In Qinjiagou watershed of Three-Gorge of
Yangtze River, 18 indices were selected from canopy layer, litter layer, soil
layer and topography to evaluate the soil and water conservation capacities of
four common plantation types by ideal point method. Results indicated that the
broadleaf plantation of robur (Lithocrpus glabra) and Chinese gugertree (Schima
superba) (LS) has the biggest soil and water conservation capacity. The rank of
three other plantation types from big to small is the mixed broadleaf
plantation of sweetgum (Liguidambar formosana), Chinese gugertree and camphor
tree (Cinnamomum camphora) (LSC), the mixed broadleaf-conifer plantation of
Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata), Masson pine (Pinus massoniana) and Chinese
gugertree (CPS), and the mixed Pine plantation of Chinese fir and Masson pine (CP).
Under the same climate and topographical condition, the broadleaf plantation
has better soil and water conservation capacity than the conifer plantation.
Sensitivity analysis showed that the three most sensitive indices are soil
non-capillary porosity, soil aggregation, and soil initial infiltration rate.
The litter amount and soil properties are the most important indicators of soil
and water conservation capacity of plantations. Therefore, suitable
measurements such as deep tillage should be taken to improve the properties of
soil under different plantations.


The paper is a review of the work of Paolo Leon (1935-2016), Emeritus Professor of Public Economics at the University of Rome Three, in the field of cultural economics, director of this revue from 2002 to 2014. Within his broader research interests in economic policy and public economics, Paolo Leon has been a leading and influential scholar in nurturing and consolidating an Italian approach in the economics of cultural heritage and cultural activities and industries. The paper reviews his contributions during more than thirty years of academic and applied research, taking also account of a tireless and informed participation to the Italian and European public discussion on cultural policies and policies for the preservation of historic, artistic and archaeological heritage. The Paolo Leon' intellectual legacy in this field is linked not only with his academic work (culture as a Musgrave-type merit good, tools for the economic and impact evaluation of public projects in the cultural sector, cultural sector as an engine for local economic development, appraisal and contribution to the Italian national policies for culture, and more), but also with his work as an applied economist, providing expertise and consultancy to a large number of Italian institutions for the realization of public and public-private projects for the preservation of heritage and the improvement of cultural organizations.


To better record and characterize mortality in the declining population of dugong (Dugong dugon) in southeast Queensland, Australia, animals were collected and brought to the University of Queensland for postmortem examination. Fifty-five animals were examined over a 14-yr period. Human activities commonly caused the animal death. Several deaths were attributed to primary or secondary infections and idiopathic and degenerative diseases. A significant proportion of animals were found to have nonspecific signs of chronic debility, but the causes of disease and mortality in these cases remains to be identified.


Results of microcalorimetric studies of water crystallization in some plant tissues are presented. It was shown that in each tissue water is crystallized in a specific temperature region and the process is independent of water crystallization in other tissues. Besides this water fraction, there exists another one in the tissues which is united in a single system. The latter is crystallized simultaneously throughout the preparation. It is suggested that this water fraction is located in the tissues intercells. Results of secondary water crystallization in plant tissues are presented. It is shown that after freezing and thawing the core cells are damaged more strongly.


The research aimed to understand the conceptions of a group of professors about integral health care in a nursing course and how they influence their pedagogical practices. It was a qualitative study that had as subjects 12 nursing professors. The data collection technique used was the interview and to analyze it, we used content analysis, in its thematic analysis form. The results showed that there are discursive convergences about integral care amongst the professors, and as an important part of the study, we could see that it is an "axis" that is establishing itself in the course and that has been developing new forms of thinking about the way nursing is being taught, in the reality that was studied.


BACKGROUND
Lanoteplase (nPA) is a rationally designed variant of tissue plasminogen activator with greater fibrinolytic potency and slower plasma clearance than alteplase.

METHODS AND RESULTS
InTIME (Intravenous nPA for Treatment of Infarcting Myocardium Early), a multicenter, double-blind, randomized, double-placebo angiographic trial, evaluated the dose-response relationship and safety of single-bolus, weight-adjusted lanoteplase. Patients (n=602) presenting within 6 hours of acute myocardial infarction were randomized and treated with either a single-bolus injection of lanoteplase (15, 30, 60, or 120 kU/kg) or accelerated alteplase. The primary objective was to determine TIMI grade flow at 60 minutes. Angiographic assessments were also performed at 90 minutes and on days 3 to 5. Follow-up was continued for 30 days. Lanoteplase achieved its primary objective, demonstrating a dose-response in TIMI grade 3 flow at 60 minutes (23.6% to 47.1% of subjects, P<0. 001). Similar results were observed at 90 minutes (26.1% to 57.1%, P<0.001). At 90 minutes, coronary patency (TIMI 2 or 3) increased across the dose range up to 83% of subjects at 120 kU/kg lanoteplase compared with 71.4% with alteplase. Thus, at this dose, lanoteplase was superior to alteplase in restoring coronary patency (difference, 12%; 95% CI, 1% to 23%). The early safety experience in this study suggests that lanoteplase was well tolerated at all doses with safety comparable to that of alteplase.

CONCLUSIONS
Lanoteplase, a single-bolus, weight-adjusted agent, increased coronary patency at 60 and 90 minutes in a dose-dependent fashion. Coronary patency at 90 minutes was achieved more frequently with 120 kU/kg lanoteplase than alteplase. In this study, safety with lanoteplase and alteplase was comparable. InTIME-II, a worldwide mortality trial, will evaluate efficacy and safety with this promising new agent.


Porphyry copper.  Abstract Geometallurgy tries to predict the instability the behavior of ores caused by variability in the geological settings, and to optimize the mineral value chain. Understanding the ore variability and subsequently the process response are considered to be the most important functions of an accurate geometallurgical study. In this paper, the geometallurgical index is presented as a new tool to optimize the mining activities. Geometallurgical index is described as any geological feature that makes a footprint on the process performance of ores. In a comprehensive research wo rk at the Sarcheshmeh porphyry copper mine, the geological features that affect the main process responses including the product grade and recovery and plant's throughput are subjected to investigation. In the current report, the rock hardness variability in terms of semi -autogenous grinding power index (SPI) and its effects on the mill throughput and energy consumption are presented. Ninety samples are collected based on the geological features including lithology, hydrothermal alteration, and geological s tructures. The samples are mineralogically characterized using XRD, XRF, and electron and optical microscopy. The Starkey laboratory mill, commercialized by Minnovex, is used to perform the SPI comminution test. The SPI results show a wide range of hardnes s, varying from 12 to 473 minutes. The correlation between the SPI results and the geological features show that lithology is a key geological feature that defines the hardness variability. In addition, the hydrothermal alteration would be an effective par ameter in the period that the plant is fed with a single lithology.


For the purpose of implementing the coordinated traffic signal control, urban road networks in Japan are divided into several sub-areas. Each sub-area consists of a series of signal intersections. The traffic signal timing is optimized within each sub-area and reflects the local traffic situation. Since there is no well-established method of decomposing a traffic network into sub-areas, the decomposition is determined by skillful engineers based on their experience. This paper proposes a new method of decomposition, which is based on an effectiveness index reflecting the traffic delay and the topological structure of the sub-area network. To evaluate the performance of our approach, simulation experiments are carried out for an actual road network. The results show that the decomposition obtained by our method outperforms the conventional decomposition in terms of the employed performance index.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the association between eating- away-from-home (EAFH) and a) the quality of dietary carbohydrate intake and b) the quality of fat intake.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
We assessed 19,371 participants in the SUN cohort who completed a validated baseline food frequency questionnaire. Quality indices of carbohydrate (CQI) and fat (FQI) were used. Multiple regression models were fitted to determine the association between the frequency of EAFH (4 categories) and both indices. Logistic regression analysis was used to assess the association between the frequency of EAFH and low CQI or FQI ((<25th percentile).

RESULTS
Participants showed an average CQI and FQI of 11,3 (SD 3,2) and 1,7 (SD 0,5), respectively. A higher frequency of EAFH (≥ 2 times/week) was associated with a poorer CQI and a poorer FQI. For CQI, the adjusted mean difference was -0,29, 95%CI: -0,41, -0,17 (p for trend <0,001), and for FQI it was -0,02, 95%CI: -0,03, -0,001 (p for trend 0,03). Participants with a highest frequency (≥ 2 times/week) of EAFH had higher adjusted risk of a poorer CQI, (adjusted OR 1,31, 95%CI 1,17, 1,46, p for trend <0,001), but this habit (EAFH) was unrelated to FQI (adjusted OR 0,93, 95%CI: 0,83, 1,03, p for trend 0,194).

KEY FINDINGS
A higher frequency of EAFH was associated with a poorer quality of dietary fat, and particularly, dietary carbohohydrate. These findings highlight the importance of nutritional education addressed to consumers who frequently do out-of-home meals.


Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, is a wireless data collection technology which, through the RF portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, uses electrostatic or electromagnetic coupling to identify objects, animals and humans as unique entities. The technology first reached mass-market application in the 1980s when it was earmarked by industry as appropriate for identifying high value items moving through the manufacturing and assembly process. Successful implementation here saw RFID systems later grow to encompass supply chains, commercial goods and animals. The most recent advance in the evolutionary development of RFID has been to make humans the subject of applications. The purpose of these applications has ranged from convenience, to access, to monitoring, and to allowing for communication. We have carried the RFID devices in our hands, wallets, and our clothes. Now, potential exists to carry the technology in our bodies. This thesis examines current applications associated with the RFID implantation of humans. It aims to bridge the gap between existing technical knowledge and speculation as to future uses. Research design is based on a usability context analysis methodology with applications thematically separated into areas of control, convenience and care. This qualitative study will clarify the current state of development by investigating issues of use, nature and commercial feasibility. Publication Details This thesis was originally submitted as Masters, A, Humancentric applications of RFID: the current state of development, Bachelor of Information and Communication Technology (Honours), University of Wollongong, 2003, 120p. This thesis is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/thesesinfo/11 Humancentric Applications of RFID: The Current State of Development IACT450 – Information and Communication Technology Honours Thesis Amelia Masters 2116832


ABSTRACT The cell wall is a defining organelle that differentiates fungi from its sister clades in the opisthokont superkingdom. With a sensitive technique to align low-complexity protein sequences, we have identified 187 cell wall-related proteins in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and determined the presence or absence of homologs in 17 other fungal genomes. There were both conserved and lineage-specific cell wall proteins, and the degree of conservation was strongly correlated with protein function. Some functional classes were poorly conserved and lineage specific: adhesins, structural wall glycoprotein components, and unannotated open reading frames. These proteins are primarily those that are constituents of the walls themselves. On the other hand, glycosyl hydrolases and transferases, proteases, lipases, proteins in the glycosyl phosphatidyl-inositol-protein synthesis pathway, and chaperones were strongly conserved. Many of these proteins are also conserved in other eukaryotes and are associated with wall synthesis in plants. This gene conservation, along with known similarities in wall architecture, implies that the basic architecture of fungal walls is ancestral to the divergence of the ascomycetes and basidiomycetes. The contrasting lineage specificity of wall resident proteins implies diversification. Therefore, fungal cell walls consist of rapidly diversifying proteins that are assembled by the products of an ancestral and conserved set of genes.


Abstract Background Increasing awareness of the emotional impact of an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) hospitalization on patients and their families has led to a rise in studies seeking to mitigate Post Intensive Care Syndrome (PICS) for both groups. In efforts to decrease symptoms of anxiety and depression, ICUs have implemented a variety of programs to reduce family distress. Methods We conducted a systematic review of experimental studies which aimed to reduce stress related disorders in family members after the experience of having a patient admitted to the ICU. Multiple databases were searched for randomized controlled trials or nonrandomized comparative trials which targeted family members or surrogate decision makers. A total of 17 studies were identified for inclusion in the review representing 3471 participants. Results We describe those interventions which we qualitatively assigned as "not passive," or those which actively engaged the family to express themselves, as more likely to be successful in both the available pediatric and adult literature than interventions which we identified as "passive." Studies which described active engagement of family members demonstrated comparative improvements in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD, as well as reduced hospital costs in the case of two studies. Discussion This review may serve to aid in the development of future interventions targeted at reducing family stress and PICS following an ICU hospitalization.


Let $pounds$ be the category of locally compact abelian groups and $A,Cin pounds$. In this paper, we define component extensions of $A$ by $C$ and show that the set of all component extensions of $A$ by $C$ forms a subgroup of $Ext(C,A)$ whenever $A$ is a connected group. We establish conditions under which the component extensions split and determine LCA groups which are component projective. We also gives a necessary condition for an LCA group to be component injective in $pounds$.


SUMMARY. The Author, after having summarized what EMDR is, remebers the international aknowledgements it has received and points out the main hypothesis of functioning and the studies of neurophysiology. He specifies how EMDR, from an initial step of therapeutic technique and clinical method, has become a global approach useful from many fields of the psychopathology, till to the most complex post-traumatic situations.


Using standard operative procedures such as gastrectomies, gastroenterostomies, and pyloroplasties, it was shown in dogs that gastritis occurred at the stoma. Because this gastritis disappeared histologically, or failed to occur at all when reflux was prevented by a Roux-en-Y reconstruction, it is suggested that the cause of the gastritis is duodenal content refluxing through the new stoma. In human subjects after operation it was also shown that gastritis persisted in spite of symptomatic improvement. Regeneration was studied in mice using tritiated thymidine administered on a single occasion only. Gastritis was induced by exposure to sublethal doses of irradiation. As gastric regeneration occurred some 10% of new chief and parietal cells were found to contain tritiated thymidine, suggesting that at least this number were derived from the parent mucus neck cells.


Glenn Ellis is a Professor of Engineering at Smith College who teaches courses in engineering science and methods for teaching science and engineering. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering and Operations Research from Princeton University. The winner of numerous teaching awards, Dr. Ellis received the 2007 U.S. Professor of the Year Award for Baccalaureate Colleges from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. His research focuses on creating K-16 learning environments that support the growth of learners' imaginations and their capacity for engaging in collaborative knowledge work.


Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is widely applied in the industry to develop new software functions and integrate them into the existing run-time environment of a Cyber-Physical System (CPS). The design of a software component involves designers from various viewpoints such as control theory, software engineering, safety, etc. In practice, while a designer from one discipline focuses on the core aspects of his field (for instance, a control engineer concentrates on designing a stable controller), he neglects or considers less importantly the other engineering aspects (for instance, real-time software engineering or energy efficiency). This may cause some of the functional and non-functional requirements not to be met satisfactorily. In this work, we present a co-design framework based on timing tolerance contract to address such design gaps between control and real-time software engineering. The framework consists of three steps: controller design, verified by jitter margin analysis along with co-simulation, software design verified by a novel schedulability analysis, and the run-time verification by monitoring the execution of the models on target. This framework builds on CPAL (Cyber-Physical Action Language), an MDE design environment based on model-interpretation, which enforces a timing-realistic behavior in simulation through timing and scheduling annotations. The application of our framework is exemplified in the design of an automotive cruise control system.


Abstract Many studies have examined temporal changes in insect feeding on angiosperm leaves, but none have considered variability within a single stratigraphic level. If spatial variability within a level is high, a single sample will not adequately represent the level and may either mask true temporal changes or create spurious ones. In order to measure the spatial variability in fossil insect feeding damage, I collected 12 replicate samples from two laterally extensive carbonaceous shale beds (55.2 and 52.6 Ma) from the early Eocene of the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. Over 2800 fossil angiosperm leaves were scored for presence or absence of 50 insect damage morphotypes. Damage frequency, diversity, and composition were computed for both the bulk flora and individual plant species in each sample, and variation within a bed was compared with differences between the two beds. Differences in diversity and composition between beds were significantly greater than variations within a bed, and intra-bed variation was primarily due to differing floral composition. Damage frequency within a bed, however, was more variable than diversity. Damage diversity and composition reflect the number of insect species present, whereas damage frequency also depends on the number of insects present, which may be much more variable over small distances.


This presentation explores the power of simulation building as a constructivist learning activity and develops an agenda for the pursuit of research in this area. Our project evolved out of repeated observations that multimedia students, working as programmers and designers on agent-based computer simulations of complex adaptive systems, often became enthusiastic and insightful about the content of the simulations. We have come to believe that the creation of an interactive simulation is a highly effective way to learn challenging concepts that require new habits of mind. We are recommending the construction rather than the use of a simulation to achieve our objectives, because the creation of a successful simulation requires the learner to acquire both a cohesive overview of the material and an intimate understanding of its details. It is also our contention that learning to design and implement simulations is an appropriate educational objective in its own right.


Trust has been a focus of research on virtual collaboration in distributed teams, e-commerce, e-learning, and telemedicine. Central to several models of trust and virtual collaboration is user's disposition to trust. This construct, however, has generally been conceptualized in as a stand-alone trait without a substantive theoretical background in personality theory. This paper advances the interpersonal circumplex model (ICM) as a theoretical framework for understanding the role of personal traits in collaboration in virtual contexts. The ICM posits that tendencies in interpersonal interaction stem from personal dispositions that can be understood in terms of dimensions of power and affiliation, fundamental constituents of user's personality. We develop a model that proposes that interpersonal traits, specifically, personality type as defined by the circumplex, affect the individual's disposition to trust, perceived trustworthiness, communication, and thereby affects willingness to collaborate and the sustainability and productivity of the collaboration. The model enables us to unpack the black box concepts of disposition to trust, faith in others, and trusting stance that are currently incorporated in theories of trust in information systems. The theory also enables explanation of trust dynamics at the dyadic and group levels. We develop propositions positing that individual's traits and dyadic complementarity are mediating factors in interpersonal trust and willingness to use new technologies and significantly affect the initiation, duration, and productivity of computer-mediated collaboration.


ABSTRACT Traditionally the concepts of terrestrial protected areas have been used in designating marine protected areas. We discuss the differences between marine and terrestrial protected areas and highlight the need to consider the movement of species through marine protected boundaries. The source of most productivity differs; in terrestrial systems it is all attached whereas in the marine environment much occurs in the water column and cannot be restrained by artificial boundaries. This has major implications for the management of marine protected areas.


