Pollen dispersion and reproductive success of four tree species of a xerophytic forest from Argentina. The "talares" in eastern Buenos Aires province, Argentina, are coastal xerophitic forests structured by few arboreal species surrounded by a lower and moister soil matrix. We studied the reproductive parameters of the most representative arboreal species (Celtis tala, Scutia buxifolia, Jodina rhombifolia,and Schinus longi- folia). Pollen dispersion was studied through floral visitor traps (biotic dispersion) and using gravimetric pollen collectors (abiotic dispersion). The reproductive success (fruit formation rate) of the focal species was studied by enclosing flowers with different mesh bags. The reproductive system varied among the different species. C. tala was anemophilous and selfcompatible. S. buxifolia was entomophilous and floral visitors dependant. J. rhombifolia was entomophylous, although spontaneous autogamy could favor reproduction in the absence of pollinators. Lastly, S. longifolia could be an ambophilous species (pollinated by insects and by the wind). This dual system may be the result of system flexibility mechanism or an evolutionary transition. Rev. Biol. Trop. 57


Background: Arthroscopy was used to observe the clinical effect of liver-softening medicine for treating knee osteoarthritis (OA). Materials and Methods: Forty knee OA patients with cartilage classifications of Outerbridge grade II, III, or II plus III determined via arthroscopy were randomly assigned to a treatment of liver-softening medicine plus glucosamine or a control treatment of glucosamine alone. Clinical observation and determination of the comprehensive effect score were performed at 60, 120, and 180 days. A second arthroscopy was performed at 180 days. Results: Signs and symptoms significantly improved at different time points in the treatment group. The effects in the treatment group were better than those in the control group. When analyzing the cartilage during the second arthroscopy, no further degeneration was observed. Conclusions: After arthroscopic debridement, the treatment of knee OA with liver-softening medicine in conjunction with glucosamine is a feasible and effective solution.


The first ever human identification through DNA analysis was done in the year 1987. Since then, this test has been used, not only in the ruling of civil and juridical cases, but also for human identification of missing persons and mass disaster victims. In this chapter we will present the usefulness of genetic DNA testing of skeletonized remains for human identification, by using automate DNA extraction from three different human bone types: tooth, femur and petrous pyramid. For each case, we obtained saliva samples on buccal swabs from relatives. After the bones were washed and cleaned, Bead Balls Mill Mix 20 (Tehtnica Domel, Slovenia), was used to obtain the bone powder. The DNA extraction from bone samples was performed on the automate Maxwell RSC 48 Instrument (Promega, USA), using the Maxwell FSC DNA IQ Casework Kit (Promega, USA). Power Quant System (Promega, USA) was used for DNA quantification of the samples. The DNA samples were amplified on a Pro Flex PCR System (Thermo Fischer, USA), using the Global Filer PCR Amplification Kit (Applied Biosystems, USA). PCR products were run on a 3500 Genetic Analyzer (Thermo Fischer, USA). Data analysis was performed by Gene Mapper 1.4. Considering that these cases involved DNA extraction from teeth, bones and old human remains, automate system was felt to be the best option to reduce handling errors and increase the possibilities of obtaining good quality DNA.


Residential solar photovoltaic (PV) systems are becoming increasingly common around the world. Much of this growth is attributed to a decreasing cost of solar PV modules, reduction in the cost of installation and other "soft costs," along with net-metering, financial incentives, and the growing societal interest in low-carbon energy. Yet this steep rise in distributed, uncontrolled solar PV capacity is being met with growing concern in maintaining electric grid stability when solar PV reaches higher penetration levels. Rapid reductions in solar PV output create an immediate and direct rise in the net system load. Demand response and storage technologies can offset these fluctuations in the net system load, but their potential has yet to be realized through wide-scale commercial dissemination. In the interim these fluctuations will continue to cause technical and economic challenges to the utility and the end-user. Late-afternoon peak demands are of particular concern as solar PV drops off and household demand rises as residents return home. Transient environmental factors such as clouding, rain, and dust storms pose additional uncertainties and challenges. This study analyzes such complex cases by simulating residential loads, rooftop solar PV output, and dust storm effects on solar PV output to examine transients in the net system load. The Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area is used as a case study that experiences dust storms several times per year. A dust storm is simulated progressing over the Phoenix metro in various directions and intensities. Various solar PV penetration rates are also simulated to allow insight into resulting net loads as PV penetration grows in future years.Copyright © 2015 by ASME


The debate over Plato's " so called unwritten doctrines", which he communicated only to a small circle of trusted disciples, has caused a stir among philosophers in recent decades. Rafael Ferber assumes a differentiated position in this controversy. He is convinced that the unwritten doctrines did exist, but that Plato, for reasons inherent in the process of gaining knowledge, was unable to communicate these doctrines even to his closest disciples. In this book, Ferber outlines the discussion and summarizes the standpoints of greatest interest.
Since Aristotle, we have known that Plato did not put his most important teachings into writing, but instead communicated them orally to the inner circle of his disciples. Although the extant dialogues pass down Plato's "exoteric" doctrines, his most important "esoteric" insights were not meant for the general public. The content and significance of these "so called unwritten doctrines" have become the subject of debate in philosophical circles.
Fifteen years ago, at the height of the controversy over these doctrines, Ferber entered the fray with a small book. He proposed that Plato was also unable to communicate the unwritten doctrines because the highest principles (i.e. the subject of the "so called unwritten doctrines") cannot be known as such due to an epistemological paradox. Ferber's alternative position met with great respect and acceptance, although in individual cases it was also rejected.
Ferber's new book again presents the text of 1991, but significantly expands on it through new perspectives and an outline of the discussion it triggered. In this book, the reader learns what is meant by Plato's "so called unwritten doctrines" and what the controversy is all about.


Both academic research and industrial practice recognize difficulties in translating the principles of service-dominant (S-D) business logic into actionable insights for practitioners, particularly when considering S-D logic at the strategic level. To address this problem, this paper focuses on the conceptualization, formulation, and communication of an S-D business strategy. From the theoretical standpoint, we conceptualize the elements of an S-D strategy by filtering the scattered literature about S-D strategy and businessmodels through the lenses of traditional views of business strategy. From the practical standpoint, we develop a tool embedding our conceptual development to support practitioners in the formulation and communication of S-D strategy. While traditional strategy tools take a value chain perspective, our tool helps to position the focal organization at the center of a complex ecosystem of partners who are cocreating value. Following the principles of action design research, the tool is developed and evaluated in close collaborationwith practice in a case study in the financial services industry. Consequently, this paper contributes both to the conceptual and the practical operationalization of S-D logic at the strategic level.


BACKGROUND
The Rotterdam Score (RS) on CT head is a new evolving clinical tool as a predictor of mortality in Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). The objective of this study is to assess the outcome of children with TBI admitted in paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) of a tertiary-care, university hospital by using RS.

METHODS
This was a prospective observational study conducted on children (age: 1mo -16yr) with TBI admitted in PICU of Aga Khan University Hospital from 2013 to 2016. RS on CT was calculated by a radiologist. All patients were managed according to according to Paediatric Brain Trauma Foundation Guidelines 2012.Demographic data, clinical variables and outcomes were recorded. Logistic regression analysis was applied to assess the association between outcome and R..

RESULTS
Ninety-two cases were enrolled during four years. The median age was 77 months (3 months to 16 years) and 73 (79%) were male. The main cause of injury was RTA (60.9%) followed by fall (39.1%). Sixty-two patients (67%) had a post-resuscitation GCS of 8 or less. 54% (51) patients were managed conservatively. The RS of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 were present in 19, 36,19,15 and 3 patients. The mean RS was 2.4. The higher mortality rate was observed in high RS. The RS was significantly associated with mortality (OR 1.75, 95% CI 1.03-2.95; p<0.04).

CONCLUSIONS
Rotterdam Score on CT head can be used to predict mortality in paediatric patients with TBI.


In recent years, nations have regained prominence as central symbols of political unity and mobilization, and proved capable of serving political goals across the political spectrum. Yet, the current revival of the national extends well beyond the realm of politics; it is anchored in the logic of global capitalism, and has become inextricably intertwined with the practices of promotion and consumption. Our article seeks to map the interface between nationalism and economic life, and bring some clarity to the so far fragmented debate on the topic, which developed under diverse headings such as 'economic nationalism', 'nation branding', 'consumer ethnocentrism' and 'commercial nationalism'. We focus more closely on developing the concept of consumer nationalism, which received little sustained attention in cultural studies and in social sciences and humanities more generally. We offer a definition of consumer nationalism, situate it vis-a-vis the broader phenomena of economic nationalism and political consumerism, and propose an analytical distinction between political consumer nationalism and symbolic consumer nationalism. Drawing on existing literature we then consider a range of examples and examine how these two forms of consumer nationalism become involved in the reproduction of nationalism, taking into account both consciously nationalist discourses and practices as well as the more banal, everyday forms of nationalism.


Characterization of corn stover and coal were undertaken in order to compare their properties and determine the combustion characteristics of both feedstocks. The study was also intended to establish whether corn stover is a suitable feedstock for blending with coal for the purpose of co-gasification based on composition and properties. Proximate and ultimate analyses as well as energy value of both samples including their blends were undertaken and results showed that corn stover is a biomass material well suited for blending with coal for the purpose of co-gasification, given its high volatile matter content which was measured and found to be 75.3%, and its low ash content of 3.3% including its moderate calorific value of 16.1%. The results of the compositional analyses of both pure and blended samples of corn stover and coal were used to conduct computer simulation of the co-gasification processes in order to establish the best blend that would result in optimum co-gasification efficiency under standard gasifier operating conditions. The final result of the co-gasification simulation process indicated that 90% corn stover/10% coal resulted in a maximum efficiency of about 58% because conversion was efficiently achieved at a temperature that is intermediate to that of coal and corn stover independently.


