The Apert syndrome is characterized by craniosynostosis and syndactyly of hands and feet. Although most cases are sporadic, an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance is well documented. Two mutations in the FGFR2 gene (Ser252Trp and Pro253Arg) account for most of the cases. We report a patient with a rare form of Apert syndrome with polydactyly. The proposita has turribrachycephaly. complete syndactyly of 2nd to 5th digits ("mitten hands" and cutaneous fusion of all toes). The X-rays revealed craniosynostosis of the coronal suture and preaxial polydactyly of hands and feet with distal bony fusion. Molecular analysis found a C755G transversion (Ser252Trp) in the FGFR2 gene. Only eight patients with Apert syndrome and preaxial polydactyly have been reported and this is the first case in which molecular diagnosis is available. On the basis of the molecular findings in this patient, polydactyly should be considered part of the spectrum of abnormalities in the Apert syndrome. This assertion would establish the need for a new molecular classification of the acrocephalopolysyndactylies.


The way molecules absorb, transfer, and emit light can be modified by coupling them to optical cavities. The extent of the modification is often defined by the cavity–molecule coupling strength, which depends on the number of coupled molecules. We experimentally and numerically study the evolution of photoemission from a thin layered J-aggregated molecular material strongly coupled to a Fabry–Perot microcavity as a function of the number of coupled layers. We unveil an important difference between the strong coupling signatures obtained from reflection spectroscopy and from polariton assisted photoluminescence. We also study the effect of the vibrational modes supported by the molecular material on the polariton assisted emission both for a focused laser beam and for normally incident excitation, for two different excitation wavelengths: a laser in resonance with the lower polariton branch, and a laser not in resonance. We found that Raman scattered photons appear to play an important role in populating the lower polariton branch, especially when the system was excited with a laser in resonance with the lower polariton branch. We also found that the polariton assisted photoemission depends on the extent of modification of the molecular absorption induced by the molecule–cavity coupling.


As Europe's leaders respond to the financial crisis, concerns of economic protectionism are leading to greater questions over the fundamental unity of the European Union. At risk is the European Single Market, which, though less prominent than the symbolic euro, is the true basis for unity among the various European countries. The strain of the crisis has led to controversial policy responses such as the French and German automotive bailouts, which appear protectionist to other countries - particularly those in Eastern Europe. Given the current financial circumstances, protectionist impulses are the natural outcome of pressing political pressures; in addition, they play a particularly strong role for European national leaders given the nature of the single market that connects all EU country economies. Nevertheless, the long history of unity and its legacy of economic benefit to Europe require that European leaders strongly defend the core ideals of the European Single Market in the wake of the economic downturn. The Single Market One of the EU's greatest achievements is its economic core, the idea of a single market spanning all of its member countries. The modern definition of the single market is based on the "four freedoms," the principle that people, goods, services, and money should enjoy unrestricted movement across Europe. Even before the four freedoms were established in 1993, however, foundations for the single market were already in place. In 1957, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands united under the European Economic Community (EEC) with the intent of building a common market. For the duration of the EEC, member countries cooperated to strengthen free trade and freedom of movement by passing hundreds of laws to eliminate "technical, regulatory, legal, and bureaucratic barriers," according to the European Union. Particularly impressive was the elimination of so-called "non-tariff barriers to trade, such as variable standards in different countries, different excise taxes rates, and favoritism in awarding public contracts to domestic firms. The majority of this work occurred in the seven years prior to 1992 and cumulated in the inauguration of the European Community in 1993. During those seven years, 280 new laws came into existence to eliminate traditional and non-tariff trade barriers. The economic underpinnings of the EEC and the strengthening and continuance of economic policy under the European Community make the single market the most important of the three "pillars" of policies governing the modern European Union today. The benefits of the European single market have been widespread and substantial. The European Commission estimates that the removal of national trade barriers has generated an additional 800 billion euros in wealth for EU consumers--of which there are now over 458 million--and 2.5 million new jobs for Europe. Consumers have benefited from lower prices, higher quality goods, and a wider array of goods from which to choose. Additionally, the liberalization of air travel and utility markets has drastically reduced costs for consumers. Of course, certain costs have accompanied the rapid opening of domestic economies to international market forces. As would be expected, national industries previously shielded from international competition became unprotected. A landmark case occurred in 2007, when the European Court of Justice--the highest court of the EU--ruled against the so-called "VW Law," a German law protecting Volkswagen from hostile takeovers. Since then, against the wishes of German labor unions and German politicians, Porsche has taken control of Volkswagen, purchasing over 50 percent of the German company's shares. Despite possible costs to parts of the German labor market and the imminent loss of German ownership in one of its key automotive manufacturers, the court nonetheless struck down the law, upholding the hegemony of the four freedoms--in this particular case, that of free movement of capital--and protecting the single market ideal. …


ABSTRACT Passarella, M.; De Muro, S.; Ruju, A., and Coco, G., 2018. An assessment of swash excursion predictors using field observations. In: Shim, J.-S.; Chun, I., and Lim, H.S. (eds.), Proceedings from the International Coastal Symposium (ICS) 2018 (Busan, Republic of Korea). Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 85, pp. 1036–1040. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Accurate predictions of swash excursion are fundamental for improving the understanding of swash zone dynamics and for coastal management and hazard applications. Researchers have provided several formulas for predicting the swash excursion on sandy beaches. However, the problem of the universality of these formulas is still open. In fact, it is not clear whether the existing formulations are applicable to a wide range of beaches and wave conditions. This study verifies 13 existing swash (total, incident and infragravity) formulations using 13 published experiments (636 swash measurements). The experiments were carried out on beaches worldwide (dissipative intermediate and reflective) under a wide range of wave conditions (including extreme events). Results show that formulas behave differently with under and over prediction. However, some trends can be recognized, which are indeed critical for coastal hazards and management applications: generally, for large swash events (swash >1.5 m) large scatter are found for all formulas. During extreme conditions (swash>2.5 m) total and incident swash are strongly underestimated, while infragravity swash varies for each formula. The maximum errors and the root mean square errors can exceed 2.5 m and 1 m, respectively.


Objective Diabetic retinopathy (DR) was reported to have higher prevalence of coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke compared with people without DR. However, whether DR had similar effects on CHD and stroke in US adults with diabetes was not well known. This study was to compare the association between DR, CHD and stroke in US adults with diabetes using the 2015 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). Methods Respondents with diabetes aged over 18 years and undergone a fundus examination over the past 2 years were included in this study. DR, CHD and stroke were self-reported. A weighted hierarchical logistic regression was used to examine the association of DR with CHD and stroke. Results A total of 21,049 respondents with diabetes aged over 18 years having undergone a fundus examination over the past 2 years were included in the analysis. There were 4690 people reported having CHD, accounting for the weighted prevalence 22.1%. The weighted prevalence of stroke was 9.6%. There was 28.3% of CHD people who had DR which was higher than that in people without CHD. Differences in weighted frequency distributions of gender, age category (over 45 years or not), current smoking, hypercholesterolemia, hypertension and insulin treatment were significantly different between the CHD and without CHD groups (p<0.001). Similar results were found in people with stroke. Logistic analysis showed that DR was related to CHD and stroke (crude OR =1.876, 2.263, respectively, p all <0.001). After adjusting other variables, these associations persisted (Adjusted OR=1.632 (95% CI=1.625–1.639), 1.846 (95% CI=1.836–1.856), respectively, p all<0.001). Conclusion The BRFSS 2015 data indicated that DR was not only associated with CHD but also associated with stroke in US adults with diabetes, independently of other risk factor. DR might be more strongly associated with stroke than with CHD.


Studies on the growth and yield performance of wheat (Triticum aestivum L. variety of Dewata) planted in polybag with various populations and media compositions, had been conducted in Faculty of Agriculture Satya Wacana Christian University field research, located at Salaran – Kopeng village, Semarang district, from April 2012 to August 2012. Location of the study lies at an altitude of 900 meters above the sea level. Purpose of this study were to determine the appearance of both the growth and yield of wheat grown in polybag with a various population densities and media composition, as well as to determine the combination of treatments that producing the highest yield of wheat. Factorial design used that was consisted of two factors, i.e: (1) growing gedia composition with four different volume ratio of sand, soil and manure (1:1:1), (1:1:0), (1:0:1) and (0:1:1), and (2) population densities consisted of four: 1 seeds per polybag; 2 seeds per polybag; 3 seeds per polybag and 4 seeds per polybag, so that there were 16 combinations of treatments. Each combination was repeated three times. Basic design of the experiments used Randomized Block Design. Experimental data were analyzed by using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and high significant difference (HSD) test at 95% level of confidence. The conclusion of this study were: (1) Combination of treatment of population densities and composition of  growing media influence on plant height, number of plants per cluster, panicle length, seed weight per panicle, seed weight per cluster and seed weight per polybag and (2) the highest seed weight per polybag was resulted in the density of population of 4 seeds per polybag and planting on mixed media of sand, soil and manure in the volume ratio of 1:1:1. Keywords: wheat, population, media composition, polybag


More than ever global health funding agencies must get better value for money from their investment portfolios; to do so each agency must know the interventions it supports and the sub-populations targeted by those interventions in each country. In this study we examine the interventions supported by two major international AIDS funders: the Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria ('Global Fund') and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The Global Fund typically posts PDF copies of its program grant agreements (PGA) to its public-facing website; some of these documents provide limited information on the portfolio of interventions supported by grant monies. Consequently we first construct a sampling frame over 2002-12 of 20 of the Global Fund's 'high-impact countries'. From this frame five countries -- Ethiopia Nigeria South Africa India the Philippines -- are purposively selected for data extraction from the PGAs as these countries represent significant funding levels and diverse regions and epidemics. In these five countries we use extracted Global Fund data and publicly available PEPFAR data to compare the financed intervention package. We find that only 35% of publicly posted Global Fund PGAs in 20 high-impact countries provide any budget information on intervention package. In Ethiopia Nigeria and South Africa a significant proportion of Global Fund spending goes to care and treatment whereas in India and the Philippines the Global Fund spends a higher proportion on prevention than treatment. PEPFAR consistently spends a higher share on prevention than the Global Fund in every country examined. Neither the Global Fund nor PEPFAR report enough data to analyze intervention package by target population. The absence of information on intervention package and service delivery areas in the Global Fund's PGAs raises a troubling concern: many publicly available grant documents are not clear on what interventions sub-populations or disease-control objectives are being funded in their budgets data which are essential for informing national and international policymakers seeking value for money.