A subset of liver transplantation (LT) recipients who undergo transplantation for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) will develop postoperative recurrence. There has yet to be a thorough investigation of donor factors influencing recurrence. Data regarding adult, primary LT recipients with HCC (n = 5002) who underwent transplantation between January 1, 2006 and September 30, 2010 were extracted from the United Network for Organ Sharing database, and the cumulative incidence of post‐LT recurrence by donor factors was subsequently estimated. Among the HCC LT recipients, 324 (6.5%) developed recurrence. An analysis of donor characteristics demonstrated a higher cumulative incidence of recurrence within 4 years of transplantation among recipients with donors ≥ 60 years old (11.8% versus 7.3% with donors < 60 years old, P < 0.001) and with donors from a nonlocal share distribution (10.6% versus 7.4% with donors with a local share distribution, P = 0.004). The latter 2 findings held true in a multivariate analysis: the risk of HCC recurrence increased by 70% for recipients of livers from donors ≥ 60 years old [subhazard ratio (SHR) = 1.70, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.31‐2.20, P < 0.001] and by 42% for recipients of nonlocal share distribution livers (SHR = 1.42, 95% CI = 1.09‐1.84, P = 0.009) after adjustments for clinical characteristics. In conclusion, the consideration of certain donor factors may reduce the cumulative incidence of posttransplant HCC recurrence and thus improve long‐term survival after LT. Liver Transpl 21:187‐194, 2015. © 2014 AASLD.


We investigated how human proislet peptide (HIP) regulates differentiation of human fetus–derived pancreatic progenitor cells (HFPPCs) and explored the potential link between HIP signaling and the menin pathway, which is key to regulating pancreatic islet differentiation. The data show that HIP promoted expression of proislet transcription factors (TFs), including PDX-1, MAFA, and NKX6.1, as well as other maturation markers of β-cells, such as insulin, GLUT2, KIR6.2, SUR1, and VDCC. Moreover, HIP increased insulin content and promoted the ability of HFPPCs to normalize blood glucose in diabetic mice. HIP inhibited the TF FOXO1 by increasing AKT-mediated phosphorylation. HIP-induced repression of FOXO1 suppressed menin expression, leading to reducing menin binding to the promoter of the three key proislet TFs, decreasing recruitment of H3K9 methyltransferase SUV39H1, and thus reducing repressive H3K9me3 at the promoter. These coordinated actions lead to increased expression of the proislet TFs, resulting in induction of HFPPC differentiation. Consistently, constitutive activation of FOXO1 blocks HIP-induced transcription of these TFs. Together, these studies unravel the crucial role of the HIP/AKT/FOXO/menin axis in epigenetically controlling expression of proislet TFs, regulating the differentiation of HFPPCs, and normalizing blood glucose in diabetic mice.


The effectiveness of the poliovirus vaccines to induce both systemic and mucosal immunity has prompted the development of this virus as a vector in which to express foreign proteins. Our laboratory has previously reported on the construction and characterization of poliovirus genomes that encode HIV-1 proteins (Porter DC, et al.: J Virol 1996;70:2643-2649). To develop this system further, we have constructed poliovirus genomes, referred to as replicons, which encode the SIVmac239 Gag or Env SU in place of the poliovirus capsid gene (P1). Since the replicons do not encode capsid proteins, they are encapsidated into poliovirus by passage with a recombinant vaccinia virus, VVP1, which provides the poliovirus capsid proteins in trans. Using this system, we have derived stocks of the encapsidated replicons which encode the SIVmac239 or Env SU protein. Infection of cells with the replicon that encodes SIVmac239 Gag resulted in the expression of a 55-kDa protein that was released from the infected cells. Analysis of the sedimentation of the released proteins by sucrose density gradient centrifugation revealed that the protein was released from the cell in the form of a virus-like particle. Infection of cells with the replicons encoding the SIVmac239 Env SU resulted in the expression of a 63-kDa protein, corresponding to the molecular mass predicted for the nonglycosylated SIVmac239 SU protein. A second protein with a molecular mass greater than 160 kDa was also immunoprecipitated. After enzymatic deglycosylation, this protein migrated at a molecular mass consistent with that for an Env SU dimer. Analysis of the medium from cells infected with the replicon encoding SIVmac239 Env SU revealed the presence of a protein of molecular mass 85-90 kDa, possibly representing a fragment of the SIVmac239 or Env SU protein. To determine the immunogenicity of the replicons encoding SIVmac239 Gag or Env SU, transgenic mice that express the human receptor for poliovirus, and are thus susceptible to poliovirus, were immunized via the intramuscular route. A serum antibody response to SIV envelope was detected following booster immunization, establishing that the encapsidated replicon was immunogenic. Finally, we demonstrate that the replicons have the capacity to infect peripheral blood mononuclear monocytes/macrophages, suggesting that this cell is a possible target for in vivo infection. The results of our studies, then, lend further support for the development and application of recombinant poliovirus replicons in a vaccine strategy.


Cytogenetic studies have been done on a group of childhood patients over a period of 3 1/2 years in which time Giemsa trypsin banding was applied to all specimens. Fifteen of the 107 patients (14%) were diagnosed as having acute nonlymphoblastic leukemia (ANLL). Twelve of the 15 had chromosomal abnormalities. The most common was an involvement of the No. 7 chromosome which occurred in five patients. Three patients had trisomy 19. No correlation could be found between the disease subgroup and the karyotypic aberration in patients with anomalies involving a common chromosome.


Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the spillover effect of the US macroeconomic news on the first two moments of the Vietnamese stock market returns. Design/methodology/approach - The author collected market expectation and actual announcements data for 12 key US macroeconomic announcements for the period from August 2000 to September 2009 from Bloomberg. The dataset consists of monthly Non-farm payroll (NFPM), Unemployment level (UNEMP), Gross Domestic Product percentage level (GDP), Housing statistics (HOMEST), Industrial production (INDP), Leading Indicator (LEAD), Retail Sales (SALES), Consumer Price Index (CPI), Producer Index (PPI), Current Account (CA, quarterly), Trade Balance (BOT), and the Federal Reserve's target rates (FOMC, 8 times a year and Findings - In general, the US real economic news has the strongest effect on the first two moments of the Vietnamese stock returns. This can be interpreted as evidence that Vietnamese market participants believe that the USA is targeting real economic activities other than other variables. It is also shown that even though the US stock market (proxied by S&P500 index) significantly affects the Vietnamese stock market returns, the spillover effect of the US macroeconomic news is still significant. Research limitations/implications - The author does not explore further on the transmission channels of the spillover effects of the US news on the Vietnamese stock market, reserving this task for future research. Originality/value - The paper contributes to the extant literature in several ways. First, to the author's knowledge, the current literature lacks empirical evidence for the impact of the US macroeconomic news on the first two moments of the Vietnamese stock markets. Given the growing integration between the two economies, evidenced by the fact that the USA is Vietnam's largest foreign direct investor and importer, the US macroeconomic news is very important, not only for Vietnamese policy makers but also for market participants. Furthermore, the choice of a small and open market with increasing exposure to the world economy and vulnerable to the US news (i.e. Vietnam) would help in reducing the problem of endogeneity bias in previous studies employing large economy pairs, as the US news might affect the Vietnamese stock market but not the reverse. Finally, previous studies tend to investigate the impact of macro news only on conditional returns. In this study, both conditional returns and the conditional variance of returns are modelled simultaneously in a time-varying framework (MA-GARCH) to better capture the impact of macroeconomic news on stock returns and stock market volatility.


Application of line-focus-beam (LFB) acoustic microscopy is extended to characterization of substrates for SH-type SAW devices. Theoretical and experimental studies on a wave mode for characterization are carried out on 36/spl deg/Y-cut LiTaO/sub 3/ wafers. A Rayleigh-type mode of leaky surface acoustic waves (LSAWs) must be employed instead of an SH-type mode of leaky pseudo-surface waves (LPSAWs). Experimental results show that the LSAW propagation should be directed along the X-axis because the LSAW velocities are more sensitive to chemical composition and elastic inhomogeneities. The relations among the LSAW velocities, densities, and Curie temperatures are determined. The LSAW velocity increases linearly at the rate of 0.52 m/s//spl deg/C with the Curie temperature. A chemical composition change of 0.03 Li/sub 2/O-mol%, corresponding to temperature resolution of better than 0.3/spl deg/C, is easily detected by the velocity measurements. Elastic inhomogeneities due to residual multi-domains, produced during the poling process during wafer fabrication, are interpreted quantitatively by this ultrasonic technology.<<ETX>>


This research was designed to examine the issues, perceptions, and experiences toward school guidance and counselling services among local gifted and talented students. This qualitative exploratory research was conducted on 30 students from the first and second cohorts of a particular 'laboratory' school which offers gifted and talented education program. The data – which was gathered from focus group and in-depth interview sessions – was thematically analysed using the Nvivo software, version 8.0 in order to deeply explore variables under study. The main finding shows that common issues shared among the participants were evolved around career, academics, and psychosocial dimensions. Hence, guidance and counseling services were often seeked to help them coping with these issues. Moreover, the participants were found to have mixed – positive and negative – perceptions and experiences toward guidance and counseling provision at school. Overall, findings of this research provide useful baseline information to guide the development of differentiated school guidance and counselling services for the local population of gifted and talented students. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/JPEN-2015-4002-09