The polishing process of a silicon wafer is a critical factor in the fabrication of semiconductor. Because a globally planar and mirror-like wafer surface are achieved in this process. The surface roughness in the wafer depends on the surface properties of the carrier head unit along with other machining conditions such as working velocity, polishing pad, temperature, down-force, etc. In this paper, the wafer surface is investigated according to several parameters and experimental data. Experiments were performed to observe the down-force and temperature when the wafer carrier head unit was pressed down onto the polishing pad. A loadcell was employed to obtain the signal of the applied pressure against the polishing pad. Also, working temperature was detected using an infrared sensor. To study on the optimum conditions of machining, monitoring system is coded in Ch and the results of experiment present data using Ch.


The ultrasonic motor is a new type of motor. In recent years, some mathematical models for the ultrasonic motor have been reported. However, these models are very complex to apply to control of the motor, and therefore speed or position controllers for this type of motor have been designed based on proportional and integral controllers or fuzzy controllers. Since these controllers cannot take account of the motor's dynamics, a simple and convenient mathematical model of the ultrasonic motor is necessary in order to achieve high control performance. The authors propose a simplified mathematical model for the ultrasonic motor, which is expressed by a difference equation, and they then design a speed controller based on adaptive control theory. Adaptive control is attractive for controlling the ultrasonic motor because its speed characteristics vary with drive conditions. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is demonstrated by experiments. Furthermore, the paper indicates the influence of control delay and model orders on the mathematical model experimentally.


The seasonal patterns of trichostrongylid nematode infections in Dorper yearlings in a semi-arid area of Kajiado District, Kenya were investigated by analysis faecal egg output, herbage infectivity and post-mortem worm recovery. Rectal faecal samples from 60 animals as well as herbage samples from their grazing fields were collected at three weeks intervals between May 1999 and December 2001. Fecal egg counts and herbage larval counts closely followed the rainfall distribution pattern. Major peaks in egg output occurred between December and August as a result of increased pasture infectivity and minor peaks between September and November following maturation of hypobiotic larvae of Haemonchus . Self-cure occurred in August/ September and November/ December. From September 2000 to July 2001, post-mortem worm counts conducted on 24 yearlings permanently on pastures during the dry and wet seasons showed mixed infections where Trichostrongylus, Haemonchus and Oesophagostomum occurred in 91.7%, Cooperia in 83.3%, Trichuris and Strongyloides in 4.1% of the animals. Adult and immature worms co-existed in proportions that varied with seasons, where Haemonchus survived the dry season mainly as hypobiotic larvae and Trichostrongylus species as an adult worm population. The mean wet season worm counts in both seasons were considered moderate, usually associated with sub-clinical helminthosis and decreased productivity. There is need, therefore, to control such infections in sheep within the study area in order to achieve higher productivity. Bulletin of Animal Health and Production in Africa Vol. 54(1) 2006: 1-6


This study examined high school students' perceptions of mathematics classroom assessments. 248 American students gave valid responses to a questionnaire. Data analysis involved counting frequencies, calculating percentages, and running Chi-square tests. Results reveal that students felt a strong congruence between mathematics assessment, planned learning and adequate transparency regarding the purpose and forms of the assessment, inadequate authenticity in assessment tasks, and had little or no say in the assessment planning process. Results show the most variance in the questions regarding accommodation of student diversity. Gender difference was observed in assessment authenticity and transparency. Results are discussed in regard to previous literature and future research.


We present an unusual case of severe unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia and normal hemoglobin at birth in a premature newborn with Rh incompatibility. We speculate that the possible mechanism is due to placental dysfunction. To our knowledge, this is the highest reported unconjugated bilirubin level at birth.


The mechanical properties and deformation behaviour of ultra-fine grained (UFG) Ni subjected to severe plastic deformation (SPD) were investigated. The UFG Ni characterized possessed an homogeneous structure with a grain size of 120 nm and high angle nonequilibrium grain boundaries. This nickel possessed an ultimate tensile stress of 1270 MPa. Investigation of the deformation relief on the polished surface of the UFG Ni sample by HRSEM revealed grain boundaries (GBs) steps already at small degrees of tension that testifying to the involvement of grain boundaries in the deformation process at room temperature. After significant tensile strain the deformation relief revealed a network of crossed shear bands oriented at an angle in the range 35°- 45° to the axis of tensile deformation. Shear bands propagated along GBs parallel to the plane of maximal shear stress. The formation of shear bands occurred due to a strong shift and rotation of grain groups. This led to a deformation mechanism involving collective relative displacement of grain groups, with extensive grain boundary sliding at room temperature. Over a length of a few micrometers the material can be regarded as uniform and therefore the local strain distribution becomes more uniform than in coarse-grained materials. It is plausible that this mode of deformation may contribute to the enhanced ductility. The deformation behaviour of Ni having different grain sizes and various grain boundary states are also considered. The Opportunity to achieve a combination high strength and good ductility by control of the microstructure of in metals and alloys opens perspectives industrial applications, particularly, for mirco-systems and for items of complex geometry to be produced by superplastic forming.


Zhumeria majdae is a rare an endemic medicinal plantspecies grown wild in Iran. The hydro distilled essential aerial part oil of Z. majdae analysed by GC–MS. Thirty-one compounds representing 95.36% of the aerial part oil, respectively, were identified, of which linalool (48.14%), camphor (20.71%), limonene (4.83%), trans-linalool oxide (2.69%), 3-Octanone (2.34%), terpinene-4-ol (2.30%), camphene (1.88%), caryophyllene oxide (1.34%), geraniol (1.23%), α-pinene (1.22%), p-Cymene (1.08%) were the major compounds. Total phenolic content was 42.74 mg GAE/g dw and the IC50 in the radical scavenging assay was 32.08 mg/ml. The hydro distilled essential aerial part oil display potential of antibacterial activity against the tested 8 phytopathogenic bacterial such as Bacillus cereus, Bacillus thuringiensis, Enterococcus faecalis, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Salmonella typhimurium, Campylobacter jejuni, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas fluorescens. The inhibition zones and MIC values for all test strains, which were sensitive to the essential oil of Z. majdae were in the range of 33-30 mm and 0.93 mg/ml, respectively. The results support the traditional usage and also possible use of Z. majdae essential oil and extracts in the food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries.


THE usefulness of angiocardiography in evaluating the nature and extent of intra-thoracic lesions is well established. It is frequently used in the preoperative study of primary cardiac malformations, abnormalities of the aorta and great vessels, and in determining the location and operability of pulmonary and mediastinal lesions. In some instances angiocardiography may be the most accurate means of determining whether or not a perplexing mediastinal mass seen on a conventional chest x-ray film is a primary mediastinal lesion or a cardiovascular abnormality. In this communication, a group of difficult diagnostic problems selected from a series of 164 patients with primary tumors and cysts of the mediastinum are presented. Each of these patients was thought, on the basis of the initial examination and chest x-ray films, to have a cardiovascular abnormality. Only after obtaining angiocardiograms was the correct diagnosis of a primary mediastinal lesion made and appropriate therapy instituted. Material A


Background In 2008, the health departments of the United Kingdom implemented routine and catch-up human papillomavirus (HPV) immunisation programme in schools to reduce the incidence of cervical cancer. European studies conducted from 2007 to 2012 showed inconsistent results on HPV vaccine uptake in relation to ethnicity and girls' age. The aim of the study was to explore the views and experiences of students, teachers and health providers on the HPV vaccine to understand how mechanisms of delivery contributed to HPV vaccine uptake in a town in the West Midlands. Methods Data was collected through 47 semi-structured individual interviews with nine nurses, four school staff and 34 year 8 girls as well as through non-participant observations in 12 schools during the delivery of the first, the second and the third dose of HPV vaccine between February and September 2013. The school staff and the girls were sampled from four secondary schools that accepted to participate in the study. Thematic analysis was employed to identify major themes related to the school context of implementation of the HPV vaccine programme in secondary schools in the town of the study. Results Year 8 girls were aged 12–13 years. Some were Christian, Muslim and Hindu while others had no religion. The health professionals were nurse coordinators, school nurses, vaccinators, sexual health nurses and practice nurses. The school staff were teachers, support staff and head of year 8. Three main themes emerged from the analysis (1) school policy related to HPV vaccine, (2) the organisation of delivery of HPV vaccination programme in the schools before and on the day of vaccination, (3) promotion of HPV vaccine in schools. The findings showed that most of the schools have supported the delivery of the programme, but it has been more difficult for nurses to go to some of the faith schools in comparison to others. Chasing up the consent forms and communication with the parents have been the most challenging activities in the HPV vaccination administration, however they are essential for a high HPV vaccine uptake. The HPV vaccine was poorly promoted in the school environment because of tight curriculum for compulsory subjects and lack of adequate staff. Conclusion Implementation of a school-based HPV programme is resource intensive in terms of time as well as of school staff and staff nurse.


