Modern internal combustion engines (ICE) operate at the ragged edge of stable operation characterized by high cycle-to-cycle variations (CCV). A key scientific challenge for ICE is the understanding, modeling, and control of CCV in engine performance, which can contribute to partial burns, misfire, and knock. The objective of the current study is to use high-fidelity numerical simulations to improve the understanding of the causes of CCV. Nek5000, a leading high-order spectral element, open source code, is used to simulate the turbulent flow in the engine combustion chamber. Multi-cycle, wall-resolved large-eddy simulations (LES) are performed for the General Motors (GM), Transparent Combustion Chamber (TCC-III) optical engine under motored operating conditions. The mean and root-mean-square (r.m.s.) of the in-cylinder flow fields at various piston positions are validated using PIV measurements during the intake and compression strokes. The large-scale flow structures, including the swirl and tumble flow patterns, are analyzed in detail and the causes for cyclic variabilities in these flow features are explained. The energy distribution across the different scales of the flow are quantified using one-dimensional energy spectra, and the effect of the tumble breakdown process on the energy distribution is examined. The insights from the current study can help us develop improved engine designs with reduced cyclic variabilities in the in-cylinder flow leading to enhanced engine performance.


We characterized the relationship between late life cholesterol exposure and neuropathological outcomes in a community-based, older adult cohort. Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) is a cohort study that enrolls consenting, randomly selected, non-demented people aged ≥65 from a healthcare delivery system. We used late life HDL and total cholesterol lab values from Group Health computerized records, and calculated HDL and non-HDL levels. We evaluated neuropathological outcomes of Alzheimer's disease, cerebral amyloid angiopathy, vascular brain injury, and Lewy body disease. Using linear mixed models with age and antilipemic medication as predictors, we obtained predicted cholesterol values at age 70 and 10 years prior to death for individuals with available cholesterol data in 10-year exposure windows. We used logistic regression to determine whether predicted late life cholesterol levels were associated with neuropathological outcomes controlling for age at death, APOE genotype, sex, and their interactions with cholesterol levels. 525 decedents came to autopsy by 08/2014. Of these, plasma cholesterol concentration was available for 318 (age 70, model 1) and 396 (10 years prior to death, model 2) participants. We did not find associations between late life cholesterol and Alzheimer's disease neuropathological changes, and there were no associations between cholesterol levels and amyloid angiopathy or vascular brain injury. We observed an association between predicted non-HDL cholesterol at age 70 and Lewy body disease. Our study suggests an association between late life non-HDL cholesterol exposure and Lewy body disease. We did not observe associations between late life cholesterol levels and Braak stage or CERAD score.


DNA hypomethylating agents (DHAs) play a well-acknowledged role in potentiating the immunogenicity and the immune recognition of neoplastic cells. This immunomodulatory activity of DHAs is linked to their ability to induce or to up-regulate on neoplastic cells the expression of a variety of immune molecules that play a crucial role in host-tumor immune interactions. To further investigate the clinical potential of diverse epigenetic compounds when combined with immunotherapeutic strategies, we have now compared the tumor immunomodulatory properties of the first generation DHAs, azacytidine (AZA) and decitabine (DAC) and of the next generation DHA, guadecitabine. To this end, human melanoma and hematological cancer cells were treated in vitro with 1 μM guadecitabine, DAC or AZA and then studied by molecular and flow cytometry analyses for changes in their baseline expression of selected immune molecules involved in different mechanism(s) of immune recognition. Results demonstrated a stronger DNA hypomethylating activity of guadecitabine and DAC, compared to AZA that associated with stronger immunomodulatory activities. Indeed, the mRNA expression of cancer testis antigens, immune-checkpoint blocking molecules, immunostimulatory cytokines, involved in NK and T cell signaling and recruiting, and of genes involved in interferon pathway was higher after guadecitabine and DAC compared to AZA treatment. Moreover, a stronger up-regulation of the constitutive expression of HLA class I antigens and of Intercellular Adhesion Molecule-1 was observed with guadecitabine and DAC compared to AZA. Guadecitabine and DAC seem to represent the optimal combination partners to improve the therapeutic efficacy of immunotherapeutic agents in combination/sequencing clinical studies.


Antibody diversification requires the DNA deaminase AID to induce DNA instability at immunoglobulin (Ig) loci upon B cell stimulation. For efficient cytosine deamination, AID requires single-stranded DNA and needs to gain access to Ig loci, with RNA pol II transcription possibly providing both aspects. To understand these mechanisms, we isolated and characterized endogenous AID-containing protein complexes from the chromatin of diversifying B cells. The majority of proteins associated with AID belonged to RNA polymerase II elongation and chromatin modification complexes. Besides the two core polymerase subunits, members of the PAF complex, SUPT5H, SUPT6H, and FACT complex associated with AID. We show that AID associates with RNA polymerase-associated factor 1 (PAF1) through its N-terminal domain, that depletion of PAF complex members inhibits AID-induced immune diversification, and that the PAF complex can serve as a binding platform for AID on chromatin. A model is emerging of how RNA polymerase II elongation and pausing induce and resolve AID lesions.


Provision of quality of service (QoS) in an ad hoc network is a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a QoS aware routing for time division multiple access (TDMA) based ad hoc networks. Our protocol tries to identify multiple paths each of which is capable of providing the QoS in terms of the number of time slots at its own or by combining it to a group of paths. Our protocol incorporates a procedure to determine the available time slots in a localized and distributed fashion. We evaluate the performance of the protocol through simulations. While evaluating the performance, we focus on the number of paths that are able to satisfy the QoS and the QoS success ratio.


Chromium of anthropogenic origin contaminates the environment worldwide. The toxicity of chromium, a group I human carcinogen, is greatest when it is in a hexavalent oxidation state, Cr(VI). Cr(VI) is actively transported into the cell, triggering oxidative damage intracellularly. Due to the abundance of unspecific intracellular reductants, any microbial species is capable of bio-transformation of toxic Cr(VI) to innocuous Cr(III), however, this process is often lethal. Only some bacterial species are capable of sustaining the vegetative growth in the presence of a high concentration of Cr(VI) and thus operate as self-sustainable bioremediation agents. One of the successful microbial Cr(VI) detoxification strategies is the activation of chromate efflux pumps. This work describes transplantation of the chromate efflux pump from the potentially pathogenic but highly Cr resistant Bacillus pseudomycoides environmental strain into non-pathogenic but only transiently Cr tolerant Bacillus subtilis strain. In our study, we compared the two Bacillus spp. strains harboring evolutionarily diverged chromate efflux proteins. We have found that individual cells of the Cr-resistant B. pseudomycoides environmental strain accumulate less Cr than the cells of B. subtilis strain. Further, we found that survival of the B. subtilis strain during the Cr stress can be increased by the introduction of the chromate transporter from the Cr resistant environmental strain into its genome. Additionally, the expression of B. pseudomycoides chromate transporter ChrA in B. subtilis seems to be activated by the presence of chromate, hinting at versatility of Cr-efflux proteins. This study outlines the future direction for increasing the Cr-tolerance of non-pathogenic species and safe bioremediation using soil bacteria.


Roadway transportation lighting is installed for multiple reasons including traffic safety and pedestrian security. Judgments of pedestrian safety and security along roadways are not strictly correlated to specified light levels, but the color of the light source influences pedestrians' judgments as well. In general, the brighter a roadway location appears, the safer and more secure it is judged as being. Most roads are illuminated using "yellowish" high pressure sodium lamps, but light sources such as light emitting diodes (LEDs) are increasingly being considered as alternative light sources for roadway lighting, and these produce a "white" light appearance. Roads illuminated by "white" light sources are consistently judged as brighter, and as a consequence safer and more secure, than roads illuminated by "yellowish" sodium lamps, even when they are lighted to the same level. The present laboratory study used lighting varying in color in order to help understand the mechanisms underlying brightness perception. Better understanding of these mechanisms can lead to recommendations for lighting that could allow engineers to design roadway lighting for equal brightness and therefore, equivalent perceptions of safety and security by pedestrians, possibly while reducing energy use.


Two new tri-connected copper(I) coordination polymers have been synthesized, featuring a 1D staircase-like structure and an interpenetrating 2D polycyclohexane framework. The geometries are controlled by steric factors that are generated from the terminal blocking ligand 2-diphenylphosphino-n-methyl pyridine (n = 3, 6) with the methyl group at different substituted positions.


To determine the distributions of glutamate receptors throughout the macaque hypothalamus, we utilized highly specific antipeptide antibodies to visualize α‐amino‐3‐hydroxy‐5‐methyl4‐isoxazole propionate receptor subunits (GluRl, GluR2 and GluR3 {designated as GluR2/3}, and GluR4); kainate receptor subunits (GluR6 and GluR7, {Idesignated as GluR6/7}), and a metabotropic receptor (mGluRlα). The results indicate that these glutamate receptors are distributed differentially throughout the monkey hypothalamus. α‐Amino‐3‐hydroxy‐5‐methyl‐4‐isoxazole propionate receptors are the dominant non‐N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate glutamate receptors within the monkey hypothalamus, and the GluR2 subunit is most abundant. GluR1‐immunoreactive neurons and neuropil are observed predominantly in the tuberal and mammillary nuclei. GluR2/3‐immunoreactive neurons and neuropil have a broader distribution within preoptic, anterior, tuberal, and caudal regions. Separate (but partially overlapping) distributions of GluRl‐ and GluR2/3‐immunoreactive neurons were found, suggesting that the GluR1, GluR2, and/or GluR3 subunits may be coexpressed in subsets of hypothalamic neurons. In contrast, GluR4 immunoreactivity was expressed minimally within monkey hypothalamus. GluR6/7 immunoreactivity was enriched selectively within the suprachiasmatic nucleus. mGluRlα immunoreactivity was present in the mammillary complex. The localization of non‐N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate glutamate receptor subunits to neurons throughout the macaque hypothalamus provides further evidence for the glutamatergic regulation of neuroendocrine, autonomic, and limbic circuits. Differential distributions of glutaniate receptor subunits may increase the dynamic range of the effects of presynaptic glutamate, allowing for the regulation of several distinct functions subserved by hypothalamic neurons. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


This paper shows how systems can be built from their component parts with specified sharing. Its principle contribution is a modular language for configuring systems. A configuration is a description in the new language of how a system is constructed hierarchically from specifications of its component parts. Category theory has been used to represent the composition of specifications that share a component part by constructing colimits of diagrams. We reformulated this application of category theory to view both configured specifications and their diagrams as algebraic presentations of presheaves. The framework of presheaves leads naturally to a configuration language that expresses structuring from instances of specifications, and also incorporates a new notion of instance reduction to extract the component instances from a particular configuration. The configuration language now expresses the hierarchical structuring of multi-level configured specifications. The syntax is simple because it is independent of any specification language; structuring a diagram to represent a configuration is simple because there is no need to calculate a colimit; and combining specifications is simple because structuring is by configuration morphisms with no need to flatten either specifications or their diagrams to calculate colimits.