Although the Internet has opened up new avenues for identity expression, many web-based sources have yet to be examined. Online testimonials as a form word-of-mouth advertising are a relatively new development. The present study examines the construction of masculinities in men's cosmetics adverting testimonials presented on the website of a leading brand. The dataset is examined using discursive psychology and membership categorization analysis methodologies. The findings indicate that when men write facial cosmetics testimonials they still justify the use of these non-typical masculine products even in the absence of others' responses. The analysis highlights the continued difficulty men report in using typically feminized products, frequently accounting for their cosmetic use as a "corrective" measure rather than for beautification. The implications for the marketing of masculine products are discussed.


Objective To describe the clinical phenotypes, treatment response, and outcome of children with antibodies against aquaporin-4 (AQP4-Ab) neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD). Methods Retrospective, multicenter, and multinational study of patients with AQP4-Ab NMOSD aged <18 years at disease onset from a center in Brazil and 13 European centers. Data on demographics, clinical findings, and laboratory results were analyzed; calculation of annualized relapse rates (ARRs) pre- and on-treatment with disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) and of ORs for predictors of poor outcome was performed. Results A total of 67 children were identified. At last follow-up (median 4 years, interquartile range 2–10 years), 37/67(57.8%) were found to have permanent disability. A more severe disease course was seen in the non-White ethnicity with both a shorter time to first relapse (p = 0.049) and a worse Expanded Disability Status Scale score at last follow-up (p = 0.008). The median ARR on treatment was 0.18 on azathioprine (n = 39, range 0–4), 0 on mycophenolate mofetil (n = 18, range 0–3), and 0 on rituximab (n = 29, range 0–2). No patient treated with rituximab as first-line therapy relapsed. Optic neuritis at onset was associated with a poor visual outcome below 20/200 (OR 8.669, 95% CI 1.764–42.616, p = 0.008), and a younger age at onset was associated with cognitive impairment (OR 0.786, 95% CI 0.644–0.959, p = 0.018). Conclusions AQP4-Ab NMOSD in children is an aggressive disease with permanent disabilities observed in over half the cohort. All DMTs were associated with a reduction of ARR. First-line rituximab prevented further clinical relapses. International consensus on treatment protocols for children is required to reduce heterogeneity of treatment regimens used worldwide. Classification of evidence This study provides Class IV evidence that for children with AQP4-Ab NMOSD, all DMTs, particularly first-line rituximab, reduced the ARR and prevented further clinical relapses.


BACKGROUND
The neuropeptide (tachykinin) substance P is widely distributed in the central and peripheral nervous systems. Substance P has been suggested to function as a neurotransmitter, cotransmitter, or neuromodulator in the central and peripheral nervous system. substance P also influences sleep physiology. Neurokinin 1 (NK-1) receptors may also be implicated in the control of sleep/wake behavior. Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is defined as repeated episodes of upper airway occlusion during sleep with subsequent excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS). Substance P levels are found to be significantly lowered in patients with OSAS.

OBJECTIVE
The aim of this review was to investigate the relationship between substance P, EDS and other OSAS complications.

METHODS
The literature was searched using standard methods. Medline and Embase were searched systematically from 1974 to the end of February 2008 for relevant articles published in English.

RESULTS/CONCLUSION
EDS seen in some OSAS patients may be associated with various pathophysiological mechanisms including changes in substance P levels. Intravenous substance P administration in OSAS patients can be effective in the treatment of EDS. Further studies on the possible relationship between low serum substance P and hypertension, reproductive function disorders, memory and learning problems in OSAS cases is required.


Get ready to update and improve your company's safety program. On pages 24-38, you'll find a comprehensive guide to safe industry practices to enhance your operation and help you stay in compliance with OSHA regulations such as the General Duty Clause and the Right-to-Know law. Achieving a safe, healthy, productive, and profitable business doesn't happen by accident. It takes upper-management commitment to improve equipment, procedures, and employee training. Managers have a personal and a legal responsibility for employees' safety on the job. Don't delay safety improvements! Language: en


Single-walled carbon nanotube bundles have the potential to provide an attractive solution for the resistivity and electromigration problems faced by traditional copper interconnect. In this paper, we discuss the modeling of nanotube bundle resistance for on-chip interconnect applications. Based on recent experimental results, we model the affect of nanotube diameter on contact and ohmic resistance. The results indicate that neglecting the diameter-dependent nature of ohmic and contact resistances can produce errors as high as 120 percent. Using the diameter-dependent resistance model, we show that SWCNT bundles can provide a significant reduction in resistance when compared with traditional copper interconnect depending on bundle geometry and individual nanotube diameter.


Approximately one-third of persons over 65 years are affected by disabling hearing loss. It is estimated that the number of people with disabling hearing loss will grow to 630 million by 2030 and maybe over 900 million by 2050. Deafness has significant consequences on many aspects of an individual's life, including their socioeconomic status, mental and physical well-being, educational and employment opportunities. When congenital or early in the developmental years, deafness results in a delay or loss of language acquisition. Deafness can result from damage or disease anywhere along the auditory pathway. Hearing prosthetic devices help restore hearing and the use of these devices depends on the degree and type of hearing loss. This chapter will give a brief account of the currently available prosthetic hearing solutions.


This article gives a survey of the possible interpretations of word synonymy, which is relevant within the framework of a theory of denotation , but not in a theory of meaning (connotations, registers). Word synonymy dealing with coded items and sentence synonymy dealing with free items are of no interest to linguists. What allows meaning to be assessed is the coded → uncoded relation, in which the analytical uncoded item is the interpretant (Ch. S. Peirce). As the interpretant is made of words, the word is therefore the semantic unit (and not the metalinguistic seme).


We postulated that primary motor cortex (M1) activity does not just decrease immediately prior to voluntary muscle relaxation; rather, it is dynamic and acts as an active cortical process. Thus we investigated the detailed time course of M1 excitability changes during muscle relaxation. Ten healthy participants performed a simple reaction time task. After the go signal, they rapidly terminated isometric abduction of the right index finger from a constant muscle force output of 20% of their maximal voluntary contraction force and performed voluntary muscle relaxation. Transcranial magnetic stimulation pulses were randomly delivered before and after the go signal, and motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were recorded from the right first dorsal interosseous muscle. We selected the time course relative to an appropriate reference point, the onset of voluntary relaxation, to detect excitability changes in M1. MEP amplitude from 80 to 60 ms before the estimated electromyographic offset was significantly greater than that in other intervals. Dynamic excitability changes in M1 just prior to quick voluntary muscle relaxation indicate that cortical control of muscle relaxation is established through active processing and not by simple cessation of activity. The cortical mechanisms underlying muscle relaxation need to be reconsidered in light of such dynamics.


Author(s): Zhang, Teresa | Abstract: This paper presents a method of environmental assessment that incorporates the strengths of ecological footprint and process based life cycle analysis. Like ecological footprint, product ecological footprint delineates between sustainable and unsustainable consumption. The ecological footprint of individual products allows consumers to budget their consumption within this limit. The resolution of product ecological footprint can be scaled, like life cycle analysis, to compare one feature, process, or product against another. This study calculates the product ecological footprint of the generic American automobile using industry life cycle inventory, US statistical data, and data on global ecological capacity. It considers CO2 emissions, mining impacts, and land directly occupied as the major contributors of land use. The conversion of these impact categories to hectares of ecological services was performed using a top down approach, based on global supply. The sources were chosen to produce a lower-bound estimate rather than the true ecological footprint.Based on this study, the average car owner in the US expends at least 50% (0.8 hectares) of their ecological budget on driving alone. The footprint of a car is dominated fuel efficiency. The actual footprint may range from 30% to over 100% of one's ecological budget, corresponding to fuel efficiencies between 55 mpg and 12 mpg. The ecological footprint of the average automobile is more than 800 times the area it occupies physically. The metric of land communicates environmental impact in an immediate and tangible manner. Land accurately represents the importance of ecological services over resources alone. It is one of few metrics that can compare dissimilar products and processes. Accordingly, product ecological footprint enables consumers to formulate and follow a personal ecological budget. The results of this study are designed to be meaningful to consumers and producers in hopes of provoking societal changes that will push industry towards sustainable design and manufacturing.


the quarto copy for the first folio of shakespeare is available in our book collection an online access to it is set as public so you can get it instantly. Our books collection spans in multiple countries, allowing you to get the most less latency time to download any of our books like this one. Kindly say, the the quarto copy for the first folio of shakespeare is universally compatible with any devices to read.