We present a device and method for performing lens-free spectral light-field fusion microscopy at sub-pixel resolutions while taking advantage of the large field-of-view capability. A collection of lasers at different wavelengths is used in pulsed mode and enables the capture of interferometric light-field encodings of a specimen placed near the detector. Numerically fusing the spectral complex light-fields obtained from the encodings produces an image of the specimen at higher resolution and signal-to-noise-ratio while suppressing various aberrations and artifacts.


Depression during pregnancy affects an estimated 10 – 20% of women, some of whom will require treatment with antidepressants. It is of great importance that the safety of this particular class of drugs is reviewed, to ensure the optimal treatment of the mother while protecting her unborn child. In this review, current safety data on all available antidepressants are discussed in detail, including the pharmacokinetics of the maternal–fetal unit and the epidemiological studies that have been published to date. The classes of antidepressants discussed include: tricyclics, selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors and other antidepressants. After reviewing these studies, it is evident that these drugs appear to be relatively safe to take during pregnancy. This evidence-based information will be helpful to women and their healthcare providers, when the decision of whether or not to treat with anti-depressants during pregnancy must be made.


One of the best ways to control water shortages in the Central Region of Iran is inter-basin water transfer (IBWT). Efficient decision making on this subject is however a real challenge for the water authorities in Iran. These decisions should include multiple attributes, model uncertainty, and also the optimistic/pessimistic view of the decision makers.
 The Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) operator can be used as an efficient multi attribute decision making (MADM) method. This paper will introduce a new method to obtain the order weights of this operator. The new method is based on the combination of fuzzy quantifiers and neat OWA operators. Fuzzy quantifiers are applied for soft computing in modeling the optimism degree of the decision maker. In using neat operators, the ordering of the inputs is not needed resulting in better computation efficiency. The theoretical results will be illustrated in a case study by solving an MADM problem with four IBWT projects for the Zayanderud basin. The results demonstrate that more sensitive decisions can be obtained by using the new method.


Assessment has been a topic of interest in higher education for decades, with its recent growth rooted in a number of scholarly traditions, as well as the broader interest in "accountability" that has been characteristic of American education since the 1980s. Many previous studies have demonstrated that the literature of assessment in higher education is a rich resource for those wishing to identify effective approaches to the assessment of information literacy. This piece invites readers to pay attention to the lessons taught by faculty development experts as well as by scholars of the science of teaching and learning, but also to remember that student learning takes place both inside the classroom and outside the classroom.


Of vital significance for an understanding of the origin and evolution
of the earth is investigation of the physical properties and stability
relationships of minerals and rocks at high pressures and temperatures, and of the more volatile components such as water and carbon
dioxide which affect the behavior of the minerals and rocks under
these conditions. Geophysical techniques, particularly the methods
of seismology, provide information about the properties of the
material within the earth, and high-pressure studies of materials of
known composition are important supplements to the seismological
studies. Geological and petrological studies of rocks now exposed
at the surface of the earth lead to the formulation of hypotheses
for the origin and history of these rocks and deductions about the
composition of the material at depth from which some of the rocks
are derived. These hypotheses can be tested by reproducing the
estimated conditions of formation within the laboratory. The important
processes occurring in the outer part of the earth usually
involve heterogeneous equilibria. Within the earth's mantle, solid-solid
phase transitions may account for seismic and density discontinuities
whose existence has been deduced from geophysical
observations. The formation of magmas within the mantle involves
solid-liquid and perhaps solid- liquid- vapor reactions. Solid- liquid-vapor,
solid-solid and solid-vapor reactions are involved in the
igneous and metamorphic processes which proceed within the
earth's crust. The deformation, folding and faulting of rocks is a
mechanical process, but interstitial gases or solutions may have a
profound effect.
Many reviews of high-pressure research and of the applications
of high-pressure studies to the earth sciences have been published,
and these are outlined in the next section. In view of the plethora
of reviews already available, one might justifiably question the
utility of one more. As the Editor, S. K. Runcorn, remarked in the
preface to the first volume in this series, it is hoped that the chapter
may be of value to those who wish to embark on research using
unfamiliar techniques, and to those who, having read and possibly
applied the results of high-pressure studies, wish to inform themselves
more fully about the methods used. The available reviews are usually
concerned mainly with one aspect of the field, with 'very high
pressures', for example references 26, 105, 16 and 106, or with
'hydrothermal' systems at moderate pressures, or with physical
properties of rocks and minerals, or with a limited range of
applications. I recently published a review which attempted to
cover the whole range of experimental results now available for
application to the earth sciences, but I am not aware of a review
in which the whole range of high-pressure techniques has been
considered in detail (reference 95 provides an outline for 1956).
This chapter brings together items which have been published previously in a variety of outlets. The justification for this is that
the geophysicist and geologist are interested in the processes occurring
within the earth from the highest of pressures and temperatures to
the low values encountered at or near to the surface of the earth.
The aim of the chapter is to sample the growing volume of literature,
and to present it in a complete but condensed form for the general
reader who has not the time to seek the information in the more
specialized publications.


The 'Southern Question' has been a major topic in Italian political, economic and cultural life for a century and more. During the Cold War, it was the justification for heavy government intervention. In contemporary Italy, a major part of the appeal of the Lombard League has been its promise to dissociate the South from the North, even to the point of secession. The South also remains a resonant theme in Italian literature.This interdisciplinary book endeavours to answer the following:* When did people begin to think of the South as a problem?* Who - intellectuals, statisticians, criminologists, political exiles, novelists (among them some important southerners) - contributed to the discourse about the South and why?* Did their view of the South correspond to any sort of reality?* What was glossed over or ignored in the generalized vision of the South as problematic?* What consequences has the 'Question' had in controlling the imaginations and actions of intellectuals and those with political and other forms of power?* What alternative formulations might people create and live by if they were able to escape from the control of the 'Question' and to imagine the political, economic and cultural differences within Italy in some other way?This timely book reveals how Southern Italians have been affected by distorted versions of a complex reality similar to the discourse of 'Orientalism'. In situating the devaluation of Southern Italian culture in relation to the recent emergence of 'anti-mafia' ideology in the South and the threat posed to national unity by the Lombard League, it also illuminates the world's stiff inter-regional competition for investment capital.


Purpose - Entrepreneurs interact with others and, through this, benefit from access to knowledge, resources and skills that enhance their own entrepreneurial and organizational capabilities. This paper aims to contribute to the literature interested in identifying and analyzing important antecedents of entrepreneurs' choices regarding social relations. The study shows how the venture stage, innovativeness and internationalization of the firm potentially influence entrepreneurial choices regarding their social sources of advice. Design/methodology/approach - The analysis is based on cross-sectional survey data for the years 2009 and 2010, involving 13 Middle East and North African (MENA) countries. Respondents include future prospective entrepreneurs, start-ups and owner-managers of operating businesses, a total of 13,251 respondents across all countries for the entire period. Findings - Entrepreneurs with innovative ventures draw more on advice sources that are able to give information useful for the commercialization of innovative products, and entrepreneurs of internationally exposed ventures rely on a broad base of advice sources that can connect them with a foreign market. However, the outcomes regarding the impact of "different venture stages" point to social interaction patterns that are strongly influenced by local culture and that do not support the assumption of universal entrepreneurship behavior. This study shows that social interactions decline in quantity the more as the venture progresses in age. However, the type of social interaction (e.g. private or professional sources) that entrepreneurs engage throughout the different venture stages remains essentially the same and does not change across different entrepreneurial phases. In the MENA sample, private relations remain the most important source of advice throughout all phases, and they are not replaced by other contacts. Research limitations/implications - Limitations of this paper refer to the use of a large-scale database that cannot address certain issues without more direct observation, such as the quality of different social relations. Future research could address this issue by offering more fine-grained items for the different advice sources. Originality/value - The paper contributes to the debate on whether entrepreneurship is universal in nature. It focuses on data from emerging and developing countries in the Arab world, which is has not been studied very much in the entrepreneurship literature.


The niclel nanoparticles were prepared via polyol process with hydrazine hydrate as reductant, the optimum conditions were investigated and proposed to be the molar ratio of NiCl2: NaOH: Hydrazine hydrate =1: 2: 11, 60 °C, pH5.5. The qualified fluorescent-magnetic dual functional CdTe/Ni nanoparticles were synthesized via layer-by-layer (LBL) technique, Ni was designed to be magnetic core and CdTe was used as fluorescent shell material, the molar ratio of CdTe:Ni is 4.5:1. The morphology of the Ni nano particles and CdTe/Ni core shell dual functional nano particles were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and optical properties were investigated with fluorescence spectrum (FS) and ultra violet spectrum (UV). The synthesized CdTe/Ni nanoparticles showed yellow fluorescence when excited at 365nm, CdTe/Ni magnetic core shell QDs can be simply precipitated with a common magnet. TEM data indicated that ~15nm of Ni nanoparticles were obtained and ~25nm of CdTe/Ni core shell dual functional nanoparticles were prepared. Red shift of maximum absorbance peak was detected via UV, and these results inferred the QDs growth, moreover, 40nm red shift of maximum emission wavelength from 530nm to 570nm was observed, and which showed the growth QDs and formation of CdTe shell. The prepared magnetic core shell CdTe/Ni nanoparticles showed excellent optical properties, and it is expected to be useful and helpful in DNA sensing based on fluorescence resonance energy transfer, biological separating, and DNA labeling process.