As a core technology of Intelligent Transportation System, traffic flow prediction has a wide range of applications. The fundamental challenge in traffic flow prediction is to effectively model the complex spatial-temporal dependencies in traffic data. Spatial-temporal Graph Neural Network (GNN) models have emerged as one of the most promising methods to solve this problem. However, GNN-based models have three major limitations for traffic prediction: i) Most methods model spatial dependencies in a static manner, which limits the ability to learn dynamic urban traffic patterns; ii) Most methods only consider short-range spatial information and are unable to capture long-range spatial dependencies; iii) These methods ignore the fact that the propagation of traffic conditions between locations has a time delay in traffic systems. To this end, we propose a novel Propagation Delay-aware dynamic long-range transFormer, namely PDFormer, for accurate traffic flow prediction. Specifically, we design a spatial self-attention module to capture the dynamic spatial dependencies. Then, two graph masking matrices are introduced to highlight spatial dependencies from short- and long-range views. Moreover, a traffic delay-aware feature transformation module is proposed to empower PDFormer with the capability of explicitly modeling the time delay of spatial information propagation. Extensive experimental results on six real-world public traffic datasets show that our method can not only achieve state-of-the-art performance but also exhibit competitive computational efficiency. Moreover, we visualize the learned spatial-temporal attention map to make our model highly interpretable.


In a screen for light regulated transcription factors the ATB2 gene was identified. The ATB2 gene belongs to the S-basic domain/leucine zipper (bZIP) class. The spatial expression of ATB2 correlates with transport of metabolites from tissues that are metabolic active. Research has shown that high concentrations of sucrose repress GUS activity of promoter-GUS lines. This effect is sucrose specific, even glucose or fructose cannot mimic this effect. Regulation by sucrose is controlled post-transcriptionally because high concentrations of sucrose upregulate transcript levels while expression is repressed. To date ATB2 is the only gene discovered which is regulated at the post-transcriptional level by sucrose. Ectopic expression of a 5' UTR construct shows that the repression system is functional in all tissues of the shoot.

To identify mutants in the sucrose regulatory pathway, a non destructive screen, utilizing a dual reporter system, was devised. Both GUS and LUC reporter genes were used and are driven individually by ATB2 regulatory sequences. Repression of both GUS and LUC expression was tested when seedlings, containing the dual reporter system, were grown on solid medium. Lines which displayed sufficient expression and repression were identified and used for a EMS mutagenesis. Many putative mutants were identified but closer analysis revealed that mutants which displayed an altered regulatory phenotype for both of the reporter genes of the dual reporter system, were not among them.

Analysis of the ATB2 sequences (genomic and cDNA) reveals an unusually long (383 bp) leader sequence. Literature studies have shown that long 5' sequences often contain regulatory elements. This is also the case for the ATB2 gene as deletion of the 5' UTR relieves the sucrose regulation. Closer examination of the 5'UTR did not reveal any secondary structures but 4 uORFs were identified. The major uORF is 129 nt long and encodes a 42 aa protein. Arabidopsis contains two ATB2 homologs and both have the long leader sequence.
A series of leader-deletion constructs have been made to locate the position of the sucrose regulating element. When the leader of the ATB2 gene is sequentially deleted the results show that the sucrose regulation is relieved when the major uORF is deleted (sucrose control uORF, SC-uORF). It seems that translation of the major uORF is important for the sucrose specific regulation. Only deletion of the startcodon of the major uORF relieves the regulation by sucrose. Deleting the startcodons from the other uORFs does not abolish the sucrose regulation. Closer analysis of the SC-uORF revealed a high amino acid conservation to other plant uORFs. These uORFs are located upstream of bZIP transcription factors. Remarkably, these transcription factors all belong to the S-type bZIP transcription factor group.


The thesis seeks to examine how The Times functioned within mid-nineteenth-century British society and to suggest how the newspaper can be used to read the history of the period from the perspective of the dominant elements within it. It begins by analysing the uses made of the newspaper by historians and questions the assumptions which lie behind them. Chapters 2 and 3 assess the dominant role of The Times within the newspaper press and explore the relationship between the newspaper and its readers and their mutual perceptions. Chapter 4 analyses the structure of contemporary society and the common values which lay within, while the following chapter indicates the extent to which The Times in its treatment of the French revolution of 1848 constructed its version of reality within those values and thereby defined and defended them. Chapter 6 completes the location of the newspaper by considering the extent to which it was independent of Government, yet dependent on individual politicians.

The locating of The Times within contemporary society enables its treatment of the crisis of 1848 to be critically examined in chapters 7 and 8. This reveals the extent to which events in London and Ireland were associated together and perceived as parts of a revolutionary movement which encapsulated the basic fears of the possessing classes and threatened their vital interests. In defending those interests The Times was at its most potent and 1848 demonstrated the ability of the paper to orchestrate and direct opinion on specific issues. The role of The Times and its importance are evaluated by means of the perceptions contemporaries had of events, the way they reacted to them, and the judgements subsequently made by historians. The thesis emphasizes the importance of The Times both as an agent within society and a source for the study of it.


Aging is associated with increased risk for type 2 diabetes, resulting from reduced insulin sensitivity and secretion. Reduced insulin secretion can result from reduced proliferative capacity and reduced islet function. Mechanisms underlying altered β-cell function in aging are poorly understood in mouse and human islets, and the impact of aging on intraislet communication has not been characterized. Here, we examine how β-cell [Ca2+] and electrical communication are impacted during aging in mouse and human islets. Islets from human donors and from mice were studied using [Ca2+] imaging, static and perifusion insulin secretion assays, and gap junction permeability measurements. In human islets, [Ca2+] dynamics were coordinated within distinct subregions of the islet, invariant with islet size. There was a marked decline in the coordination of [Ca2+] dynamics, gap junction coupling, and insulin secretion dynamics with age. These age-dependent declines were reversed by pharmacological gap junction activation. These results show that human islet function declines with aging, which can reduce insulin action and may contribute to increased risk of type 2 diabetes.


The Schwinger model (quantum electrodynamics in 1+1 dimensions) is a testbed for the study of quantum gauge field theories. We give scalable, explicit digital quantum algorithms to simulate the lattice Schwinger model in both NISQ and fault-tolerant settings. In particular, we perform a tight analysis of low-order Trotter formula simulations of the Schwinger model, using recently derived commutator bounds, and give upper bounds on the resources needed for simulations in both scenarios. In lattice units, we find a Schwinger model on $N/2$ physical sites with coupling constant $x^{-1/2}$ and electric field cutoff $x^{-1/2}\Lambda$ can be simulated on a quantum computer for time $2xT$ using a number of $T$-gates or CNOTs in $\widetilde{O}( N^{3/2} T^{3/2} \sqrt{x} \Lambda )$ for fixed operator error. This scaling with the truncation $\Lambda$ is better than that expected from algorithms such as qubitization or QDRIFT. Furthermore, we give scalable measurement schemes and algorithms to estimate observables which we cost in both the NISQ and fault-tolerant settings by assuming a simple target observable---the mean pair density. Finally, we bound the root-mean-square error in estimating this observable via simulation as a function of the diamond distance between the ideal and actual CNOT channels. This work provides a rigorous analysis of simulating the Schwinger model, while also providing benchmarks against which subsequent simulation algorithms can be tested.


The educational objectives for training general practitioners are widely agreed. However, there is a shortage of paediatric posts in hospital, especially in Scotland. As there are obvious advantages in training clinicians who will work in general practice in the setting of general practice, we have initiated 10 posts in training each of six months' duration and each in addition to the trainee year. Three months will be spent in general practice itself and systematic teaching will also be provided for three months by the Edinburgh School of Community Paediatrics. Pre-course and post-course assessments will be carried out and the learning achieved will be evaluated.


Abstract Lycalopex vetulus (Lund, 1842), commonly called the hoary fox, is Brazil's smallest canid. It has a slender body and limbs and a small skull composed of relative fragile bones. Its size and skull characteristics combined with its peculiar dentition make it more suitable for an insectivorous diet rather than one of large vertebrates. L. vetulus is endemic to Brazil and occurs primarily in the south-central cerrados at low elevations. There is some evidence to indicate its presence in Bolivia. L. vetulus is widespread and abundant in Brazil and presently there are no known threats that would result in declines in its occurrence in the core area of its distribution.