This is a fresh and perceptive work which seeks to examine the assumptions and methodology of Victorian and Edwardian poverty experts. Professor Martin reviews research undertaken by such familiar figures as T. R. Malthus, Edwin Chadwick, Helen Bosanquet, Charles Booth and Beatrice Webb; through this, Martin also aims to provide a structural critique of the work of more recent poverty experts such as Edward Banfield and Charles Murray: 'What Murray is doing, in a very real sense, is Victorian social science. Anyone familiar with the Victorian social science of poverty recognizes immediately in Murray's analysis of public welfare its typical concerns, techniques, assumptions, blind spots and behavioral models' (p. vii).(1)


Fourty-one soil samples from the "Eternal Rye" long-term experiment in Halle, Germany, were used to test the usefulness of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to differentiate between C derived from C3 and C4 plants by using the isotopic signature (δ13C) and to predict the pools considered in the Rothamsted Carbon (RothC) model, i.e., decomposable plant material, resistant plant material, microbial biomass, humified organic matter, and inert organic matter. All samples were scanned in the visible-light and near-infrared region (400–2500 nm). Cross-validation equations were developed using the whole spectrum (first to third derivative) and a modified partial least-square regression method. δ13C values and all pools of the RothC model were successfully predicted by NIRS as reflected by RSC values (ratio between standard deviation of the laboratory results and standard error of cross-validation) ranging from 3.2 to 3.4. Correlations analysis indicated that organic C can be excluded as basis for the successful predictions by NIRS in most cases, i.e., 11 out of 16.


Abstract Coordination of the myoelectrical activity of the large and small intestine was studied. Pacemaker cells of intestine are predominantly located at the proximal divisions of large and small intestine and have an increased spontaneous slow-wave activity, which ensures the distribution of excitation in smooth muscle underlying intestines. Due to the ileocecal coordination by sequential motor activity of small and large intestine is provided. The distal direction gradient of slow waves frequency reduction was established. Pacemaker cells possess certain structural specificity and is specialized in the spontaneous bioelectric activity.


Given a facial matcher, in explainable face verification, the task is to answer: how relevant are the parts of a probe image to establish the matching with an enrolled image. In many cases, however, the trained models cannot be manipulated and must be treated as "black-boxes". In this paper, we present six different saliency maps that can be used to explain any face verification algorithm with no manipulation inside of the face recognition model. The key idea of the methods is based on how the matching score of the two face images changes when the probe is perturbed. The proposed methods remove and aggregate different parts of the face, and measure contributions of these parts individually and in-collaboration as well. We test and compare our proposed methods in three different scenarios: synthetic images with different qualities and occlusions, real face images with different facial expressions, poses, and occlusions and faces from different demographic groups. In our experiments, five different face verification algorithms are used: ArcFace, Dlib, FaceNet (trained on VGGface2 and CasiaWebFace), and LBP. We conclude that one of the proposed methods achieves saliency maps that are stable and interpretable to humans. In addition, our method, in combination with a new visualization of saliency maps based on contours, shows promising results in comparison with other state-of-the-art art methods. This paper presents good insights into any face verification algorithm, in which it can be clearly appreciated which are the most relevant face areas that an algorithm takes into account to carry out the recognition process.


The dissertation presents a theoretically controlled and historically informed inquiry into the formation and dynamics of the European system of states between the 8th and the 18th Centuries. It combines two methods of research and exposition. First, it pursues a comparative-chronological approach by elaborating and contrasting historically diverse logics of territorial and international order - exemplified with reference to the medieval, the early modern, and, partially, the modern geopolitical systems. Second, it adopts a developmental perspective by supplementing the systematic-comparative but static account of geopolitical orders with a more narrative, yet theoretically hedged, exposition of their incommensurable conflictual dynamics and expansionist drives. This processual perspective allows us to address the crucial question of the causes behind the passage from one geopolitical order to another. Contrary to conventional assumptions in the theory of international relations, the thesis is that the diversity of geopolitical systems and the reasons behind their transformations are bound up with different and changing social property relations in the domestic sphere. These social property relations govern the very identity of the constitutive actors of any geopolitical system and inform their modes of territorial order and foreign policy behaviour. Such a thesis has direct implications for a fundamental re-interpretation and re-periodisation of the origins of modern international relations, commonly associated with the Westphalian Peace settlements of 1648. By embedding the demystification of 1648's essential modernity in the wider continuum of European history, the dissertation shows to which degree early modern geopolitics remained tied to its medieval roots. The old pre-modern logic of geopolitical relations is only challenged with the advent of a new social property regime and the articulation of a new state/society complex in late 17th Century England, which starts in the 18th Century to transform the state system of the Old Regime into a modern system of sovereign states.


This paper revisits the question of debasement by analysing a newly compiled dataset with a novel approach, as well as employing conventional methods. It finds that mercantile influence on monetary policies favoured relative stability, and wage-payers did not typically gain from silver debasement. Excess demand for bullion was not a major cause of debasement. Yet monetary issues were important. Warfare made the debasement of silver but not of gold more likely. Regime types had an importance comparable to that of warfare: Princes debased silver more often than monetary unions and especially city-states. It is likely that fiscal debasements were more frequent in principalities, not least because princes debased for fiscal reasons also in the absence exceptional needs. The conclusion discusses the implications of the findings.


The restrictions on duration and number of allowed renewals implied by fixed- -term contracts generate lower job security. In many countries, these contracts are particularly common among young women. In this paper, I study the impact of job security on fertility decisions. Using a policy reform, which took place in Portugal in 2003, I show that the lower job security associated with fixed-term contracts decreases the likelihood of giving birth. The negative effect is particularly strong for shorter contracts. To identify the different channels that explain these results, I build and estimate a dynamic life-cycle structural model where women decide both labour supply and fertility, conditional on the characteristics of the job contract. I then simulate two different labour market policies that have been discussed in the public debate. Imposing an automatic conversion into permanent contracts, with higher job security, at the end of the fixed-term contract limit, decreases the number of childless women by 8.3%. In contrast, applying contract-specific tax rates, penalising fixed-term contract wages and subsidising permanent contract wages, induces 20% of the women who are already mothers to have their second child. These results corroborate the reduced-form evidence, showing that job security is especially important at first birth and income is relatively more important for subsequent birth decisions.


A link has been established between prenatal nutrition and the development of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases later in life, a process referred to as developmental programming. It has been suggested that the trajectory of development is shifted by alterations in the maternal nutritional state leading to changes in developmental plasticity, in part underpinned by epigenetic changes in gene regulation. However, to date, only candidate gene approaches have been used to assess expression and molecular changes in the offspring of maternally undernourished animals. Furthermore, most work has focused on animals at an age where the programmed phenotype is already manifest and little is known about changes in gene expression in the offspring prior to development of obesity and related metabolic disorders. Gene expression profiles of liver, retroperitoneal white adipose fat, and biceps femoris skeletal muscle tissue from young adult male rats (55 days old) in which nutritional status had been manipulated in utero by maternal undernutrition (UN) were compared to the profiles of offspring of ad libitum fed mothers serving as the control group (AD) (8 offspring/group). The expression profiles were determined using the Illumina RatRef-12 BeadChip. No significant changes in expression were identified for skeletal muscle or white adipose tissue. However, studies of liver tissue showed 249 differentially expressed genes (143 up regulated, 106 down regulated). Although the animals at day 55 have yet to develop obesity they already show biochemical abnormalities and by day 110 express a phenotype characterized by increased adiposity and altered insulin sensitivity. An analysis of pathways affected suggests that intrauterine programming of UN animals to favor fat as an energy source results in mitochondrial dysfunction which initially affects the postnatal hepatic function and subsequently, via the resultant metabolic changes in other organs leads to the evolution of a phenotype similar to that of the metabolic syndrome.


We propose and illustrate a method for developing algorithms that can adaptively learn from data streams that change over time. As an example, we take Hoeffding Tree, an incremental decision tree inducer for data streams, and use as a basis it to build two new methods that can deal with distribution and concept drift: a sliding window-based algorithm, Hoeffding Window Tree, and an adaptive method, Hoeffding Adaptive Tree. Our methods are based on using change detectors and estimator modules at the right places; we choose implementations with theoretical guarantees in order to extend such guarantees to the resulting adaptive learning algorithm. A main advantage of our methods is that they require no guess about how fast or how often the stream will change; other methods typically have several user-defined parameters to this effect. In our experiments, the new methods never do worse, and in some cases do much better, than CVFDT, a well-known method for tree induction on data streams with drift.


The growing importance of Kinect as a tool for clinical assessment and rehabilitation is due to its portability, low cost and markerless system for human motion capture. However, the accuracy of Kinect in measuring three-dimensional body joint center locations often fails to meet clinical standards of accuracy when compared to marker-based motion capture systems such as Vicon. The length of the body segment connecting any two joints, measured as the distance between three-dimensional Kinect skeleton joint coordinates, has been observed to vary with time. The orientation of the line connecting adjoining Kinect skeletal coordinates has also been seen to differ from the actual orientation of the physical body segment. Hence we have proposed an optimization method that utilizes Kinect Depth and RGB information to search for the joint center location that satisfies constraints on body segment length and as well as orientation. An experimental study have been carried out on ten healthy participants performing upper body range of motion exercises. The results report 72% reduction in body segment length variance and 2° improvement in Range of Motion (ROM) angle hence enabling to more accurate measurements for upper limb exercises.