This research examines how a seller's reputation score and auction pre-configuration affects people's participation in communication within online auction communities. A leading horizontal intermediary auction platform is used to conduct this research. Its seller "feedback" mechanism and "ask seller a question" forum are chosen as representatives of post- and intra-transactional information disclosure. A self-developed classification approach is used to classify the buyer-initiated questions. The results of multinomial logistic regression indicate that product quality, shipment and payment issues are aspects that concern buyers the most in the early stages of an auction. Subsequently, their attention is likely to shift to seller credibility and price negotiations as listing durations get longer. In terms of the influence of seller feedback ratings, our findings suggest that lower-rated traders are more likely to be asked questions about product description and seller credibility. Buyer concern about seller uncertainty is only alleviated if the seller has a good reputation. Even medium-rated sellers are suspected of being opportunistic. Moreover, buyers are more willing to discuss transaction-related issues and raise negotiation-associated questions with sellers who have already achieved high reputation scores. Fi-nally, the theoretical and managerial implications are elaborated.


Machine learning (ML) which was initially adopted for search ranking and recommendation systems has firmly moved into the realm of core enterprise operations like sales optimization and preventative healthcare. For such ML applications, often deployed in regulated environments, the standards for user privacy, security, and data governance are substantially higher. This imposes the need for tracking provenance end-to-end, from the data sources used for training ML models to the predictions of the deployed models.
In this work, we take a first step towards this direction by introducing the ML provenance tracking problem in the context of data science scripts. The fundamental idea is to automatically identify the relationships between data and ML models and in particular, to track which columns in a dataset have been used to derive the features of a ML model. We discuss the challenges in capturing such provenance information in the context of Python, the most common language used by data scientists. We then, present Vamsa, a modular system that extracts provenance from Python scripts without requiring any changes to the user's code. Using up to 450K real-world data science scripts from Kaggle and publicly available Python notebooks, we verify the effectiveness of Vamsa in terms of coverage, and performance. We also evaluate Vamsa's accuracy on a smaller subset of manually labeled data. Our analysis shows that Vamsa's precision and recall range from 87.5% to 98.3% and its latency is typically in the order of milliseconds for scripts of average size.


This publication presents one of the first attempts to integrate two emerging bodies of economic research: institutional economics and organizational theory. It begins within the framework of neoclassical economics, and then extends the boundaries of this framework to offer answers to questions that have so far remained puzzles in neoclassical economics. The integrated approach of this publication also challenges the dominant paradigm in economics over the last 15 years that views the market as the best mechanism for carrying out transactions. The market is not the only transaction mechanism; other modes of organization are also important. However, this way of thinking does not involve a simple reintroduction of the confrontation between the 'government' and the 'market'. On the contrary, the integrated approach tries to open the 'black box' of the role of institutions in daily life and the diversity of modes of organization. Through this integrated approach, the book hopes to contribute to a better insight to real world problems.


BACKGROUND
Males are diagnosed with dyslexia more frequently than females, even in epidemiological samples. This may be explained by greater variance in males' reading performance.

METHODS
We expand on previous research by rigorously testing the variance difference theory, and testing for mediation of the sex difference by cognitive correlates. We developed an analytic framework that can be applied to group differences in any psychiatric disorder.

RESULTS
Males' overrepresentation in the low performance tail of the reading distribution was accounted for by mean and variance differences across sex. There was no sex difference at the high performance tail. Processing speed (PS) and inhibitory control partially mediated the sex difference. Verbal reasoning emerged as a strength in males.

CONCLUSIONS
Our results complement a previous finding that PS partially mediates the sex difference in symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and helps explain the sex difference in both dyslexia and ADHD and their comorbidity.


ABSTRACT Climate change, nutrient pollution, land conversion, overexploitation, and invasive species and diseases – the 'big five' global drivers of ecosystem change – are altering biodiversity in the Arctic. Changes in biodiversity have implications for local people since they depend on biodiversity for their traditional activities. Remote Arctic areas lack scientific records of biodiversity status and trends. Indigenous knowledge (IK) can help fill in these information gaps. More importantly, IK is essential to establish policies and practices for biodiversity conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. This study presents indigenous people's perceptions of changes and trends in biodiversity in Arctic Yakutia in Northeastern Siberia, Russia. The results document the perception of indigenous people on biodiversity changes at the study sites: new species of plants and animals have expanded their ranges to the north, and the abundance of native species as well as the phenology of plants have changed. IK relates these trends to different global change drivers, assumes that the changes are both naturally and anthropogenically driven, and reflects resulting alterations in species interactions in the forest tundra and tundra ecosystems.


We are usually not aware of the process of speaking, as we are unconscious of our breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide; as if they are automatic and effortless. We become conscious of our breathing only when we gasp for a little air and likewise, fumbling for the right word very often makes us aware of our speaking. Surprising facts about speaking are there. A chain of subtle and intricate activities takes place within moments. The starting is in our brain where the message is conceptualized, and then in the in physiological level, the message travels through the nervous system and finally in the physical level, the message is passed to the articulatory speech organs to produce sounds. In this writing, we shall see how the messages are formed and monitored in a preverbal state and how those messages receive phonological and grammatical encoding following some phonetic plan. Various stages and features of speaking and the role of long and short term memory are also dealt here. This writing will hopefully facilitate the interested learners of the phonetics and psycholinguistics .


Problem construction has been determined to be an important process contributing to creative problem solving. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether problem construction plays a role in how individuals interpret ambiguous, ill-defined problems in a way that fits with their personality. We also hypothesized that solution quality and originality would be related not only to problem construction ability but also to the degree to which the solution fits the personality of the individual. Students who participated in this study (N = 195) were asked to complete measures to identify personality types, a measure of problem construction ability, and a problem-solving exercise. Solutions were rated for fit of the solution to the personality, quality, and originality. Results suggest that problem construction ability is positively related to the fit of the solution to the personality type, and that solution quality and originality are related to both problem construction and solution fit. Implications ...


Introduction: Carbapenem resistance (CR) in Klebsiella pneumoniae is mainly mediated by bla NDM and bla OXA-48 carbapenemases. Newer Food and Drug Administration-approved antimicrobial ceftazidime/avibactam (C/A) has a potent activity against bla OXA-48-like producers. However, its activity is limited in organisms co-producing bla NDM and bla OXA-48-like. Addition of aztreonam (ATM) to C/A potentially expands the spectrum of coverage for carbapenemase co-producers. With this, we aimed to determine the synergistic activity of combination of C/A plus ATM against bla NDM, bla OXA-48-like and co-producers of bla NDM + bla OXA-48-like producing CR Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRKp). Materials and Methods: A total of 12 isolates of CRKp-harbouring genes encoding bla NDM and bla OXA-48-like were tested. Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) were determined for several antimicrobial agents, including C/A (0.5–8 μg/ml) by broth microdilution method. Checkerboard assay was performed for the combination of C/A plus ATM at varying concentrations. Fold differences in the MIC of C/A with and without addition of ATM were determined to infer synergistic effects. Results: MIC of C/A and ATM ranged from 0.5 to >8 μg/ml and 64 to 2048 μg/ml, respectively. Two isolates were susceptible to C/A with MIC of 0.5 and 1 μg/ml, while others were resistant with MIC of >8 μg/ml. Synergistic effects of >8-fold MIC difference in C/A MIC were noted with addition of ATM at 4 μg/ml. This was observed for all CRKp with profiles of bla NDM, bla OXA-48-like and co-producers of bla NDM + bla OXA-48-like genes, which was a promising effect. Notably, all five of the colistin-resistant CRKp were inhibited with >8-fold MIC difference in the combination of C/A plus ATM at 4 μg/ml. Conclusion: With the increasing burden of CRKp, the use of C/A with ATM combination seems to be very promising, especially for bla NDM, bla OXA-48-like and co-producers of bla NDM + bla OXA-48like carbapenemases.


The role of the Radiation Safety Officer at a medical facility can be complicated. The complexity of the position is based on the breadth of services provided at the institution and the nature of the radioactive materials license. Medical practices are constantly changing and the use of ionizing radiation continues to rise in this area. Some of the newer medical applications involving radiation have unique regulatory and safety issues that must be addressed. Oversight of the uses of radiation start at the local level (radiation safety officer, radiation safety committee) and are heavily impacted by outside agencies (i.e. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, State Radiologic Health, The Joint Commission (TJC), etc).
This session will provide both an overview of regulatory oversight and essential compliance practices as well as practical ways to assess and introduce some of the new applications utilizing radioactive materials into your medical facility.
Learning Objectives:
Regulatory Compliance and Safety with New Radiotherapies: Spheres and Ra-223 (Lance Phillips)
1.
Understand the radioactive materials license amendment process to add new radiotherapies (i.e., SIR-Spheres, Therasphere, Xofigo).
2.
Understand the AU approval process for microspheres and Xofigo.
3.
Examine the training and handling requirements for new procedures.
4.
Understand the process involved with protocol development, SOP in order to define roles and responsibilities.
The RSO and The RSC: Challenges and Opportunities (Colin Dimock)
1.
Understand how to form an effective Committee.
2.
Examine what the Committee does for the Program and the RSO.
3.
Understand the importance of Committee engagement.
4.
Discuss the balance of the complimentary roles of the RSO and the Committee.
The Alphabet Soup of Regulatory Compliance: Being Prepared for Inspections (Linda Kroger)
1.
Recognize the various regulatory bodies and organizations with oversight or impact in Nuclear Medicine, Radiology and Radiation Oncology.
2.
Examine 10CFR35 requirements as they relate to the everyday practice of Nuclear Medicine and Radiation Oncology.
3.
Understand the nature of available guidance documents (e.g., NUREG 1556).
4.
Examine the commonalities between TJC and CMS preparedness.