The second edition of this book provides updated information that specificallyfocuses on drug-induced nutritional deficiencies. It is comprehensive, well organized, and well referenced; and as such, it is a useful reference for the educator, practitioner, and researcher in the field of clinical nutrition. The book is organized into 15 chapters that I will discuss as three distinct sections: (I) fundamental principles, (2) diagnosis of druginduced nutritional deficiencies, and (3) specific drug-nutrient interactions. In the discussion of fundamental principles, an overview of nutrient metabolism is provided and follows the outline of food source, absorption, transport, distribution, and interaction with drugs for each nutrient. Also discussed in this section are variables, such as genetic makeup, age, physiologicstate, and clinicalcondition, that affect nutritional requirements; classification of drug-nutrient interactions; and variables that determine the risk and incidence of such interactions. The chapter on diagnosing drug-induced nutrient deficienciesprovides particularly useful information on the performance of drug and dietary histories, and physical as well as laboratory evaluation of nutrient (especially vitamin) deficiencies. The third section of the book deals specifically with drug-nutrient interactions that lead to nutrient deficiencies. This section consists of two parts: one deals with druginduced nutrient malabsorption, altered distribution (tissue content), and excretion; and the second part discusses specific drug classes and diseases that induce nutrient deficiencies. Drug classes included in this section are anti vitamins, alcohol and alcoholism, fetal malnutrition, anticonvulsants, oral contraceptives, antitubercular agents, anti parkinsonian drugs, and cancer chemotherapeutics. Of particular use are the nutrient supplement recommendations for both children and adults receiving specific drugs. The drug-nutrient interactions discussed in this text emphasize those that cause nutrient deficiencies. This text does not delve into specifics of either nutritional effects on drug disposition or drug-induced disease, i.e. renal or hepatic failure, that affect the tolerance to and utilization of nutrients provided in the diet. Most of the text's examples and discussionsconcern vitamin and mineral deficiencies. This emphasis does not indicate a problem of focus within the text. Rather, it denotes that these drug-induced nutritional deficiencies have been more extensively investigated than others. Overall, this is a good reference text that should be included as a supplementary reference in the library of nutrition support services and/or dietary departments. It will also prove useful to most drug information libraries. JAY M. MIRTALLO, M.S. Clinical Pharmacist Department of Pharmacy Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 43210 BOOKS RECEIVED


Following the 2007-08 Global Financial Crisis, there has been a growing research interest on the spatial interrelationships between house prices in many countries. This paper examines the spatio-temporal relationship between house prices in the twelve provinces of the Netherlands using a recently proposed econometric modelling technique called the Bayesian Graphical Vector Autoregression (BG-VAR). This network approach is suitable for analysing the complex spatial interactions between house prices. It enables a data-driven identification of the most dominant provinces where temporal house price shocks may largely diffuse through the housing market. Using temporal house price volatilities for owner-occupied dwellings from 1995Q1 to 2016Q1, the results show evidence of temporal dependence and house price diffusion patterns in distinct sub-periods from different provincial housing sub-markets in the Netherlands. In particular, the results indicate that Noord-Holland was most predominant from 1995Q1 to 2005Q2, while Drenthe became most central in the period 2005Q3–2016Q1


Nick Joaquin has been read as nostalgic of Filipino Hispanic culture. While it's true that most of Joaquin's works deal with the country's Hispanic past, his works account for more than just nostalgia. A lot of studies that make use of postcolonial theory show how this Filipino Hispanic culture as depicted in Joaquin's works can be construed as a form of resistance against US neocolonialism, on one hand, and nativist nationalism, on another. Using postcolonial and narrative theories, this paper argues that Joaquin's The Woman Who Had Two Navels should also be read as a strategy for resisting US neocolonialism and a critical view of nativism, shedding light on the disjunction among history, culture, and literary consciousness.


The coastal zone is a dense human activity area, and has been under the heavy pressure from large population centers and various human activities. The scarcity and the use conflicts of coastal resources have become increasingly prominent problems. Coastal principal function zoning is an effective approach to solving these problems, and a helpful way to optimize resources allocation and support sustainable development. Determining the principal function is a key step in coastal principal function zoning. In this paper we make an attempt to apply economic analysis to the principal function selection in the coastal area of Xiamen Bay. Based on the distribution and characteristics of coastal resources, and the opinion of local residents revealed by a questionnaire investigation, we set two scenarios as alternative principal functions, i.e. to develop coastal tourism as a priority or to fully develop commercial port transportation in the research area. The net benefits of Scenario 1 and 2 are calculated by the constructed formulas, and the results are 3.4×1010 RMB Yuan/a and 7.4×109 RMB Yuan/a, respectively. Based on the economic analysis, we propose that coastal tourism should be chosen as the principal function in the coastal area of Xiamen Bay.


This dissertation asks what happens to the politics of multiculturalism in postcolonial India, epitomized in the motto of "unity in diversity", when "diversity" becomes not only a social, but also an ecological good, given the emphasis on biodiversity in the Anthropocene. The ethnography studies marketized conservation practices such as ecotourism, in the northeastern frontier state of Sikkim, as emergent sites of a politics of bio-cultural recognition, where recognition-seeking ethnic groups articulate their under-valued cultural diversity with the valued biodiversity of this Himalayan region. If recognition of diversity by the state is a mode of being subjected to its sovereignty and of being bound to it, what liberatory potential does being subjects of marketized conservation paradigms offer to marginalized communities? What are the limits of these alternative avenues of recognition? And what is the impact of this politics of ecological and neoliberal multiculturalism – negotiated between frontier citizens, conservationists and national tourists as financers of neoliberal conservation – on the liberal state, which ceases to be the sole adjudicator of recognition and redistribution, that is a significant source of its authority? The ethnography highlights the ability secured by Nepali and Sherpa ethnic groups to escape from the rigid bureaucratized criteria for state recognition, which fail to remedy the exclusion these border communities perceive. However, the validation of their biocultural diversity by conservationists and ecotourists (as neoliberal conservation-sponsors), engenders its own rigid and contradictory criteria. The biodiversity discourse's emphasis on nativism of species, and the market/tourists' search for exotic, aesthetic variety of nature-culture, precipitate new forms of symbolic violence. Further, the state while promoting neoliberal development, pushing communities towards the market, is anxious about losing its authority to the market, and reasserts its power accordingly. Communities are then caught in a bind between the state and the market. The politics of neoliberal and ecological multiculturalism, this dissertation shows, entails a diffusion of physical sites and governing gazes of recognition. In this diffusion, communities trade the postcolonial state's binding ethnographic matrix of cultural categorizations in favor of an unbounded yet anxiety-inducing terrain of negotiations, that is equally unsettling for the state and for its multispecies citizens.


This study estimated the severity of Nilahue-Barahona and Las Máquinas wildfires, occurred in central Chile during the summer of 2016-17, by an empirical-statistical modelling based on preand post-fire arithmetic differences of spectral indices sensitive to vigor, turgor and calcination states of vegetation. By doing this, map of damages were created to aid the efficient management and ecological restoration of disturbed forestry ecosystems. The index differences were calculated from Sentinel-2 satellite images, acquired anually in the summers spanning from 2016 to 2019. The resulting nine index-derived differences were used as predictors of burn severity, field-measured during the summer of 2019 using the CBI (composite burn index) method, into a linear stepwise regression that allowed for selecting those with the highest predictability. CBI yielded low correlations as its calculation includes low vegetation strata largely recovered at the time of the field data collection. However, when overstory field data were used alone, correlations increased (70 % of the data ≥ 0.80, P < 0.05). This was because this stratum was still appreciably damaged during the field campaign, along with its best representation from the image planimetry. The burn severity of both wildfires was mapped using the overstory data as regressand in a model based on NDWIex-ante-2019, NDWIex-ante-2018, NBRex-ante-2018 and NBRex-ante-2017 differences (R 2 ad = 0.77, RMSE = 0.35).


Abstract The plant-parasitic cyst nematode Heterodera glycines requires a host plant to complete its life cycle, which involves hatching of infective juveniles that parasitize through root entry. A laboratory population of H. glycines grown on soybean, Glycine max, undergoes a sharp increase in maturity between 5 and 6 weeks in culture, as measured by the proportion of eggs containing well developed pre-hatch juveniles (late development eggs) versus eggs without visible juveniles (early development eggs). The median percent of eggs classified as late development, representing all samples taken from 4 to 7 weeks in culture, was 61%. For all samples taken up to 5 weeks, 80% scored below the median. In samples taken after 5 weeks, 15% scored below the median. This shift in population maturity was accompanied by a significant increase (P < 0.01) in the number of hatched juveniles present in each sample. There was also a significant increase (P < 0.02) in amount of FaRP-like peptide detected by specific ELISA. Total FaRP levels increased from 0.18 ± 0.07 fMol FLRFamide equivalents per ng protein in early development eggs to 0.40 ± 0.17 in late development eggs. The level remained high in hatched juveniles. HPLC/ELISA detected as many as nine potential FaRPs in H. glycines, two of which were specifically increased (P < 0.005) in hatched juveniles. The association of FaRPs with maturing eggs and the possible involvement of these neuropeptides with juvenile hatching and motility are discussed.


Governments and corporations may chip in, but around the world houshold saving is the biggest factor in national saving. To better understand why saving rates differ across countries, this volume provides the most up-to-date analyses of patterns of household saving behavior in Canada, Italy, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Each of the six chapters examines micro data sets of household saving within a particular country and summarizes statistics on patterns of saving by age, income, and other demographic factors. The authors provide age-earning profiles and analyses of the accumulation of wealth over the lifetime in a clear way that allows quick comparisons between earning, consumption, and saving in the six countries. Designed as a companion to Public Policies and Household Saving (1994), which addresses saving policies in the G-7 nations, this volume offers detailed descriptions of saving behavior in all G-7 nations except France.