Background Expanded GGGGCC hexanucleotide repeats in the promoter of the C9ORF72 gene have recently been identified in frontotemporal dementia (FTD), Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and ALS-FTD and appear as the most common genetic cause of familial (FALS) and sporadic (SALS) forms of ALS. Methods We searched for the C9ORF72 repeat expansion in 950 French ALS patients (225 FALS and 725 SALS) and 580 control subjects and performed genotype-phenotype correlations. Results The repeat expansion was present in 46% of FALS, 8% of SALS and 0% of controls. Phenotype comparisons were made between FALS patients with expanded C9ORF72 repeats and patients carrying another ALS-related gene (SOD1, TARDBP, FUS) or a yet unidentified genetic defect. SALS patients with and without C9ORF72 repeat expansions were also compared. The C9ORF72 group presented more frequent bulbar onset both in FALS (p<0.0001 vs SOD1, p=0.002 vs TARDBP, p=0.011 vs FUS, p=0.0153 vs other FALS) and SALS (p=0.047). FALS patients with C9ORF72 expansions had more frequent association with FTD than the other FALS patients (p<0.0001 vs SOD1, p=0.04 vs TARDBP, p=0.004 vs FUS, p=0.03 vs other FALS). C9ORF72-linked FALS patients presented an older age of onset than SOD1 (p=0.0139) or FUS mutation (p<0.0001) carriers. Disease duration was shorter for C9ORF72 expansion carriers than for SOD1 (p<0.0001) and TARDBP (p=0.0242) carriers, other FALS (p<0.0001) and C9ORF72-negative SALS (p=0.0006). Conclusions Our results confirm the major role of expanded repeats in C9ORF72 as causative for ALS and provide evidence for specific phenotypic aspects compared to patients with other ALS-related genes.


Letter on Office of Agricultural Insurance Company letterhead from Uncle John C. Cooper to nephew Hamilton K. Redway stating that he will be sending $5.00 as a small token. He wishes it to be placed in a bank to earn the best interest and be given to Hamilton's little son, R.C.K., when he reaches the age of 21. If he doesn't live to 21 , Hamilton is free to do what he thinks best with the money.


In serum of some healthy women and patients with fibroadenomatosis of the mammary gland antibodies to the cell membranes of adipocytes were detected. Interconnections between these antibodies and corresponding antigens in blood, on the one hand, and hormonal-metabolic status of probands, on the other hand, were observed. Possible autoimmune origin of phenomenon detected and its relation to the normal and pathological processes in adipose tissue are discussed.


Transmission lines on PCB can be treated as microstrip antennas when the frequency is high enough. Because of the incident HP-EM (high power electromagnetic) wave, electric systems may be disturbed by the coupling between spatial waves and transmission lines. To solve the interference of complex systems, an efficient model is proposed in this paper. It combines the transmission theory and network theory and gives an easier solution of the system coupling


Potato (Solanum tuberosum, L) is an important crop for food consumption and biomass which is susceptible to several pests and diseases, including root-knot nematodes {Meloidogyne spp.) Root knot nematodes are serious pests of food crop and horticultural plants in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. In order to apply molecular approaches to confer resistance to root-knot nematodes to new potato varieties, it is necessary to have optimum conditions for tissue culture and transformation. A major aim of the work reputed was to establish such conditions for potato varieties grown in Western Australia.

In this work, a shoot regeneration system for potato cvs. Delaware, Desiree, Kennebec, and Russet Burbank has been studied using tissue culture in vitro. Different explants (stem segments and leaf pieces) were cultured on two different callus induction and shoot regeneration media of different hormone composition. Results from this work showed that medium M1 (callus induction medium: MS medium, NAA (0.186 mg/l), BAP (2.25 mg/l) followed by shoot regeneration medium: MS medium, BAP (2.25 mg/l), and GA3 (5 mg/l} was the best overall medium composition for callus production and shoot regeneration. This system has been applied to generate transgenic plants. The two plasmids which were used in transformation studies with cvs. Delaware and Desiree, pAF1 and pAF2, contained the ∆0.3 and ∆0.6 sequences of the TobRB7 promoter linked to the gus reporter gene, and also contained a sequence for constitutive expression of the npt II gene which conferred resistance to kanamycin. Transformation using Agrobacterium tumefaciens and regeneration of transformed shoots of potato has resulted in regeneration of a 76 putative transgenic plants of Delaware and 72 transgenic plants of Desiree (see Appendix 1 and 2). The putative transgenic lines generated were analysed by PCR and Southern hybridisation to confirm their transgenic nature. Based on PCR analysis, more that 70% of the lines tested has the gus gene and all plants tested except 3 of cv. Desiree with pAF1 contained the kanamycin resistance gene. This is the first report of the production of transgenic plants of potato cv. Delaware.

Potato plants transformed with the pAF1 construct, containing ∆0.6TobRB7 promoter (pAF2) which has been reported to drive gus expression only in nematodeinduced giant cells, were infected with juveniles of the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne javanica. However, no gus expression was found in the transformed plants tested in this work. A number of factors can influence detection of the gus expression, for example, the size of cells and their metabolic activity, position and copy number of T-DNA insertions. Transgenic potato plants transformed with the ∆0.6TobRB7 promoter (pAF2) which is reported to drive gene expression in roots and in giant cells were evaluated by nematode infection. Most of the lines tested showed gus expression in the root tissues and giant cells of infected plants, and in root tissues of uninfected plants.

It is concluded that in future work transgenic plants resistant to root-knot nematodes (or other nematodes) may be generated by fusing the A0.6TobRB7 promoter to a gene which can disturb nematode migration of body structure or giant cells, without an effect on plant cells.


Background Although the survival of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) has improved, irreversible organ damage remains a critical concern. We aimed to characterize damage accrual and its clinical associations and causes of death in Swedish patients. Methods Accumulation of damage was evaluated in 543 consecutively recruited and well-characterized cases during 1998−2017. The Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics (SLICC)/American College of Rheumatology damage index (SDI) was used to estimate damage. Results Organ damage (SDI ≥ 1) was observed in 59%, and extensive damage (SDI ≥ 3) in 25% of cases. SDI ≥ 1 was significantly associated with higher age at onset, SLE duration, the number of fulfilled SLICC criteria, neurologic disorder, antiphospholipid antibody syndrome (APS), hypertension, hyperlipidemia, depression and secondary Sjögren's syndrome (SS). In addition, SDI ≥ 3 was associated with serositis, renal and haematological disorders and interstitial lung disease. A multiple regression model identified not only well-known risk factors like APS, antihypertensives and corticosteroids, but pericarditis, haemolytic anaemia, lymphopenia and myositis as being linked to SDI. Malignancy, infection and cardiovascular disease were the leading causes of death. Conclusions After a mean SLE duration of 17 years, the majority of today's Swedish SLE patients have accrued damage. We confirm previous observations and report some novel findings regarding disease phenotypes and damage accrual.


In this paper, we propose a phrase-based document similarity to compute the pair-wise similarities of documents based on the suffix tree document (STD) model. By mapping each node in the suffix tree of STD model into a unique feature term in the vector space document (VSD) model, the phrase-based document similarity naturally inherits the term tf-idf weighting scheme in computing the document similarity with phrases. We apply the phrase-based document similarity to the group-average Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering (HAC) algorithm and develop a new document clustering approach. Our evaluation experiments indicate that, the new clustering approach is very effective on clustering the documents of two standard document benchmark corpora OHSUMED and RCV1. The quality of the clustering results significantly surpass the results of traditional single-word \textit{tf-idf} similarity measure in the same HAC algorithm, especially in large document data sets. Furthermore, by studying the property of STD model, we conclude that the feature vector of phrase terms in the STD model can be considered as an expanded feature vector of the traditional single-word terms in the VSD model. This conclusion sufficiently explains why the phrase-based document similarity works much better than the single-word tf-idf similarity measure.


The effect of 0.01 mol%V2O5 on the grain boundary characteristics of ZnO-Bi2O3-based varistor ceramics is investigated in this work. The average grain size of ZnO was 13.3 µm. The ZnO-Bi2O3 system added with V2O5 content of 0.01 mol% exhibited not only a high nonlinearity, in which the nonlinear coefficient is 25 and the leakage current density is 0.02 µA/mm2 and the voltage gradient of 31.1 V/mm, but also a good grain boundary characteristics, in which barrier height fB = 0.908 eV, depletion layer width w = 32.49 nm, donor density Nd = 0.810×1018 cm-3, and density of interface states Ns = 2.632×1012 cm-2.


ABSTRACT Corynebacterium glutamicum was engineered for the production of l-valine from glucose by deletion of the aceE gene encoding the E1p enzyme of the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex and additional overexpression of the ilvBNCE genes encoding the l-valine biosynthetic enzymes acetohydroxyacid synthase, isomeroreductase, and transaminase B. In the absence of cellular growth, C. glutamicum ΔaceE showed a relatively high intracellular concentration of pyruvate (25.9 mM) and produced significant amounts of pyruvate, l-alanine, and l-valine from glucose as the sole carbon source. Lactate or acetate was not formed. Plasmid-bound overexpression of ilvBNCE in C. glutamicum ΔaceE resulted in an approximately 10-fold-lower intracellular pyruvate concentration (2.3 mM) and a shift of the extracellular product pattern from pyruvate and l-alanine towards l-valine. In fed-batch fermentations at high cell densities and an excess of glucose, C. glutamicum ΔaceE(pJC4ilvBNCE) produced up to 210 mM l-valine with a volumetric productivity of 10.0 mM h−1 (1.17 g l−1 h−1) and a maximum yield of about 0.6 mol per mol (0.4 g per g) of glucose.


'Online churches' are Internet-based Christian communities, seeking to pursue worship, discussion, friendship, support, proselytism and other key religious practices through computer-mediated communication. This article introduces findings of a four-year ethnographic study of five very different 'online churches', focusing on the fluid, multi-layered relationship between online and offline activity developed by Christian users of blogs, forums, chatrooms, video streams and virtual worlds. Following a review of online church research and a summary of methods, this article offers an overview of each of the five groups and identifies clear parallels with earlier television ministries and recent church-planting movements. A new model of online and offline activity is proposed, focused on two pairs of concepts, familiarity/difference and isolation/integration, represented as the endpoints of two axes. These axes frame a landscape of digital practice, negotiated with great care and subtlety by online churchgoers. These negotiations are interpreted in light of wider social changes, particularly the shift from bounded community towards 'networked individualism'.