For years, scientists have challenged the machine intelligence problem, which aims at building algorithms that can learn patterns from evidence and use the knowledge to solve unseen problems. Learning classes of objects followed by the classification of objects into their classes is a common task in machine intelligence. For this task, two objects representation schemes are often used: a vector-based representation, and a graph–based representation. While the vector representation has sound mathematical background and optimization tools, it lacks the ability to encode relations between the patterns and their parts, thus lacking the complexity of human perception. On the other hand, the graphbased representation naturally captures the intrinsic structural properties, but available algorithms usually have exponential complexity. In this work, we build an inductive learning algorithm that relies on graph-based representation of objects and their classes, and test the framework on a competitive dataset of human actions in static images. The method incorporates three primary measures of class representation: likelihood probability, family resemblance typicality, and minimum description length. Empirical benchmarking shows that the method is robust to the noisy input, scales well to realworld datasets, and achieves comparable performance to current learning techniques. Moreover, our method has the advantage of intuitive representation regarding both patterns and class representation. While applied to a specific problem of human pose


The secondary raw materials of fish can be used for various purposes in food industry, agriculture, etc. No less important way for usage of secondary raw fish, dead fish and fish farming sludge is the utilization of mentioned feedstocks for energy purposes, i.e. biofuels production. In this reearch, the possibilities of the consumption of dead fish and fish farming sludge for biodiesel and biogas production has been studied. The influence of the basic biodiesel production parameters, including the methanol to oil molar ratio, amount of catalyst, temperature and process duration on transesterification yield was determined. The guantitative and gualitative research of biogas production using different substrates such as fish waste, fish farming sludge and substrates  composed of  fish waste (de-oiled and non de-oiled biomass)+fish farming sludge and  fish farming sludge+wastewater sludge was performed. The biodiesel yield higher than 96.5% could be achieved under the following process conditions: methanol/oil molar ratio – 4:1, amount of enzyme content – 7% from oil mass, temperature – 40 ° C, reaction time – 24 hours. The highest biogas yield (1224 ml/gVS) was determined using wet fish waste biomass and mixed substrates consisted of fish waste and fish farming sludge. The results of qualitative biogas research revealed, that biogas produced from both homogeneous and heterogeneous substrates contained more than 60% of methane. The highest calorific value (app. 70% of methane)  had biogas gained from fish waste biomass. Keywords: biodiesel, biofuels, biogas, fish farming sludge, fish waste Article DOI: http://doi.org/10.15544/RD.2017.073


Purpose: Retrospective evaluation and comparison of image quality generated by low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) from obese patients with urolithiasis using alternative reconstruction algorithms. Materials and methods: Twenty- fi ve obese patients (body mass index [BMI]>25 kg/m 2 ) underwent LDCT scans for suspected urolithiasis. The scans were recompiled using fi ltered-back projection (FBP), statistical iterative reconstruction (iDose) and iterative model-based reconstruction (IMR). Dose-length product (DLP) and patient details were obtained from the CT dose report and clinical charts, respectively. Objective image noise was assessed by measuring the SD of Houns fi eld units (HUs) in de fi ned locations. Additionally, subjective image evaluation was independently performed by two radiologists using a 3-point Likert scale. The inter-reviewer agreement of image quality was calculated. Results: Ureteral concretions were observed in all CT scans, two of which revealed bilateral stones. The assessed patients ' mean BMI was 29.29±3.74 kg/m 2 , and the DLP of the CT scans was 100.04±10.00 mGy*cm. All scans were rated diagnostic with the iDose and iterative model-based reconstructions, whereas 41% of the scans performed with FBP reconstruction were nondiagnostic. With respect to image quality, IMR was superior to iDose and FBP, both in the objective ( P <0.001) and overall subjective ( P ≤ 0.008) evaluation of the respective data sets. The inter-reviewer agreement for overall image quality was " almost perfect " for IMR, " substantial " for iDose and " moderate " for FBP ( κ values of 1.0, 0.6 and 0.46, respectively). Conclusion: Using iterative image reconstruction algorithms, LDCT of urolithiasis is feasible in overweight patients with a BMI between 25 and 35 kg/m 2 . Due to higher image quality, IMR is the preferred algorithm for scan reconstruction as it may help to avoid repeated examinations due to initial nondiagnostic scans. reconstruction.


Modulation instability (MI) limits the transmission capacity of fiber systems using optical phase conjugation (OPC). A midway OPC system with periodic dispersion compensation (DC) where fiber parameters and the local path-averaged power are distributed symmetrically with respect to the position of OPC, is proposed to cope with the MI effect. The analytical solution for evaluating the effect of MI shows that the MI effect can be suppressed considerably in such an OPC system with a strong DC configuration. The improvement of the system performance is confirmed by numerical simulations.


Background:  Mouth breathing has been reported to affect gingival health in children. However, studies on the effect of mouth breathing in adult patients are scarce. The objective of present cross sectional study was to examine the relationship between mouth breathing and gingival condition and to evaluate the distribution of gingival inflammation in young adult mouth breathing patients. Methods: Study groups comprised of participants with mouth breathing (test group) and nose breathing (control group) patients with gingivitis. Both the groups underwent periodontal examination. PI, GI and BOP % sites were recorded and analyzed statistically for the differences in mean values. Results: Mouth breathing patients showed higher full mouth GI and BOP scores. Upper anterior segment in mouth breathing patients showed highest GI and BOP followed by lower anterior segment, lower posterior and upper posterior region. Conclusion: Within the limits of present study, our findings suggest that relative to control group participants, test group i.e. patients with mouth breathing had higher gingival inflammation and bleeding sites in upper anterior region. Keywords: Mouth breathing; gingivitis; young adult; cross sectional pilot study


Technological advances in robotics have already produced robots that are indistinguishable from human beings. This technology is overcoming the uncanny valley, which refers to the unpleasant feelings that arise from humanoid robots that are similar in appearance to real humans to some extent. If humanoid robots with the same appearance are mass-produced and become commonplace, we may encounter circumstances in which people or human-like products have faces with the exact same appearance in the future. This leads to the following question: what impressions do clones elicit? To respond to this question, we examined what impressions images of people with the same face (clone images) induce. In the six studies we conducted, we consistently reported that clone images elicited higher eeriness than individuals with different faces; we named this new phenomenon the clone devaluation effect. We found that the clone devaluation effect reflected the perceived improbability of facial duplication. Moreover, this phenomenon was related to distinguishableness of each face, the duplication of identity, the background scene in observing clone faces, and avoidance reactions based on disgust sensitivity. These findings suggest that the clone devaluation effect is a product of multiple processes related to memory, emotion, and face recognition systems.


Seasonal variations in metal concentrations in soft tissues of marine mussels can be due, to a great extent, to seasonal changes in flesh weight. Consequently, this event results in an unpredictable overestimation of metal bioavailability when the metal concentration in soft tissues is considered as an index of such metal bioavallability. The Abra estuary (Bizkaia, Bay of Biscay, Spain) was used as a natural experimental basin with well-known differences in the levels of metallic pollutants. The level of metal bioavailability was determined at various sites at different times of the year. For this purpose the conventional approach of recording metal concentrations in soft tissues and the approach based on the calculation of metal/shell-weight indices, first proposed by Fischer (1983), were applied. We concluded that seasonal changes in organism condition (Flesh Condition Index) cause unpredictable oscillations in the metal concentration in soft tissues. For this reason the direct use of metal concentration values is not recommended to assess metal bioavailability. The metal/shell-weight indices, however, were not affected by seasonal changes in the flesh weight of sentinel mussels and thus may provide a more realistic indication of metal bioavailability. In the present study, different metal bioavailabilities, assessed by metal/shell-weight indices, were found at different sampling sites, according to the influence of industrial activities. Seasonal trends in metal/shell-weight indices (attributed to different metal inputs at different tlmes) were also recorded. In conclusion, metal/shell-weight indices, characterized by a high sensitivity and a low noise-to-signal ratio, are a simple and rehable tool for assessing metal bioavailability in 'Mussel Watch' monitonng programmes.


It is beginning to be possible to test for the action of natural selection in nonmodel species, including in natural populations of plants, using DNA sequence diversity within species and divergence between related species. We suggest some questions of interest in plants in the genus Silene, where the evolution of unisexuals has occurred multiple times and related species suitable for use as outgroups in such comparisons are available. In the dioecious species Silene latifolia, the evolution of separate sexes raises many questions about selection, including the possibility of recent selective sweeps on the Y or other chromosomes. If recent selective sweeps have not occurred on the Y chromosome, one might be able to conclude that the low sequence diversity that is observed for Y-linked genes may be due to processes involved in genetic degeneration of Y chromosomes. In a dioecious species, it is also interesting to test whether sexual selection occurs (a question that has been difficult to study in plants and which could affect the effective population sizes of genes on the X and Y chromosomes and on the autosomes, which must be taken into account when testing for selection), and also whether selection occurs during pollination. Silene latifolia is also useful for testing selection in other Silene species, and we outline tests for long-term balancing selection in the mitochondrial genome associated with the presence of females in the gynodioecious species Silene vulgaris. The results of our tests for selection are preliminary, and there are important caveats associated with the conclusions. We therefore include discussion of some of the main difficulties and the kinds of data that should be helpful in refining the results in the future.


