Since 1996 a mysterious epidemic has been sweeping across the island of Tasmania, threatening the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) with extinction. The species is endemic to the island which is part of Australia and lies south of Melbourne. Being endemic to the island the devils are of particular risk of extinction. Not only has the risk of losing the world's largest extant carnivorous marsupial aroused great interest, but also the disease itself, has received much attention from the world of oncology due to its unusual trait of being a contagious cancer.


In an effort to obtain evidence for or against the existence of a humoral factor controlling hepatic regeneration, observations in over 800 rats have resulted in the following: ( a ) Plasma obtained from hepatectomized donors injected into normal rats either intravenously or intraperitoneally resulted in an increase in mitoses of similar magnitude to that observed when plasma from normal donor rats was injected. No significant increase in hepatic DNA synthesis as determined by incorporation of P32 into DNA resulted when either route of administration was employed. ( b ) Serum obtained from hepatectomized normal and cirrhotic rats and injected intravenously or intraperitoneally failed to significantly increase mitoses. DNA-phosphorus specific activity was no greater than that observed following the injection of normal serum. ( c ) With a variety of time relationships between hepatectomy, P32 injection, and sacrifice of animals, no definite evidence of increased DNA synthesis in the intact normal member of a parabiotic pair occurred following hepatectomy in the other which was either normal or cirrhotic. Likewise, no effect upon mitoses in the intact member was observed. Following sham operation in parabiotic rats an increase in mitoses was not seen.

It is concluded from these experiments that these is no unequivocal evidence to support the concept that a specific humoral factor is present in the serum or plasma of hepatectomized animals which, when injected into normal animals, influences hepatic parenchymal cell activity. Nor is there significnat evidence that hepatectomy in one member of a parabiotic pair affects liver cells of the other member in this regard. The great variation in the number of mitoses encountered in all experiments performed tends to minimize the value of this parameter as an index of hepatic parenchymal response to a specific factor.


Purpose. To assess the impact of medication use on improvements in coronary heart disease (CHD) risk among WISEWOMAN participants. Design. Pre-post analysis. Setting. WISEWOMAN projects operating at the local level in 8 states. Subjects. WISEWOMAN participants with baseline and one-year follow-up data with at least one abnormal risk factor at baseline (N = 2385; 24% of women with baseline visits). Intervention. WISEWOMAN provides low-income uninsured women with CHD risk factor screenings, lifestyle interventions, access to medications, and referral services. Measures. One-year changes in blood pressure, cholesterol, and 10-year CHD risk by medication status. Analysis. Regression analysis was used to estimate risk factor changes by medication status (newly medicated women, women medicated at baseline, or not medicated women) and quantify the percentage of improvements in risk factors attributed to medication use. Results. Participants experienced statistically significant improvements in systolic (12.6 mm Hg) and diastolic (9.7 mm Hg) blood pressure, total (25.7 mg/dl) and HDL (4.9 mg/dl) cholesterol, and 10-year CHD risk (11.6%). Medication use was responsible for 4% to 5% of the reduction in blood pressure, 32% of the reduction in total cholesterol, 3% of the increase in HDL cholesterol, and 31% of the reduction in 10-year CHD risk. Conclusions. Some of the improvements in CHD risk factors can be attributed to medication use; however, the majority of improvements are likely driven by a combination of other factors, including screenings, risk factor counseling, and lifestyle interventions.


This study compared the vegetable intake of preschool children from three European countries [Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom (UK)] and explored the parent, child, and environmental factors that predicted intake in each country. A total of 408 parents of preschoolers (Italy: N = 61, Poland: N = 124, and UK: N = 225; child mean age = 32.2 months, SD = 9.47) completed an online survey comprising a set of standardised questionnaires. For all three countries, the questionnaires included measures of children's vegetable intake (VegFFQ), child eating behaviour (CEBQ-FF), parents' mealtime goals (FMGs), and sociodemographic questions about family background and environment. In the UK and Italy, additional questionnaires were used to assess child temperament (EAS-T) and parents' feeding practices (CFPQ). The results showed that the number of child-sized portions of vegetables consumed per day varied significantly across countries; Polish children consumed the most (∼3 portions) and Italian children the least (∼1.5 portions). Between-country differences were seen in parents' goals for family mealtimes; compared to Italian parents, Polish and UK parents were more motivated to minimise mealtime stress, increase family involvement in meal preparation, and share the same foods with family members. British and Italian parents also adopted different feeding practices; parents in the UK reported more use of healthy modelling behaviours and more use of foods to support their child's emotion regulation. In terms of child factors, Italian children were reported to be more emotional and more sociable than British children. Analyses of the relationships between the parent, child, and environmental factors and children's vegetable intake revealed both similarities and differences between countries. Negative predictors of vegetable intake included child food fussiness in the UK and Poland, child temperament (especially, shyness) in Italy, and the use of food as a reward and child emotionality in the UK. Positive predictors included the parental mealtime goal of 'family involvement' in the UK. These results highlight differences in the extent to which European preschoolers achieve recommended levels of vegetable intake, and in the factors that influence whether they do. The results suggest a need to develop healthy eating interventions that are adopted to meet the specific needs of the countries in which they are implemented.


The LignoCity Initiative is one of the existing test beds within the Environmental Technology topic, a part of "Testbed Sweden" and serves the need for infrastructure to upscale processes for lignin separation, purification and modification and/or lignin-based products and applications. The initiative offers help in the upscaling phase, with the aim of shortening the time to market for ideas. The main focus is to promote new lignin applications, although different new lignin separation unit operations and processes are other possible upscaling collaboration activities. The LignoCity test bed project operations are based at the site of the RISE LignoCity Demo AB facility, formerly LignoBoost Demo AB. The main equipment comprises two parallel precipitation lines where carbon dioxide is added and tank volumes for maturation of the precipitation with the aim of improving filtration properties. There are also two parallel vacuum belt filters for dewatering of lignin and one chamber press filter for filtration, washing and dewatering. There are also different storage tanks for chemicals and tank volumes for the process operation, as well as a computerised process control system. Examples of additional equipment usually rented for different studies include a pilot scale membrane filtration unit with ceramic membranes and a pilot scale centrifuge.


Encephalomyocarditis virus (EMCV) has been found on pig farms worldwide and can cause myocarditis in young pigs and reproduction disorders in sows. So far, clinical signs of EMCV have not been reported in the Netherlands. The aim of this study was to estimate the seroprevalence of EMCV infection in Dutch sow herds. A total of 277 Dutch sow herds were randomly selected, from which 3237 serum samples were collected. These samples were tested for EMCV antibodies using the virus neutralization test (VN test). The apparent prevalence of EMCV antibodies was 9.3% in the total sow population, and the apparent herd prevalence was 58.8%. An exact determination of the prevalence of EMCV infections in the Dutch sow population was not possible because the characteristics of the VN test under field circumstances were not known. However, Dutch sow herds seem to be infected with EMCV because the distribution of positive blood samples in the tested sow population was significantly different from that expected if random false-positive reactions had occurred.


The paper presents a fast bit-error-rate (BER) test suitable for digital receivers or transceivers. The test technique makes use of an elevated BER which can be achieved by geometrical translation of the signal constellation points on the IQ plane. As the elevated BER requires much less bits (or symbols) to be measured, significant savings in the test time can be anticipated. Also a maximum sensitivity to impairments in the noise factor is obtained in this way. To develop an effective elevated-BER test for a device in mass production a careful characterization procedure must be carried out, followed by a fine tuning procedure aimed at improving the test resolution and thereby the test coverage. The technique is supported by a simple statistical model and illustrated by a simulation example of a 4QAM receiver.


This report discusses the role of Management Indicators in validating the predictive capability of the bottom-up evaluation process, which is defined by the Procedural Approach to the Evaluation of Software Development Methodologies. The bottom-up evaluation process provides a framework for determining the extent to which software engineering objectives, e.g., reliability and maintainability, are present in a software product from a design perspective of the code and supporting documentation. The bottom-up evaluation process is observed to be a predictor of the extent to which the objectives are realized in the post-developed product. Employment of the bottom-up evaluation process to determine the extent to which the objectives are present in the product is accomplished by the utilization of Design Indicators. Management Indicators are proposed as a counterpart to Design Indicators and enable one to measure the extent to which the objectives are realized in a developed product. While Design Indicators focus on design structure characteristics of the product, Management Indicators focus on the acquisitional, behavioral, and maintenance characteristics. To accomplish the validation of the predictive capability, the correlation between the values obtained by utilizing Design Indicators and those obtained by utilizing Management Indicators must be investigated. The author has chosen to study and present the software engineering objectives of reliability and maintainability as they related to a future validation effort.


The Digital Ludeme Project (DLP) aims to reconstruct and analyse over 1000 traditional strategy games using modern techniques. One of the key aspects of this project is the development of Ludii, a general game system that will be able to model and play the complete range of games required by this project. Such an undertaking will create a wide range of possibilities for new AI challenges. In this paper we describe many of the features of Ludii that can be used. This includes designing and modifying games using the Ludii game description language, creating agents capable of playing these games, and several advantages the system has over prior general game software.


