency. By producing, circulating, rejecting and modifying them in an iterative process, actors identify and structure their individual and their joint agency. As actors go through this process, their cooperation as well their noncooperation take shape. In using cognitive artefacts, actors are at the same time aligning and legitimising their agency. That involves persuasion, coercion and deceit, but not necessarily shared views.


Abstract In this paper, we consider three U.S. public policies that potentially influence the work decisions of mothers of infants—parental leave laws, exemptions from welfare work requirements, and child care subsidies for low-income families. We estimate the effects of these policies on the timing of work participation after birth, and on a range of outcomes in the subsequent four years, using a group difference-in-difference technique suitable for analysis of cross-sectional data. We find that the three policies affect early maternal work participation, but obtain no evidence of significant consequences for child well-being.


Background:
Evaluation design generally focuses more on the strength of the causal relationship between intervention and outcomes (internal validity) than on the generalisability of these findings (external validity). Consequently there are numerous examples of interventions demonstrated to be effective in one setting which fail in another. Despite considerable advances in understanding how interventions operate, there has been little work to analyse what shapes the transferability of interventions between settings, different target groups, or different problems.

Policy makers and practitioners frequently have to decide whether an intervention developed for a different setting, target group and/or problem would be appropriate for their needs, and research funders have to decide whether further evaluation is required for interventions being delivered in different circumstances. This is critical as research and public service interventions are globalised, especially in low-income countries (LICs) where there are scarce resources to confirm evidence from studies in high-income countries (HICs).

Aims:
This paper will set out the rationale for identifying general principles for assessing the transferability of interventions and some of the challenges involved. We will explore which aspects of setting, target group or problem impact on effectiveness, and what makes interventions resilient to loss of effectiveness. We will illustrate this using a literature review of the transferability of parenting interventions from HICs to LICs.

Issues:
A recent review (Gardner et al. 2015) found that four HIC parenting interventions were effective when transferred, even into culturally distant settings, but these only included two middle-ICs and no LICs. We will explore which kind of HIC parenting interventions seem effective in Africa, which contextual factors do or do not impede their effectiveness, and why.

Several conceptual issues will be addressed. Should 'the intervention' be defined in terms of form or function? Focusing on programme theory would suggest the latter, yet most programme designers prescribe content (e.g. Incredible Years, Triple P). Others define their programme by its goals and approach, intending to make it adaptable to local culture (e.g. International Child Development Programme).

What criteria should be used to define effectiveness, e.g. evaluation design, strength of outcomes, and /or size of effect? More fundamentally, concepts of effectiveness are socially constructed: should we restrict ourselves to the designers' intended primary outcomes or include secondary, interim, or unanticipated but beneficial outcomes which might be more socio-culturally appropriate?

Analysing context generates most challenges. Realist evaluation has long acknowledged that some intervention factors can be defined as either mechanism or context, for instance the motivation of facilitators in parenting programmes. Even if this distinction is unproblematic, it is difficult to know which aspects of context are important in relation to a specific intervention and therefore need to be described.

Contextual factors need to be categorised to formulate general principles. The literature suggests three possible typologies: levels in the socio-ecological model; Pawson's VICTORE checklist of dimensions of complexity; or elements of programme theory. We hope to identify which typology is most useful in exploring the transferability of parenting programmes.


In this paper, a gyroscope with novel structure is designed and fabricated by the GaAs surface micromaching technology and GaAs bulk micromachining processes technology to achieve an integration of RTD and gyroscope structure. The structure and properties of RTD are tested by Transmission electron microscopy and Aglient 4156C semiconductor analyzer, and then the key parameters of gyroscope are measured by application of Scanning Electron Microscope. The effect of packaged gyroscope is tested by Polytec Micro-system analyzer. The problems in the fabrication process are analyzed and summarized, which have certain reference significance for the further study.


Monitoring rotating machinery is often accomplished with the aid of vibration sensors. The vibration sensor signals contain a wealth of complex information that characterizes the dynamic behavior of the machinery. Transforming this information into useful knowledge about the health of the machine can be challenging due to the presence of extraneous noise sources and variations in the vibration signal itself. This is particularly true in situations in which the rotating machinery is monitored under varying loads and/or speeds. In order for any gained knowledge or insight into the health of machinery to be useful, it must be actionable. This is achieved by detecting incipient faults as early as possible. A novel approach to vibration monitoring that employs a multivariate similarity-based modeling (SBM) technique to characterize the expected behavior of time synchronous averaged spectral features is shown to enable the detection in rotating machinery. This in turn facilitates the assessment of machine health and enables fault diagnostics and ultimately prognostics. SBM has been applied successfully to a variety of non-vibration related multi-sensor, health monitoring applications. Our new approach builds off of these experiences and a combination of signal processing algorithms to expand the overall applicability of SBM into single sensor vibration monitoring. We discuss an approach to gearbox fault monitoring using vibration data and SBM. This new approach is described in detail and is applied to actual H-60 gearbox vibration data acquired from seeded fault tests conducted by U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) at the Helicopter Transmission Test Facility (HTTF) in Patuxent River, MD in 2001 and 2002.