In this work, the effect of Zn dopant on structural and optical properties of cadmium oxides, CdO, thin film were studied prepared by pulse laser deposition on glass substrate then annealed at 250 ᵒC in air. All films were examined by X-ray diffraction and UV- visible spectrometer. The XRD analysis shows  appearance of  new phase identical with hexagonal ZnO additional with cubic phase at high Zn content, which effected on the optical properties. The optical energy gap increase from 2.45 eV to 2.70 eV with increasing  Zn content  from 0 to 40 %.


Lake Skarsjon is a dimictic, oligotrophic, clear water lake with bottom plant communities including the rare Nostoc zetterstedtii. The lake is located in western Sweden, south of Gothenburg. During the late 1970s to mid-1980s, there was fish cage farming located near the outlet of the lake. When the fish farming was first introduced, there was concern over the health of the late which prompted a monitoring study which was conducted from 1980 to 1990 by the County Administration Board (regional governing body of Sweden). Starting in 1983, another National Monitoring study commenced simultaneously with the 10 year study. This monitoring study had one site taking measurements from 0.2-2m and collected the same data as the 10 year study.There were notable changes starting in 1985, the year the fish farming was closed down. After these changes, there are patterns indicating the lake returning to similar conditions before 1985. The pH of the lake is increasing and the acidity decreasing which reflects the ongoing decrease in atmospheric sulphur deposition and concentration in the lake.Overall, the impacts from the fish farming may have been more intense if it was located farther from the lake outlet. This would have allowed nutrient emissions from the fish cages to influence the lake more severely before exiting through the outlet. The lake is slowly recovering from this anthropogenic event and the current monitoring program, the National Monitoring study, should remain intact.


Model-based treatment planning and exposimetry for high-intensity focused ultrasound requires the numerical simulation of nonlinear ultrasound propagation through heterogeneous and absorbing media. This is a computationally demanding problem due to the large distances travelled by the ultrasound waves relative to the wavelength of the highest frequency harmonic. Here, the k-space pseudospectral method is used to solve a set of coupled partial differential equations equivalent to a generalised Westervelt equation. The model is implemented in C++ and parallelised using the message passing interface (MPI) for solving large-scale problems on distributed clusters. The domain is partitioned using a 1D slab decomposition, and global communication is performed using a sparse communication pattern. Operations in the spatial frequency domain are performed in transposed space to reduce the communication burden imposed by the 3D fast Fourier transform. The performance of the model is evaluated using grid sizes up to 4096×2048×2048 grid points, distributed over a cluster using up to 1024 compute cores. Given the global nature of the gradient calculation, the model shows good strong scaling behaviour, with a speed-up of 1.7x whenever the number of cores is doubled. This means large-scale simulations can be distributed across high numbers of cores on a cluster to minimise execution times with a relatively small overhead. The efficacy of the model is demonstrated by simulating the ultrasound beam pattern for a high-intensity focused ultrasound sonication of the kidney.


We assess the accuracy and resolution of topography data provided by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) through spectral comparisons with the National Elevation Dataset (NED) and a high‐resolution laser data set of the 1999 Hector Mine earthquake rupture. We find that SRTM and the NED are coherent for wavelengths greater than 200 m, however the spatial resolution of the NED data is superior to the SRTM data for wavelengths shorter than 350 m, likely due to the application of a boxcar filter applied during final SRTM processing stages. From these results, a low‐pass filter/decimation algorithm can be designed in order to expedite large‐area SRTM applications.


To improve the energy-regenerative efficiency and robustness of electric vehicle (EV), a novel energy-regenerative controller was designed and applied to the charge current loop of the EV. The controller that combines neural network (NN) with traditional sliding mode controller (SMC) comprises a radial basis function NN (RBFNN) and a SMC. The RBFNN is used to adaptively adjust the switching gain of the SMC. The simulation model of the energy-regenerative system is built with MATLAB/SIMULINK, and the simulation results show that comparing with traditional SMC, the NNSMC has better performance at response speed, steady-state tracking error and resisting disturbance in energy-regenerative process. Additionally, it can recover more energy.


The presentation of religious and spiritual issues is a common occurance in counselling. Are counselors competent to address this issue? This paper will address this issue. An exploration of the ways religion coming up in counseling will be discussed along with suggestions for its practices. The discussion will pay attention on the issue of educational counselor and the preparation for counselors to meet the spiritual and religious needs of their clients. In this paper this writer brings out discussion on counseling and its relation to religion through an attempt of rereading literatures in order to provide understanding as to how religion could be understood in the light of counseling. This paper also brings into focus the personality of counselor, and anything concerned to the relation of counseling and the religiousity of client. Issues of ethic for counseling in treating a religious client will be discussed as well. Thus, the discussion of religion and educational counselor will answer the question as to where it would lead to? In the lattest discussion of this paper, this writer's suggestion on developing a subject of counseling and guidance in any universities offering Islamic Studies and on treatment of religious clients with religious approachment will be dealt with. From this point, this writer brings about a suggestion to the university.


Students' abilities to self-assess their understanding can influence their learning and academic performance. Different factors, such as performance level, have been shown to relate to student self-assessment. In this study, hierarchical linear modeling was used to identify factors and quantify their effects on the changes observed in chemistry students' self-assessed understanding when engaging in instructional activity. This study replicates and expands on previous findings regarding performance by showing that the worse students performed on a task, the more likely they were to lower their self-assessed understanding after that activity. Task difficulty was found to be a significant effect on change in students' self assessments with students being more likely to lower their self-assessed understanding after a more difficult task and raise it following an easier task independent of performance. Perceived comparative understanding (how students thought they compared to their surrounding peers) was also found to be a significant effect. Students who later reported their understanding to be lower than their peers, as compared to those who later reported their understanding to be about the same as their peers, were observed to have lowered their self-assessed understanding. Actual comparative performance (difference in performance of the student to their surrounding peers), gender, and feedback were not found to be significant effects on change in students' self-assessed understanding. The results of this investigation may inform instructors on how their instructional decisions differentially impact changes in students' judgements about their understanding.


Uncaria tomentosa has been widely used in several countries as an anticancer remedy, but due to its pharmacological effects this plant has been extensively harvested and faces extinction.     Regardless of its traditional anti-tumoral use, root bark water extract was the lesser active extract. Hydroalcoholic preparation of the root bark showed LD50 ranging from 150 to 500 μg/mL and leaf extracts (water and hydroalcoholic) showed LD50 as low as 180.1μg/mL.  Selectivity index showed that except for astrocytoma and leukemia, all tumor cells were 2-8 times more sensitive to the extracts than to non tumor cells.  Oxindole pentacyclic alkaloids (mitraphylline, isomitraphylline, uncarine C and uncarine E) are present in the extracts and they probably play a role in the cytotoxic effect on tumor cell lines.  Our study suggets that Uncaria tomentosa roots could be replaced by the leaves in order to obtain good pharmacological results, protecting the plant from extinction.


The G protein-coupled bradykinin B2 receptor (Bdkrb2) plays an important role in regulation of blood pressure under conditions of excess salt intake. Our previous work has shown that Bdkrb2 also plays a developmental role since Bdkrb2(-/-) embryos, but not their wild-type or heterozygous littermates, are prone to renal dysgenesis in response to gestational high salt intake. Although impaired terminal differentiation and apoptosis are consistent findings in the Bdkrb2(-/-) mutant kidneys, the developmental pathways downstream of gene-environment interactions leading to the renal phenotype remain unknown. Here, we performed genome-wide transcriptional profiling on embryonic kidneys from salt-stressed Bdkrb2(+/+) and Bdkrb2(-/-) embryos. The results reveal significant alterations in key pathways regulating Wnt signaling, apoptosis, embryonic development, and cell-matrix interactions. In silico analysis reveal that nearly 12% of differentially regulated genes harbor one or more Pax2 DNA-binding sites in their promoter region. Further analysis shows that metanephric kidneys of salt-stressed Bdkrb2(-/-) have a significant downregulation of Pax2 gene expression. This was corroborated in Bdkrb2(-/-);Pax2(GFP+/tg) mice, demonstrating that Pax2 transcriptional activity is significantly repressed by gestational salt-Bdkrb2 interactions. We conclude that gestational gene (Bdkrb2) and environment (salt) interactions cooperate to impact gene expression programs in the developing kidney. Suppression of Pax2 likely contributes to the defects in epithelial survival, growth, and differentiation in salt-stressed BdkrB2(-/-) mice.


Abstract This paper outlines a cultural science approach to videogames. Using the example of the independently developed Minecraft, we examine the dimensions of social learning involved in playing videogames that are characterised by relatively unscripted gaming environments. We argue that a cultural science approach offers an analytic framework grounded in evolutionary externalism, social learning and emergent institutions. We develop this framework by proposing a multiple games model of social learning.