Author(s): Baclawski Jr, Kenneth Paul | Advisor(s): Jenks, Peter | Abstract: This dissertation argues for the existence of a new A'-feature, discourse connected (DC), which grammatically encodes a constraint on the relation between the constituent it attaches to and discourse relations to previous sentences. Connectives like That's because and For example encode the rhetorical relations of explanation and elaboration. DC encodes these relations as well, but by A'-movement of a phrase to the left edge of a clause or noun phrase, specifically the movement of a phrase that is previously mentioned in the sentence that the current one is explaining or elaborating upon. I argue that there must be a DC-feature in the lexicon on par with other A'-features, such as wh. Given that DC encodes a discourse structural constraint, there must be a syntax--discourse structure interface.One consequence of this dissertation is descriptive: a range of phenomena in the Eastern Cham language (Austronesian: Vietnam) are found to be instances of DC-marking. These phenomena include what appear on the surface to be topicalization, optional wh-movement, partitives, and inventory forms (e.g. bread, three loaves). I argue that these phenomena in Eastern Cham must be analyzed in terms of DC, not information structure or other previously proposed analyses for comparable constructions in other languages. As a result, multi-sentence discourses that control for discourse structure should be used as diagnostics for constructions that might be licensed by DC or something similar.This dissertation adds a new A'-feature, DC, to the typology of A'-features. DC-movement shares a variety of characteristics with A'-movement more broadly. It exhibits sensitivity to syntactic islands, weak crossover, and locality effects. As with other A'-features in some cases, there is a parallelism between CP and DP: a phrase can be DC-moved to the left edge of either a clause or a noun phrase. Similarly, wh-phrases can undergo secondary movement to the left edge of the noun phrase in some languages. Additionally, this dissertation examines the position of DC among other A'-features, following recent work on the hierarchy of A'-features (Aravind 2017, 2018). Despite its apparent optionality, DC-movement is argued to be obligatory, like wh-movement. DC is also found to be independent from other features such as wh; the same phrase can be marked as both DC and wh. Unlike wh, DC can only be checked once on a respective phrase in a derivation, and the movement of multiple DC-phrases to the edge of the same clause exhibits Path Containment Effects (Pesetsky 1982), not the tucking-in pattern observed in multiple wh-movement (Richards 1997).DC is argued to provide evidence for the need for a dynamic event semantics that allows the events introduced throughout the discourse to be tracked. This dissertation proposes that the DC-feature is introduced by a DC-particle on analogy with focus particles and the Q-particle on wh-phrases (Cable 2010). The DC-particle is shown to introduce a presupposition that checks the participants of two events in a discourse: the current event and an event in a prior sentence inferred by a subordinating discourse relation (i.e. explanation or elaboration).The dissertation proceeds as follows. Chapter 1 introduces DC, along with the ongoing debate on the existence of pragmatic features in syntax. Additionally, the concept of hierarchical discourse constraints (HDCs) is introduced as a heuristic to understand that position of DC in comparison with linear information states (LISs), exemplified by information structural notions like old information topic. Chapter 2 examines the basic case of DC-movement, topicalization, and demonstrates that DC must be an \={A}-feature. In Chapter 3, wh-phrases are shown to be able to be DC-marked in Eastern Cham. An analysis is proposed in which DC-particles and Q-particles can be present in the same DP. Chapter 4 turns to DC-marking inside a noun phrase and finds a CP/DP parallelism: phrases can be DC-moved to the left edge of a noun phrase. Despite these cases involving movement inside a noun phrase, the event semantic interpretation of DC is affirmed: DC is only computed between the larger events of which the noun phrase is a part. Chapter 5 concludes. Additionally, it analyzes clitic right-dislocation in Catalan as DC-movement with minor syntactic and semantic differences from DC-movement in Eastern Cham (cf. Lopez 2009). Contrastive topic is also examined and proposed to be a second hierarchical discourse constraint, different from DC.


9100 Background: Viagenpumatucel-L (HS-110) is an allogeneic cell therapy derived from a human lung adenocarcinoma cell line incorporating multiple cancer testis antigens and transfected with a gp96-Ig fusion protein. Methods: We report interim results of cohort A (previously treated pts who had not received a checkpoint inhibitor [CPI]) and cohort B (pts who progressed after CPI treatment) in an ongoing phase 2 trial evaluating HS-110 plus nivolumab (NIVO) in advanced NSCLC pts (NCT02439450). Pts received HS-110 (1×107 cells) intradermally QW for 18 wk and NIVO Q2W until tumor progression. Stratified analyses were performed by injection site reaction (ISR), yes (+) or no (–); baseline blood tumor mutational burden (bTMB), bTMB-L (<10 mutations/ megabase [mut/Mb]) or bTMB-H (≥10 mut/Mb) by FoundationACT test; and baseline PD-L1 expression, – (<1%) or + (≥1%). Results: As shown in the Table, median progression-free survival (PFS) in cohort A (n=47) was 1.8 mo (95% CI 1.8-7.8) and median overall survival (OS) was 24.6 mo (95% CI 11.7-36.0) after a median follow-up (MFU) of 19.5 mo. We observed significantly longer PFS and OS in ISR+ pts (hazard ratio [HR] 0.43, p=0.01; HR 0.23, p<0.001) and longer OS in PD-L1+ pts (HR 0.25, p=0.02). In cohort B (n=68), median PFS was 2.8 mo (1.8-3.9) and median OS was 11.9 mo (9.7-16.3) after a MFU of 11.9 mo. We observed significantly longer OS in ISR+ pts (HR 0.48, p=0.03) and a trend toward extended OS in bTMB-L pts (HR 0.58, p=0.20). HS-110 TEAEs were reported in 21 (44.7%) pts in cohort A and 18 (26.5%) pts in cohort B. TEAEs in >5% of pts included fatigue, maculopapular rash, nausea, diarrhea, and pruritus. Few HS-110–related TEAEs led to discontinuation of treatment [cohort A, 5 (10.6%); cohort B, 3 (4.4%)], and no serious AEs were considered related to HS-110. Conclusions: HS-110 was well tolerated when administered in combination with NIVO. In previously treated pts with advanced NSCLC, we observed (1) significantly longer PFS and OS in ISR+ pts in both CPI naïve and CPI progressor cohorts; (2) significantly longer OS in PD-L1+ patients in the CPI naïve cohort; and (3) a trend of improved OS in bTMB-L pts in the CPI progressor cohort. Further clinical evaluation of HS-110 is warranted in both CPI naïve and CPI progressor NSCLC patients. Clinical trial information: NCT02439450. [Table: see text]


Alternative measures of saving are developed and compared to the traditional NIPA estimates. Various data sources and estimation methodologies all conclude that adjustments for net saving in durables, government capital, capital gains and losses, and revaluations are substantial. For example, government capital and durables adjustments raise the NIPA estimate of net national saving in 1985 from 4.7% to 8.8%. New estimates of saving, developed and measured as the change in real net worth based on data from the Federal Reserve Flow of Funds National Balance Sheets, differ substantially from the NIPA estimates. For example, in 1986 and 1987, the NIPA net national saving measure is 1.8% and 1.9%, respectively, whereas my corresponding estimates from FED data are 11.5% and 3.3%. My new estimates of net private saving from FED data average 6.5% for the period 1981-87, versus 11.3% for the 1951-80 period. Net national saving has fallen even further, from an average of 11.2% in 1951-80 to 3.2% in 1981-87. Correspondingly, real private net worth reached 13.4 trillion (in constant 1982 dollars) by 1987, but its rate of growth slowed in the period 1979-87 relative to the postwar average. Various conceptual and measurement issues are discussed. Most important are 1) the appropriate level of aggregation across households of different age and type, sectors of the economy, and types of assets, and 2) improved measures of personal income to include as much currently unrecorded income as possible.


Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) has become an attractive research topic due to growing interest in remote monitoring of older people. Development in sensor technologies and advances in wireless communications allows to remotely offer smart assistance and monitor those people at their own home, increasing their quality of life. In this context, Wireless Acoustic Sensor Networks (WASN) provide a suitable way for implementing AAL systems which can be used to infer hazardous situations via environmental sounds identification. Nevertheless, satisfying sensor solutions have not been found with the considerations of both low cost and high performance. In this paper, we report the design and implementation of a wireless acoustic sensor to be located at the edge of a WASN for recording and processing environmental sounds which can be applied to AAL systems for personal healthcare because it has the following significant advantages: low cost, small size, audio sampling and computation capabilities for audio processing. The proposed wireless acoustic sensor is able to record audio samples at least to 10 kHz sampling frequency and 12-bit resolution. Also, it is capable of doing audio signal processing without compromising the sample rate and the energy consumption by using a new microcontroller released at the last quarter of 2016. The proposed low cost wireless acoustic sensor has been verified using four randomness tests for doing statistical analysis and a classification system of the recorded sounds based on audio fingerprints.


Here we demonstrate, via a modified transfer-printing technique, that electrochemically fabricated porous silicon (PSi) distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) can serve as the basis of high-quality hybrid microcavities compatible with most forms of photoemitters. Vertical microcavities consisting of an emitter layer sandwiched between 11- and 15-period PSi DBRs were constructed. The emitter layer included a polymer doped with PbS quantum dots, as well as a heterogeneous GaAs thin film. In this structure, the PbS emission was significantly redistributed to a 2.1 nm full-width at half-maximum around 1198 nm, while the PSi/GaAs hybrid microcavity emitted at 902 nm with a sub-nanometer full-width at half-maximum and quality-factor of 1058. Modification of PSi DBRs to include a PSi cavity coupling layer enabled tuning of the total cavity optical thickness. Infiltration of the PSi with Al2O3 by atomic layer deposition globally red-shifted the emission peak of PbS quantum dots up to ∼18 nm (∼0.9 nm per cycle), whil...