The central claim of this project is that literary and historical texts from the turn of the last century rhetorically contained the Southern Appalachian mountaineer through racializing that figure into less-than-normative whiteness and anachronizing that figure into incompatibility with the modern era. Other scholars have traced the origins of Appalachian stereotypes to this foundational period, and some have also pointed to the capitalistic utility of Appalachian stereotypes given the contemporaneous and rather sudden profitability of Appalachian land and labor via the coal and timber industries. I expand upon previous scholarship to examine this phenomenon in terms of exploitative trends in American history and literature. In particular, I draw a parallel between the rhetoric surrounding the supposedly "Vanishing Indian" in the mid-nineteenth century and that of the supposedly doomed mountaineer, hopelessly backward and incapable of modernizing, in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The literary texts that established the hillbilly stereotype—one that has far surpassed the texts themselves in ubiquity—as well as that stereotype's wide acceptance in historical paratexts of the period demonstrate that mountaineers' rhetorical exploitation had more than a casual relationship with their material exploitation. In this vein, chapters one through three consider Mary N. Murfree's In the Tennessee Mountains (1884), Emma Bell Miles's The Spirit of the Mountains (1905), and John Fox, Jr's The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1908), in the context of an emerging racial hierarchy of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, which along with denigrating those deemed non-white also privileged and disenfranchised particular kinds of whiteness. Chapter four examines more recent Appalachian literature by Lee Smith and Silas House. Though their novels under consideration here, Fair and Tender Ladies (1988) and A Parchment of Leaves (2001), respectively, were published in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, they are set at the turn of the twentieth century, the same period as the earlier literary texts examined in this project. Having at their disposal the effects of land usurpation, Smith and House are able to view the figure of the Southern Appalachian mountaineer over the longue duree, complicating and amending that figure's earlier characterization. Thus, these authors' portrayals have something to tell us about the enduring marginalization of the mountaineer and the persistence of historical disenfranchisement. Moreover, while the literature of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, I argue, was complicit with the ruinous re-appropriation of mountain lands by greedy industrial interests, the literature of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries may serve as a tool in rehabilitating the image of the Appalachian mountaineer. Finally, in chapter five, the conclusion, I consider modern popular conceptions of Appalachian people, some of which demonstrate that the hillbilly stereotype and its relationship to economic disenfranchisement persist to this day.


We propose and experimentally demonstrate an all-optical Nyquist sinc-shaped pulse train source based on intensity modulation and four-wave mixing. The proposed scheme allows for the tunability of the bandwidth and the full flexibility of the repetition rate in the limit of the electronic bandwidth of the modulators used through the flexible synthesis of rectangular frequency combs. Bandwidth up to 360 GHz at 40 GHz rate and up to 45 frequency lines at 5 GHz rate are demonstrated with 40 GHz modulators.


Many migratory species have experienced substantial declines that resulted from rapid and massive expansions of human structures and activities, habitat alterations and climate change. Migrants are also recognized as an integral component of biodiversity and provide a multitude of services and disservices that are relevant to human agriculture, economy and health. The plethora of recently published studies reflects the need for better fundamental knowledge on migrations and for better management of their ecological and human-relevant effects. Yet, where are we in providing answers to fundamental questions and societal challenges?. Engaging a broad network of researchers worldwide, we used a horizon-scan approach to identify the most important challenges which need to be overcome in order to gain a fuller understanding of migration ecology, and which could be addressed using radar aeroecological and macroecological approaches. The top challenges include both long-standing and novel topics, ranging from fundamental information on migration routes and phenology, orientation and navigation strategies, and the multitude of effects migrants may have on resident communities, to societal challenges, such as protecting or preventing migrant services and disservices, and the conservation of migrants in the face of environmental changes. We outline these challenges, identify the urgency of addressing them and the primary stakeholders – researchers, policy makers and practitioners, or funders of research. (Less)


A total of 123 patients with neonatal liver disease without extrahepatic bile duct obstruction or arteriohepatic dysplasia have been studied for six to 18 years. Idiopathic neonatal hepatitis, present in 73 babies, carried a high mortality due to liver failure (18%), septicaemia (6%), and associated defects (14%), especially in the first year of life (25%). Progression to chronic liver disease in non-familial idiopathic cases occurred in three of 40 reviewed patients. Only 12 of these children were completely healthy, the remainder having other permanent disabilities (57%). Four of nine familial cases of idiopathic neonatal hepatitis died in the first 12 months of life as did two of the four reviewed survivors. Progression to chronic liver disease or to death was a continuous process without any interval of recovery in all but one of these patients. Among patients with a presumed infective cause, cytomegalovirus infection caused a particularly benign form of neonatal hepatitis but was a frequent cause of brain damage or other disabilities. Babies who survived other infective liver diseases showed complete healing of the liver damage. Neonatal liver disease associated with alpha 1 antitrypsin deficiency progressed to death or chronic liver disease in three of nine patients and was not associated with a paucity of interlobular bile ducts.


Studying how we retrace our way in darkness provides a means of understanding the internal representations we use during navigation. In adults, path integration in darkness is influenced by previously presented visual information that conflicted with actual motion (Tcheang et al, PNAS, 2011, 108(3): 1152-7). Here we used immersive virtual reality to isolate visual and motor cues during encoding of a path in children and adults, and examined whether the cues' relative contributions to the stored path representation reflect optimal integration. Eighteen adults and fifteen 10-11-year-old children were guided along a two-leg path in darkness (motor-only), in a virtual room (visual-motor), or they watched a pre-recorded walk in the virtual room while standing still (visual-only). Participants then reproduced the path in darkness. By fitting bivariate normal distributions we obtained a measure of the dispersion of the end-points (variable error) and of their distances from the correct end point (constant error). While adults performed similarly across all three conditions, 10-11-year-old children reduced their variable error when encoding in the bimodal condition, indicating integration of cues. Both adults and children showed greater constant error in the visual-only condition than the motor-only (although significantly greater in adults than children), while the constant error for the visual-motor was intermediate between these two. A significant inverse correlation between visual-motor constant error and number of trials indicated that with only 10 repetitions children learnt to better combine the two cues. These results indicate that 10-11 year-old children can learn to optimally combine visual and motor information to encode a path. Adults' inability to do this could reflect their complete reliance on internal motion-related information because of its greater perceived reliability and relevance to the task. This suggests that the representations we use to navigate in darkness change significantly during the lifespan.


Geographic Information System (GIS) vector maps have become more widely available, prompting a need to prevent their unauthorized use. This is commonly done through the use of a digital watermark, with many approaches applying techniques from image map watermarking, without exploiting the particular properties of vector map data. In previous work we showed that using k-medoids clustering and the bounding box property of vector maps in the embedding process leads to increased robustness against simplification (removing vertices from vector data) and interpolation (adding new vertices to the data) attacks, which may distort the watermark and prevent the identification of the map owner. In this paper we show that the advantages of using the bounding box property are maintained even with a different clustering approach (k-means), and argue that they would hold regardless of the method used for identifying the watermark embedding locations in the map.


Abstract We describe an exquisitely preserved new skull of a bird from the Late Cretaceous sandstones of Ukhaa Tolgod, southern Mongolia. Derived similarities shared between this skull and the holotype of Gobipteryx minuta also from the Late Cretaceous of the Gobi Desert, support the assignment of the new cranial material to this avian taxon. The new skull also proves indistinguishable from that of the enantiornithine Nanantius valifanovi from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia. The identification of the new skull as that of Gobipteryx minuta and its correspondence to that of Nanantius valifanovi indicate that the latter taxon is a junior synonym of Gobipteryx minuta This taxonomic conclusion is crucial for understanding the phylogenetic relationships of Gobipteryx minuta because the undoubtedly enantiornithine postcranial morphology of Nanantius valifanovi provides the first uncontroversial evidence of the enantiornithine relationship of Gobipteryx minuta The new skull from Ukhaa Tolgod and our reinterpretation of cranial aspects of the previously published material of Gobipteryx minuta and Nanantius valifanovi permit an accurate reconstruction of the palate of this enantiornithine bird, thus adding significant data for understanding the poorly known palatal structure of Mesozoic birds.


Recent collections from plant-bearing deposits of Cenomanian age in central Kansas have yielded angiosperm axes with helically arranged, seed-bearing, conduplicate carpels. Large leaves associated with these fruits are thought to represent parts of the same kind of plant because the leaves and fruits are the only plant fossils at this locality to have distinctive, morphologically identical, yellow bodies within their carbonaceous remains. These fossils provide a rare opportunity to study the morphology of an ancient angiosperm and illustrate the antiquity of certain features considered primitive by comparative angiosperm morphologists.


In the end of 2015 is the time for Indonesia to enter the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) that will integrate with 10 Southeast Asia countries. AEC itself is expected can bring Indonesian economy to be better by expanding the market share. The applicability of AEC not only affects the free trade sectors, but also makes a various workers from ASEAN countries can compete to fill a variety sectors across the ASEAN countries. To be able to compete with other ASEAN countries, Indonesia must have qualified human resources. One of the ways that could be done is through the development of education in Indonesia in order to make high quality human resources. Meanwhile there are still a lot of inequality in Indonesia, both educational inequality and economic inequality itself. This study aims to determine the inequality of education and economic development within the framework of the preparation of AEC. The research methods used are descriptive statistics and statistical inference to know the relationships between the variables. The variables are Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) and Net Enrolment Ratio (NER), Dropout Rate, Natioal Exam Score, and the Literacy Rate, on the other variables: School Operational Assistance, government expenditure in education sector, Specific Allocation Funds of education, deconcentration fund, GDRP per capita, School-Pupil Ratio, Teacher-Pupil Ratio, and the Teachers' Competency Test. The study was conducted in 33 provinces in Indonesia in 2012-2013. From the results of the estimation using Eviews 7 software, are known that GER inequality, Dropout and Literacy rate inequality variable influenced by economic inequality and education inequality in different directions.