Objectives: Limited human resources are widely recognised as a barrier to achieve health-related Millennium Development Goals. Availability of medical supplies and suitably trained health personnel are crucial to ensuring a well-functioning medical supply system. The objective of this paper is to identify the factors which influence the availability of medical supplies within the health facilities of Vanuatu. Methods: A qualitative triangulated strategy using semi-structured interviews, observational workplace surveys and semi-structured focus groups was developed. This research was approved by the Human Ethics Committee of the University of Canberra and was funded through a direct grant from the United Nations Population Fund Suva, Pacific sub regional office. Results: During two weeks of data collection, 21 interviews were conducted, observational workplace surveys were completed in 19 facilities and 22 personnel participated in three focus groups across three provinces. The interviewees had a wide range of primary professional groupings and were representative of the Vanuatu health workforce. A complex array of medical supply issues are described from within the three tiered structure of the medical supply system. Conclusion: The results of this research have further informed our understanding of the competencies required by healthcare personnel to conduct medical supply management activities effectively in Pacific Island countries. As a result of this research, a platform is provided for the government of Vanuatu to engage development partners to work toward a sustainable medical supply system.


Through an empirical analysis of the relationship between private participation in infrastructure and country risk, the paper shows that country risk ratings are a reliable predictor of infrastructure investment levels in developing countries. The results suggest that a difference of one standard deviation in a country's sovereign risk score is associated with a 27 percent increase in the probability of having a private participation in infrastructure commitment, and a 41 percent higher level of investment in dollar terms. The predictive ability of country risk ratings exists for all sectors of infrastructure and for both greenfield and concessions. On average, energy investments exhibit a higher sensitivity to country risk than transport, telecommunications, and water investments. Concessions are more sensitive than greenfield investments to country risk, although country risk is a good predictor of investment levels for both contractual forms. Although foreign direct investment is found to be sensitive to country risk, the causal relationship is not nearly as sensitive as it is with private participation in infrastructure. Finally, an analysis of private participation in infrastructure patterns for those countries emerging from conflict reveals that conflict-affected countries typically require six to seven years to attract significant levels or forms of private investments in infrastructure from the day that the conflict is officially resolved. Private investments in sectors where assets are more difficult to secure--such as water, power distribution, or roads--are slower to appear or simply never materialize.


Many previous studies of electrical breakdowns in dielectric liquids in point-plane geometry have examined the relationships among the breakdown structure (or speed), the electrode geometry (point radius, gap length), and/or voltage. This paper explores the hypothesis that, for streamers initiating from a point anode, the critical volume model used for similar geometry in gaseous dielectrics is useful in liquids. The assumption of the critical volume is shown to be consistent with experimental data. Specifically, a critical volume of 0.4-1.0 mum 3 is consistent with the location of streamer initiation, with the independence of the initiation voltage for the 2nd anode mode from the tip radius for sharp tips, and the measured free paths of electrons in cyclohexane for the energies of interest


In the medical field, the segmentation of organs and structures in the patient's body is a very important task to assist the study of morphological and pathological changes of organs. Normally, specialists perform manual segmentation, however it is time consuming, error-prone and observer-dependent. Here the experience of the expertise influences the quality of the ultimate results. This work aims to develop tools for automatic liver segmentation using data acquired with two medical imaging modalities: Computed Tomography and Positron Emission Tomography, in order to improve the way of obtaining volumes of object and to help the clinician in the study of the organ. Liver segmentation methods were developed for each modality separately and also for the combination of the two modalities. To validate the implemented algorithms, specialists delineated some images for each exam. The results of segmentation algorithms were then compared with the expert reference. The outputs obtained are reasonable and a good starting point for further work.


Experiments were performed on isolated rabbit left ventricles. Controlled ejections during otherwise isovolumic contractions were studied. The time constant of relaxation was defined as the slope of the linear approximation of the ln(P)-t relation over a 40-ms period starting 20 ms after the minimum of the first time derivative of left ventricular pressure (dP/dt) of the isovolumic contraction. Variations in time of ejection, its amplitude, and velocity are applied independently. No direct effect of the variations in time and velocity of the ejection on the time constant of relaxation was found. This is in conflict with the findings of Hori et al. (Circ. Res. 55: 31-38, 1984). The difference is due to the influence of the recovery of pressure directly after the end of ejection in their study. This effect is present especially when ejection was timed to take place late in the contraction phase. The effect of the variation of the amplitude of the ejection on the time constant was similar to the effect of the end-diastolic pressure on the end-diastolic volume. It is concluded that the time constant of relaxation depends linearly on the same processes that are responsible for the height of the end-diastolic pressure.


Since many Internet applications employ a multitier architecture, in this article, we focus on the problem of analytically modeling the behavior of such applications. We present a model based on a network of queues where the queues represent different tiers of the application. Our model is sufficiently general to capture (i) the behavior of tiers with significantly different performance characteristics and (ii) application idiosyncrasies such as session-based workloads, tier replication, load imbalances across replicas, and caching at intermediate tiers. We validate our model using real multitier applications running on a Linux server cluster. Our experiments indicate that our model faithfully captures the performance of these applications for a number of workloads and configurations. Furthermore, our model successfully handles a comprehensive range of resource utilization---from 0 to near saturation for the CPU---for two separate tiers. For a variety of scenarios, including those with caching at one of the application tiers, the average response times predicted by our model were within the 95% confidence intervals of the observed average response times. Our experiments also demonstrate the utility of the model for dynamic capacity provisioning, performance prediction, bottleneck identification, and session policing. In one scenario, where the request arrival rate increased from less than 1500 to nearly 4200 requests/minute, a dynamic provisioning technique employing our model was able to maintain response time targets by increasing the capacity of two of the tiers by factors of 2 and 3.5, respectively.


As previous research has shown, people with disabilities often have restricted access to adulthood and its corresponding life events (including sexuality, partnership and parenthood), both in society and in popular cultural representations. This article analyzes five contemporary Swedish fiction films with protagonists with disabilities in order to consider how and in what ways they depict romantic relationships, sexuality, and reproduction as manifestations of adulthood in normative time and life course. The aim is to analyze if ableist norms related to time, adulthood, and sexuality is confirmed or challenged in these films. Four of the five films confirmed the ableist norm and used normalizing strategies to assimilate the disability position into normative life course and timeline. One of the films challenged the ableist implications of the normative timeline thus providing the possibility of crip time. Given media representations' powerful dissemination of cultural values it is of great importance to scrutinize its underlying cultural values.


Abstract Much recent research has pointed out the generally declining influence of planning on urban development, often explaining this trend with major structural shifts in the world economy. In this paper we take a somewhat different tack founded upon a "devil is in the detail" intuition. Tracing the City of Stockholm's urban governance landscape over the course of a century, we examine how overarching patterns of change are reflected in and reproduced through the organisation of local planning and development administrations. Our point is not to dispute the relevance of broader structural explanations, but rather to suggest that any ambition to change the currently dominant development-led regime must combine more general understandings of broad international trends with a detailed understanding of the concrete institutional mechanisms that come to produce specific patterns of effects at a particular time and place. The paper argues that for urban planning to be promoted as a governance of place, more research on identifying the critical institutional mechanisms which enable or constrain the realisation of particular policy goals is needed.


Quantum Physics and Logic is an annual conference that brings together researchers working on mathematical foundations of quantum physics, quantum computing, and related areas, with a focus on structural perspectives and the use of logical tools, ordered algebraic and category-theoretic structures, formal languages, semantical methods, and other computer science techniques applied to the study of physical behaviour in general. Work that applies structures and methods inspired by quantum theory to other fields (including computer science) is also welcome.


Traffic congestion has continued to increase over the past decade. As a result, there has been an increase in roadway construction throughout the United States. However, work zones contribute to congestion levels that impact travel time and increase delays due to speed reductions, lane closures and traffic diversions. As a result, many transportation agencies are beginning to use incentive/disincentive clauses to motivate contractors to stay on or ahead of schedule. An important aspect in incentive/disincentive clauses is determining monetary values for various measures-of-effectiveness on a per day basis. This monetary value is known as a road user cost. There are several different tools and methodologies in determining road user costs including sketch planning tools, economic analysis tools and simulation modeling. However, there is very little literature on using mesoscopic and microscopic simulation-based models to determine these monetary values. The goal of this study was to use multi-resolution modeling techniques to calculate user costs and address the impact of traffic diversion at a system-wide level. A simulation-based mesoscopic model was used to determine time-dependent routing and diversion of vehicles based upon each work zone construction sequence. Then, a sub-area of the project limits was extracted and converted to a microscopic level to obtain various measures-of-effectiveness for auto and trucks. The multi-resolution modeling approach is an innovative way of capturing the impact of driver behavior due to delays incurred as a result of route shifting. A deterministic model was then developed to calculate a final road user cost per approach during each phase of construction. A case study analyzing the construction of a set of direct connectors in El Paso, Texas was used to test the proposed methodology.


Objective This study aimed to assess the protective value of adiponectin (APN) in pancreatic islet injury induced by chronic intermittent hypoxia (CIH). Methods Sixty rats were randomly divided into three groups: normal control (NC) group, CIH group, and CIH with APN supplement (CIH+APN) group. After 5 weeks of CIH exposure, we conducted oral glucose tolerance tests (OGTT) and insulin released test (IRT), examined and compared the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) levels, mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) levels, reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels, enzymes gene expression levels of Ant1, Cs, Hmox1, and Cox4i1 which represented mitochondrial tricarboxylic acid cycle function, the protein and gene expression levels of DRP1, FIS1, MFN1, and OPA1 which represented mitochondrial fusion and division, and the protein expression levels of BAX, BCL-2, cleaved Caspase-3, and cleaved PARP which represented mitochondrial associated apoptosis pathway of pancreatic islet. Results OGTT and IRT showed blood glucose and insulin levels had no differences among the NC, CIH and CIH+APN groups (both P>0.05) at 0 min, 20 min, 30 min, 60 min, 120 min. However, we found that compared to NC group, CIH increased the ROS level, reduced ATP level and MMP level. The islets of CIH exposed rats showed reduced gene expression levels of Ant1, Cs, Hmox1, and Cox4i1, decreased protein and gene expression levels of MFN1 and OPA1, increased protein and gene expression levels of DRP1 and FIS1, increased protein expression levels of cleaved Caspase-3 and cleaved PARP, with lower ratio of BCL-2/BAX at protein expression level. All the differences among three groups were statistically significant. APN treated CIH rats showed mitigated changes in the above measurements associated with islet injuries. Conclusion APN may ameliorate the pancreatic islet injury induced by CIH via inhibiting the imbalance in mitochondrial fusion and division.