Background and aims Oesophageal varices are an important complication in primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC). However, there have yet to be any studies made on treatment of oesophageal varices in PBC. We therefore studied the efficacy and related complications of endoscopic variceal ligation (EVL) and endoscopic injection sclerotherapy (EIS) as an initial treatment in primary biliary cirrhotic patients. Methods From December 1985 to March 1999, 29 biliary cirrhotic Japanese patients with portal hypertension and oesophageal varices were treated in our clinics. Eleven patients were treated with EVL and EIS, and 18 patients underwent EIS only. The liver function, renal function and respiratory function were studied before and after endoscopic treatment and any complications were also examined. Results In stages III and IV, significant differences were observed in the serum levels for total bilirubin and &ggr;‐glutamic pyruvic transaminase only in the EIS group. Significant differences were observed in the rate of appearance of pyrexia, retrosternal pain and pleural effusion between the EIS and EVL groups. Conclusion EVL significantly reduced the adverse effects associated with EIS at the initial session in primary biliary cirrhotic patients.


The study offers further documentation of the effect of capital flight on tax revenue in Nigeria. After a theoretical and empirical literature review of the subject, an Ordinary Least Square model is employed based on time series data quantifying capital flight under the hot money or balance of payment approach. It is found that a unit increase in capital flight will lead to a 0.02 or 2% decrease in tax revenue. Consequently, policy measures discouraging capital flight, like placing a limit on the repatriating percentage of local profit, would improve tax revenue in Nigeria.


We describe algorithms to obtain an approximate classical description of a $d$-dimensional quantum state when given access to a unitary (and its inverse) that prepares it. For pure states we characterize the query complexity for $\ell_q$-norm error up to logarithmic factors. As a special case, we show that it takes $\widetilde{\Theta}(d/\varepsilon)$ applications of the unitaries to obtain an $\varepsilon$-$\ell_2$-approximation of the state. For mixed states we consider a similar model, where the unitary prepares a purification of the state. In this model we give an efficient algorithm for obtaining Schatten $q$-norm estimates of a rank-$r$ mixed state, giving query upper bounds that are close to optimal. In particular, we show that a trace-norm ($q=1$) estimate can be obtained with $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(dr/\varepsilon)$ queries. This improves (assuming our stronger input model) the $\varepsilon$-dependence over the algorithm of Haah et al.\ (2017) that uses a joint measurement on $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(dr/\varepsilon^2)$ copies of the state. To our knowledge, the most sample-efficient results for pure-state tomography come from setting the rank to $1$ in generic mixed-state tomography algorithms, which can be computationally demanding. We describe sample-optimal algorithms for pure states that are easy and fast to implement. Along the way we show that an $\ell_\infty$-norm estimate of a normalized vector induces a (slightly worse) $\ell_q$-norm estimate for that vector, without losing a dimension-dependent factor in the precision. We also develop an unbiased and symmetric version of phase estimation, where the probability distribution of the estimate is centered around the true value. Finally, we give an efficient method for estimating multiple expectation values, improving over the recent result by Huggins et al.\ (2021) when the measurement operators do not fully overlap.


We report on a search for gravitational waves from coalescing compact binary systems in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds. The analysis uses data taken by two of the three LIGO interferometers during the first LIGO science run and illustrates a method of setting upper limits on inspiral event rates using interferometer data. The analysis pipeline is described with particular attention to data selection and coincidence between the two interferometers. We establish an observational upper limit of R , 1.7 3 10 2 per year per Milky Way Equivalent Galaxy ~ MWEG ! , with 90% confidence, on the coalescence rate of binary systems in which each component has a mass in the range 1–3 M ( .


A distinct group of slowly growing mycobacteria was identified on the basis of growth characteristics, biochemical and lipid profiles, and nucleic acid analyses. The isolates showed growth at 22 to 37 degrees C, yellow pigmentation, and negative tests for Tween 80 hydrolysis, nicotinic acid, nitrate reductase, and urease; tests for arylsulfatase, pyrazinamidase, and heat-stable catalase were variable. Analysis of cellular fatty acids by gas-liquid chromatography and mycolic acids by thin-layer chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography indicated a distinctive pattern which was unlike those of other species. Determination of the 16S rRNA gene sequence showed a unique sequence closely related to Mycobacterium simiae and M. genavense. On the basis of DNA homology studies, we suggest that these organisms are representatives of a novel species, for which the name M. lentiflavum sp. nov. is proposed.


Digitally networked platforms are transforming interpersonal relations and the occupation of urban space, including how home and the domestic are understood and enacted. Despite a rhetoric of openness, neutrality and sharing, the penetration of digital platforms into the domain of architecture is resulting in increased individualization and financialization—extending the managerial logic of late capitalism deeper into the domestic sphere. On one hand, the networks of this platform capitalism—from Uber to Airbnb and beyond—allow a distributed, fluid mode of exchange, fostering forms of flux and openness that exceed the comparatively-static models that preceded them. By altering patterns of interaction, consumption, travel, and more, digital sharing platforms are re-shaping the way private and public spaces are conceived and used for work, leisure, and living. On the other hand, this fluidity is too often accompanied by a dissolution of stability and mutual obligation, leading to precarious forms of life. In the process, the centralized model of domesticity ebbs in favour of a decentralization of domestic space—pushing domesticity beyond the bounds of the individual domicile into collective and urban space. The nine theses of this paper comprise a call for a critical re-evaluation of the trajectories of distributed domesticity—examining both historic experiments and contemporary digitally-networked permutations. The theses are a foray into the realm of platform domesticity: excavating new trajectories from both platform and domestic to inform future models of 'home.' To do so, the paper traces three independent but overlapping trajectories in the decentralization of domestic space: the austere dwelling, the collective dwelling, and the networked dwelling. Emerging forms of domesticity entangle aspects of the austere, collective, and networked in novel ways—and do so with a variety of attitudes to technology, control, politics, and design. In response, the paper argues that platform domesticity requires a renewed conception of conviviality and agency: a right to the platform.


This report documents the work carried out during the spring semester 2008. The project
 deals with the application of a multi agent system (MAS) for service restoration in
 distribution power systems. In this project, the part of the service restoration process
 which deals with restoring power to consumers in case of an outage, is considered.
 A restoration strategy based on agent technology has been formulated. This strategy
 proposes a method for prioritizing certain consumers as part of the restoration process.
 A multi agent system has been developed in JADE, a software framework specifically
 suited for the development of agent software systems. A simple distribution network has
 been used as basis for simulating the operation of the MAS. In order to verify the capability
 of the MAS software, it has been tested with two kinds of fault scenarios occurring
 in the distribution network.
 During the project it has also been considered how to connect a MAS developed in
 JADE with a model of a physical network. The motivation for this has been the potential
 for simulating the interaction between the MAS in JADE and a realistic physical
 model of a distribution network. Matlab Simulink has been used to build a model of a
 physical network and a communication between Matlab and JADE has been established.
 The results of this project have been a demonstration of a multi agent system as an approach
 to power service restoration. The MAS has been seen to perform successfully to
 different fault scenarios. Thus, it has been demonstrated how FIPA protocols and ontologies
 can be utilized in a multi agent system to add intelligence to the service restoration
 process.


The purpose of this study was to explore how blended learning in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms was perceived by language learners and how this understanding helped inform the quality of blended learning for language education, particularly at a tertiary level. This study was conducted with 215 first-year students from six major universities in Thailand which are active in blended language learning programs. The quantitative and qualitative data obtained from a questionnaire were integrated and analysed. Overall, the study showed mixed results for language learners' perceptions. Although blended learning was positively perceived as useful for their English language development, some learners in this study were of the view that the environment was not as effective as expected. The limitations and problems of blended learning in language programs were highlighted: the need for learner training, prompt support, authentic tasks, and the teachers' competence in blended learning implementation. The study also concluded with both practical and pedagogical implications for language programs which aim to continue implementing blended language learning and improving the quality and effectiveness of this mixed environment.


The next generations of both biological engineering and computer engineering demand that control be exerted at the molecular level. Creating, characterizing and controlling synthetic biological systems may provide us with the ability to build cells that are capable of a plethora of activities, from computation to synthesizing nanostructures. To develop these systems, we must have a set of tools not only for synthesizing systems, but also designing and simulating them. The BioJADE project provides a comprehensive, extensible design and simulation platform for synthetic biology. BioJADE is a graphical design tool built in Java, utilizing a database back end, and supports a range of simulations using an XML communication protocol. BioJADE currently supports a library of over 100 parts with which it can compile designs into actual DNA, and then generate synthesis instructions to build the physical parts. The BioJADE project contributes several tools to Synthetic Biology. BioJADE in itself is a powerful tool for synthetic biology designers. Additionally, we developed and now make use of a centralized BioBricks repository, which enables the sharing of BioBrick components between researchers, and vastly reduces the barriers to entry for aspiring Synthetic Biologists. Thesis Supervisor: Thomas F. Knight Jr Title: Senior Research Scientist


The focus of this paper is the London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony. More specifically, this article examines the pre-Games views of a sample of three hundred and one British residents (male=57.8%, female=42.2%; age range: 18-65 years) on imagined themes and content of the Opening Ceremony. In addition, the paper discusses the perceptions of cultural identity i.e. 'Britishness' of the surveyed population. The link between the imagined and actual representation of cultural elements is analysed to investigate the importance of local residents' perspectives in the planning of the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games. The paper also argues residents' perceptions of contemporary culture in Britain as "an amalgamation of British and ethnic minority cultures" and its impact on shaping the meaning of 'Britishness'. The findings of this study propose important managerial implications for planning of Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies while they may also be useful in planning of national events and ceremonies. Cultural performances which highlight the mainstay feature of a country help develop a realistic and accurate national identity to international audiences which potentially increase tourism visits.