Patients on hemodialysis (HD) are usually anemic because of defective erythropoeisis. Hepcidin is a polypeptide that regulates iron homeostasis and could serve as an indicator of functional iron deficiency in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD); this may also aid in the assessment of patient's response to erythropoietin (EPO). The present study was directed to investigate serum levels of hepcidin, iron status and inflammation markers such as C-reactive protein (CRP) in patients with ESRD on maintenance HD and to observe the correlation of serum hepcidin with conventional iron and inflammatory markers. A total of 42 patients of both sexes on maintenance HD and EPO therapy were enrolled; 42 ageand sex-matched healthy subjects were included as controls. Laboratory tests including complete blood count, serum hepcidin, total iron binding capacity (TIBC), serum ferritin, serum iron and CRP were performed. Serum hepcidin levels were significantly higher in patients with ESRD than in the control group (18.2 ± 2.8 ng/mL and 8.5 ± 2.3 ng/mL, respectively P = 0.000). The hemoglobin, hematocrit, serum iron, TIBC and transferrin saturation levels in the patient group were significantly lower than in the control group. Higher hepcidin levels were found in EPO non-responders (19.6 ± 2.4 ng/mL) while lower levels (16.9 ± 2.5 ng/mL) were seen in responders (P = 0.001). A positive and significant correlation was observed between the values of serum hepcidin and CRP. Our study indicates that higher hepcidin levels are found in ESRD patients on HD and in those not responding to EPO. Our findings suggest that hepcidin might play a role in the pathophysiology of anemia associated with chronic diseases as well as EPO resistance.


The capacity for transcending the self through art arises from the creative process, an altered state of consciousness facilitating the occurrence of anomalous events such as precognition and interior visions that appear to be outside the spacetime of waking life. Frustration can trigger the far-from-equilibrium conditions necessary for creativity, while inspiration may seem as if its source is exterior to the artist, and the experience of flow, like a trance state, can produce an altered sense of time. Archetypes in the creative process link a single mind to the collective unconscious and works of art become self-opening worlds that create an expanded reality.


Mutations in the currently known mismatch repair genes cannot explain all cases of hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC), and novel predisposing genes are actively sought. Recently, mutations in the DNA repair gene EXO1 have been implicated in HNPCC. One truncating and several missense changes were observed in familial colorectal cancer (CRC) cases but not in controls. We evaluated a series of European CRC patients and population controls to clarify whether EXO1 variants may indeed predispose to familial CRC. Several variants observed in patients were also observed in controls with similar frequencies, including the truncating variant proposed previously to be a disease-causing mutation. Thus, little evidence was obtained to support a major causative role of EXO1 in HNPCC, although we cannot exclude a role for EXO1 as a low penetrance cancer susceptibility or modifying gene.


This paper addresses the issue of modeling and analysis of custom power controllers, power electronic-based equipment aimed at enhancing the reliability and quality of power flows in low voltage distribution networks. A new PWM-based control scheme has been proposed that only requires voltage measurements and no reactive power measurements are required. The operation of the proposed control method is presented for D-STATCOM and DVR. Simulations and analysis are carried out in PSCAD/EMTDC with this control method for two proposed systems. The reliability and robustness of the control scheme in the system response to the voltage disturbances due to system faults or load variations is obviously proved in the simulation results.


We are developing a high-temperature superconducting (HTS) air-core compact cyclotron, named Skeleton Cyclotron (Ueda et al. 2013), (Ueda et al. 2019), that can accelerate various particles and variable energy for radioisotope (RI) production. The coil system of Skeleton Cyclotron consists of circular main coils and noncircular sector coils which are wound by REBa2Cu3O6+δ (REBCO) tape applied no-insulation (NI) winding technique for both high current densities and thermal stabilities. The electromagnetic and thermal behaviors in NI coil differs from those in conventional insulated coils during charging, discharging, and quenching. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the mechanical behavior and reinforcement structure of multiple NI coils in Skeleton Cyclotron. In this study, we report on the numerical evaluation of mechanical properties of NI REBCO coils in Skeleton Cyclotron at charging and quenching considering the current distributions and electromagnetic stresses unique to NI coils. In the quenching process, the radial current in a quenching pancake of the sector coil became dominant, resulting in generating the rotating force and non-symmetric deformation. YOROI-coil (Y-based oxide superconductor and reinforcing outer integrated coil) structure is effective for the additional magnetic stress.


This paper used input-output table and the energy consumption data by sector to estimate the effect of international trade on carbon emissions of China in 2007. The result shows that international trade has played a great part in increasing China's carbon emissions. China is a net carbon exporter, with carbon emissions embodied in exports 583.4Mt, and emissions embodied in imports from 186.0 to 476.8 Mt, according to different assumptions taken. Besides, international trade increases the global emissions and makes the problem of global warming worse. Therefore the paper suggests that it is necessary to change the present 'producer responsibility principle' used in regional carbon accounting and allocate certain part of responsibility of the carbon emissions to consumers.


In cooperative food activities, the pervasive term 'community' plays a performative role in stimulating congenial activities which build enthusiasms and expand alternative food-supply chains. As exemplified by London's food initiatives, community-building entails several forms of social innovation, e.g. enhancing socio-political capabilities, fulfilling unsatisfied needs and redefining societal problems. In particular, these initiatives recast 'food poverty' as a socio-cultural poverty which warrants a system change.  They reframe 'assets' as people's capacities, e.g. by defending amenities for lower-income people, re-commoning urban spaces, and resisting land-assetisation.  Social innovation depends on novel forms of agency in two main processes: capabilities development for a food culture, and multi-actor territorial outscaling. Together these build solidaristic interdependencies around a vision of food sovereignty for social justice.  To gain more resources, they accommodate or stretch the criteria of funding bodies; they strategically engage with local authorities as partners and/or critics.  London's food initiatives face challenges in combining these diverse aims and activities.


Finite mixture models are flexible parametric models that allow one to describe complex probability distributions as a mixture of a small number of simple probability distributions. Measures of health status are often used to reflect a person's overall health. Such measures may be subject to a ceiling effect, in that the measure is unable to discern gradations in health status above the ceiling. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the use of finite mixture models to describe the probability distribution of the Health Utilities Index, under the assumption that the HUI is subject to a ceiling effect. Mixture models with two through six components are fit to the HUI. Bayes factors were used to compare the evidence that the Canadian population of non-institutionalized residents is composed of four distinct subpopulations, and that a mixture of six Normal components is required to describe these four subpopulations.


Cotton‐ and maize‐producing insecticidal crystal (Cry) proteins from the bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), have been commercialized since 1996. Bt plants are subjected to environmental risk assessments for non‐target organisms, including natural enemies that suppress pest populations. Here, we used Cry1F‐resistant Spodoptera frugiperda (J.E. Smith) and Cry1Ac and Cry2Ab‐resistant Trichoplusia ni (Hübner) as prey for the assassin bug, Zelus renardii (Kolenati), a common predator in maize and cotton fields. In tritrophic studies, we assessed several fitness parameters of Z. renardii when it fed on resistant S. frugiperda that had fed on Bt maize expressing Cry1F or on resistant T. ni that had fed on Bt cotton expressing Cry1Ac and Cry2Ab. Survival, nymphal duration, adult weight, adult longevity and female fecundity of Z. renardii were not different when they were fed resistant‐prey larvae (S. frugiperda or T. ni) reared on either a Bt crop or respective non‐Bt crops. ELISA tests demonstrated that the Cry proteins were present in the plant at the highest levels, at lower levels in the prey and at the lowest levels in the predator. While Z. renardii was exposed to Cry1F and Cry1Ac and Cry2Ab when it fed on hosts that consumed Bt‐transgenic plants, the proteins did not affect important fitness parameters in this common and important predator.


Wavelet methods with polynomial filters are usually favored in applications for their fast wavelet transforms and compact support. However, wavelet methods with rational filters have more freedom to achieve smaller condition numbers, more regularity and better efficiency. Such meth- ods can be attractive if they also possess fast algorithms and have fast decay (as if the corresponding wavelets had compact support). In the first part of this paper, we propose a new wavelet method with rational filters which do have these properties. We call it the difference wavelet method. It is a generalization of Butterworth wavelets. The analysis part is simply averaging and finite differencing. The wavelet coefficients measure the finite differences of the a of an input data sequence. Its synthesis part involves rational filters, which can be performed with linear computational complexity by the cyclic reduction method. Their Riesz basis property, biorthogonality, decay and regularity are investigated. In the second part of this paper, we perform comparison studies of the difference wavelet method (Diff) with three other popular wavelet methods: the Cohen-Daubechies-Feauveau biorthogonal wavelets (CDF), the Daubechies orthogonal wavelets (Daub) and the Chui-Wang semi-orthogonal wavelets (CW). Natural criteria in designing good wavelet methods for representing functions and operators are speed, stability and efficiency. Therefore, the items of our first comparison include (i) operation counts for performing transformations, (ii) condition numbers of the wavelet trans- formations, (iii) compression ratios, by some numerical experiments, for representing (smooth or non-smooth) data sequences and matrices (smooth or non-smooth kernels). The results show that (i) Diff, Daub and CDF have about the same operation counts, and CW has more; (ii) Diff has about the same condition numbers as those of CDF and CW; (iii) Diff has better compression ratio for both (smooth or non-smooth) data sequences and matrices (smooth or non-smooth kernels). The items of our second comparison include regularity, approximation power (the constant in the approximation estimate), approximation errors for non-smooth functions (where Gibbs phenomena appear) and the "essential supports." The results show that Diff has better regularity and better approximation ability with only slightly bigger essential supports. It is evident that the better efficiency of Diff for smooth functions is due to its regularity. It is surprising that, even for non- smooth functions, Diff is comparable to, sometimes even superior to, other methods, despite its infinite-support property. This paper is organized as follows. Sec. 1 is preliminary. Sec. 2 provides the theory of the difference wavelet method. Sec. 3 contains the comparison studies. Experts are suggested to read Sec. 3 directly.