Abstract Baits targeting invertebrate ultraconserved elements (UCEs) are becoming more common for phylogenetic studies. Recent studies have shown that invertebrate UCEs typically encode proteins—and thus, are functionally different from more conserved vertebrate UCEs—and can resolve deep divergences (e.g., superorder to family ranks). However, whether invertebrate UCE baits have the power to robustly resolve relationships at shallower phylogenetic scales has been generally limited to investigations within the Coleoptera and Hymenoptera; thus, there are many invertebrate UCE baits that remain to be tested at shallower levels (i.e., tribes and congeners). Here, we assessed the ability of a recently designed Hemiptera UCE bait set to reconstruct more recent phylogenetic relationships in the largest leaf-footed bug subfamily, the Coreinae (Hemiptera: Coreidae), using a taxon-rich sample representing 21 of the 32 coreine tribes. Many well-supported, novel relationships were congruent in maximum likelihood and summary coalescent analyses. We also found evidence for the para- and polyphyly of several tribes and genera of Coreinae, as well as the subfamilies Coreinae and Meropachyinae. Our study, along with other recent UCE studies, provides evidence that UCEs can produce robust and novel phylogenetic hypotheses at various scales in invertebrates.


Some 30 years of physical and chemical marine aerosol data are reviewed to derive global-size distribution parameters and inorganic particle composition on a coarse 15°×15° grid. There are large gaps in geographical and seasonal coverage and chemical and physical aerosol characterisation. About 28% of the grid cells contain physical data while there are compositional data in some 60% of the cells. The size distribution data were parametrized in terms of 2 submicrometer log-normal distributions. The sparseness of the data did not allow zonal differentiation of the distributions. By segregating the chemical data according to the major aerosol sources, sea salt, dimethylsulfide, crustal material, combustion processes and other anthropogenic sources, much information on mass concentrations and contribution of natural and anthropogenic sources to the marine aerosol can be gleaned from the data base. There are significant meridional differences in the contributions of the different sources to the marine aerosol. Very clearly, we see though that the global marine surface atmosphere is polluted by anthropogenic sulfur. Only in the case of sulfur components did the coverage allow the presentation of very coarse seasonal distributions which reflect the spring blooms in the appropriate parts of the oceans. As an example of the potential value in comparing the marine aerosol data base to chemical transport models, global seasonal meridional MSA distributions were compared to modelled MSA distributions. The general good agreement in mass concentrations is encouraging while some latitudinal discrepancies warrant further investigations covering other aerosol components such as black carbon and metals.


We produced murine monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) directed against the surface membrane of squamous-cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN). One antibody, SQM1, was determined by immunofluorescence and radioimmunoassay to be reactive with 13/13 SCCHN cell lines derived from different sites of the head and neck area. No binding reaction was observed with normal fibroblasts, red blood cells, nucleated bone-marrow cells or epithelial cells from normal oral mucosa. SQM1 reactivity was observed with primary cultures of normal epidermal and bronchial epithelial cells. Significant reactivity was found with 2/4 cell lines derived from small-cell carcinoma of the lung but little or no reactivity was found with other lung cancer cell lines. Various cell lines derived from other cancers including breast, colon, and ovarian carcinomas, melanoma, neuroblastoma and leukemia were generally unreactive. Seventeen out of 18 fresh frozen specimens of SCCHN were strongly reactive with SQM1 antibody. However, autopsy specimens from the heart, liver, kidney, spleen, colon, subcutaneous fat and skin connective tissue were unreactive. SQM1 antibody may be useful in biological and clinical studies of the head and neck region.


By coupling the SPOT-5 multi-spectral RS images, ground-spectrum, and field measured data of different winter wheat ecological zones, a pure pixel spectrum extraction method was developed based on spectral response function and pixel unmixed, and the quantitative relationships between leaf nitrogen accumulation (LNA) and simulated, measured, and pure pixel spectra were analyzed. The estimation accuracy for LNA was in the sequence of simulated pixel spectra pure pixel spectra measured pixel spectra. However, the LNA monitoring model based on simulated pixel spectra couldn't be extrapolated directly to spatial level. The results of model verification also indicated that the monitoring model based on pure pixel spectra performed well in two different wheat ecological zones. Therefore, the pure pixel spectrum extraction method could be applied to other varied and remotely sensed data with different spatial and spectral resolutions by making use of the merits of ground- and space- remote sensing simultaneously, which provided a technological basis for estimating winter wheat nitrogen status in regional scale.


Oral consumption of probiotic bacteria has the potential to support the health of American consumers. This paper will discuss the rationale of the probiotic theory, several health targets for probiotic bacteria, probiotic products in the U.S. and, finally, issues pertaining to communication about probiotic products to the consumer. J. Nutr. 130: 384S–390S, 2000.


In silico tools have been developed to predict variants that may have an impact on pre-mRNA splicing. The major limitation of the application of these tools to basic research and clinical practice is the difficulty in interpreting the output. Most tools only predict potential splice sites given a DNA sequence without measuring splicing signal changes caused by a variant. Another limitation is the lack of large-scale evaluation studies of these tools. We compared eight in silico tools on 2959 single nucleotide variants within splicing consensus regions (scSNVs) using receiver operating characteristic analysis. The Position Weight Matrix model and MaxEntScan outperformed other methods. Two ensemble learning methods, adaptive boosting and random forests, were used to construct models that take advantage of individual methods. Both models further improved prediction, with outputs of directly interpretable prediction scores. We applied our ensemble scores to scSNVs from the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer database. Analysis showed that predicted splice-altering scSNVs are enriched in recurrent scSNVs and known cancer genes. We pre-computed our ensemble scores for all potential scSNVs across the human genome, providing a whole genome level resource for identifying splice-altering scSNVs discovered from large-scale sequencing studies.


: Isolated brains were perfused for 30 min at 10, 20, 30 or 40 torr followed by up to 45 min of reoxygenation. Arterial and venous blood samples were drawn at frequent intervals before, during and after hypoxia for determination of oxygen and glucose content. Brain samples were frozen in situ before hypoxia, following 30 min of hypoxia and after 45 min of reoxygenation for measurement of adenine nucleotide and creatine phosphate (CrP) content. Neither the cerebral metabolic rate for oxygen (CMRO2) nor the ATP level returned to normal in the arterial pO2 10 and 20 torr groups. Although ATP reached normal levels in the arterial pO2 30 torr group following 45 min of reoxygenation. CMRO2 was 84% of normal and the CrP was only 63% of normal. However, ATP, CMRO2 and CrP were all normal in the arterial pO2 40 torr group following 45 min of reoxygenation. The failure of the arterial pO2 30 torr group to reach a normal CrP level is thought to be the result of a defect in brain energy metabolism whereby the cell was unable to generate ATP at a rate sufficient to restore CrP to normal levels. The defect appears to be signaled by a lower than normal CMRO2. The ability to effectively utilize oxygen to form ATP is believed to reside in the intact mitochondria of undamaged brain cells. Thus, the posthypoxic CMRO2 is an index of mitochondrial function and by implication it is a measure of the integrity of cerebral neurons.


In this work, we studied the flow boundary conditions for the interface between two immiscible liquids under the condition of low shear rates in the presence or absence of surfactants. Our simulation results indicate that the boundary conditions are substantially changed by the presence of surfactants. Similar to the liquid-solid boundary, several boundary conditions at immiscible liquid-liquid interfaces, including slip, no-slip, and locking boundary conditions, are observed depending on the interfacial surfactant concentration. The slip boundary condition is achieved only at zero or lower surfactant concentration. The locking boundary condition is observed when the surfactant concentration is large enough to form a fully developed monolayer whereas the no-slip condition occurs for systems with intermediate values of surfactant concentration. The slip, no-slip, and locking boundary conditions yield the positive, zero, and negative slip lengths, respectively. We also investigated the dependence of boundary slip on shear rate at different interfacial surfactant concentrations. Compared to the systems without surfactants, the increase in slip with shear rate slows down because of the presence of surfactants, and consequently, the linear dependence of slip length changes to a nonlinear dependence. Simulation results also indicate that the shear rate also affects the surfactant distribution. In particular, when the surfactant concentration is high enough to form a fully developed monolayer, the higher shear rate would make the monolayer rupture.


Beam search is the go-to method for decoding auto-regressive machine translation models. While it yields consistent improvements in terms of BLEU, it is only concerned with finding outputs with high model likelihood, and is thus agnostic to whatever end metric or score practitioners care about. Our aim is to establish whether beam search can be replaced by a more powerful metric-driven search technique. To this end, we explore numerous decoding algorithms, including some which rely on a value function parameterised by a neural network, and report results on a variety of metrics. Notably, we introduce a Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) based method and showcase its competitiveness. We provide a blueprint for how to use MCTS fruitfully in language applications, which opens promising future directions. We find that which algorithm is best heavily depends on the characteristics of the goal metric; we believe that our extensive experiments and analysis will inform further research in this area.


Statement of Problem: Shear bond strength (SBS) of home and office bleached enamel will be compromised by immediate application of composite restoration. Antioxidant agent may overcome this problem.
Objectives: This in vitro study assessed the effect of green tea extract on shear bond strength of resin composite to in-office and home-bleached enamel.
Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, 40 extracted intact human incisors were embedded in cylindrical acrylic resin blocks (2.5 ×1.5 cm), with the coronal portion above the cemento enamel junction out of the block. Then, after bleaching labial enamel surfaces of 20 teeth with 15% carbamide peroxide 6 hours a day for 5 days, they were randomly divided into two groups: A1 and A2 (n = 10), depending upon whether or not they are treated with antioxidant. Labial enamel surfaces of the remaining 20 teeth were bleached with 38% hydrogen peroxide before being randomly divided into groups B1 and B2 (n = 10), again depending on whether or not the antioxidant was used in their treatment . The experimental groups (A2,B2) were treated with 5% solution of green tea extract before resin composite restoration was done by a cylindrical Teflon mould (5×2 mm). Shear bond strength of the specimens was tested under a universal testing machine (Zwick/Roell Z020). The SBS data were analyzed by using One-way ANOVA and Tukey HSD tests (p < 0.05).
Results: There were no statistically significant differences between shear bond strength of the control group (A1) and treated group (A2), but there were statistically significant differences between the groups B1 and B2 (p < 0.05).
Conclusions: Application of antioxidant did not increase the shear bond strength of home-bleached enamel to resin composite but its application increased the shear bond strength of in-office bleached enamel to resin composite.