WELCOME to the Gender & Sexuality Studies Senior Seminar! If you are a GSS major, and you are graduating this year or the next, then this class is for you. You will have the opportunity to develop an independent project, which will culminate in a research


International relations scholars have long suspected that popular support for war is structured in part by in-group reactions to out-group threats. Huntington's (1993, 1996) "clash of civilizations" hypothesis is one of the most controversial and under-tested extensions of this perspective within international relations. Most of the studies to quantitatively test Huntington's hypothesis have examined the outcomes of group conflict, asking whether militarized interstate disputes are more likely across than within civilizations. Our study takes a different approach by examining the patterns of discourse that activate group conflict, focusing on a single militarized interstate dispute: the 2003 invasion of Iraq. For over 70 years, the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) has monitored the world's press, translating broadcast, print, and internet news content into English from vernacular coverage from almost every country in the world. Our analysis of FBIS data before, during, and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq reveals patterns of ingroup discourse that are mostly inconsistent with Huntington's "clash of civilizations" hypothesis. Ingroup discourse was prevalent in worldwide news coverage about Iraq, but this ingroup discourse tends to be structured at the level of individual nation-states rather than common cultures. Paper presented at the 2011 annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Montreal, Canada, March 16-19. 1 The authors thank the Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois for its support of this project.


The majority of the glass finds discovered during the excavations at the monastery of Olba consists of fragments belonging to lamps, goblets, and window panes that indicate the use of glass for illumination. In addition to these, fragments of bowls, plates, jars, or flasks were also recorded. As almost all the glass fragments were found within the earth fill, it is not possible to build a chronology through stratigraphy. The only location that gives numismatic evidence for dating is the stone basin. The densely corroded coins from the basin suggest a date starting from the sixth century AD. The overall study of the archaeological evidence from the monastery, as well as the typological research into the glass material, reveal that the glass finds belong to a period starting from the fifth century and ending in the seventh century AD.


Abstract Collaboration has been considered one of the keys for effectively managing state school properties in New Zealand, with participants combining their abilities to solve challenges and achieve common goals. However, this is challenging due to the multiple stakeholders involved (Ministry staff, external consultants, school boards), process fragmentation, and the stakeholders' diversity of knowledge. This research aims to develop a collaboration maturity model with process areas, criteria in each process area and rating levels. The criteria were identified from interviews with school managers and then used in a questionnaire survey to investigate the maturity levels of criteria in the collaboration. The assessment results provide insights into the problems or lowest scores criteria that are most needed for improvement. Based on the findings, improvement initiatives have been discussed. From school managers' perspective, the empirical findings can be translated into actionable knowledge in a way that helps the top management review their collaboration policies regarding staff training, funding allocation, reporting system and information technology.


231 Abstract: Species from the family Apidae (Hymenoptera) in Ankara province were considered. Nine species were determined from the subfamily Bombinae. Synonymies, the plants on which the specimen were caught, the Turkish and global distributions are given along with their distribution maps. Detailed drawings of the ventral view and photographs of the dorsal view of the male genitalia are also given except for the species Megabombus armeniacus (Rad.) , M. pascuorum (Scopoli), and M. humilis (Illiger), which had insufficient male specimens.


A logic model is framework that is used to delineate goals and resources. It was used by the Social Work Department at Texas A&M University-Commerce to help visualize and establish the initial accreditation of the MSW program and continues to be a valuable tool for this rural social work program. The model has helped faculty determine a vision for the program. This vision has transferred to other areas such as recruitment and retention of faculty, curriculum choices for students, resources for alumni, and community development to reach rural social service agencies that are lacking in resources. The logic model provided a guiding framework that started at the inception of the social work program and has helped clarify strengths and weaknesses in building the social work program.


The watermarking technique has served as a tool for the protection of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of multimedia contents. Due to the digital nature of multimedia documents, these documents can be duplicated, modified, transformed, and diffused very easily. As a result, a watermark that is embedded into the digital data cannot be distinguished from the data itself. Upon request, the watermark can be extracted to prove authorized ownership. In this research, an integration of two watermarking techniques; spatial Least Significant Bit (LSB), and frequency domains Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) in cover image, had been proposed. A simulation of the proposed method was done in order to determine the robustness and imperceptibility of the watermarked image when exposed to various attacks. The simulation of the proposed method was done in MATLAB, using the PSNR, MSE, and SSIM, as simulation parameters. The efficiency of the method that was based on the robustness and imperceptibility of the watermarked image was determined through the values of the PSNR, MSE, and SSIM. The PSNR of the LSB, the DWT, and the proposed method were 33.09%, 32.3%, and 34.6 respectively, and the MSE of the LSB, the DWT, and the proposed method were 34.4%, 44.9%, and 20.7% respectively. The findings showed that the proposed method was more efficient in terms of robustness and imperceptibility for the watermarked image, compared to LSB and DWT techniques. PTT A PER PU STA KA AN TU NK U T UN AM INA H vi


This paper presents the development of a new modeling support tool able to simulate, with a reasonable workload, 36 integrated building-plant systems with different scales and resolutions, in order to support architects and HVAC designers/engineers in their modeling efforts, providing them with an extremely flexible, guided and accurate tool which does not require specific expertise during its use. The starting point is represented by a detailed model created with the calculation engine TRNSYS, which allows for dynamic and integrated simulation of the building envelope, heating plant subsystems, and plant components related to the production of the domestic hot water. The paper explores the strategies and simplifications that can considerably reduce the number of necessary inputs for the simulations, thus minimizing the modeling, implementation and simulation runtime of the model, still maintaining a very high degree of accuracy with respect to the computational results and real energy consumptions. The protocols are applied to different case studies, first for the detailed modeling and progressively enhancing the level of simplification. The results show that the accuracy of the most simplified model in terms of heating loads and efficiencies is always below 16% with respect to the most detailed model, but with up to 90% modeling and simulation workload reductions. In this way the dynamic simulations could become an everyday working tool, with a greater amount of outputs in order to avoid plant oversizing and design errors.