During conversation, spoken utterances occur in rich acoustic contexts, including speech produced by our interlocutor(s) and speech we produced ourselves. Prosodic characteristics of the acoustic context have been known to influence speech perception in a contrastive fashion: for instance, a vowel presented in a fast context is perceived to have a longer duration than the same vowel in a slow context. Given the ubiquity of the sound of our own voice, it may be that our own speech rate a common source of acoustic context also influences our perception of the speech of others. Two experiments were designed to test this hypothesis. Experiment 1 replicated earlier contextual rate effects by showing that hearing pre-recorded fast or slow context sentences alters the perception of ambiguous Dutch target words. Experiment 2 then extended this finding by showing that talking at a fast or slow rate prior to the presentation of the target words also altered the perception of those words. These results suggest that between-talker variation in speech rate production may induce between-talker variation in speech perception, thus potentially explaining why interlocutors tend to converge on speech rate in dialogue settings.


This paper examines the relationships between migration and the life cycle of households in contexts where the economic activities of peasant families are increasingly diversified and where off-farm labor has come to form a vital part of subsistence strategies. Research from the department of Puno, southern Peru is used to explore the issues this raises including: (a) differences between externally induced economic differen - tiation and the life cycle dynamics of peasant households; (b) the differing migratory patterns of rich and poor households; and (c) the effects of migration on household labor supply and produc - tive organization. The paper concludes by suggesting that for poor families, who exercise less control over the timing of the migratory process, migration may cause disruptive effects in productive, a reorientation of the household division of labor, and changes in reproductive decision-making.


Multiple studies evaluating non-small cell lung cancer disparities reveal male gender and African American race as independent predictors for poorer outcome. This study aims to evaluate the prognostic factors affecting survival of non-small cell lung cancer patients receiving radiation treatment at the University of Washington and to investigate whether race and gender disparities persist at the level of access to radiation treatment. Race, age, stage at presentation, radiation treatment length, and length of time from initial diagnosis to death or last follow-up were recorded and analyzed in a retrospective review of 372 patients receiving radiation treatment from 1994 - 2008. Of a final 372 patients, 306 were Caucasian, 32 African American, 34 Asian American and 134 female, 238 male patients. Cox regression models showed male gender [hazard ratio (HR, 1.34) p-value 0.027] and stage at presentation [stage III: HR, 1.93, p-value .001, stage IV: HR, 2.46, P value < 0.001] were predictors for shorter survival. In these analyses, race had no significant effect on length of survival. These results suggest disparate origins of race and gender inequity in non-small cell lung cancer outcome, highlighting that race differences in lung cancer survival disappear at the level patients have access to radiation treatment. This supports the notion that gender survival differences are likely the result of biologic differences, while racial survival disparities are an issue of healthcare access- however, additional studies are needed to conclusively discern the etiology of these disparities.

 Key words: Race, disparity, radiation, lung, cancer.


Internet of Things and Industrial Internet of Things begin its journey in several areas of our lives. Is a new wave of connectivity that is going beyond, desktop, tablet, smartphones, laptops or notebooks (internet of people). The goal to achieving is that things / objects become beings with a curiosity like humans and interconnected with each other. We do not know now how far the development will go. What we are sure is in this new digital era of hyper-connectivity the Infrared Industry: thermal imaging, InGaAs, thermal sensors, hyperspectral, there is much that can contribute.


Visual attention is a field with a considerable history, with eye movement control and prediction forming an important subfield. Fixation modeling in the past decades has been largely dominated computationally by a number of highly influential bottom-up saliency models, such as the Itti-Koch-Niebur model. The accuracy of such models has dramatically increased recently due to deep learning. However, on static images the emphasis of these models has largely been based on non-ordered prediction of fixations through a saliency map. Very few implemented models can generate temporally ordered human-like sequences of saccades beyond an initial fixation point. Towards addressing these shortcomings we present STAR-FC, a novel multi-saccade generator based on a central/peripheral integration of deep learning-based saliency and lower-level feature-based saliency. We have evaluated our model using the CAT2000 database, successfully predicting human patterns of fixation with equivalent accuracy and quality compared to what can be achieved by using one human sequence to predict another. This is a significant improvement over fixation sequences predicted by state-of-the-art saliency algorithms.


To circumvent difficulties of isolating pure populations of cancer stem cells (CSCs) for the purpose of identifying malignancy-specific gene expression, we have compared exon-resolution transcriptomic profiles of 5 embryonal carcinoma (EC) cell lines, a histological subtype of germ cell tumor (GCT), to their nonmalignant caricature, specifically 6 human embryonic stem (ES) cell lines. Both cell types are readily accessible, and were purified for undifferentiated cells only. We identified a set of 28 differentially expressed genes, many of which had cancer and stemness roles. Overexpression of the recently discovered pluripotency gene NR5A2 in malignant EC cells revealed an intriguing indication of how WNT-mediated dysregulation of pluripotency is involved with malignancy. Expression of these 28 genes was further explored within 2 publically available data sets of primary EC tumors and normal testis. At the exon-level, alternative splicing events were detected in ZNF195, DNMT3B, and PMF1, and alternative promoters were detected for ASH2L and ETV5. These events were validated by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction-based methods in EC and ES lines, where the alternative splicing event in the de novo DNA methyltransferase DNMT3B may have functional consequences. In conclusion, we have identified malignancy-specific gene expression differences within a rigorous pluripotent stem cell context. These findings are of particular interest for both GCT and ES cell biology, and, in general, to the concept of CSCs.


Araucarian pollen cones Rabagostrobus hispanicus gen. et sp. nov. and their associated foliage Brachyphyllum obesum Heer are described from Lower Cretaceous (Albian) strata of northern Spain. Male cones consist of helically arranged microsporophylls bearing 5–8 elongate pollen sacs with in situ inaperturate Araucariacites‐type pollen. The new taxon is compared to material described previously from the Early Cretaceous of North and South Americas. Sterile twigs of B. obesum bear helically arranged leaves with wrinkled margins. Its cuticle has files of predominantly transversely oriented stomata. Both twigs and pollen cones occur as inclusions in amber from the Peñacerrada 1 outcrop (Álava Province), and as compressions are recorded from the amber‐bearing strata sediments of the Rábago/El Soplao outcrop. Inclusions of araucariacean plant remains and the co‐occurrence of amber and male cone and twig compressions suggest that the amber in these two localities, or at least some of it, was produced by araucariacean plants.


Education provides opportunities for adolescents to make developmental gains. Remote Indigenous adolescents not engaged in education programs need alternate learning opportunities to reach developmental goals. This review identifies attributes that contribute to an alternate model of education within the existing literature and reports on the quantity and nature of evidence. Thirty-seven databases and grey literature were canvassed using strict search criteria. Analysis of papers was conducted to find the enablers of alternate models by identifying the conditions, strategies and outcomes the intervention produced. Papers were categorised according to their nature by Canada's Hierarchy of Evidence and the Sanson-Fisher model. There was limited literature on alternate models of education for Indigenous adolescents in settings outside a school environment. Three papers were classified as descriptive and ten as intervention research. All papers were described as 'emerging' and 'promising' practices. The five attributes embedded within a model included 1) cultural connectedness and awareness; 2) being contextually designed; 3) fosters relationships with peers and adults; 4) specific teaching and learning strategies and; 5) holistic outcomes. The findings will contribute to the co-design of an alternate model of education for remote Indigenous communities. Gaps identified in the literature included examples of 'best practice' models and highlighted the need for further research of innovative models that move from descriptive research to form an evidence base.


The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of excessive sulfur (S) supply on iron plaque formation and arsenic (As) accumulation in rice plants. A combined soil-sand pot experiment was conducted by using two As levels (0, 20 mg/kg) combined with three S concentrations (0, 60, 120 mg/kg). The results showed that excessive S supply significantly decreased As concentration in brown rice, but As concentration in root increased with increas ing rate of S supply. Moreover, bioconcentration factors for leaves and stems were 8–35 fold of that for brown rice, indicating that As was mainly accumulated in rice leaves and stems instead of brown rice. Furthermore, excessive S supply significantly decreased translocation factor of As compared to treatment without S supply. These results indicated that excessive S may reduce As translocation from soils and roots to grain. The mechanism could be as cribed to excessive S that induced the decrease of As availability, the increase of iron plaque formation under As stress, and the increase of glutathione in rice leaves and roots. Therefore, excessive S can reduce As accumulation in brown rice exposed to As contaminated soils though it may result in loss of rice yield.


Viruses are obligate intracellular symbionts. Plant viruses are often discovered and studied as pathogenic parasites that cause diseases in agricultural plants. However, here it is shown that viruses can extend survival of their hosts under conditions of abiotic stress that could benefit hosts if they subsequently recover and reproduce. Various plant species were inoculated with four different RNA viruses, Brome mosaic virus (BMV), Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), Tobacco mosaic virus and Tobacco rattle virus. The inoculated plants were stressed by withholding water. The onset of drought symptoms in virus-infected plants was compared with that in the plants that were inoculated with buffer (mock-inoculated plants). Metabolite profiling analysis was conducted and compared between mock-inoculated and virus-infected plants before and after being subjected to drought stress. In all cases, virus infection delayed the appearance of drought symptoms. Beet plants infected with CMV also exhibited significantly improved tolerance to freezing. Metabolite profiling analysis showed an increase in several osmoprotectants and antioxidants in BMV-infected rice and CMV-infected beet plants before and after drought stress. These results indicate that virus infection improves plant tolerance to abiotic stress, which correlates with increased osmoprotectant and antioxidant levels in infected plants.