This thesis focuses on Medea, the classical Greek play by Euripides that was first produced in 431 B.C., and its feminist, queer, and decolonial revisions in contemporary global contexts. These revisions include The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea by Chicana queer feminist author Cherríe Moraga and Black Medea by Indigenous Australian playwright Wesley Enoch. Common to these primary texts are themes of Medea's madness and anger, which are tied to the fraught questions of home, nation, and the Other. Each section of this thesis focuses on a different play, analyzing the intersectional feminist politics of Medea's madness across varying sociopolitical and historical contexts. While all the individual sections of this thesis develop a nuanced argument specific to the sociopolitical context of the play, the guiding theme throughout the thesis is that readers must interpret Medea's madness through an intersectional feminist lens. Each section situates the play within its specific historical and geographical context and interprets Medea's madness within that context. Ultimately, this thesis argues that the function of Medea's madness is determined by her marginal, exiled locations as a woman and an ethnic Other within the domestic space and the nation-space. Reading the source text and the revisions through an intersectional feminist framework allows the reader to see how Medea must navigate "home" as a gendered, racialized, and/or nationalist space, as well as a discursive construct.


UNLABELLED
We investigated the effect of clinical features and well-known histomorphological parameters on survival of breast cancer.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
44 patients with invasive ductal carcinoma were included in this study. We investigated the effect of age, breast cancer location (right/left), histological grade, largest diameter of the tumor, lymphovascular and perineural invasion on patient survival. IBM SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) 20 program was used for statistics. Cox proportional hazard regression model for survival analysis, log-log plot, life function graphs were used. Results were 95% confidence interval, significance (P < 0.05).

RESULTS
In univariate analysis, the left breast localization, high histological grade, large tumor size, lymphovascular invasion, perineural invasion has been shown that reduced the overall survival (P < 0.05). In multivariate analysis, only high histological grade, large tumor size and perineural invasion were identified as parameters negatively associated with patient survival (P < 0.05). On univariate and multivariate analysis, age was not associated with survival.

CONCLUSION
The above results should be considered in the follow-up and treatment planning of invasive ductal carcinoma patients.


For research in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and the Internet of Things (IoT), while many protocols are either analysed mathematically or simulated to assess performance, it has become necessary that they are tested on hardware in real world environments. Algorithms are often validated in either (i) a densely connected network or (ii) a sparsely connected network. The majority of existing testbeds have implemented dense networks, making evaluation and validation of certain protocols, such as spatially-redundant source location privacy (SLP) protocols, challenging. We explore the use of transmission power to achieve network sparsity and present the results of such experiments performed on the FlockLab testbed. Based upon our experience in using FlockLab, we also identify additional aspects of testbed performance that need to be monitored to ensure reliable and reproducible results.


The results of 522 plastic procedures performed in patients with skin cancer are analysed. The following methods of skin plasty were employed: free skin graft plasty, local tissue plasty, the combined skin plasty. The best immediate results were obtained in using the pedicled graft plasty (4.4% of complications) and in free skin graft plasty (8.8% of complications). Without any signs of the recurrence and metastases 73% of patients are still alive for over 1 years, 49.4%--over 3 years, 31.8%--over 5 years, 23.9%--over 7 years and 7.28%--over 10 years.


AIM
To study the correlation between high metastasis-associated protein 1 (MTA1) expression and lymphangiogenesis in colorectal cancer (CRC) and its role in production of vascular endothelial growth factor-C(VEGF-C).

METHODS
Impact of high MTA1 and VEGF-C expression levels on disease progression and lymphovascular density (LVD, D2-40-immunolabeled) in 81 cases of human CRC was evaluated by immunohistochemistry. VEGF-C mRNA and protein expressions in human LoVo and HCT116 cell lines were detected by real-time polymerase chain reaction and Western blotting, respectively, with a stable expression vector or siRNA.

RESULTS
The elevated MTA1 and VEGF-C expression levels were correlated with lymph node metastasis and Dukes stages (P < 0.05). Additionally, high MTA1 expression level was correlated with a large tumor size (P < 0.05). A significant correlation was found between MTA1 and VEGF-C protein expressions in tumor cells (r = 0.371, P < 0.05). Similar to the VEGF-C expression level, high MTA1 expression level was correlated with high LVD in CRC (P < 0.05). Furthermore, over-expression of MTA1 significantly enhanced the VEGF-C mRNA and protein expression levels, whereas siRNAs - knocked down MTA1 decreased the VEGF-C expression level.

CONCLUSION
MTA1, as a regulator of tumor-associated lymphangiogenesis, promotes lymphangiogenesis in CRC by mediating the VEGF-C expression.


We link population register data to information on regional child care characteristics in order to estimate the influence of the latter on second and third birth intensities of Swedish couples in 1997-98. Our analysis allows us to distinguish interactions and specific effects of different dimensions of the local day-care infrastructure, namely the provision rate, the child-to-staff-ratio, and the costs of care to parents. However, our results reveal no clear effects of these child care characteristics on Swedish couples' continued childbearing. We interpret this absence of effects as a reflection of the generally very appropriate level of child care in Sweden, which is complemented by further supportive family policies. In such a context, moderate regional variations in the characteristics of day care may have no decisive impact on parents' propensity to have another child.


: The in vitro study of the influence of photodynamic action (with the use of photosensitizer "Photosens", laser and non-laser irradiation) on the strains of the main representatives purulent wound microflora was carried out. Staphylococcus aureus, S. epidermidis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, Proteus mirabilis cultures have been isolated from wound secretions and identified. The photosensitizer was shown to produce no bactericidal effect by itself. Irradiation with laser and non-laser light sources induced a sharp decrease in the number of viable cells in the cultures under study. The irradiation of the photosensitizer led to its activation, manifested in bactericidal action. The results thus obtained confirm good prospect of using photodynamic therapy for the treatment of purulent wounds.


A robust 12 kW rectifier with low THD in the line currents, based on an 18-pulse transformer arrangement with reduced kVA capacities followed by a high-frequency isolation stage is presented in this work. Three full-bridge (buck-based) converters are used to allow galvanic isolation and to balance the dc-link currents, without current sensing or current controller. The topology provides a regulated dc output with a very simple and well-known control strategy and natural three-phase power factor correction. The phase-shift PWM technique, with zero-voltage switching is used for the high-frequency dc-dc stage. Analytical results from Fourier analysis of winding currents and the vector diagram of winding voltages are presented. Experimental results from a 12 kW prototype are shown in the paper to verify the efficiency, robustness and simplicity of the command circuitry to the proposed concept.


This paper deals with the effects that intermediation has on strategic behaviour in negotiations. To this end, we use the tools of game theory to analyse how different institutional settings can provide specific strategic incentives and thereby condition the outcome of negotiations. We concentrate on some very recent contributions, which have addressed gaps in this literature and stress the economic intuition behind some predicted behaviours.


Analyzing and interpreting of thermograms has been increasingly employed in the diagnosis and monitoring of diseases thanks to its non-invasive, non-harmful nature and low cost. This thesis explores methods for thermal image analysis systems based on image registration for two medical applications; skin disease diagnosis and cooling study. In the first application, a novel system is proposed to improve the diagnosis and monitoring of morphoea based on a face sketch and the published lines of Blaschko. In the latter, a novel semi-automated system is proposed to investigate a cooling mask for maxillofacial surgery patients based on thermogram data of normal subjects. In both applications, image registration based on global and local registration methods are found inevitable. A modified normalized gradient cross-correlation (NGC) method to reduce large geometrical differences between two multimodal images of different subjects that are represented by smooth gray edge maps is proposed for the global registration approach. To correct for small displacements between the global outcomes, a simple stochastic based non-rigid affine registration (NRAR) method is proposed. The NRAR method is driven by a cost function that takes into consideration the similarity between two images by a correlation coefficient. A geometric based intensity distortion to ensure only small distortions are accepted, and an overlapping pixel rate are also incorporated. Smooth deformation controlled by an exponential Euclidean based smoothing operator is employed to only edge pixels navigated by a distance function as both the images are represented by edge maps and thus reduces computation time. The NRAR method has shown good performance in correcting for small, varying displacements between images with fairly reliable flexibility and elasticity for both convex and concave objects with the help of the NGC to minimize the initial displacements. A semi-automated approach that includes the NGC and/or the NRAR method followed by determination of cooling area based on the Otsu's thresholding and a seed-based region growing method is found to achieve reliable and reproducible cooling patterns with good correlation with the clinical assessment, for potential cooling study of maxillofacial surgery patients. 3


PURPOSE
To compare the accuracy of left atrial enlargement (LAE) diagnosis made by electrocardiographic criteria with those obtained using M-mode echocardiography.

METHODS
We studied 273 patients age 17 to 87 (mean 49) years, 115 men, white 95.5%, black 3.5% mulattos 1%, with or without heart disease of different etiologies. The ECG criteria studied were: a) P terminal force in V1 > or = 0.04 mmx s; b) Pt force in V1 duration > 0.04s; c) Pt force in V1 depth > or = 1 mm; d) P wave notching in D2 with interpeak distance > or = 40ms; f) presence of atrial fibrillation. The gold-standard for LAE was left atrial dimension > 40 mm obtained by echocardiography.