As a matter of public memory, America should not forget the history of slavery, those involved, or its consequences. Yet, considerable social and political pressures suppress and restrain our public remembrance and foster our neglect of this fundamental feature of American history and identity. The failure to recognize the essential role of slavery in the construction and development of American cities, states, and of the nation as whole reflects a common dismissal of the significance of the contributions those enslaved Americans made. While historians, economists, and a small body of specialists continue to examine slavery, its participants, and its consequences, as a matter of public history, slavery is of marginal importance at best. Apart from the work of specialists, public discussions are far too rare. Most primary and secondary educational institutions have an incredibly thin coverage of the subject, and college students need not consider it at all outside of a very small number of disciplines. Collective memory studies indicate that individuals remember events as groups. This speaks to the way that black and white Americans have different collective memories of slavery, and it will discuss why these differ. Because of these differences in our memories, America needs to have a total recall of slavery. This can be accomplished through the development of a shared public memory of slavery and of the blacks who were enslaved. A robust public examination of slavery would help to correct this void in America's memory. This Article examines the relationship between public memory, rectificatory justice, and the discourse on reparations. It details a proposal that will develop a collective memory about slavery that establishes a common history of slavery in America. The proposal strives to correct the fractured narrative and ignorance that predominates our shared understandings of slavery as an institution, the contributions and lives of those it affected, and its significance to our national identity. Specifically, this Article promotes the creation, development, and support of monuments, memorials, museums, research grants, and educational programs to commemorate, honor, recognize, and humanize the roughly twenty generations of enslaved Africans and their contributions to the American society. These efforts will reframe our national identity, restore the honor of millions of forgotten forebears, and set the correct framework for all future generations of Americans. Although the individuals and their immediate families who suffered the offense have all died, the memory of the grievous indignities inflicted upon them remains and calls out for correction. To restore the honor and the dignity denied them in life, this Article contends that the commemoration, examination, and celebration of their lives and contributions represents a necessary, if not sufficient, means of redress and reparation for the federal government's role in creating and maintaining America's racialized system of slavery.


In an age of information technologies, the preparation of teachers includes a wide variety of technological skills and knowledge. The appropriate process for doing so is a topic of spirited discussion among institutions of teacher education. Beginning with a framework of current national standards, this article describes one college's experiences with designing and implementing a required "technology strand" for teachers. Topics addressed include rationale, initial implementation, division of content, feedback from faculty and students, and effects on instruction. Based on their experiences with this project, the authors ultimately recommend an approach in which basic technological knowledge and skills are addressed in an introductory experience required of all teachers, and more advanced topics such as curricular integration are addressed as an integral part of other teacher education coursework.


Landscapes and ecosystems are complex systems with many feedback mechanisms act- ing between the various abiotic and biotic components. The knowledge about these interacting processes is mainly derived from mature ecosystems. The initial development of ecosystem complexity may involve state transitions following catastrophic shifts, disturbances, or transgression of thresholds. We propose a conceptual framework of feedback processes in early states of ecosystem development affected by spatiotemporal environ mental drivers. To test this concept, we used 10-year time series of hydrological, biologi- cal, geomorphological, and soil data from the constructed catchment Chicken Creek." The 6ha site was left to unrestricted development since 2005 and was intensively moni- tored. The data showed a very rapid development of the site with an increasing complexity and heterogeneity. In the first years, stochastic signals like the initial substrate conditions and external drivers like extreme weather events were the most important factors resulting in abiotic/abiotic feedback mechanisms shaping the morphology of the site and creating site diversity. Initial abiotic feedback mechanisms between water and substrate were soon followed by abiotic/biotic feedbacks between biological soil crusts, invading vegetation, geomorphology, and hydrology resulting in state transitions of catchment functioning.


This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of dietary prebiotic, probiotic, and synbiotic products for controlling infection in laying hens and broiler chickens challenged with Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis (SE). These products could replace the use of antibiotics, which would avoid the problem of hastening antimicrobial resistance for both types of birds. Salmonella-free 1-day-old (1-d-old) layers chicks and broilers chicks were inoculated with SE resistant to nalidixic acid and spectinomycin (SE Nal r Spec r ) and divided into four groups: 1) control (without feed additives); 2) probiotic (Bacillus subtilis, Lactobacillus acidophilus, L. casei, Enterococcus faecium, Bifidobacterium longum); 3) prebiotic (inulin, fructooligosaccharide, mannanoligosaccharide, and oligosaccharide); and 4) synbiotic (85% of the probiotic+15% of the prebiotic additives). The presence of SE Nal r Spec r in cloacal swabs was analyzed at 7, 14, and 21 days post-infection (dpi) in laying hens and broilers. The number of SE Nal r Spec r per gram of cecal contents was determined at 7, 14, and 21 dpi in laying hens and at 2, 5, 7, 14, and 21 dpi in broilers. The results showed that the prebiotic additive reduced the occurrence of SE in cloacal swabs from laying hens but not from broilers. In the groups of laying hens and broilers that received prebiotics, the isolation and counts of SE Nal r Spec r were lower during the first weekpost-infection but not throughout the experiment. The probiotic and synbiotic additives did not influence the SE infection in laying hens and broilers; in contrast prebiotics had a protective effect during the first


Sex-linked mutations to recessive female sterility were induced, sorted for egg-laying, mapped within broad regions and grouped by complementation tests into cistrons. The mutations have also been partially characterized for their temperature sensitivity and pleiotropic effects. Altogether 59 cistrons have been identified, including five ellelic with previously known loci: cin, fs(1)N, mk, sn, and r. All of the genes make maternal contributions to developing embryos. In some instances mutant defects are recognized in the egg envelopes; in the remainder the defects are presumably in the egg cytoplasm. For mutations in twenty-two genes, including cin, mk, and r alleles, the lethality of the maternal effect is reversed and the embryo is "rescued" by the action of a wild-type, paternal allele. The mutant strains are potentially important material for the study of developing egg envelopes and for furthering the analysis of causation in embryogenesis and its origins in oogenesis.


Our goal is to devise a computer comprising large numbers of cooperating processors (LSI). In doing so we reject the sequential and memory cell semantics of the von Neumann model, and instead adopt the asynchronous and functional semantics of dataflow. We briefly describe the high-level dataflow programming language Id, as well as an initial design for a dataflow machine and the results of detailed deterministic simulation experiments on a part of that machine. For example, we show that a dataflow machine can automatically unfold the nested loops of n X n matrix multiply to reduce its time complexity from 0(n3) to 0(n) so long as sufficient processors and communication capacity is available. Similarly, quicksort executes with average 0(n) time demanding 0(n) processors. Also discussed are the use of processor and communication time complexity analysis and "flow analysis," as aids in understanding the behavior of the machine.


Geological fluids are a central theme linking the petrography and chemistry of all rock types, deformation processes on the microscopic to the continental scale, and the concentration of economic resources. The fundamental importance of fluid migration and evolution to rock composition and structure is reflected in a growing interest in fluid processes, including a series of successful conferences on water-rock interaction. he papers in this volume are intended to give a review of the whole spectrum of current geofluids research. The papers include international case studies and are written by leading experts in the field. First overview of fluids research Examples of commercial applications of fluids research Reviews research for the non-specialist Up-to-date extensive bibliographies Promotes methodological transfer between oil and minerals industries Explains theory behind and consequences of fluid flow processes


Word embeddings have been shown to be useful across state-of-the-art systems in many natural language processing tasks, ranging from question answering systems to dependency parsing. (Herbelot and Vecchi, 2015) explored word embeddings and their utility for modeling language semantics. In particular, they presented an approach to automatically map a standard distributional semantic space onto a set-theoretic model using partial least squares regression. We show in this paper that a simple baseline achieves a +51% relative improvement compared to their model on one of the two datasets they used, and yields competitive results on the second dataset.


Although there are increasing and significant ties between China and Portuguese-speaking countries, there is not much parallel corpora in the Chinese-Portuguese language pair. Both languages are very populous, with 1.2 billion native Chinese speakers and 279 million native Portuguese speakers, the language pair, however, could be considered as low-resource in terms of available parallel corpora. In this paper, we describe our methods to curate Chinese-Portuguese parallel corpora and evaluate their quality. We extracted bilingual data from Macao government websites and proposed a hierarchical strategy to build a large parallel corpus. Experiments are conducted on existing and our corpora using both Phrased-Based Machine Translation (PBMT) and the state-of-the-art Neural Machine Translation (NMT) models. The results of this work can be used as a benchmark for future Chinese-Portuguese MT systems. The approach we used in this paper also shows a good example on how to boost performance of MT systems for low-resource language pairs.


As the perfect complement to the highly acclaimed Environmental Organic Chemistry, this companion volume enriches the textbook with illustrative examples, applications, practical problems, and case studies. Expanded to include treatment of groundwater systems, rivers, and porous media, this work may also serve as a valuable stand-alone text/reference.Keyed to related topics in Environmental Organic Chemistry, the support material provided in this book includes:* Challenging problem sets* Illustrative calculations that clarify the theoretical discussions in the text* Case studies dealing with the integrative modeling of organic compounds in various aquatic systems* Coverage of the basic concepts of modeling* A review of current literature* Meticulous cross-referencing to the equations, tables, and figures of Environmental Organic ChemistryEnvironmental Organic Chemistry: Illustrative Examples, Problems, and Case Studies brings together theory and practice, while developing problem-solving skills and the critical use of sophisticated models-a valuable supplement to an outstanding text.