One of the important types of information on the Web is the opinions expressed in the user generated content, e.g., customer reviews of products, forum posts, and blogs. In this paper, we focus on customer reviews of products. In particular, we study the problem of determining the semantic orientations (positive, negative or neutral) of opinions expressed on product features in reviews. This problem has many applications, e.g., opinion mining, summarization and search. Here we utilize a list of opinion words(also called opinion lexicon) for the purpose. Opinion words are words that express desirable (e.g., great, amazing, etc.) or undesirable (e.g., bad, poor, etc.) states. Sometime customers writes the wrong spellings for the product property so we solve this problem here by using fuzzy string searching. Approximate string matching (often colloquially referred to as fuzzy string searching) is the technique of finding strings that match a pattern approximately (rather than exactly).


This essay systematically explores the concept "spirit" (shen 神) in Wang Fuzhi's Annotation on the Zhuangzi (Zhuangzi Jie 莊子解). Following Zhuangzi, Wang Fuzhi interprets spirit as a mass of vital force/jingqi, and regards spirit as the master of human life and human body. Through preserving one's spirit, one will not only be able to preserve one's body, but also keep all creatures immune from sickness and plague. This can be accomplished, since a well-preserved spirit will contribute harmonious and pure qi to the universe and make the whole universe more harmonious. In an effort to achieve this purpose, Wang Fuzhi proposes "forgetting all external things" and aiming for an empty and detached mind, on one hand, and asks a person to concentrate his spirit with a constant will, one the other hand. Once one's spirit is well concentrated, one will be a spiritual person (shenren 神人), who will transcend life and death, fortune and misfortune, always living a leisurely and carefree life. One will also forget all cognitive distinctions and fully become one with the transformation of things and Heaven (tian 天). In this way, one's spirit will achieve eternity, and fully realize the meaning of human life.


The lattice dynamics of the hexagonal close-packed (hcp) phase of iron was studied with nuclear inelastic absorption of synchrotron radiation at pressures from 20 to 42 gigapascals. A variety of thermodynamic parameters were derived from the measured density of phonon states for hcp iron, such as Debye temperatures, Gruneisen parameter, mean sound velocities, and the lattice contribution to entropy and specific heat. The results are of geophysical interest, because hcp iron is considered to be a major component of Earth's inner core.


Objective: To evaluate whether use of oral contraceptives (OC) or menopausal hormonal therapy (MHT) is associated with B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Methods: Within the prospective California Teachers Study cohort, women under age 85 with no history of hematopoietic cancer were followed from 1995 through 2007 for diagnosis of B-cell NHL. Overall, 547 women of 116,779 women eligible for analysis of OC use and 402 of 54,758 postmenopausal women eligible for analysis of MHT use developed B-cell NHL. Relative risks (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated by fitting multivariable Cox proportional hazards models. Results: Women who used OCs had marginally lower risk of B-cell NHL than women who had never used OCs (RR=0.86, 95% CI=0.69-1.06). The reduced risk was most pronounced among women who started OCs before age 25, but did not decrease with increasing duration. No association with MHT was observed when MHT ever users were compared to the never users (RR=1.05, 95% CI=0.83-1.33); this result was consistent across formulations of MHT [unopposed estrogen therapy (ET), combined estrogen and progestin therapy (EPT)]. Among women who had never used MHT, women with a bilateral oophorectomy had three times greater risk than those with natural menopause (RR=3.15, 95% CI=1.62-6.13), whereas there was no association with bilateral oophorectomy among women who had used MHT. In stratified analyses according to hysterectomy and oophrectomy status, ET and EPT did not affect risk for women with natural menopause or those with hysterectomy who had at least part of an ovary remaining. Among women who had a bilateral oophorectomy, ET reduced risk of NHL (RR=0.41, 95% CI=0.21-0.82). Conclusion: These data suggest that ET use decreases the risk of B-cell NHL among women with both ovaries removed, but not among women retaining at least part of an ovary. In other subgroups MHT does not influence risk. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 867.


AIM
Our aim was to describe the findings of a systematic review of studies that examine the relationship between nursing leadership practices and patient outcomes.

BACKGROUND
As healthcare faces an economic downturn, stressful work environments, upcoming retirements of leaders and projected workforce shortages, implementing strategies to ensure effective leadership and optimal patient outcomes are paramount. However, a gap still exists in what is known about the association between nursing leadership and patient outcomes.

METHODS
Published English-only research articles that examined leadership practices of nurses in formal leadership positions and patient outcomes were selected from eight online bibliographic databases. Quality assessments, data extraction and analysis were completed on all included studies.

RESULTS
A total of 20 studies satisfied our inclusion criteria and were retained. Current evidence suggests relationships between positive relational leadership styles and higher patient satisfaction and lower patient mortality, medication errors, restraint use and hospital-acquired infections.

CONCLUSIONS
The findings document evidence of a positive relationship between relational leadership and a variety of patient outcomes, although future testing of leadership models that examine the mechanisms of influence on outcomes is warranted.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT
Efforts by organisations and individuals to develop transformational and relational leadership reinforces organisational strategies to improve patient outcomes.


Based on an enhancement of Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behaviour, this article investigates German consumers' trust in different sources of information. Moreover, it discusses the settings and the extent to which consumers' trust influences consumers' behaviour both in the case of a standard purchasing situation and in the environment of a hypothetical food safety incidence such as bird flu . Results indicate that both the consumers' attitude and their trust in suppliers of information is a crucial factor determining their behaviour under uncertainty.


Formal Semantics is a topic of major importance in the study of programming language design. Action semantics is a recently developed framework for the specification of formal semantics which allows understandable, modular and reusable semantic descriptions of programming languages. Action laws are algebraic properties of primitive actions and action combinators which can be used to prove the existence of semantic equivalence between pairs of constructs, expressions etc. of programming language.

This thesis endeavours to show how action semantics can be formalised computationally by reporting on the representation of the kernel of action notation in CAML. CAML is a functional language whose type systems allow the user to define his/her own data structures. It allows the definitions of functions manipulating these data structures with the security provided by strict type verification. The representation of the kernel in the specification language of the Coq development system is also outlined. The Coq system is an implementation of the Calculus of Inductive Constructions and provides goal-directed tactic-driven proof search. The proof engine of the Coq system is then used to prove various action laws.


Based on current trends in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), we provide an overview of novel algorithms intended to address Army-specific needs for increased operational tempo and autonomy for ground robots in unexplored, dynamic, cluttered, contested, and sparse data environments. This paper discusses some of the motivating factors behind US Army Research in AI and ML and provides a survey of a subset of the US Army Research Laboratory's (ARL) Computational and Information Sciences Directorate's (CISD) recent research in online, nonparametric learning that quickly adapts to variable underlying distributions in sparse exemplar environments, as well as a technique for unsupervised semantic scene labeling that continuously learns and adapts semantic models discovered within a data stream. We also look at a newly developed algorithm that leverages human input to help intelligent agents learn more rapidly and a novel research study working to discover foundational knowledge that is required for humans and robots to communicate via natural language. Finally we discuss a method for finding chains of reasoning with incomplete information using semantic vectors. The specific research exemplars provide approaches for overcoming the specific shortcomings of commercial AI and ML methods as well as the brittleness of current commercial techniques such that these methods can be enhanced and adapted so as to be applicable to army relevant scenarios.


ABSTRACTPM2.5 samples from four coastal urban sites (Fuzhou, Putian, Quanzhou, and Xiamen) in Southeastern China were collected to analyze their major chemical composition including inorganic ions, organic carbon (OC), elemental carbon (EC), and inorganic elements. Organic matter (OM = 1.6 × OC) was the largest contributor, accounting for 30.2% of PM2.5 mass concentration, and followed by sulfate (19.8%), ammonium (10.6%), and nitrate (9.7%), with minor contribution from trace species (5.1%), crustal species (4.7%) and EC (2.9%). Sea-salt and biomass burning potassium together contributed less than 2%. At the four sites, higher PM2.5 and its major components were observed in the northeast monsoon season while lower levels were found in the southwest monsoon season. The periodic PM2.5 cycle was observed and influenced mainly by rain wash out. However, regular diurnal variations of PM2.5 with high concentration during daytime were only observed in summer due to the greater production of sulfate and organic aerosols in spite of the fact that the vertical mixing coefficients were lower during nighttime. The relative contributions of secondary inorganic aerosols (sulfate, nitrate, and ammonium) to PM2.5 increased rapidly while the contribution of OM decreased during the haze episodes. The reconstructed visibility using revised IMPROVE method correlated well with the measured values. At Xiamen and Fuzhou sites, the major contributors of light extinction coefficient were ammonium sulfate, ammonium nitrate, OM and coarse mass, and accounted for more than 80% of the light extinction coefficient on average.


This work follows the artistic processes between 2019 and 2021 during a Master's course in Contemporary Artistic Creation, that unfolded into "I'm not here". A short documentary in which, from a conversation with her nephew, the director revisits losses that crossed her family. Like Cirandinha, a classic restaurant that used to be the local of family reunions in Copacabana. Dialogues established with the artist Agnés Varda add to the narrative built in the film in the construction of this reflective portfolio that takes the form of an article. In addition, Giorgio Agamben's notions about contemporaneity and profanation are evocated to deepening the reflections of the author's trajectory in the last 3 years.