Introduction: Lack of accuracy and uniformity of impact have been the limitations of the ancient and current methods of potentization. Non-standardized electromechanical potentizers are in use across industry. It is very important that within each manufacturing process, the number of succussions should remain constant as well as the impact given (force exerted) is quantified. The author proposes to give importance to the force parameters in potentization and quantify the impact of potentization. Materials and Methods: The author develops electromechanical potentizer with certain specifications such as arm length, weight, and angle at which the arm drops at the base. The machine was operated with specific instructions given in the machine operation manual. The force parameters were calculated and standardized. Results: Torque is measured to quantify the impact of the force applied in potentization. The magnitude of torque is to be calculated by the force applied, length of the lever arm connecting the axis to the point of force application, and angle between the force vector and the lever arm. In this case, torque was calculated to be = 40.43 Nm. Since ten strokes are given, torque applied at every potency is calculated as 40.43. Conclusion: Necessity for the documentation of force parameters used in the process of potentization has been identified, and a tool is developed to demonstrate it.


OBJECTIVE
Developing and evaluating new treatment guidelines for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) based on observational data requires a quantitative understanding of patterns in current treatment practice with biologic and targeted synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (b/tsDMARDs).

METHODS
We used data from the CorEvitas RA registry to study patients starting their first b/tsDMARD therapy, defined as the first line of therapy, between 2012 and the end of 2021. We identified treatment patterns as unique sequences of therapy changes following and including the first-line therapy. Therapy cycling was defined as switching back to a treatment from a previously used therapeutic class.

RESULTS
A total of 6015 b/tsDMARD-naïve patients (77% female) were included in the analysis. Their median age was 58 years, and their median disease duration was 3 years. In 2012-2014, 80% of the patients started a tumor necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFi) as their first b/tsDMARD. However, the use of TNFi decreased in favor of Janus kinase inhibitors since 2015. Although the number of treatment patterns was large, therapy cycling was relatively common. For example, 601 patterns were observed among 1133 patients who changed therapy at least four times, of whom 85.3% experienced therapy cycling. Furthermore, the duration of each of the first three lines of therapy decreased over the past decade. For example, the median duration of the first-line therapy was 153 days in 2018-2021 compared to 208 days in 2015-2017 (P < 0.001).

CONCLUSION
First-line therapy was almost always TNFi, but diversity in treatment choice was high after that. This practice variation allows for proposing and evaluating new guidelines for sequential treatment of RA. It also presents statistical challenges to compare patients with different treatment sequences.


Hydrological variations represent significant, broadband, and integral information in temporal gravity observations. On the one hand, they need to be eliminated from high-precision time series as they interfere with small geodynamic signals. On the other hand, they are considered as a valuable supplement to traditional hydrological point measurements. Of particular interest is to what extent such information can be used to improve the understanding of hydrological process dynamics and to evaluate distributed hydrological models. In this context, a new application of temporal gravity observations has been emerging: the study of natural hydrological mass changes and their underlying processes. Interdisciplinary research has been carried out for the hilly and geologically inhomogeneous surroundings of the superconducting gravimeter at the Geodynamic Observatory Moxa, Germany. From repeated gravity observations on a local network as well as combined hydrological catchment and well-constrained gravimetric 3D modelling a high accuracy reduction for the local hydrological signal in the continuous recordings of the superconducting gravimeter was developed. Applying this reduction, the data of the superconducting gravimeter become suitable to be interpreted with regard to changes in continental water storage. Clear global seasonal variations are detected which were previously masked by the local hydrology. This seasonal signal is also found in variations based on global hydrological models and in GRACE satellite observations. The local hydrological model was evaluated. To further enhance its quality and improve the modelled effect of extreme hydrological events such as heavy rain or snow melt, the response time between different storages of the model may be shortened. In general, the methods developed and the results achieved for the surroundings of Moxa observatory can be transferred to other gravity stations and regions worldwide.


The History of Capitalism, with its focus on ocean-spanning networks, commodity flows, and the financialization of exchange, largely takes for granted a male/female gender binary. As a result, women play little part in its core narratives and gender appears as a cultural gloss on economic transformations. But, as the institution of the auction demonstrates, women and gender were essential to capitalism's emergence. Understanding how households, gendered divisions of labor, and female bodies acquired and incubated value opens up a far more dynamic picture of economic change. Households varied dramatically in size and stability in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which supported different distributions of power between the men and women within them. What constituted "men's work" and "women's work" was always in flux and not necessarily linked to particular bodies, although capitalist institutions used laws governing inheritance and slavery to link monetary value to specific ideas about gender. Simultaneously, cultural stereotypes such as the frivolous female consumer, the poor widow, or the fecund slave woman spread through popular culture. As a result, nineteenth-century capitalism and the ideas about masculinity and femininity familiar to us today created one another.


Smart home devices have brought us many benefits such as advanced security, convenience, and entertainment. However, these devices also have made unintended consequences like giving ultimate power for devices' owners over their intimate partners in the same household which might lead to tech-facilitated domestic abuse (tech-abuse) as recent research has shown. In this paper, we systematize findings on tech-abuse in smart homes. We show that domestic abuse and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in smart homes is more effective and less risky for abusers. Victims find it more harmful and more challenging to protect themselves from. We articulate a comprehensive analysis of all the phases of abuse in smart homes and categorize risks and needs in each phase by designing a unified analytical framework. Technical analysis of current smart home technologies is conducted to shed light upon their limitations. We also summarize recent recommendations to combat tech-abuse in smart homes and focus on their potentials and shortcomings. Unsurprisingly, we find that many recommendations conflict with each other due to a lack of understanding of phases of abuse in smart homes. Desirable properties to design abuse-resistant smart home devices are proposed for all the phases of abuse. The research community benefits from our analysis and recommendations to move forward with a focus on filling the blind spots of existing smart home devices' safety measures and building appropriate safety measures that consider tech-abuse threats in smart homes.


: Objective: Cornelia de Lange's disease is represented by various anatomical deformities, which can influence the airway and the administration of analgesics. The objective of the survey was to gather data from groups of cases with CdLS about its vision of the airway and the anesthesia encounters and related complexities. This could let anesthesiologists to assess perspective of families in regard to find the improved way to treat cases. Methods: An electronic snapshot of 26 inquiries was requested through the CSLS Foundation's quarterly brochure (throughput 4,500). This was followed by telephone, Skype and e-mail queries about intubation, ventilation, oxygenation, desire and complexities throughout medical intervention and systems needing sedation. The current research overview form was dispersed to relatives and parent figures of cases at 2014 CdLS Foundation. The main objective of this overview was to get recognition of relatives and families identified in the meetings and views on airways and drug administration in general, taking into account clinical considerations. Results: We obtained 76 review responses (53 networks, 23 articles). 26 of CdLS cases through grown-ups, whereas 49 were children. Sixty-three defendants (75.7%) provided details on anatomically based respiratory disorders. In contrast to adults, children with CdLS were considered to have more difficulty with airways and a substantially higher frequency of oxygen desaturation (18.3% vs. 0.1%). Heart failure occurred in 13.9% of children with CFLDS. Thirty-two (45.4%) respondents reported difficulties with sedatives or pain medications. The most common complexity revealed was the worrisome increase following anesthesia (53.8%). During development, researchers found that the very large number of tutors did not comprehensive reactions owing to deficiency of thoughtful or attentiveness. The views of both parent figures and families underscored the need to create a tolerant targeted methodology for patients with CSLD. Conclusion: Our investigation revealed that patients with CDLS experienced general problems during air travel and administration of sedatives. In addition, some confusions were found more often in pediatric patients, such as heart failure and difficult intubation. Researchers found that relatives were included and made aware of the consideration of their children. Nevertheless, there was still a lack of attention in some areas of airway and analgesic administration. The assessment of their views highlighted the need for a progressive engagement of a tolerant and focused consideration for cases with CDLS and their families.


This article reports on the analysis of a narrative discussion group facilitated by the author as a part of a larger study. The participants of this study are six male Saudi Arabian international students who are enrolled at different universities in Victoria in Australia. This article aims to answer this question: what are some challenges that male Saudis experience as international students in Australia? Participants announced some challenges that they have experienced as international students in Australia. These challenges include academic challenges, cultural challenges, personal challenges and challenges with the Saudi Cultural Mission (SACM). Recommendations for future researchers and implications for practitioners are provided.


The time series data in the manufacturing process reflects the sequential state of the manufacturing system, and the fusion of temporal features into the industrial knowledge graph will undoubtedly significantly improve the knowledge process efficiency of the manufacturing system. This paper proposes a semantic-aware event link reasoning over an industrial knowledge graph embedding time series data. Its knowledge graph skeleton is constructed through a specific manufacturing process. NLTK is used to transform technical documents into a structured industrial knowledge graph. We employ deep learning (DL)-based models to obtain semantic information related to product quality prediction using time series data collected from IoT devices. Then the prediction information is attached to the specified node in the knowledge graph. Thus, the knowledge graph will describe the dynamic semantic information of manufacturing contexts. Meanwhile, a dynamic event link reasoning model that uses graph embedding to aggregate manufacturing processes information is proposed. The implicit information with industrial temporal knowledge can be further mined and inferred. The case study has shown that the proposed knowledge graph link reasoning reflects dynamic temporal characteristics. Compared to the classical knowledge graph prediction models, our model is superior to the baseline methods.