This presentation covers fiscal operations; examples of creative indicators such as structural balance and the new accounting framework in Chile, the public debt in Brazil and traditional balance and public private partnerships in Mexico. Also covered are indicators of "quality" of public spending, and also conclusions and recommendations. It was presented in the 6th Hemispheric Meeting for the Public Management and Transparency Network of the Regional Policy Dialogue celebrated on May 23rd and 24th, 2005.


Verification and Validation (V&V) is currently performed during application development for many systems, especially safety-critical and mission-critical systems. However, the V&V process has been limited to single system development. This dissertation describes the extension of V&V from an individual application system to a product line of systems that are developed within an architecture-based software engineering environment.
In traditional V&V, the system provides the context under which the software will be evaluated, and V&V activities occur during all phases of the system development lifecycle. The transition to a product line approach to development removes the individual system as the context for evaluation, and introduces activities that are not directly related to a specific system. This dissertation presents an approach to V&V of software product lines that uses the domain model and the domain architecture as the context for evaluation, and enables V&V to be performed throughout the modified lifecycle introduced by domain engineering.
This dissertation presents three advances that assist in the adaptation of V&V from single application systems to a product line of systems. The first is a framework for performing V&V that includes the activities of traditional application-level V&V, and extends these activities into domain engineering and into the transition between domain engineering and application engineering. The second is a detailed method to extend the crucial V&V activity of criticality analysis from single system development to a product line of systems. The third advance is an approach to enable formal reasoning, which is needed for high assurance systems, on systems that are based on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products.


The increasingly precarious nature of North America's labour market has created challenges for young adults in securing and maintaining adequate employment. In a study to better understand these barriers one to one interviews and focus groups were conducted with 36 young adults (between ages 18 and 29) in one neighborhood in Toronto, Canada. Findings show that varying forms of discrimination experienced and perceived by respondents when searching out employment, along with expectations of employers within current labour markets, act as key barriers impacting successful labour market attachment. The findings suggest that these challenges experienced by young people in the labour market can have a lasting psychosocial impact on young people when attaching to the labour market. There is a present need to address both negative socio-cultural perceptions of young adults (and those held by young adults) and the precarious aspects of the labour market that support and maintain social inequality through more substantive policy, regulatory and program based initiatives.


Facilitating sustained dialogic engagement in writing groups to support postgraduates' research-based writing can be challenging. So far there is little research on dialogic strategies in such groups. Studies of tutor-student talk around texts highlight that different dialogic strategies can invite or exclude contributions. This article investigates how writing group participants negotiate different perspectives on academic writing practices in a multidisciplinary writing group. The study analyses six recorded meetings of multilingual master's students writing in English at a Swedish university. It identifies dialogue patterns with diverging or converging perspectives, where students refer to a range of universal or discipline-specific norms. Reference to a generic yet unspecific norm creates a space for sharing diverging perspectives while reflecting on ones' own writing. Applying perceived universal norms to others' texts can close down dialogue. Awareness of dialogue patterns can help facilitators to decide when to step back and when to step in as moderators.


In Reply: We thank Dr. Kehlet for his comments on our article.1 His letter raises important issues which we broadly agree with. The implementation of fast-track or "enhanced recovery" programs and the increasing use of minimally invasive surgical approaches are two examples of how surgical practice has changed in recent years, at least in some parts of the world. These may have impact on the risk of patient morbidity and mortality, particularly in the short term. Furthermore, improvements in the medical management of some chronic illnesses (e.g., ischemic heart disease) mean that the implications of such illnesses for patient health and perioperative prognostication are quite different today, compared with 20 yr ago when some of the risk-stratification tools featured in our systematic review were first developed and validated. Thus, we agree that an approach to risk stratification is warranted which is responsive to such changes in practice and will also enable specialty-specific risks to be taken into consideration. The use of technology (such as mobile apps) and large datasets ("big data") present opportunities to refine existing risk-stratification methodology for the modern era, leading to the development, validation, and regular reevaluation and recalibration of risk-prediction tools. However, the challenge of implementing the collection of such large datasets in a systematic manner remains significant in many Predicting Postoperative Morbidity: In What Procedures and What Patients?


This thesis describes work in the area of high temperature superconductors. Attempts have been made for the synthesis of doped and composites of YBCO superconductors to study the electrical and magnetic properties.The general objective of this work is to look at the effect of inhomogeneities and secondary phases on Superconducting order parameter fluctuation(SCOPF)in doped and composite superconductors.The influence of inhomogeneities on the microstructural and electrical properties is investigated for the simultaneous incorporation of Ga3+ and Zn2+ to the Cu-site of YBa2Cu3O7-δ.The evolution of anisotropy has also been analyzed for the effect of both hole doping to the Y- site through Ca,and CuO-chain electronic state anisotropy by Zn doping to the Cu-site through SCOPF analysis.Conductivity fluctuation analysis performed around Tc, provides evidence that dimensionality of fluctuations depends on the doping level in the mean field regimes.The inclusion of sub-μ sized BZO particles and nano-BaTiO3 to the YBCO matrix bring about structural as well as dimensional fluctuation changes in the electrical transport properties.The characteristic scaling of the curves obtained from excess conductivity (Δσ) as a function of reduced temperature, e for YBCO + x BaZrO3 composites (x = 0, 1, 2.5, 5 and 10 wt.%) in 8 T magnetic field showed a crossover between two to three-dimensional (TLD) behaviors in the mean-field region but the critical region is not witnessed due to smearing out of data points in high magnetic field like 8 T. Study of magneto-resistance and vortex dynamics in YBCO superconductors has been done to get
requisite information for properties such as critical current density, quantized flux trapping and activation energy. The activation energy and critical current density associated with magnetic field gives the vital inferences on inter and intra-granular behaviour. The resistive broadening in the tailing region due to application of magnetic field has been explained on the Ambegaokar–Halperin (AH) phase-slip theory. When magnetic field is applied to type-II superconductors magnetic flux can penetrate in the form of Abrikosov vortices flux lines, each carrying a quantum of magnetic flux Ф0 0 = h / 2e . As density of flux lines increases due to application of magnetic field these vortices form flux line lattice (FLL) due to interaction. In order to have a detail understanding of flux pinning mechanism, critical current density studies have also been carried out in YBCO + x BaZrO3 (BZO) composites. The flux pinning effect of submicron BZO particles in the composites enhances the current density Jc from 8 x 104 Acm-2 for pristine YBCO to 2 x 105 A-cm-2 for YBCO + 5 wt % BZO composite samples in field varying from 1–16 T at a temperature of 40 K.


The design of a high-speed IC random number source macro-cell, suitable for integration in a smart card microcontroller, is presented. The oscillator sampling technique is exploited and a jittered oscillator which features an amplified thermal noise source has been designed in order to increase the output throughput and the statistical quality of the generated bit sequences. The oscillator feedback loop acts as an offset compensation for the noise amplifier, thus solving one of the major issues in this kind of circuit. A numerical model for the proposed system has been developed which allows us to carry out an analytical expression for the transition probability between successive bits in the output stream. A prototype chip has been fabricated in a standard digital 0.18 /spl mu/m n-well CMOS process which features a 10 Mbps throughput and fulfills the NIST FIPS and correlation-based tests for randomness. The macro-cell area, excluding pads, is 0.0016 mm/sup 2/ (184 /spl mu/m /spl times/ 86 /spl mu/m) and a 2.3 mW power consumption has been measured.


The use of game-design elements – a phenomenon known as 'gamification' – features prominently within on-going processes of innovation of governance. According to the research and advisory firm Gartner, 2,000 of the top public organizations worldwide have at least one gamified application and/or process in place. Examples of gamification in public governance include "Run that town" (ideated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to raise citizens' awareness of the national census), the "Red Balloon Challenge" (initiated by the United States' Defence Advanced Research Project Agency to test systems for improving cooperation among soldiers, experts and diplomatic officers overseas), and "Manor Labs" (a web platform that awarded "Innobucks", a type of virtual commodity, to residents of the City of Manor, in Texas, for proposing ideas related with urban development).
The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to determine who is actually participating in public policy processes via gamification; second, to weigh the impact that the public(s) engaged by gamification has on democratic governance; third, to assess the societal environment within which gamification might flourish or establish plausibly. The paper is structured in four sections. The first section of the paper sets off by briefly introducing and discussing the decreased interest in political and civic life in Western democracies. It then describes the use of gamified strategies from public administrations as an attempt to foster civic engagement. The second section of the paper attempts to classify and describe the three typologies of citizens that are (re-)activated by gamified public policies: self-conscious public ('policy-entrepreneurs'), citizens who use the gamified mechanisms to leverage policy-making in their favour ('citizen-lobbyists'), and 'citizensactivists' – i.e. socially engaged citizens advocating towards public decision makers. The third section of the paper analyses the potential impact that public(s) participating in gamified policymaking have on democratic governance. This impact is assessed through three conceptual tools: 'prosumerism' (prosumers of public policies contribute to the "creation" of policies, the same policies which effects will affect their individual spheres), 'collective intelligence' (the one that develops from the aggregation of a large groups' preferences), and network theory (i.e. networks of cooperation, of collaboration, and of innovation). The fourth section of this paper briefly examines the societal environments that may offer the best opportunity to establish gamification as a practice in policy-making. The paper argues that public regulators experimenting with gamification should nurture diversified audiences, or 'mini publics'. At the same time, public regulators should be prepared to face three challenges brought by gamified governance, namely: the dominance of elites, increased costs and the public perception.