Last month, the government body that took over management of the property and finances of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) in January published a road map for its reform. Among the measures it calls for is a formal assessment of the research effectiveness of RAS institutes. Scientists have concluded that the only reason to grade institutes is to decide which ones to close down. The timing of the road map is especially alarming given that a yearlong moratorium on any changes to the staff and property of RAS, set by President Vladimir Putin, will soon be coming to an end. Meanwhile, a draft law setting an age cap for institute directors threatens to leave many of them leaderless and vulnerable.


ABSTRACT. Increased synthesis of type I collagen, leading to increased ratios of type I to type III collagen in the lungs, has been observed in the lungs of animals with experimental pulmonary fibrosis. Similar changes in collagen type ratios have been observed in lungs of humans dying of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and of adult respiratory distress syndrome. In this study, lung collagen type ratios were examined in infants with acute and chronic lung disease. Tissue from the right lower lobes of neonates was obtained post mortem. Specific collagen types were quantitated by solubilization of lung collagen with CNBr and fractionation of the resulting mixture of peptides by column chromatography and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Ratios of type I/III collagen were calculated for each lung sample using two independent pairs of marker peptides for these determinations. In some cases the ratio of type Y to type III collagen in these same lung samples was also quantitated. We observed a significant increase in the ratio of type I/III collagen in infants with a premortem diagnosis of chronic lung disease, usually preceded by respiratory distress syndrome. We also observed two infants with large changes in collagen type ratios who might have had pulmonary fibroplasia secondary to intrauterine lung disease. These data suggest that there may be several subsets of infants with respiratory distress syndrome, each having a different prognosis.


Background: The physical environment has an impact on wellbeing. School nurses can use this to promote students' health. Aim: The aim of this study is to elucidate school nurses' perceptions of using the physical environment at their office, as a tool in nursing. Method: A qualitative interview study was conducted with five Swedish school nurses, using semi-structured questions. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Results: Three categories (offering a health environment for wellbeing, being present in the environment for the children and using the environment for health education) and six subcategories emerged during analysis. Conclusions: School nurses made their office a place for wellbeing by using it for health information, as a sanctuary and as an environment that supports children's need for integrity. How the school nurses used their environment depended on their personality. Obstacles included people in the school who had little knowledge of what school nurses' work consists of ...


An exploration of the origins and development of Queensgate Market; a 1970 covered retail market in Huddersfield in the United Kingdom.

The market's roof of glazed reinforced concrete asymmetric hyperbolic paraboloid shell umbrellas and prominent artwork have led to never ending controversy. Proposed demolition of the building in 2003 and its listing on grounds of its architectural or historic importance in 2005 accentuated the community's dichotomy over the market's qualities.

Can the building be better understood by examining antecedents and historical practice?

Through a review of markets and market architecture and design, hyperbolic paraboloid shell roofs engineering, retail design and public art the research aims to explore aspects of the development of Queensgate Market;

the trajectories of art, engineering and architectural practice

the transfers of awareness, knowledge, empowerment and actualisation

the mechanisms and vectors at play in such transfers; education and autodidactic learning and dissemination through publication and migration.

the connections based on proximity, employment, meeting and travel.

It was carried out by site visits, primary and secondary sources and interviews with people involved with design and construction.

Queensgate Market is identified as the unique nexus and climax in the expression of markets, hyperbolic paraboloid shells and civic art.

The study concludes that the vagaries of human migration, challenge, proximity, education and friendship are informal but important vectors in addition to technology, commercial, legislative and societal norms to the realisation of the project


Night ventilation is one kind of passive cooling ways which is very effective in certain climate type. The main work of this paper is to determine the cooling potential of office buildings that use night ventilation in the city of Xi'an. Xi'an is located in the Continental Climate zone of China. For this purpose, a typical office building simulation model has been built for the numerical analysis. Cooling and energy-saving potential of night ventilation in office buildings is determined through the simulation in different ventilation and air-conditioning cases by the energy simulation software DeST.


Changes occurring ovarian folliculogenesis as a result of stimulation and destruction of the cortico-medial part of the amygdala, as well as the effect of choriogonadotropine on the background of these changes were studied in 80 infantile female rats. The stimulation and destruction of the cortico-medial part of the amygdala were stated to stimulate production of larger ovarian follicles and also to affect the changes produced by administration of choriogonadotropine.


The Alhambra is built on a conglomeratic formation, known as the Alhambra Formation, whose age is Pliocene to Lower Pleistocene and has a visible thickness of 200 metres. The western part of the San Pedro escarpment corresponds to a fault-scarp with some retreat; the fault-plane outcrops in the innermost part of the escarpment, showing normal displacement and NW-SE strike with NE steep dip. This fault is the most important one of a set that outcrops along the northern hillslope of the Alhambra. Several topographic steps with NW-SE orientation are interpreted as retreated fault-scarps. In some cases, the activity of these faults seems to be very recent and maybe related to earthquakes. The seismic risk associated with these faults (and maybe some not-outcropping ones) can be taken to be moderate, as some historical damages have been reported concerning the Alhambra walls and the fence. In this respect, the Alhambra fence has numerous cracks geometrically related to fault planes outcropping in the Alhambra Formation, i.e. faults and cracks are continuous and have similar strike and dip. We hypothesize that these cracks are due to small displacements along the faults, occurred during recent earthquakes in the region. These faults constitute mechanical discontinuities, which represent a supplementary risk, because they contribute to reduce the stability of the entire rock massif.


To evaluate the opportunity factors that lead to fraudulent behavior in Vietnam stock market, the authors combine the case study methodology with in-depth interviews and surveys. During the survey process, the answers from 568 experts were collected from securities companies, fund management companies, Stock Exchanges and the State Securities Commission in Vietnam. By using the exploratory factor analysis method, the authors have identified opportunity factors leading to fraudulent behavior in Vietnam stock market including: (i) Group of opportunity factors due to an internal person and an issuer (Person whose internal information has not been published by the company; Collusion of the issuer and securities company; An important person in the company who abuses power; An issuer has complex organizational structure; A person has multiple positions; An issuer does not control internal information well). (ii) Group of opportunity factors by investors (Investors trade securities following an internal person; Investors trade securities following foreign investors; Investors trade securities according to brokerage company recommendations; Investors make securities transaction according to advisory information on securities forums). (iii) Group of opportunity factors due to market management and supervision (The penalty is not strict and deterrent; The penalty is untimely; The authority of the securities committee is limited). The authors then use the regression model to determine the order of the impact of each group of factors that lead to fraudulent behavior in Vietnam stock market from high to low including: opportunity factors due to an internal person and the issuing organization, the opportunity factors due to the market management and supervision and finally the opportunity factors due to investors.


Spring Creek Prairie (SCP), in Lancaster County, Nebraska, was purchased by Audubon Nebraska in 1998 and is being restored for educational purposes and scientific study. It is a remnant tallgrass prairie of247 ha (610 acres) that was grazed for a century but never plowed. The research was conducted to obtain baseline information about diversity and abundance of upland species, for assessment of management practices. Specimens were collected from September, 1998, through October, 2000, and an inventory was produced. These data were compared with similar data from Nine-Mile Prairie (NMP), a nearby and essentially ungrazed virgin tallgrass prairie that is now managed with prescribed burning. Seventy-eight percent of the 349 species at SCP are native and 22% are non-native. At about one-third the size, NMP contains 398 species, with 85% native and 15% non-native. Sampling data from the fall of 1999 indicated greater richness at SCP, while actual plant species inventories showed greater total richness at NMP. Ruderal and introduced species are significantly more abundant at SCPo Richness assessed using the "Chicago Method" indicated lower values at SCP than NMP, as did Simpson's diversity index. Detrended correspondence analysis, frequency, and basal cover indicated a greater propensity for warm-season grasses at NMP and for ruderal grasses and forb species at SCPo


Cool cores of galaxy clusters are thought to be heated by low-power active galactic nuclei (AGN), whose accretion is regulated by feedback. However, the interaction between the hot gas ejected by the AGN and the ambient intracluster medium is extremely difficult to simulate as it involves a wide range of spatial scales and gas that is Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) unstable. Here, we present a series of three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of a self-regulating AGN in a galaxy cluster. Our adaptive-mesh simulations include prescriptions for radiative cooling, AGN heating and a subgrid model for RT-driven turbulence, which is crucial to simulate this evolution. AGN heating is taken to be proportional to the rest-mass energy that is accreted on to the central region of the cluster. For a wide range of feedback efficiencies, the cluster regulates itself for at least several 10 9 yr. Heating balances cooling through a string of outbursts with typical recurrence times of around 80 Myr, a time-scale that depends only on global cluster properties. Under certain conditions, we find central dips in the metallicity of the intracluster medium. Provided the subgrid model used here captures all its key properties, turbulence plays an essential role in the AGN self-regulation in cluster cores.


The paper develops a Kantian view of the highest good and the relation between virtue and happiness. Several Kantian theses are defended, among them the thesis that the highest good is realized only if every virtuous individual is happy, the view that virtue is neither necessary nor sufficient for happiness, and the proposition that virtue is both necessary and sufficient for the worthiness of being happy. The author argues that the highest good ought to be realized and that it ought to be that everyone who is virtuous is happy. To prove these claims, the author will use techniques developed by modern deontic logicians. According to Kant, we do not have an immediate duty to promote our own happiness, the aim of morality being not personal satisfaction but rather virtue and the good will. The important question is not "How do I become happy?" but "How do I become good?". The arguments in this paper support this view.