Introduction and objectives:
There are more and more men who suffer from lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) associated with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Symptoms can be classified as storage symptoms or voiding symptoms, e.g. weak urinary flow and urgency-frequency. Several treatment options are possible. Transurethral resection of the prostate is the gold standard for surgical therapy.
There is a correlation between prostatic obstruction and these symptoms. However, there is some evidence that patients who are not obstructed benefit from surgery. Two studies presented in this thesis compare obstructed with unobstructed patients who underwent TURP because of LUTS and associated BPH.
TURP shows several complications like bleeding. New surgical modalities have been introduced to match the results of TURP, but with less complications. Several studies described in this thesis compare the results of TURP with contact laser prostatectomy (CLP) and electrovaporization (Evap). Costs of these treatments are nowadays of great importance and are analyzed in a separate chapter. A special group of patients with LUTS and BPH who suffer from bleeding disorders or use anticoagulants is treated with laser therapy.
Materials and methods:
132 patients were urodynamically measured before and 6 months after TURP. They also completed validated questionnaires to quantify symptoms and subjective results. Urodynamic outcome was compared to subjective outcome. A subgroup af patients with a Schaefer grade of 1 or 2 (unobstructed or equivocal) were compared to patients who were obstructed according to Schaefer.
A randomized, controlled study was conducted comparing TURP, CLP and Evap. Fifty, 45 and 46 patients were included respectively. Preoperatively and postoperatively up to 7 years tests were performed, including urodynamics, uroflowmetry, validated symptom questionnaires, morbidity and mortality. A separate cost analysis was performed. A prospective, controlled study of high risk patients was conducted, in which 30 patients with bleeding disorders or using anticoagulants were treated with laser therapy. They were compared to 45 normal risk patients undergoing laser therapy.
Results and conclusions:
Patients with a high obstruction grade benefited most from TURP, but those who were not obstructed showed also clinical relevant improvements in objective and subjective parameters.
Urodynamic, uroflowmetric, symptomatic and subjective results, morbidity and mortality were very similar for all three groups at several times during the first year postoperatively and during long-term follow-up up to 7 years (mean follow-up 4.3 years). Costs were lowest for Evap and almost similar for CLP and TURP. Laser therapy is a safe and effective operation for high-risk patients


This paper presents a new mathematical programming approach for including water usage and discharge in the selection of installation sites for industrial facilities. Water integration within the industrial facility as well as interaction of the discharged wastewater with the environment and the surrounding watershed are considered simultaneously through a material flow analysis model. The model tracks the properties that affect the process sinks and the environment (e.g., pH, toxicity, density, color, chemical oxygen demand, etc.) as well as compositions of targeted components. The model considers all the inlets and outlets that affect the watershed as well as the interactions between the pollutants and the environment. The objective function is aimed at minimizing the total annualized cost, which includes the installation cost of the new facility, the transportation of raw materials, products, and utilities, the land cost, the wastewater treatment costs (including the piping cost), and the fresh sources ...


Abstract We present extensions to ChainQueen, an open source, fully differentiable material point method simulator for soft robotics. Previous work established ChainQueen as a powerful tool for inference, control, and co-design for soft robotics. We detail enhancements to ChainQueen, allowing for more efficient simulation and optimization and expressive co-optimization over material properties and geometric parameters. We package our simulator extensions in an easy-to-use, modular application programming interface (API) with predefined observation models, controllers, actuators, optimizers, and geometric processing tools, making it simple to prototype complex experiments in 50 lines or fewer. We demonstrate the power of our simulator extensions in over nine simulated experiments.


Wireless mesh networks are being deployed all around the world both to provide ubiquitous connection to the Internet and to carry data generated by several services (video surveillance, smart grids, earthquake early warning systems, etc.). In those cases where fixed power connections are not available, mesh nodes operate by harvesting ambient energy (e.g., solar or wind power) and hence they can count on a limited and time-varying amount of power to accomplish their functions. Since we consider mesh nodes equipped with multiple radios, power savings and network performance can be maximized by properly routing flows, assigning channels to radios and identifying nodes/radios that can be turned off. Thus, the problem we address is a joint channel assignment and routing problem with additional constraints on the node power consumption, which is NP-complete. In this paper, we propose a heuristic, named minimum power channel assignment and routing algorithm (MP-CARA), which is guaranteed to return a local optimum for this problem. Based on a theoretical analysis that we present in the paper, which gives an upper bound on the outage probability as a function of the constraint on power consumption, we can guarantee that the probability that a node runs out of power with MP-CARA falls below a desired threshold. The performance of MP-CARA is assessed by means of an extensive simulation study aiming to compare the solutions returned by MP-CARA to those found by other heuristics proposed in the literature.


This article argues that mobile phones should be viewed as new cultural resources that operate within an individualized, mobile and convergent mass communication; such a recognition facilitates the options for a cultural ecology. A particular challenge here is to find adequate curricular functions in school where the inclusion of these new cultural resources can and should be introduced. The authors expand their argument, first, by discussing mobile devices as cultural resources theoretically from the perspective of their position within what they call a triangular-oriented mobile complex; second, by means of this triangular analysis of structures, agency and cultural practices the mobile complex is investigated with the purpose of positioning the school in relation to this complex; third, they present the notion of user-generated contexts as a means of integrating meaning-making from the world outside of schools into the school and its curriculum. User-generated context is conceived by the authors in a way in which users of mobile digital devices are being 'afforded' synergies of knowledge distributed across people, communities, locations, time (life course), social contexts and sites of practice (such as socio-cultural milieus) and structures. In order to concretize this notion of context they give a brief example. The article then goes on to draw on a case study of a school project that examines mobile devices and associated media within school mathematics. This analysis leads the authors to propose some guidelines for mobile learning. They conclude by noting some significant methodological challenges for their future research around the mobile complex and user-generated contexts.


Environment of pervasive computing fosters interactions between people and devices. The effective collaboration among existing entities cannot exist without trust. For this reason, computationally supported trust management systems are necessary part of such environment. In this paper, we evaluated the Qualitative Assessment Dynamics (QAD) methodology for managing trust, based on simulations. We proposed different scenarios with service requesters and service providers, where some of them provide unsatisfying services. Further, we performed two set of experiments. The first set of experiments demonstrates the effect of introducing trust management system into environment. QAD methodology defines different operators that model an agent's behavior. The second set of experiments shows the effects of QAD operators. We analyzed the behavior of agents modeled with different operators and compared the decisions they made.


The third party evaluation model has become the main form of government performance assessment in western countries because of its unique advantage that independence, professional and authoritative. The Chinese government actively learn from the western experience, and years of practice.It is necessary in theory and practice to introduce the third party evaluation into the performance evaluation of government purchase of homebased care services,and through the analysis of PEST model, the author also found that it is feasible .Because the special situation of China and the history that third party assessment development in China is shorter, there are many places to be perfected in third party assessment model. To achieve the policy objectives that government purchase of home-based care services. When the third party evaluation is introduced into the government purchase of home-based care services field, there are some advice.


The EU's offer of tariff- and quota-free access for all exports from the Least Developed Countries (for Everything but Arms) has been welcomed as part of the WTO-led initiative to assist these countries. But it is not without problems. As the Least Developed compete more with other developing countries than with the EU, trade is likely to be diverted from other, sometimes poorer, countries. ("Least Developed" is an official classification, not a neutral measure of poverty.) EBA contradicts and impedes the EU's policies of reciprocity and promotion of regions: it not only creates an alternative trade regime, but seems unilaterally to break existing agreements. The article concludes that the policy was adopted for essentially political, not developmental, motives.


The increase in the bandwidth of wireless channels and the computing power of mobile devices increase the interest in video communications over ad-hoc wireless networks. However, the high error rate and the rapidly changing quality of the radio channels can be devastating for the transport of compressed video. In addition, the bounded playout delay for interactive video limits the effectiveness of retransmission-based error control. In this paper, we propose an error recovery mechanism for real-time video that combines forward error correction (FEC), and multi-path retransmission. Based on the sender to receiver route obtained from lower layers, as well as the video data content, the mechanism determines the allocation of error correction code, as well as the retransmission criteria. We evaluated the effectiveness of the mechanism under different network conditions. Simulation results show that the proposed hybrid error recovery mechanism maintains the video quality under different loss rates and mobility speeds, with less overhead compared to error recovery methods that depend only on fixed FEC allocation


Background Ankle sprains account for a large majority of injuries in netball. As a result of the rules of the sport balance is believed to be an essential component game-related athletic performance. Balance allows players in shooting positions to remain stable and aim for goal but also allows all players to obstruct a pass, or shot at goal, by holding a stable defensive position whilst maintaining the ground distance rule. Objective To determine the effect of a previous ankle sprain on the balance of netball players. Design Cross-sectional study. Setting Community spaces. Participants Ninety-six female netball players. Participants were classified as uninjured, coper or CAI. Intervention Participants performed the anterior, posterior-lateral and posterior-medial reach directions of the SEBT. Participants also performed single limb eyes-closed stance trials as well as trials of the demi-point balance test. Main outcome measurements The dependent variables of interest were reach distances in the anterior, posterior-lateral and posterior-medial directions of the SEBT. Additionally the number of foot-lifts during 30 s of eyes-closed single limb stance was also assessed. The demi-pointe balance test was used to determine the ability of participants to stand unilaterally in a plantar flexed position for 5 s. Results There were no differences in any balance test measures when comparing uninjured, coper and CAI netball players (p ≥ 0.05). Composite SEBT reach distance scores when normalised to leg length were 70.6 ± 6.3, 73.3 ± 7.4 and 70.9 ± 6.9 in the uninjured, coper and CAI groups, respectively. The number of foot-lifts during unilateral stance recorded in the uninjured, coper and CAI groups were 28.0 ± 11.4, 27.0 ± 10.4 and 30.3 ± 12.1, respectively. A failed demi-pointe balance test was reported in 26% of the uninjured group, 35% of the coper group and 33% of the CAI group. Conclusions A previous ankle sprain had no effect on netball players' ability to balance, irrespective of the presence of chronic ankle instability.