RESULTS
The percentage of correct diagnosis were: atrial fibrillation (88%), Morris index (75%), PtfV1 negativity > or = 1 mm (74%), notched P wave in D2 with interpeak distance > or = 0.04 s (70%), PtfV1 with duration > 0.04 s (64%) and P wave duration in D2 > 0.11s (46%).

CONCLUSION
Conventional ECG has limited value for detecting LAE. A higher correlation was found between atrial fibrillation and changes in P wave in V1 and the echocardiographic LAE.


This short essay notes that therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) has had a considerable impact on many lower courts, but, despite some important scholarship a bit over a decade ago relating to TJ in the appellate arena, has yet to be felt in the higher courts. The paper notes two different potential streams for TJ appellate activity: 1. the drafting of opinions that should read more as respectful letters to the loser (rather than the conventional opinion which reads more like a congratulatory letter to the winner), and 2. the formation of legal doctrines that achieve therapeutic/preventive objectives. For the appellate courts to adopt more of a therapeutic jurisprudence approach, scholars have noted that "lawyering needs to be done differently," and the present essay finds that potential for different lawyering in the form of law clerks/appellate court staff attorneys, and amici curiae. The law clerks/staff attorneys can be enlisted to assist in more sensitive opinion drafting and the use of amicus curiae briefs in appropriate cases can focus on the therapeutic or anti-therapeutic impact of the legal doctrines under consideration in those cases.


Equity market neutral strategies take offsetting long and short positions in similarly mispriced securities. They are considered to be close relatives of long/short strategies, the key distinction being the degree of systematic risk that a manager is willing to bear. A manager who is not keen on bearing systematic risk at any time can be regarded as a market neutral manager. Managers profit during economic upturns when their long holdings appreciate quicker than the decline in value of their short positions. In periods of economic downturn, they profit when their short positions appreciate quicker than the decline in value of their long holdings. In this issue's trading strategy forum, a market neutral manager provides readers with a clearer and more informed understanding of the investment potential of this strategy and his firm's particular approaches to capturing the return/risk trade-offs within the market neutral strategy.


The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the changes of taurine levels in the hearts of old rats on endogenous malondialdehyde (MDA) and diene conjugate (DC) levels and ascorbic acid (AA)- and NADPH-induced lipid peroxidation as well as non-enzymatic (glutathione, vitamin E and vitamin C) and enzymatic antioxidants (superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase and glutathione transferase). Two groups of old (22 mo) rats were treated with beta-alanine (3%, w/v; in drinking water), a taurine depleting agent, or taurine (2% w/v; in drinking water) for 6 wk. Significant decreases were observed in taurine contents of hearts in old rats as compared to young (5 mo) rats. We found that MDA and DC levels and AA- and NADPH-induced lipid peroxidation increased, but non-enzymatic and enzymatic antioxidants did not alter in heart homogenates of aged rats. beta-Alanine administration resulted in significant decreases in heart taurine levels of old rats. This treatment did not cause further increases in MDA or DC levels or changes in antioxidants. However, AA- and NADPH-induced lipid peroxidation was higher than that of old rats. Taurine treatment caused significant increases in heart taurine levels of old rats. This treatment was found to decrease endogenous MDA and DC levels without affecting the antioxidant system in the heart homogenates of aged rats. AA- and NADPH-induced lipid peroxidation was also reduced in old rats when given taurine, although not statistically significantly. Our results indicate that the changes in heart taurine levels may influence the susceptibility of heart tissue to lipid peroxidation in aged rats and that taurine supplementation has protective effects on age-dependent oxidative stress in heart tissue.


The thermal decomposition pathways of the tungsten dimethylhydrazido complexes Cl4(RCN)W(NNMe2) (1a: R=CH3; 1b: R=Ph), precursors for single source deposition of WNxCy, were investigated using a combination of experiments and calculations. Raman scattering studies were performed in an impinging-jet, up-flow, aerosol-assisted CVD reactor to identify reaction intermediates. Density Functional Theory calculations (B3LYP/LanL2DZ) were used to estimate Raman active frequencies and explore the reaction surface. Dimethylamine and methylmethyleneimine, products from N–N cleavage of the hydrazido ligand, were observed under deposition conditions and identified by comparison with previously reported Raman shifts and calculated frequencies. © 2012 The Electrochemical Society. [DOI: 10.1149/2.002206jes] All rights reserved.


Seven new U-Pb zircon ages for volcanic and intrusive igneous rocks from southern Britain are as follows: 613 ± 4 Ma for the Coedana Granite, Anglesey, and 614 ± 2 Ma for the Padarn Tuff Formation of the Arfon Group, North Wales; 677 ± 2 Ma for a deformed granite of the Malvernian Complex and 566 ± 2 Ma for a rhyolitic tuff in the Warren House Formation, Malvern Hills; 603 ± 2 Ma for a granophyric diorite ('markfieldite') intrusive into the Caldecote Volcanic Formation at Nuneaton; 566 ± 2 Ma for the Uriconian volcanic group, Shropshire, and 560 ± 1 Ma for the Ercall Granophyre, which is intrusive into Uriconian volcanic rocks. Three of the four dated intrusive rocks contain a component of inherited zircon, but the dated volcanic rocks are composed of simple, single-stage zircon populations with no detectable amount of secondary Pb-loss. The ages clarify the timing of Precambrian magmatic events in southern Britain, and conform well with those in neighbouring Avalonian terranes. The new age of the Ercall Granophyre provides a reliable maximum age for the Early Cambrian (Atdabanian—late Tommotian) strata of England, and reconfirms a Precambrian age for the Padarn Tuff Formation and granophyric diorite ('markfieldite') which demonstrably underlie Early Cambrian strata.


The police organization is highly dependent on information. Frontline police officers are working on the streets and need the right information at the right time. Mobile technology can provide location-based information and could be of great assistance to them. We developed a mobile location-based real-time notification system and conducted an exploratory study in two real-life experiments. The system provides information on a point of interest (PoI) when frontline police officers are close to that PoI. Usability, recall of information, and situational awareness were measured to assess the impact of the system on police work. The results show that the system usability was adequate, recall of information varied between police officers working with the system and without, whereas little difference in situational awareness was found. Interviews suggest that awareness regarding PoI's was increased and new behaviour was triggered by the system. Future research will evaluate further developments of the system and its impact on police work.


The Softmax function on top of a final linear layer is the de facto method to output probability distributions in neural networks. In many applications such as language models or text generation, this model has to produce distributions over large output vocabularies. Recently, this has been shown to have limited representational capacity due to its connection with the rank bottleneck in matrix factorization. However, little is known about the limitations of Linear-Softmax for quantities of practical interest such as cross entropy or mode estimation, a direction that we explore here. As an efficient and effective solution to alleviate this issue, we propose to learn parametric monotonic functions on top of the logits. We theoretically investigate the rank increasing capabilities of such monotonic functions. Empirically, our method improves in two different quality metrics over the traditional Linear-Softmax layer in synthetic and real language model experiments, adding little time or memory overhead, while being comparable to the more computationally expensive mixture of Softmaxes.


Precopulatory sexual cannibalism, or female predation of a potential mate before mating, illustrates an extreme intersexual conflict. Unlike sexual cannibalism occurring after mating, precopulatory sexual cannibalism cannot be construed as a male strategy. Thus, research on the adaptive significance of this phenomenon has focused on female benefits. In the present study, I test the idea that precopulatory sexual cannibalism represents an adaptive female trade-off between the material costs and benefits of mating with a male (forgoing food, securing sperm) and preying on a male (forgoing sperm, securing food). I pay particular attention to the rarely tested prediction that precopulatory sexual cannibalism by virgin females should increase as each female's expectation of future mating opportunities increases. I use the phenomenon of cohabitation between adult males and juvenile females nearing sexual maturity as a means to manipulate female expectation of future mate availability. Results indicate that feeding on a male has significant positive effects on several measures of female fecundity. However, the likelihood of precopulatory attacks was not explained by a female's recent feeding history. Finally, as predicted, juvenile female cohabitation with mature males (expectation of future mating opportunities) heightens the prevalence of precopulatory attacks by virgin females, suggesting that juvenile experience can alter a female's propensity for sexual cannibalism. This is the first study to suggest that juvenile experience can alter a female's propensity for sexual cannibalism. This finding emphasizes the point that studies of sexual selection and mating systems need to consider the effects of juvenile experience on adult behavior. Copyright 2005.


A novel algorithm is described for omnidirectional control of a multilegged robot vehicle using periodic gaits. The vehicle model is chosen from a hexapod robot vehicle, named the Adaptive Suspension Vehicle, which is under development. To implement periodic gaits for omnidirectional control, the notion of the constrained working volume (CWV) is introduced on the basis of reachability of the leg and the kinetic maximum locomotion period is defined using the CWV. As a result, the leg touchdown and liftoff points are constrained within the CWV during vehicle locomotion. Based on this constraint, the foothold selection problem is addressed. The algorithm was developed through a computer graphics simulation; results of the simulations are discussed. >


Introduction: The top refugee health concerns characteristically are associated with parasitic infections, infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and parasites, as well as nutritional deficiencies such as anemia, and malnourishment. Understanding the specific health needs of the refugee population will not only improve the transition of the refugees within the United States healthcare systems, but also improve public health within the community. Methods: Health records from Public Health Dayton & Montgomery Country were used to obtain the prevalence of both acute and chronic health conditions within the newly resettled refugee population. There were a total of 193 refugees included in this study who received a health screening between April 2007-April 2008. Results: Of the 193 refugees the three greatest countries of nationality were Iraq 40%, Burundi 34%, and Sudan 11%. Parasitic infection was found to be highest within the Burundi population with 27% positive for Giardia, and 27% positive for schistosoma. Fourteen percent of the total refugee population was found to be positive for latent tuberculosis, highest prevalence among Sudanese refugees. Overall, 38% of the refugee population was found to be overweight/obese according to BMI. Elevated fasting blood glucose was found in 24% of the refugee population. Conclusion: This study provided statistical data to support a focus not only on acute infectious processes during the resettlement health screening, but also on chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes in the refugee population. Approximately one-third of all refugees in this study were found to have an elevated BMI or fasting blood glucose.