The controller for an intelligent mobile autonomous system (IMAS), equipped with vision and low-level sensors to cope with unknown obstacles, is modeled as a hierarchy of decision-making for planning and control. One of the levels (pilot) deals with a distorted 'windshield' view of the world and provides the actuator controller with real-time decisions. This level of IMAS controller is treated as a linguistic controller with fuzzy variables that assume values from possible intervals. The decision-making process at this level of control are presented as a production system with a fuzzy database. The rules in the production system are derived from an analytical system model for minimum-time control. The choice of optimal motion execution commands is performed using fuzzy set operators. Also included is a temporal decision-making mechanism (reporter), which recognizes the persisting conflicts between successive levels of the hierarchy by observing the motion trajectory. >


Within the context of agricultural production, vinification has peculiar characteristics due to the sort of "sacredness" of wine and its aging process, which takes place in dedicated spaces. Starting from the end of the 20th century, the figure of the architect has been increasingly involved in the design of the wine-making buildings. Whatever the reason driving many companies in this direction, this has had global resonance and even affected the Alps: among the Alpine countries, this phenomenon has been particularly prevalent in Italy and especially in South Tyrol, a territory where contemporary architecture has been gradually emerging and where architectural competitions are more common, contributing to improving the quality of the projects.
The region has put local architects at the center: they have actively participated in this intense work on wine cellars, albeit without denying the pre-existing buildings; thus, they preserved the original production volumes and mainly intervened with extensions. However, an already well-established tourism sector has reduced the depth of this process – which has taken place rapidly and in a geographically limited area – as interventions have often focused on attracting the attention of tourists. In many cases, this approach has led to an excess of shapes, technologies, decorations and colors, creating something that resembles a sort of wine theme park. However, there are some exceptions to this phenomenon that are worth discussing.


In industrial iron ore sintering, the raw material is heated in a reducing atmosphere and cooled in an oxidizing atmosphere. In order to study the characteristics of mineral formation under different regimes of heating and cooling in industrial sintering, small tablet specimens made from powdered materials were sintered in a tube furnace under controlled gas atmospheres. The results obtained are summarized as follows.In the heating stage acicular calcium ferrite can be produced from the reaction of hematite and the flux below 1 180°C. With an increase of temperature, the calcium ferrite crystal size increases and at higher temperature the calcium ferrite transforms to magnetite and silicate melt. During the cooling stage, the magnetite tends to react with the silicate melt and oxygen to generate calcium ferrite at a medium oxygen partial pressure (around 1×10-2 atm). Reoxidized hematite is formed from magnetite at a higher oxygen potential (e.g., 5×10-2 atm). The magnetite (produced in the heating stage) is preserved at a low oxygen potential. Acicular calcium ferrite may also be generated from magnetite ore at high oxygen potential (e.g., PO2>5×10-3 atom) during the heating stage of sintering.Calcium ferrite produced from the reaction of hematite and the flux in heating stage is a form of calcium diferrite (CaO·2Fe2O3) with some substitution of Si and Al. The composition of calcium ferrite generated from magnetite depends on the amounts of SiO2 and CaO from silicate melt reacting with magnetite. The basicity (mole ratio of CaO/SiO2) of silicate melt consumed in the reaction is around 2.


BACKGROUND Beside botulinum-toxin injections and hyaluronic acid fillers, thread lifts have established themselves as the third column of minimally invasive facial rejuvenation. Most commonly, barbed threads for this approach are made out of polydioxanone, a material known for decades from application in resorbable sutures. The clinical efficacy and the putative material safety of polydioxanone have fueled the popularity of thread lifts. METHODS The present study highlights significant variation among six commercially available threads in microstructure, tensile strength, elasticity, anchoring capacity in human tissue, and biocompatibility. RESULTS Despite their license to be marketed and sold in the European Union, some products performed significantly worse than others on material testing, and even displayed cytotoxic characteristics. CONCLUSION The results of this study are highly relevant for clinicians and may be linked to various typical side effects of polydioxanone threads for facial rejuvenation.


Background: Androgenetic Alopecia (AGA) is a nonscarring alopecia that affects both men and women. It is characterized by a progressive miniaturization of hair follicles with a characteristic pattern distribution in genetically predisposed men and women. The currently available treatments for AGA are sometimes perceived as having limited effectiveness, therefore, Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has been postulated as a new therapy for AGA. Objective: To assess the efficacy of PRP on the evolution of AGA, between 6 months of treatment and baseline. Methods: This was a prospective, randomized, placebo controlled, double-blind, half-head study in male and female patients with AGA. The patient selection was performed in two different phases, according to presence or absence of medication for AGA. Group A included patients without previous medication for AGA and Group B included patients under medication for AGA (minoxidil or finasteride). All patients received a total of 3 treatments of PRP on one half-head and saline solution in the other half-head, with an interval of 1 month from each other. Injected areas comprised 4 circular areas marked with a dot tattoo. The follow-up visit was made at 6 months. Results: In Group A: administration of PRP alone attended a statistically significant improvement of mean hair density, mean terminal hair density, mean anagen hairs and telogen hairs, when compared with baseline, at 6 months. A statistically significantly correlation between demographic data and trichoscan analysis was found with two parameters: mean total hair density and mean anagen hairs. Regarding Group B: administration of PRP associated with ongoing medication is effective on the evolution of AGA. Both minoxidil or finasteride associated with PRP improved hair regrowth, although PRP in combination with minoxidil showed a greater improvement than PRP with finasteride, at six months. Limitations: The two major limitations of this study relate to the sample size and duration of follow-up. Conclusion: Administration of autologous PRP had a positive effect on male and female pattern hair loss without major side-effects.


This paper summarizes the main results from the Speaker Verification (SV) research pursued so far in the CAVE project. Different state-of-the art SV algorithms were implemented in a common HMM framework and compared on two databases : YOHO (office environment speech) and SESP (telephone speech). This paper is concerned with the different design issues for LR-HMM-based SV algorithms which emerged from our investigations and which led to our current SV system, which delivers Equal Error Rates below 0.5 % on a very realistic telephone speech database.


In this paper we propose a new approach for disocclusion removal in depth image-based rendering (DIBR) for 3D-TV. The new approach, Hierarchical Hole-Filling (HHF), eliminates the need for any preprocessing of the depth map. HHF uses a pyramid like approach to estimate the hole pixels from lower resolution estimates of the 3D wrapped image. The lower resolution estimates involves a pseudo zero canceling plus Gaussian filtering of the wrapped image. Then starting backwards from the lowest resolution hole-free estimate in the pyramid, we interpolate and use the pixel values to fill in the hole in the higher up resolution image. The procedure is repeated until the estimated image is hole-free. Experimental results show that HHF yields virtual images that are free of any geometric distortions, which is not the case in other algorithms that preprocess the depth map. Experiments has also shown that unlike previous DIBR techniques, HHF is not sensitive to depth maps with high percentage of bad matching pixels.


Emerging methods for participatory algorithm design have proposed collecting and aggregating individual stakeholder preferences to create algorithmic systems that account for those stakeholders' values. Using algorithmic student assignment as a case study, we argue that optimizing for individual preference satisfaction in the distribution of limited resources may actually inhibit progress towards social and distributive justice. Individual preferences can be a useful signal but should be expanded to support more expressive and inclusive forms of democratic participation.


Viva Voce is a website platform that allows social science researchers to set up five minute podcasts about their research. Gemma Sou argues podcasts are an ideal medium for early career researchers as social media tend to mirror the academic environment, with CV-like publication lists and stratified networks. By literally giving researchers a voice, findings can be brought to life and a more level playing field for researchers can be established.


Kobresia pastures in the eastern Tibetan highlands occupy 450000 km2 and form the world's largest pastoral alpine ecosystem. The main constituent is an endemic dwarf sedge, Kobresia pygmaea, which forms a lawn with a durable turf cover anchored by a felty root mat, and occurs from 3000 m to nearly 6000 m a.s.l. The existence and functioning of this unique ecosystem and its turf cover have not yet been explained against a backdrop of natural and anthropogenic factors, and thus its origin, drivers, vulnerability or resilience remain largely unknown. Here we present a review on ecosystem diversity, reproduction and ecology of the key species, pasture health, cycles of carbon (C), water and nutrients, and on the paleo-environment. The methods employed include molecular analysis, grazing exclusion, measurements with micro-lysimeters and gas exchange chambers, 13C and 15N labelling, eddy-covariance flux measurements, remote sensing and atmospheric modelling. The following combination of traits makes Kobresia pygmaea resilient and highly competitive: dwarf habit, predominantly below-ground allocation of photo assimilates, mixed reproduction strategy with both seed production and clonal growth, and high genetic diversity. Growth of Kobresia pastures is co-limited by low rainfall during the short growing season and livestock-mediated nutrient withdrawal. Overstocking has caused pasture degradation and soil deterioration, yet the extent remains debated. In addition, we newly describe natural autocyclic processes of turf erosion initiated through polygonal cracking of the turf cover, and accelerated by soil-dwelling endemic small mammals. The major consequences of the deterioration of the vegetation cover and its turf include: (1) the release of large amounts of C and nutrients and (2) earlier diurnal formation of clouds resulting in (3) decreased surface temperatures with (4) likely consequences for atmospheric circulation on large regional and, possibly global, scales. Paleo-environmental reconstruction, in conjunction with grazing experiments, suggests that the present grazing lawns of Kobresia pygmaea are synanthropic and may have existed since the onset of pastoralism. The traditional migratory rangeland management was sustainable over millennia and possibly still offers the best strategy to conserve, and possibly increase, the C stocks in the Kobresia turf, as well as its importance for climate regulation.