The working memory (WM) is a key mechanism that ensures complex behavior in humans. It requires the bilateral activation of the fronto-parietal brain network and has been subdivided on the phonological loop, which processes numbers, semantics and auditory-verbal information, with lateralized activation towards the left hemisphere, and the visuo-spatial sketchpad, which mainly operates in the right hemisphere (Baddeley and Hitch 1974; Sauseng et al. 2005; Muller and Knight 2006; Baddeley 2012; Eriksson et al. 2015). This neural system maintains constant long-range communications within itself and with other cognitive systems through neuronal oscillations.
This work aimed to show a causal relationship between visuo-spatial WM functions and the mechanism of fronto-parietal oscillatory connectivity – the theta phase coherence. To reach our aim, two experiments were conducted. Our first hypothesis was that the WM network operates by phase connectivity. The results of the electroencephalographic (EEG) experiment demonstrated significant theta coherence during the WM events. Our second hypothesis was that it would be feasible to interfere with the WM through bi-hemispheric transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) and thus change phase connectivity. To show causal effects of theta coherence, behavioral changes in subjects under fronto-parietal theta-tACS bi-laterally, were analyzed. We found that desynchronization of theta phase relations in the fronto-parietal network led to an impairment in the WM performance. Synchronization of the fronto-parietal network had no significant effect on the group level, but individual analysis revealed a tendency for improvement of the WM for subjects with low baseline performance.
These results show that optimally balanced theta coherence in the fronto-parietal network is a prerequisite for the ideal WM functions in humans.


The neutron-induced fission cross section of 235U, a standard at thermal energy and between 0.15 MeV and 200 MeV, plays a crucial role in nuclear technology applications. The long-standing need of improving cross section data above 20 MeV and the lack of experimental data above 200 MeV motivated a new experimental campaign at the n_TOF facility at CERN. The measurement has been performed in 2018 at the experimental area 1 (EAR1), located at 185 m from the neutron-producing target (the experiment is presented by A. Manna et al. in a contribution to this conference). The 235U(n,f) cross section from 20 MeV up to about 1 GeV has been measured relative to the 1H(n,n)1H reaction, which is considered the primary reference in this energy region. The neutron flux impinging on the 235U sample (a key quantity for determining the fission events) has been obtained by detecting recoil protons originating from n-p scattering in a C2H4 sample. Two Proton Recoil Telescopes (PRT), consisting of several layers of solid-state detectors and fast plastic scintillators, have been located at proton scattering angles of 25.07° and 20.32°, out of the neutron beam. The PRTs exploit the ΔE-E technique for particle identification, a basic requirement for the rejection of charged particles from neutron-induced reactions in carbon. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations were performed to characterize proton transport through the different slabs of silicon and scintillation detectors, to optimize the experimental set-up and to deduce the efficiency of the whole PRT detector. In this work we compare measured data collected with the PRTs with a full Monte Carlo simulation based on the Geant-4 toolkit.


There has been an enormous growth in the popularity of the Internet. The provisions of access to the Internet will be one of the principal services of the next generation of access networks. In order to provide cost effective Internet access over ATM-based broadband access networks, the introduction of an available bit rate (ABR) service class is a promising solution. This paper describes our analysis of the ABR behavior over ATM based access networks focusing on explicit-rate-based rate controls and their round-trip time effects. We also describe the hardware implementation of the ABR-based rate controls.


In this dissertation, I examine the correspondence of an upper middle-class family from the early part of the nineteenth century. My aim is to answer questions about correspondence and letter-writing as an everyday event and as a social activity. My principal theoretical framework has been ethnograpy of communication. My main source is the Euren-Snellman manuscript collection at Uppsala University Library (UUB, G65). The central figure of this collection is Axel Euren (1803−1879), who was a clergyman in Dalarna and also a member of the Swedish parliament. The material expands over three generations and includes Axel, his mother, his sister, his wife and Axel's and his wife Sophie's three children. In each generation the letter-writing is reciprocal in nearly all relations.By creating a database of the 2,267 letters that remain from the family correspondence and by extracting meta-commentary about letter-writing I have studied how the family organized their correspondence. From the total collection I have chosen 293 letters during the period 1825−1858. These letters constitute a digitalized corpus that consists of approximately 160,000 words. With this corpus as my principal source, I have examined two different aspects of language use: a structural analysis of each writer's total sum of letters and a study on address. Certain findings confirm that letter-writing was based on routine. Traits of orality appear less often in the latter part of the material, a result that is in line with earlier investigations.The dimension of formal−informal language has been interesting to examine in relation to gender. Whereas the women's writing at a lexico-grammatical level is more informal and natural in style, their need to portray themselves in a virtuous Christian manner seems at the same time to promote a certain kind of formality in expression. The opposite seems to be true for the men.


Summary To sum up my advice to those persons charged with procuring translations: Make sure you have specified exactly what is to be translated and by when you need it. Build up a group of suppliers on the basis of your own experience. Once you have found a group of individuals or firms who can give you the type of service you require, use them regularly and make their work a little easier by providing them with English-language references whenever possible. Above all, do not be overly concerned with costs. A good translator is a highly trained and skilled professional and will not condescend to work for cut-rate fees. It is no more advisable to look for bargains in translation services than it would be to look for bargains in medical or legal services. John Ruskin, the English writer and critic, wrote a century ago : ''There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper—and the people who consider price alone are this man's lawful prey." This is particularly true in the field of translation.


Enhancing trust is known to be good for the economy through bringing about positive impacts on economic growth and stabilizing the macroeconomy, etc. Previous studies show that trust is associated with happiness and mental health. We examine whether psychological interventions aimed at improving mental health would enhance the general trust scale (Yamagishi, 1998). Such interventions included internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy, emotion-focused mindfulness, and positive psychology exercises. The results show that the general trust scale improves significantly as compared with the control group only in the case of positive psychology intervention. Through panel data analyses, we reconfirm that a higher level of general trust is associated with lower levels of depression, anxiety, and negative affect, and with higher levels of positive affect.


Revelations of an insider

How was a journal "fit for wrapping fish and chips"1 transformed into an organisation, with papers read by research workers as soon as they had been accepted, a wide variety of review articles published for the general reader, and a circulation of over 10 000? The changes began about 25 years ago and have accelerated during the past 10 years.

Archives of Disease in Childhood ( ADC ) was founded by the British Medical Association (BMA) as the first house specialist journal in 1926. In Britain there were about 50 physicians with a special interest in diseases of children and a handful who worked exclusively with children.

 "Some of the medical men whose work lies mainly among children had suggested that the BMA should publish a new journal".2

The editor of the BMJ , Sir Dawson Williams, had been a paediatrician before becoming a full time journalist and this may have influenced his decision to support this risky proposal. The British Journal of Children's Diseases had been published from 1904 and was a competitor for the small number of subscriptions. At the first meeting of the Archives' editorial committee the present title was adopted and Hugh Thursfield and Reginald Miller were appointed joint editors.3 Sir Thomas Barlow stated in his introduction to the first edition that the reasons for the new publication were that conclusions scattered through various publications should be available, there should be opportunities for research to be published and criticised, and adoption of research into practice should be promoted.4 The early editors were slow in implementing Barlow's first objective and about 50 years would pass before they published two review papers a year. The British Paediatric Association (BPA) was formed in 1928 and in 1944 was allowed to nominate the editors and …


Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive and irreversible neurodegenerative disease, and corresponds to the most common cause of dementia worldwide. Although not fully understood, the pathophysiology of AD is largely represented by the neurotoxic events triggered by the beta-amyloid cascade and by cytoskeletal abnormalities subsequent to the hyperphosphorylation of microtubule-associated Tau protein in neurons. These processes lead respectively to the formation of neuritic plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, which are the pathological hallmarks of the disease. Clinical benefits of the available pharmacological treatment for AD with antidementia drugs (namely cholinesterase inhibitors and memantine) are unquestionable, although limited to a temporary, symptomatic support to cognitive and related functions. Over the past decade, substantial funding and research have been dedicated to the search and development of new pharmaceutical compounds with disease-modifying properties. The rationale of such approach is that by tackling key pathological processes in AD it may be possible to attenuate or even change its natural history. In the present review, we summarize the available evidence on the new therapeutic approaches that target amyloid and Tau pathology in AD, focusing on pharmaceutical compounds undergoing phase 2 and phase 3 randomized controlled trials.