Blood glucose control during cardiac surgery. Report of the Emergency Council of the Argentine Society of Cardiology. Hyperglycemia after cardiac surgery is a common find- ing associated with the worse outcomes affecting both diabetic and non diabetic patients. Despite the large number of publications available, there is no universally accepted approach to this problem. In an initia- tive of the Emergency Council of the Argentine Society of Cardiology, local experts gathered to discuss the management of hyperglycemia after adult cardiac surgery. The main objective of the present paper is to summarize the current state of knowledge regarding glycemic control in postoperative cardiac surgery.


The Neoclassical theory of production establishes a dual relationship between the profit value function of a competitive firm and its underlying production technology. This relationship, usually referred to as the duality theory, has been widely used in empirical work to estimate production parameters without the requirement of explicitly specifying the technology. We analyze the ability of this approach to recover the underlying production parameters and its effects on estimated elasticities and scale economies measurements, when data available for estimation features typical realistic problems. We design alternative scenarios and compute the data generating process by Monte Carlo simulations, so as to know the true technology parameters as well as to calibrate the dataset to yield realistic magnitudes of noise. This noise introduced in the estimation by construction prevents duality theory from holding exactly. Hence, the true production parameters may not be recovered with enough precision, and the estimated elasticities or scale economies measurements may be more inaccurate than expected. We compare the estimated production parameters with the true (and known) parameters by means of the identities between the Hessians of the production and profit functions.


There is broad consensus on the fact that housing has central importance to everyone's quality of life and health with considerable economic, social, cultural and personal significance. The way in which housing is produced and exchanged impacts development goals as well as environmental sustainability and the mitigation of natural disasters. Design of dwellings and neighbourhoods reflect and protect important elements of values and culture. The important role of housing production in employment generation, particularly for unskilled labour, is recognised globally. Despite considerable progress has been achieved in developing countries in the past two decades in policy formulation, facilitating a shift of the public sector's role to strengthening of enabling strategies and focussing on the utilisation of the potential and capacity of informal sectors, there is a widening gap between policy formulation and the implementation process, and the status of low-income housing delivery is far beyond being satisfactory. There are many constraints for this situation. Lack of effective implementation strategies, poor promotion of security of tenure, inadequate supply of affordable land and infrastructure, inadequacy of housing finance systems, poor utilisation of local building materials and technologies, lack of support to small-scale construction activities, inappropriate standards and legislation, inadequate participation of communities in shelter development process and support to self-help, lack of focused research and experimental projects, poor utilisation of research findings, are amongst such major constraints. UNCHS (Habitat) is contributing to the implementation of the Habitat Agenda's specific goal of "Adequate shelter for all" by undertaking diverse activities in the fields of knowledge creation, facilitation of information and experience exchange, awareness raising and advocacy, policy formulation and advice, and technical cooperation. A great majority of these activities focus specifically on the needs of low income and other vulnerable groups and in this context related to low-cost housing.


God and the Novel in India Bina Gogineni The novel—especially the realist novel—has been generally understood as a secular, disenchanted form, but the history of the Indian novel complicates this view. A seminal trajectory of realist novels situated in India, by native and non-resident writers alike, presents a perception of God in the daily that is rooted in Indian religious traditions—in contradistinction to the deus absconditus European realist novel which has generally restricted itself to the secular sphere. Despite the conspicuous and consequential enchantment of the Indian novel, even postcolonial literary critics have followed in the critical tradition that takes secularism to be the precondition of the novel and dismisses instantiations of religion as mere anomaly, symptom, or overlay. I contend that the powerful realism brought to India by the British novel was immediately injected with a strong dose of enchantment drawn from the popular religious and mythopoetic imagination. The novel invited God to come down to earth to become more real and more compatible with a self-consciously secularizing India unwilling to dispense with its spiritualism; reciprocally, God's presence in the naturalist novel engendered a radically new sense of both the genre and reality. Of all the existing art forms in India, it was only the realist novel—with its worldly orientation—that could give shape to the "profane illumination" in everyday life and provide a forum for the praxis of enchantment. The Indian novel was part of a larger phenomenon in which the enchanted worldview became the grounds for independence from England whose disenchanted ethos was understood as the underpinning and justification for its imperialism. Not surprisingly, the place—namely, Bengal—that birthed the novel also sparked India's anti-colonial struggle and its religious revival and reform movements. The novel in particular was seen as a privileged form for preserving a spiritualized cosmology, renovating it in some ways, and using it to enable Indian sovereignty. Straddling both the British and the Indian, the worldly and the spiritual, the novel offered a unique opportunity for cultivating a modern religious sensibility. By analyzing the various literary techniques my novelists deploy to enchant a putatively disenchanted form in a (post)colonial context, I rediscover overlooked possibilities for the novelwrit-large. The trajectory I analyze teaches us that mimetic realism can offer a more congenial home to religious enchantment than the non-mimetic experimental modes, such as magical realism, usually considered more apt. My project charts the course of what I call the enchanted realist novel tradition via five seminal novels set in India and published between 1866 and 1980. In this arc, divinity is first made immanent in the phenomenal world, then it becomes internalized, only to meet with a birfurcated fate in the mid-twentieth century. The indigenous writers continue with realist first-order rendering of the divine in the daily, whereas the more international novelists formally distance themselves from the felt enchantment of the first order they struggle to represent. Another way to view that bifurcation: as the disenchanted, statist worldview comes to prevail in the national imaginary at Independence, the enchanted novel must henceforth either restrict itself to tiny local pockets of extant enchantment; or, if the novel still has ambitions to be a national allegory, it must register disenchantment as the nearly thoroughgoing a priori to what now can only be called a deliberate re-enchantment.


We thank Iannone et al for their comment1 on our recent study on drug survival on etanercept, infliximab and adalimumab in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).2 They noted similarities between our findings and their previously published data3 on 853 Italian patients starting tumour necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitor treatment in 2003–2004 in terms of best drug survival on etanercept, similar 4- versus 5-year drug survival for etanercept and infliximab, and some shared findings regarding predictors. We agree that there are several similarities, but also differences. We also apologise for not including their study in our non-exhaustive review in the appendix, and not citing their study together with the study by Kievit et al .4

Specifically, we …


Cross-bonded three-phase single-core Cross-linked Polyethylene (XLPE) cables are widely used in power transmission and distribution systems. A great deal has been published on on-line monitoring of HV cable systems to prevent failure. Relative Dielectric Losses (DL) monitoring reveals the general condition of the cable insulation. Generally, DL measurement relies on measuring operating voltage and insulation leakage current. The main challenge to on-line monitoring of DL in Cross-bonded High voltage (CB HV) cables is the interconnectedness of metal sheath. Measured sheath currents are a combination of the leakage currents of each section and the imbalanced circulating current. Differentiating the leakage current of each interconnected section from the measured data is complex. The second challenge is that co-axial cables are used to connect cable sheaths to cable link boxes, for ease of installation and protection against moisture. As a result, any measured value contains currents from the two sheaths connecting at a joint. The third challenge is that it is hard to obtain the reference voltage synchronously and with high accuracy. Consequently, this paper investigates separation of leakage current components and analysis of DL based on leakage currents without reference voltage. A circuit model is proposed to describe the leakage current separation method for CB HV cables to allow on-line monitoring of DL, and the criterion required for assessing relative change of DL among different phases or sections of the cable for insulation deterioration are presented. Operational measurements from a cable system are analyzed and discussed. Results show that there is no significant deterioration in this monitored major section of a CB HV cable system.


ABSTRACT The reduction of porosity due to pressure solution is analyzed for some theoretical models consisting of aggregates of spherical grains of uniform size. The analysis is carried out for all six of the stable regular packing arrangements suggested by Graton and Fraser (1935). For each regular packing arrangement, two limiting cases are considered, one with all of the dissolved material removed from the system and the other with all of the material locally precipitated. Even for the most compact packing arrangement and complete local precipitation, the amount of vertical shortening for total porosity reduction is found to exceed 26 percent. A comparison of the amount of porosity reduction due to solution and the additional reduction due to precipitation of the dissolved material as cemen indicates that for all cases, solution is more important in the early stages while cementation becomes more effective in the later stages. The exact relationship also varies according to the packing arrangement and its orientation with respect to the direction of compaction. Cases 1 and 6 show the maximum cementation-solution ratio while Case 3 shows the minimum ratio. The results obtained from studies of regular geometric arrays of spherical grains can be used to estimate the importance of pressure solution as compared to other porosity-reducing mechanisms in the diagenesis of well-sorted sandstones of uniform grain size. Any initial porosity in the sandstone can be represented by combinations of different volume proportions of the various packing arrangements. By comparing the "minus cement porosity" in a sandstone with the volume of cement predicted by a theoretical model, the role of pressure solution and the minimum volume of cement that has entered or left the system can be estimated.