Flooding situation in river is a complex phenomenon and affects the livelihood and economic condition of the region. The modelling of such flow is primary importance for a river engineers and scientists working in this field. Water surface prediction is an important task in flood risk management. As a result of topography changes along the open channels, designing the converging compound channel is an essential. Fluvial flows are strongly influenced by geometry complexity and large overall uncertainty on every single measurable property, such as velocity distribution on different sectional parameters like width ratio, aspect ratio and hydraulic parameter such as relative depth. The geometry selected for this study is that of a non-prismatic compound channel having converging flood plain. For the research work the parameters, the water depth, incoming discharge of the main channel and floodplains were varied. This total topic represents a practical method to predict lateral depth-averaged velocity distribution in a non-prismatic converging compound channel. Then the numerical method is applied to calculate water surface elevation in a non-prismatic compound channel configurations, the results of calculations show good agreement with the experimental data. As numerical hydraulic models can significantly reduce costs associated with the experimental models, an effort has been made through the present investigation to determine the different flow characteristics of a converging compound channel such as velocity distribution, depth averaged velocity distribution, boundary shear etc. In this Thesis a complete three-dimensional and two phase CFD model for flow distribution in a converging compound channel is investigated. The models using ANSYS – FLUENT, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code, are found to give satisfactory results when compared to the newly conducted experimental data under controlled system


IntroductionAccording to her congressional testimony, when Jamie Leigh Jones arrived in Baghdad to work for Halliburton, she was housed in a barracks with four hundred male coworkers1 and was almost immediately sexually harassed.2 When she complained to managers, she was told to "go to the spa."3 The very next evening, she was "drugged, beaten, and gang-raped by several [Halliburton] employees."4 After the incident, Halliburton kept her in a container under armed guard.5 When she finally returned to the United States, Jones was initially denied her day in court because her employment contract included an arbitration clause.6 Although the jury found against Ms. Jones in her civil trial,7 her story and a recent Supreme Court decision8 have cast the public spotlight on arbitration, and arbitration is under siege.9 At the center of the controversy is a fundamental question that has divided scholars for the past decade: Should arbitration clauses in employment and consumer contracts be enforced despite the risk of unequal bargaining?10Scholars have mostly divided into two camps on this complicated question.11 In one camp, supporters of binding arbitration argue that the problem of unfair bargaining is overstated, and that arbitration has significant benefits for employees and consumers that increase overall social welfare.12 The other camp opposes the enforcement of binding arbitration agreements, pointing to the Jones case and other arbitration horror stories that demonstrate that binding arbitration for consumers and employees can lead to disastrous and inequitable results.13 After Jones and Concepcion, this academic debate has spilled over into the political arena with potentially meaningful and lasting consequences. And (as is often the case) the entry into the political debate has done little to moderate either camp; if anything, it has crystalized and polarized the sides further.14In addition to the divide in the scholarship, a divide has emerged between two branches of government. The Supreme Court has expanded the enforcement of arbitration clauses, under increasingly broad interpretations of the Federal Arbitration Act. As a result of decisions like ATT however, consumer and employment arbitration must be seriously reformed. The reform should be sensitive to the different concerns that arise from different types of disputes, instead of the blunderbuss approaches that have emerged out of Congress and the Supreme Court.The main thrust of this Note is to propose meaningful reform that balances the competing social interests. This Note argues three main points. First, arbitration clauses in employment and consumer contracts are not per se the problem-the real problem is unfair arbitration as a result of inadequate procedural guarantees that result from disparities not only in bargaining power (as other scholars have argued), but in access to information about disputes (commonly formulated as a "repeat-player problem")16 that causes procedural difficulties for third-party verification and review. The repeat-player problem is not in and of itself problematic,17 but it renders the procedural guarantees of unconscionability review inadequate. …


Objectives The thrombin inhibitor dabigatran is mainly excreted by the kidneys. We investigated whether the recommended method for estimation of renal function used in the clinical trials, the Cockcroft-Gault (CGold) equation and the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) modification of diet in renal disease equation 4 (MDRD4), differ in elderly participants, resulting in erroneously higher dose recommendations of dabigatran, which might explain the serious, even fatal, bleeding reported. The renally excreted drugs gabapentin and valaciclovir were also included for comparison. Design A retrospective data simulation study. Participants Participants 65 years and older included in six different studies. Main outcome measure Estimated renal function by CG based on uncompensated ('old Jaffe' method) creatinine (CGold) or by MDRD4 based on standardised compensated P-creatinine traceable to isotope-dilution mass spectrometry, and the resulting doses. Results 790 participants (432 females), mean age (±SD) 77.6±5.7 years. Mean estimated creatinine clearance (eCrCl) by the CGold equation was 44.2±14.8 ml/min, versus eGFR 59.6±20.7 ml/min/1.73 m2 with MDRD4 (p<0.001), absolute median difference 13.5, 95% CI 12.9 to 14.2. MDRD4 gave a significantly higher mean dose (valaciclovir +21%, dabigatran +25% and gabapentin +37%) of all drugs (p<0.001). With MDRD4 58% of the women would be recommended a full dose of dabigatran compared with 18% if CGold is used. Conclusions MDRD4 would result in higher recommended doses of the three studied drugs to elderly participants compared with CG, particularly in women, and thus increased the risk of dose and concentration-dependent adverse reactions. It is important to know which method of estimation of renal function the Summary of Products Characteristics was based on, and use only that one when prescribing renally excreted drugs with narrow safety window. Doses based on recently developed methods for estimation of renal function may be associated with considerable risk of overtreatment in the elderly.


A Fe3Al based single phase alloy was rolled at 600 °C and 400 °C and the kinetics of recrystallisation in A2 and B2 phase regions was determined in conjunction with the kinetics of the A2-B2 ordering and recovery. At 700°C and 800°C the recrystallisation kinetics depends strongly on the temperature of rolling while at 900°C only a small influence is visible. These results are attributed to the high stored energy in the sample rolled at 400 °C and its high recovery rate at 900 °C, leading to a similar level in stored energy as for the sample rolled at 600 °C in the beginning of annealing. At lower temperatures, in contrast, the difference in stored energy is conserved over longer times in the annealing process. Almost half the apparent activation energy was observed in the ordered state compared to that in the disordered state.


Abstract Metallocenes, labelled with 103Ru, are potential radiopharmaceuticals for use in nuclear medicine diagnosis. Ruthenocene derivatives with oxopropene side-chains were administered to mice and rats to study their biochemical properties. Excretion rates and organ distributions of 103RuCl3 and Cinnamoyl-[103Ru] ruthenocene were very different. While 103RuCl3 was relatively evenly distributed in the body, the metallocene derivative was concentrated in liver, lungs and spleen after intravenous (i.v.) injection. After i.p. injection however a high thymus affinity was observed and autoradiography proved that the site of 103Ru accumulation was in thymocytes. The thymus affinity can be diminished by corticoid pretreatment and raised by inhibition of phagocytosis (BeSO4). The mechanism of accumulation in the thymus and a possible clinical application are discussed.


Background. In food marketing, there is a trend towards artisanal, traditional "honest" food, and simultaneously to good looking, long lasting, multi-purpose food with a clean label. In addition, marketeers like to upgrade the image of the food, including the label, using various digital techniques. This can produce (un)intended non-conformities with the current food law on labelling, which in this review, refers to Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 (European Union, 2011). Food and meat labelling have been subjected to increased regulation in the recent years, sometimes after scandals (horse-gate, food fraud), sometimes due to wishes of consumer organisations (nutritional information) and sometimes after the introduction of new types of ingredients (sweeteners, phytosterols, nanomaterials).
Scope and approach. This review provides information about food labelling. Some experiences gathered by food inspectorate personnel in practice, with reference to the literature data, positive aspects, main problems and trends are discussed.
Key findings and conclusion. Food labelling is a complex requirement, with the general demands written down in the harmonized regulation (European Union, 2011). Foods sold by e-commerce must also follow these same regulations. However, many food labels on the market show smaller and/or bigger deviations from the legal requirements, which should be appropriately addressed by the food manufacturers or packers, but also by the competent authorities. Even training of consumers seems to be needed, since all this information is, in the end, intended for consumers to aptly utilise.


This paper presents experimental and 3-D numerical simulation of ballistic impact of 5.56 mm projectiles on steel plates. Standard 5.56-mm projectile comprising Cu-Ni as outer jacket and three different inner cores namely, steel-lead, Aluminum-lead & full lead at an impact velocity of 900 m/s is considered for analysis. Target plates thicknesses 1, 3.5 mm for steel at angle of obliquity of 0° has been considered in experimentation. The residual velocity curves were constructed and compared. All necessary material properties have been taken from published literature and numerical simulations have been performed using explicit commercial code ANSYS-AUTODYN. Constitutive models play a key role in simulation of impact events, rate dependent continuum damage models have been employed for both projectile & target. The findings of numerical investigations compared with experimental results. A good agreement found between computed and experimental results in terms of exit velocity, size & shape of perforation. A relative assessment of damage potential of three projectiles is also made.


This chapter provides an overview of key economic issues in the use of taxation as an instrument of environmental policy in the UK. It first reviews economic arguments for using taxes and other market mechanisms in environmental policy, discusses the choice of tax base, and considers the value of the revenue from environmental taxes. It is argued that environmental tax revenues do not significantly alter economic constraints on tax policy, and that environmental taxes need to be justified primarily by the cost-effective achievement of environmental goals. The chapter then assesses key areas where environmental taxes appear to have significant potential -- including taxes on energy used by industry and households, road transport, aviation, and waste. In some of these areas, efficient environmental tax design needs to make use of a number of taxes in combination -- a "multi-part instrument".