In this paper, we analyze mutual coupling of switched reluctance (SR) motors with even and odd numbers of phases. We illustrate that SR motors with an even number of phases produce asymmetric mutual flux in different phases. On the other hand, an SR motor with an odd number of phases produces symmetric mutual coupling in all the phases. Then, we explain a practical way of measuring the mutual flux in SR motors and present the test results for an 8/6 pole, four-phase 4 kW motor. We simulated the performance of the SR motor with and without mutual flux, thereby demonstrating the effect of mutual flux on phase current, flux, and average torque. We verified the effect of mutual flux on position estimation by simulation and experiment. We show that appropriate correction for mutual flux may improve the accuracy of estimated position by 3deg, which will give better performance of the drive while driven without any shaft sensors. We also show that an SR motor with an odd number of phases is a better choice than one with an even number of phases because of its symmetric mutual coupling, its ability to utilize short flux paths, and the fact that it does not require costly bipolar excitation.


Objective: This study aims to investigate the effects of tibialis posterior muscle (TP) fatigue on dynamic plantar pressure (DPP) characteristics during different walking speeds. Materials and Methods: Thirty healthy volunteers walked at normal and fast paces in three trials. The Footscan ® 3D system was used to obtain the distribution of dynamic plantar pressure before and after the TP fatigue protocol. The study measured the peak pressure (PP) of the hallux, toes 2–5, metatarsals (Meta 1-5), midfoot (MF), medial heel (MH) and lateral heel (LH), as well as the percentage of contact area (CA%) of the forefoot (FF), MF and hindfoot (HF), foot progression angle (FPA) and the minimum and maximum values of the subtalar angle. Results: The results showed significant differences in the PP of Meta 4, MH and MF at a normal pace after the tibialis posterior muscle fatigue protocol. At a fast pace, significant differences were found in the PP of the MF and CA% of FF and MF. Before the fatigue protocol, there were significantly different values in the peak pressure of the hallux, toes 2–5 and MH between the two walking speeds. After the fatigue protocol, there were significantly different values in the peak pressure of toes 2–5, MH and LH between the two walking speeds. The study also found a significant difference in FPA between the two walking speeds (p<0.05). Conclusion: The study provides evidence that TP fatigue may lead to injuries during long-term walking or sports activities. These results highlight the importance of endurance training and minimizing its negative effects on foot biomechanics by reducing fatigue


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the ability of ultrasound to identify and characterize the anterior oblique ligament of the thumb in cadavers and asymptomatic volunteers.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS
The anterior oblique ligaments of four cadaveric hands were imaged with a high-resolution transducer. The ligaments were then injected with 0.1% methylene blue using ultrasound guidance. To confirm identification of the ligament, the base of the thumb was immediately dissected, revealing the exact location of the dye. The bilateral ligaments in 40 asymptomatic adult volunteers were imaged.

RESULTS
Surgical dissection confirmed injection of methylene blue into all cadaveric ligaments. The proximal attachment of the anterior oblique ligament was well defined in all the hands, and the distal attachment was well defined in 94% of the hands. The mean thickness of the anterior oblique ligament at the metacarpal attachment (0.7 mm), midportion (0.98 mm), and trapezial attachment (0.65 mm) did not differ significantly with respect to sex, right and left side, or hand dominance and was weakly correlated with weight, height, body mass index, and age. The length of the ligament was statistically significantly different between the dominant (10.6 mm) and nondominant (9.6 mm) hands. The volar metacarpal translation with palmar abduction stress did not differ significantly between the dominant (0.7 mm) and nondominant (0.8 mm) hands. There was no association between the degree of translation and the biologic characteristics (weight, height, body mass index, and age).

CONCLUSION
High-resolution ultrasound can be used to identify and measure the thickness of the anterior oblique ligament. Dynamic ultrasound imaging can depict volar translation of the metacarpal, which may facilitate diagnosis of ligamentous injury.


Three approaches to learning are distinguished in the learning literature: a surface, deep and strategic approach to learning. The surface approach to learning is characterized as undirected rote learning, motivated by a fear of failure. The deep approach to learning is characterized as interested learning, seeking personal meaning in what is being learned, and stems from an intrinsic motivation. The strategic approach to learning is described as organized studying guided by an awareness of learning in context, with the intention to do as well as possible in the course. Although the deep approach to learning is preferred and stimulated by many educational researchers, the empirical evidence that this approach leads to the best results in every context in higher education is contradictory. The key research question in this dissertation is; What approach to learning leads to success for undergraduate students in business and how can students be stimulated to use this approach? The dissertation starts with a cross-sectional study among three consecutive cohorts of first-year students. The correlation between approaches to learning and study success of these students is analyzed. Approaches to learning are measured by means of the ASSIST questionnaire developed by Entwistle. Study success is measured in terms of the grades and credits for all first-time exams during one academic year. The analysis of the data reveals a significant positive relationship between the strategic approach to learning and study success and significant negative relations between the surface approach to learning and study success. No correlation is found between the deep approach to learning and study success. This is inconsistent with the broadly accepted idea that the deep approach to learning leads to the best study results. Reasons for this deviation are likely to be the specific disciplinary context of business. Secondly, a longitudinal study on the variability of learning strategies is reported. Many educational experiments are based on the premise that students' approaches to learning can be changed by changing the learning environment. These experiments frequently yield opposite results, i.e. students increase the surface approach to learning in response to the educational changes. At this point there is no clear evidence for either variability or stability of approaches to learning, or for the mechanisms to change approaches to learning. Three perspectives on this issue are proposed: a personality trait perspective, a development perspective, and a contingency perspective. These perspectives are tested with a longitudinal study on the development of approaches to learning in two different educational environments. Analysis of the data implies that approaches to learning are rather stable over time, in line with what the trait perspective implies. Thirdly, a design-oriented study is conducted to develop a model that can be used in practice by student counsellors. This model serves as a guide for student counsellors to help students who are at risk for drop-out. It provides a framework to help students change their approaches to learning in order to improve their study results. Twelve cases are presented and analyzed with a specific focus on the design of the model. The effects of the counselling on the students' study performance are analyzed. Finally, recommendations for the application of this model are given. Overall, this dissertation sheds light on the approaches to learning of students in business-related programs at the undergraduate level. One major finding is that the results of previous studies of student learning in other disciplines do not appear to apply to the discipline of business. In addition, the results give reason to claim that improving student learning (in undergraduate programs in business studies) should not be done by way of expensive redesigns of curriculum content and teaching methods. Instead, targeted interventions at the level of underperforming individual students seem to be more effective and efficient.


AIM: To describe the role of Transanal total mesorectal excision(Ta TME) in minimally invasive rectal cancer surgery, to examine the differences in patient selection and in reported surgical techniques and their impactson postoperative outcomes and to discuss the future of Ta TME. METHODS: MEDLINE(Pub Med), EMBASE, and The Cochrane Library were systematically searched through the 1st of March 2015 using a predefined search strategy. RESULTS: A total of 20 studies with 323 patients were included. Most studies were single-arm prospective studies with fewer than 100 patients. Multiple transanal access platforms were used, and the laparoscopic approach was either multi- or single port. The procedure was initiated transanally or transabdominally. If a simultaneous approach with 2 operating surgeons was chosen, the operative time was significantly reduced. CONCLUSION: Ta TME was also associated with better TME specimens and a longer distal resection margin. Ta TME is thus feasible in expert hands, but the learning curve and safety profile are not well defined. Longterm follow-up regarding anal function and oncological outcomes should be performed in the future.


The present approach for considering galvanic incompatibilities is simplistic and static. It is simplistic in that the only thing it takes into account is the galvanic potential difference between two adjacent materials. An estimate of the galvanic corrosion severity is usually based on some form of galvanic potential table, as in MIL-STD-889. However, in mixed material assemblies it is the galvanic current that determines the severity of corrosion, not the galvanic potential, and the two are not directly related. The design engineer needs a way to estimate the true corrosion risk based on both the explicit geometry and all the materials in an assembly. The present approach is static in that it assumes that the condition of an assembly remains constant. However, from the moment that weapons systems are deployed, corrosion protection schemes become compromised over time due to physical and environmental damage. Sacrificial coatings and passivates become depleted, while paint systems become damaged and deteriorate. It is essential therefore, that the design engineer considers, upfront, not only how the factory-fresh finish system will perform, but the very real impact of environmental degradation and protective finish damage on the integrity of the weapon system over its lifetime. This paper introduces a development where deterioration is simulated over time, accounting for the consumption of sacrificial metallic coatings. The insight provided by this approach is invaluable, for the first time giving the designer the tools to incorporate protection schemes that are more damage-tolerant, and appropriate for the intended operational environment of the weapons system.