At the occurrence of phase-to-ground faults, abnormal levels of thermal energy I2t, due to the Joule effect, will be developed during the clearing time that protective devices take to operate. The I2t, also referred to as specific energy or Joule Integral, is accumulated within the elements forming the fault-loop, such as the protective conductors (also referred to as equipment grounding conductors), responsible to return ground-fault currents to the source. As a consequence, the temperature of these conductors elevates and may exceed, in the case of an incorrect design, the maximum value that their insulation can withstand. This dangerous situation can cause the failure of the conductor insulation and/or trigger fires in neighboring materials. The maximum I2t that protective conductors can endure is, therefore, crucial in order to guarantee the electrical safety. The parameters on which the maximum I2t depends are described by the factor k2, which will be herein discussed and analytically evaluated. The intention of the authors is to provide a theoretical support to the Power Systems Grounding Working Group of the Technical Books Coordinating Committee IEEE P3003.2 "Recommended Practice for Equipment Grounding and Bonding in Industrial and Commercial Power Systems"; the working group is currently elaborating a dot standard based on the IEEE standard 142-2007, also referred to as the Green Book. To this purpose, a comparison with existing formulae, currently present in codes, standards of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and of the IEEE, as well as in literature, will be also presented.


This paper aims to research existing literature on the collapse of the Doha Round and its causes. The first part is a review of significant paper in the vast literature on the history of international trade from the end of the Second World War until the present, focusing especially, on the beginning of the Doha Ministerial Conference as part of World Trade Organization, but also, the results of the negotiations that followed it. The second part illustrated, briefly, some of the causes that led to this impasse, along with the diametrically opposed perceptions of developed countries and developing ones. The main conclusion is that although it would complete the negotiations within the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), on the contrary, the round is underway and can't be set a fixed date for completing it. The methology used is based on reasoning deductive.


In this article, we demonstrate the use of the 2D directional continuous wavelet transform (DCWT) for structural boundary delimitation. We include an example of Bouguer gravity anomaly data analysis from the Basin and Range Province of the United States. Our approach is based on mapping maxima in the modulus of the directional continuous wavelet transform for various scales. We initially validate our concept using synthetic gravity anomaly fields generated from cylindrical and prismatic model bodies (source geometries). Subsequent application of our concept to real gravity anomaly data shows that the method is versatile and robust.


Purpose: Pathologic stage is the most important predictive factor of relapse in gastric cancer after curative resection. However, patients with the same stage often have different risks of relapse. Here, we investigated whether the expressions of molecular markers can supplement the current staging system in terms of relapse prediction. Patients and Methods: One hundred and nine stage III or IV (M0) patients who had received curative gastrectomy followed by adjuvant 5-fluorouracil and cisplatin chemotherapy were included in this study. The expressions of molecular markers including p53, p27, COX-2, HER-2, EGFR, maspin, S100A4, E-cadherin, Sp1, and p97 were analyzed by immunohistochemistry in cancer and paired normal tissues. Results: The overall relapse rate was 58.7%, and pathologic stage was a significant predictive factor of relapse (42% in stage IIIA, 48% in IIIB, 76% in IV, p = 0.005). Of the 10 markers examined, p53 and S100A4 were expressed only in tumor tissues, and S100A4 expression was significantly associated with a higher relapse rate (85% vs. 53%, p = 0.008). In multivariate analysis including tumor stage, S100A4 and p53 expression were independent predictive factors of relapse (relative risk, 6.98; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.608-30.342, 3.49; 95% CI, 1.328-9.186, respectively). On comparing patients who expressed S100A4 or p53 with those who expressed neither, relapse rates were 58% vs. 25% in stage III (p = 0.011) and 95% vs. 59% in stage IV (M0) (p = 0.003). Conclusion: In addition to staging system, the expressions of S100A4 and p53 were significant predictive factors of relapse in gastric cancer after curative resection and adjuvant chemotherapy.


Background: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a significant public health concern across the whole world, including India. In the absence of any specific treatment or vaccine against COVID-19, the role of efficient testing and reporting has been uncontested so far as the number of cases is rising daily. In order to strengthen the screening activities and to prevent nosocomial infection, facility-based screening centres have been designed and operated at various levels of healthcare, including tertiary care institutions. Methods: The present study has been planned with an objective to understand the patient profile and evaluate the functioning of COVID-19 screening OPD (CS-OPD) at a tertiary care hospital. In this hospital-based retrospective study, data from individuals visiting the COVID-19 screening OPD during the period from 17th March 2020 to 31st July 2020 were collected. We documented and analysed relevant demographic, epidemiological and clinical characteristics of the patients. Results: A total of 10,735 patients visited the COVID-19 screening OPD during the defined study period of which 3652 individuals were tested. The majority of the patients, i.e., 65.67% (7050) were male and in the 15–59 years age group (84.68%). The most common symptoms among patients visiting CS-OPD was cough (9.86%). Of the total, 17.17% (1843) of patients reported to the CS-OPD with a contact history of COVID-19–positive patient. On the other hand, 13.49% (1448) of patients were with either domestic or international travel history. The overall testing rate and positivity rate for CS-OPD during this period were found to be 34.02% and 7.94%, respectively. Conclusion: The clinical, demographic and epidemiological characteristics of patients visiting CS-OPD varied across the study period depending upon the containment and testing strategy. The CS-OPD played a crucial role in preventing nosocomial infection and maintaining non-COVID care at the tertiary care hospital.


Both conservative and surgical techniques are widely used in the treatment of femoral shaft fractures in children. In our study immediate spica-cast application for 0-2 ages, 90/90 skeletal traction (average 16.7 days) +Spica-cast application (average 7.2 weeks) for 2-10 ages, surgical treatment for above 10 age and fractures with associated injuries were used. Excellent and good result in 92% of cases, poor results in %8 of cases were obtained. Age groups and associated injuries affect the treatment selection.


Hat Six Ranch, by Edgar Watson Howe, is a novel of the frontier west. In its present form, the novel appears to be an edited version of an earlier draft. The revisions appear to be responsible for many of its weaknesses. Three major sources of influence can be identified in Howe's Western story: Bryant B. Brooks, one-time governor of Wyoming and friend of Howe's; the conflict between the cattlemen and ranchers in Johnson County, Wyoming, which culminated in "The Johnson County Invasion\ in 1892; and Howe's own family life. Thematically, Hat Six Ranch is similar to much of Howe's fiction. His picture of gossip and its role in the common-sense philosophy is probably the novel's greatest strength. His attitude toward women with a \history\ is also apparent, as well as his disgust for the \liberties\ allowed and encouraged in \parlor romances.\ In terms of fictional techniques, Hat Six Ranch exhibits little creative ability. The plot is rigid, implausible, and totally separated from characterization. Much of its improbability can be traced to Howe's deviations from the actual events of the Johnson County Invasion and to Howe's omissions of background development concerning the trouble between the cattlemen and ranchers. The setting, while based on B. B. Brooks' V-V Ranch near Casper, Wyoming, is not presented in detail. Characterization is also weak because of Howe's inability to achieve a proper balance between showing and telling. While many of the characters were drawn from real-life counterparts, none really come to life within the novel. Stylistically, Hat Six Ranch is stiff and formal. In some ways Hat Six Ranch is a conventional Western novel, while in others it is not. While certain archetypal themes and patterns emerge, Howe's characters are not romantic figures, nor is the West portrayed in romantic terms. Howe was the first author to suggest that the frontier experience might lead to the same disillusionment he had depicted earlier in The Story of a Country Town. However, the novel remains essentially weak.


ABSTRACT Objective In a cohort of elite rowers requiring lumbar spine surgery, we report information regarding: (1) presentation, (2) operative treatment, and (3) return to play (RTP). Methods All competitive rowers undergoing spine surgery at a single academic institution from 2015 to 2020 were analyzed. Three rowers underwent spine surgery during the allotted time period. Demographic, clinical, operative, and RTP data was recorded. Each athlete's self-reported level of effort/performance was assessed before and after surgery. First RTP was defined as the time of initial return to rowing activities, and full RTP was defined as the time of unrestricted return to rowing activities. Descriptive statistics were performed. Results The three collegiate rowers ranged from 20- to 21-year-old, each with L5/S1 disc herniations. Preoperative pain levels ranged from 8 to 10, and inciting injury events included back squats, front squats, and rowing during the 'finish' stage. Each athlete underwent a minimally invasive, unilateral L5/S1 decompression, partial medial facetectomy, and partial discectomy with microscopic-assistance. First RTP ranged from 4-6 months, with full RTP at 6–8 months. Pain dissipated to the 0–1 range at full RTP. Final effort/performance improved from 10–60% mid-injury to 90–100% at full RTP. Each athlete's 2000m row time showed a decline mid-injury and an improvement to at or within 10 s of their pre-injury time. Conclusions Drawing from three collegiate rowers who underwent lumbar decompression surgery, each athlete successfully returned to rowing, with initial RTP in the 4–6 months range and full RTP in the 6–8 months range. Performance levels rebounded to near or better than pre-injury performance. The results of this small case series warrant replication in larger, multi-institutional samples.


Access control deals with eliciting, specifying, enforcing, and maintaining access control policies in software-based systems. Recently, role-based access control (RBAC)-together with various extensions-has developed into a de facto standard for access control. Scenario-driven role engineering is a systematic approach for defining customized RBAC models, including roles, permissions, constraints, and role hierarchies. Since its first publication in 2002, the author gained considerable experience with scenario-driven role engineering, and several consulting firms and international projects have adopted the approach. Based on these experiences, the author enhanced the approach and now has a much deeper understanding of the relations between different role-engineering artifacts, the need for process tailoring, and the use of preexisting documents in role-engineering activities.