A novel single feed circularly polarized metallic patch antenna for RFID reader is proposed. The proposed antenna has a simple structure, it has corner truncated square patch, ground plane and a probe feed. In addition to structure of the proposed antenna is simple and low cost. Experimental results of a constructed prototype with the center operating frequency at 911 MHz showed that the antenna has an impedance bandwidth (2:1 VSWR) of about 23 MHz, a 3 dB axial ratio of about 9 MHz, and a gain level of about 9 dBi


Cutaneous metastases with a prevalence of 5.3% in all malignancies are rarely observed phenomena in dermatology. Bladder cancers constitute 0.84% of cutaneous metastases; and 90% of these are transitional cell carcinomas (TCCs), the commonest bladder malignancy. However, these metastatic cutaneous lesions are notorious for mimicking many dermatological disorders and show poor prognosis. Herein, we report a 51-year male patient who presented with fibrotic or sclerodermoid type lesions on his both legs and trunk due to cutaneous metastases of bladder urothelial carcinoma. We would like to call attention to these rarely observed skin lesions to prevent delayed diagnosis; and emphasise the use of immunohistochemical staining for the determination of the primary origin of the tumour. Key Words: Cutaneous metastasis, Bladder, Urothelial carcinoma.


It is ideas that act as initiators of new product development projects. In the literature, ideas for the development of new products are found to originate from different sources both external and internal to an organisation. For example, formalised product development processes use customer surveys and technology development in order to find ideas for new products while integration with a lot of other idea sources is less evident. Some organisations have identified this weakness and created arenas where ideas can be discussed and exchanged between individuals. One example of an arena is idea management systems, which are formal ways of capturing, examining, nurturing, storing and developing ideas created in an organisation. In this paper, the role of idea management systems in three multinational Swedish organisations is studied. The findings suggest that idea management systems can be used to introduce and strengthen the innovation capability of an organisation.


Research has emphasized the importance of practice learning to social work qualifying education but has tended to feature social work educator and student perspectives more strongly than the views of those responsible for assessing students' practice in the field. This article draws on 195 responses to a postal questionnaire sent at two points in time to practice assessors working with students from nine social work qualifying programmes run in six higher education institutions collected as part of the evaluation of the new social work degree qualification in England. While practice assessors described changes in their role and in the opportunities available to students, they also emphasized continuities, particularly in the skills that they expected students to possess. The key difficulty they identified was the heavy workload resulting from combining their role as practice assessors with their other responsibilities at work. Increases in the number of social work students and changes to the organization of services are likely to create further pressures on practice assessors. Given that these issues are faced by a number of different professions, the article concludes that there is potential for future studies to look at the experiences of practice educators across different professional qualifying programmes.


We consider the long-open problem of attribute-efficient learning of halfspaces. In this problem the learner is given random examples labeled by an unknown halfspace functionf on R n . Furtherf is r-sparse, that is it depends on at mostr out ofn variables. An attribute-efficient learning algorithm is an algorithm that can output a hypothesis close to f using a polynomial in r and logn number of examples (Blum, 1992). Despite a number of attempts and some partial progress, there are no efficient algorithms or hardness results for the problem. We propose a potentially easier question: what is the query complexity of this learning problem in the statistical query (SQ) model of Kearns (1998). We show that, as in the case of general PAC learning, the query complexity of attributeefficient SQ learning of any concept class can be characterized by a combinatorial parameter of the concept class. The proposed question is then equivalent to estimating the value of this parameter for the concept class of halfspaces. A potentially simpler problem is to estimate this parameter for the concept class of decision lists, a subclass of halfspaces.


: A study is performed on the alterations in blood pressure and heart rate in 36 patients with cervical spinal cord lesions with as evolution of at least 5 years. We have found fluctuations in blood pressure and heart rate when passing from lying to standing position, before urinating and from one day to another. The incidence of autonomic dysreflexia crisis is observed in 178 patients suffering cervical spinal cord lesions of the Hospital Nacional de Paraplejicos, Toledo. This is a scarcely known entity by physicians in general and the patient's life very often depends on its diagnosis and correct treatment.


Development of adaptive control system for over its history has a great number of approaches. A crucial property of all approaches is that they have the ability to adapt the controller to accommodate changes in the process. That means that the controller maintains a required level of performance in spite of noise and fluctuation in the process. The paper focuses on model reference adaptive controllers based on Lyapunov adaptive law. The named adaptive controller in some cases has a little level of performance regarding conventional controller. In order to improve the controller performance behavioral cloning is used. In the behavioral cloning, the system learns from control traces of a human operator. The advantage of the named approach lies in simplicity with regard to the controller parameters tune up in order to reach an appropriate performance


PeerCQ is a peer-to-peer Continual Query system for information monitoring on the Internet. It uses Continual Queries (CQs) as its primitives to express information-monitoring requests. A primary objective of the PeerCQ system is to build a decentralized Internet scale distributed information-monitoring system, which is highly scalable, self-configurable and supports efficient and robust way of processing CQs. In this paper we describe the basic architecture of the PeerCQ system and focus on the mechanisms used for service partitioning and service lookup. There are two unique characteristics of PeerCQ. First, it introduces a donation based peer-aware mechanism for handling the peer heterogeneity. Second, it integrates CQ-aware and peeraware information into its service partitioning scheme, while maintaining decentralization and self-configurability. We report a set of initial experiments demonstrating the sensitiveness of our approach to peer heterogeneity and the effectiveness of our service partitioning algorithm with respect to load balancing and


This paper investigates the emergence of documentary practices on the Internet. It is potentially beneficial to researchers and practitioners in the emerging area of documentary Web work, and for museums or cultural institutions who utilize Web sites for exhibition programming and thematic presentations. The goal of the paper is to develop a methodological framework for analyzing Web documentaries based on current film theory, since to date, documentary practice has been rooted in filmmaking. A secondary goal is to describe the current state of Web documentaries as well as potential benefits and hurdles in its future development. A review of potentially relevant film theories assists in building a framework for analyzing documentary practices on the Internet. The framework proposed is based on Bill Nichol's theory of documentary film. The study includes analysis of five documentary Web sites ranging from independently to institutionally produced sites. Our aim is to contribute to further investigations of the relationship between documentary cinema and documentary practices on the Internet.


In this paper we proposed an "Inside & Outside" design method which is suitable for small and medium–sized enterprises to solve the problems that small and medium–sized enterprises usually meet with non-design and tough design. The meaning as well as the principles of this method was explained in detail, meanwhile the process to find out the production opportunities in a short time for small and medium–sized enterprises with the provided method was discussed. Finally, a case study on the improvement of a specific product was analyzed so as to be an illustrated-example.


Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was employed to develop a model of income and scale efficiency for Irish beef farms. The objective was to identify and quantify management, farm structural and intensity indicators of efficiency for over 400 representative farms over two production systems and two years. Bootstrapping techniques were employed to measure and correct efficiency scores for sampling bias. Less than 10% of the sample exhibited constant or increasing returns to scale. The remaining farms exhibited decreasing returns to scale meaning that they were larger than optimal scale. Greater income efficiency was associated with lower levels of concentrate feeding and lower overhead costs per livestock unit (LU). Fragmentation, paid labour and capital investment were significantly negatively associated with income efficiency. There was a positive relationship between market gross output per LU and income efficiency. Negative market net margins tended to be subsidised by greater off-farm income on smaller (more scale efficient) farms and by greater direct payments on larger (more scale inefficient) farms. Consequently, prospects for increasing beef output via scale expansion are negative in an external environment of declining subsidies and reduced off-farm employment in rural areas. Increased output from Irish beef farms must therefore come primarily from farm system structural changes rather than scale changes, otherwise farm income efficiency will decline.


The authors report three cases of cerebral vascular spasm following transfrontal removal of large pituitary neoplasms. One patient awakened from surgery hemiparetic, but has since recovered. A second patient developed hemiparesis with confusion on the fifth postoperative day and eventually died. The third patient developed hemiplegia on the tenth postoperative day, but recovered completely. Vascular spasm was documented angiographically in all three cases. Possible mechanisms underlying this unusual complication are discussed.


The Topological City is a design concept for a three-dimensional city in China. To accommodate future populations, cities need to be dense, diverse and ecological. Minimising the physical dimension reduces the consumption of material and energy and the destruction of ecological and agricultural landscapes. Mixed-use cities reduce the time, energy and congestion of travel. The integration of natural systems improves environmental quality and supports biodiversity. Ultimately however, the quality and functionality of contemporary urban life relies on dynamics of economic, social and intellectual interaction. The design form of a city must facilitate exchange between heterogeneous and changing programs while minimising energy and maximising habitat. High-rise construction is the dominant morphology of modern cities. Generated by an extrusion from the ground toward the sky, high-rise adds significant density but results in circulatory dead ends, structural inefficiency and habitat disconnectedness. High-rise is not interactive, energy efficient, or ecological. The Topological City proposes an alternate configuration of the urban environment. Drawing on the theory of place and connection known as 'topology', it constructs a three-dimensional network of vertical and horizontal towers, connected and activated by circulation. The Topological City is dense, diverse, ecological and interactive, suggesting a potential new direction for sustainable urban form.


The use of CCTV is prevalent in many towns and cities around the developed world. Used for their deterrent, real-time intelligence and evidence providing abilities, they serve a useful purpose, especially in social and open settings. However, for specific problem areas, or local hotspots of anti-social behaviour, a more focused solution is desirable: specific camera positions; set angles of view; picture clarity; and recording ability.
The authors approach the detection of graffiti from two directions: permanent pixel colour change in successive video frames; and assessment of the involvement of humans with an Omega (Ω) head detection process.
The pilot study, using MathLab, utilises principles of 3D volumetric video analysis, boundary and edge detection, Omega shape detection and mean shift colour contour detection to produce a successful working model for recorded video streams. The next stage of this work is to transfer the processes to on-board processors to analyse live camera feeds.


Political-institutional factors — such as the political composition of state legislatures, and interstate variations in public sector labor environments, such as union strength, and collective bargaining rights — can explain a significant proportion of interstate variation in bankruptcy risk. We find that, controlling for multiple economic variables, states with weaker unions, weaker collective bargaining rights, and fewer Democratic state legislators pay less in borrowing costs absolutely, and less in borrowing costs at similar levels of unexpected budget deficits, than do states with stronger unions and a higher proportion of Democrats.