The paper identifies commonalities and differences between women and men in terms of eleven key factors' impact on the formation of entrepreneurial intentions (EIs) among Norwegian students. The analysis is based on a sample of 1,782 Norwegian students from a variety of faculties and degree programs. A path analysis methodological approach is used, while being based on multiple regressions so as to gradually refine model complexities. Findings show that common to both sexes are the effects of entrepreneurial experience, social norms, self-efficacy, and age. The direct effects of role models and taking an economics major are only evident among males. The direct effect of entrepreneurship education and risk perceptions are only evident among females. Moreover, the study identifies the criticality of role models and an economics major in the overall network of effects in the case of male students, as well as the critical role of entrepreneurial education in the overall network of effects in the case of female students.


ABSTRACT The type II transmembrane serine proteases TMPRSS2 and HAT can cleave and activate the spike protein (S) of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) for membrane fusion. In addition, these proteases cleave the viral receptor, the carboxypeptidase angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), and it was proposed that ACE2 cleavage augments viral infectivity. However, no mechanistic insights into this process were obtained and the relevance of ACE2 cleavage for SARS-CoV S protein (SARS-S) activation has not been determined. Here, we show that arginine and lysine residues within ACE2 amino acids 697 to 716 are essential for cleavage by TMPRSS2 and HAT and that ACE2 processing is required for augmentation of SARS-S-driven entry by these proteases. In contrast, ACE2 cleavage was dispensable for activation of the viral S protein. Expression of TMPRSS2 increased cellular uptake of soluble SARS-S, suggesting that protease-dependent augmentation of viral entry might be due to increased uptake of virions into target cells. Finally, TMPRSS2 was found to compete with the metalloprotease ADAM17 for ACE2 processing, but only cleavage by TMPRSS2 resulted in augmented SARS-S-driven entry. Collectively, our results in conjunction with those of previous studies indicate that TMPRSS2 and potentially related proteases promote SARS-CoV entry by two separate mechanisms: ACE2 cleavage, which might promote viral uptake, and SARS-S cleavage, which activates the S protein for membrane fusion. These observations have interesting implications for the development of novel therapeutics. In addition, they should spur efforts to determine whether receptor cleavage promotes entry of other coronaviruses, which use peptidases as entry receptors.


Access to the anatomy, physiology and pathology of cardiovascular system organs has been made easy by the invention of various tools and techniques. One third of all deaths globally are due to heart diseases. Future predictions indicate that by the year 2020, heart diseases will be the leading cause of death globally; therefore early diagnosis is needed for a better prognosis. Tools that are currently central to diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases are: the stethoscope, sphygmomanometer,
electrocardiogram, emission techniques like X-rays and echocardiograms. From the early sixteenth through the twenty first century, these devices have been modified to increase their sensitivity and specificity. For further modification of these devices, understanding the concepts of their discovery in the first place is inevitable. To elucidate the evolutionary understanding of the cardiovascular system
To show the historical discovery of some of the devices used in the diagnosis of cardiovascular system diseases This work was compiled by reviewing books, journals and websites with information on the historic advancement of diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases Before the 17th Century, knowledge on the cardiovascular system was much contributed to by Pliny and Galen (a Greek physician and teacher).
This knowledge came to be challenged in the 17th Century by William Harvey. His experiments led to the present understanding of the cardiovascular system, and are considered the greatest achievement of that century. The discovery of the sphygmomanometer was steered by reverend Hales who watched a horse's arterial blood climb 8 feet six inches high in a glass tube. Dr. Laennec heard heart sounds better using folds of hard paper and so laid foundations for the discovery of the stethoscope.
The concept of the electrocardiogram began by the observation of bioelectricity by L.Galvan in 1787.
Humans always struggle to master their environments. As a problem arises, the need to understand better and modify the present solving techniques or invent new ones arises


The following Protocol contains medical necessity criteria that apply for this service. It is applicable to Medicare Advantage products unless separate Medicare Advantage criteria are indicated. If the criteria are not met, reimbursement will be denied and the patient cannot be billed. Preauthorization is required. Please note that payment for covered services is subject to eligibility and the limitations noted in the patient's contract at the time the services are rendered.


Python has become a dominant programming language for emerging areas like Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), and Data Science (DS). An attractive feature of Python is that it provides easy-to-use programming interface while allowing library developers to enhance performance of their applications by harnessing the computing power offered by High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms. Efficient communication is key to scaling applications on parallel systems, which is typically enabled by the Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard and compliant libraries on HPC hardware. mpi4py is a Python-based communication library that provides an MPI-like interface for Python applications allowing application developers to utilize parallel processing elements including GPUs. However, there is currently no benchmark suite to evaluate communication performance of mpi4py-and Python MPI codes in general-on modern HPC systems. In order to bridge this gap, we propose OMB-Py-Python extensions to the open-source OSU Micro-Benchmark (OMB) suite-aimed to evaluate communication performance of MPI-based parallel applications in Python. To the best of our knowledge, OMB-Py is the first communication benchmark suite for parallel Python applications. OMB-Py consists of a variety of point-to-point and collective communication benchmark tests that are implemented for a range of popular Python libraries including NumPy, CuPy, Numba, and PyCUDA. Our evaluation reveals that mpi4py introduces a small overhead when compared to native MPI libraries. We plan to publicly release OMB-Py to benefit the Python HPC community.


Background and Context Nightingale House Hospice have offered a 24-hour telephone advice line to patients and their carers in North East Wales since the year 2000. Predominantly the area covered is urban with good access to a variety of health and social care services. In 2010 the hospice were asked to provide a similar service providing advice on palliaitive care/specialist palliative care to health care professionals across all geographical areas of North Wales acting as a triage centre for palliative medicine consultant advice, this service was not made avaialble to patients and families due to concerns regarding potential volume of calls. This introduced a population located in large rural areas with more sporadic access to services. Aim & Approach The purpose of the audit was to encourage discussions about the ethics of delivering a two tier service based purely on geography but also considers the context of the calls in terms of the services available to patients within each locality in terms of model of service provided and also the hours of operation/delivery Outcomes This presentation details the findings of an audit of the advice call forms completed reviews and compares the data collected from both geographical areas covered by the advice line, considering the volume of calls from both areas, the time and duration of calls and also the reasons why people called. Application to practice The audit recognises some limitations in the method by which data is currently collected and reviewed providing guidance for the future in terms of what do we need to know in order to measure the impact and outcome of the provision of this service to patient s and their families. The work also draws conclusions for practice in terms of identifying current need within our locality.


When Ban Ki-Moon launched the idea of a Global Compact for Refugees in April 2016 it was with an ambition to secure new commitments in regard to the long-standing gap in international refugee law regarding international cooperation. To do so, he proposed that that the global compact should develop a principle of responsibility-sharing 'through the application of standards that reflect the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol thereto, regional refugee instruments and international human rights and humanitarian law.' In the ensuing drafting process, several commentators have expressed similar hopes for the compact to address a range of normative issues, providing either substantively new commitments or pushing interpretation of existing obligations as a matter of international refugee and human rights law. Others again, have expressed the hope that, even if the Global Compact for Refugees is itself non-binding, this instrument will eventually pave the way for subsequent international legal developments, such as a new protocol to the 1951 Convention.

To assess any such possibilities it is, however, necessary first to understand what kind of animal the Global Compact for Refugees is in the zoo of international law and diplomacy. The present contribution sets out a short analysis of the term 'compact' as a political-legal instrument and on this basis asks how the Global Compact on Refugees relates to existing international refugee law, and what, if any, normative implications are likely to follow from this new instrument. It does so by considering the compact as a particular form of soft law instrument and examine the different roles such an instrument can play from an international law perspective.


We explore the multiwavelength properties of AGN host galaxies for different classes of radio-selected AGN out to z ≲ 6 via a multiwavelength analysis of about 7700 radio sources in the COSMOS field. The sources were selected with the Very Large Array (VLA) at 3 GHz (10 cm) within the VLA–COSMOS 3 GHz Large Project, and cross-matched with multiwavelength ancillary data. This is the largest sample of high-redshift (z ≲ 6) radio sources with exquisite photometric coverage and redshift measurements available. We constructed a sample of moderate-to-high radiative luminosity AGN (HLAGN) via spectral energy distribution decomposition combined with standard X-ray and mid-infrared diagnostics. Within the remainder of the sample we further identified low-to-moderate radiative luminosity AGN (MLAGN) via excess in radio emission relative to the star formation rates in their host galaxies. We show that at each redshift our HLAGN havesystematically higher radiative luminosities than MLAGN and that their AGN power occurs predominantly in radiative form, while MLAGN display a substantial mechanical AGN luminosity component. We found significant differences in the host properties of the two AGN classes, as a function of redshift. At z 1.5, we observed a reversal in the behaviour of the stellar mass distributions with the HLAGN populating the higher stellar mass tail. We interpret this finding as a possible hint of the downsizing of galaxies hosting HLAGN, with the most massive galaxies triggering AGN activity earlier than less massive galaxies, and then fading to MLAGN at lower redshifts. Our conclusion is that HLAGN and MLAGN samples trace two distinct galaxy and AGN populations in a wide range of redshifts, possibly resembling the radio AGN types often referred to as radiative- and jet-mode (or high- and low-excitation), respectively, whose properties might depend on the different availability of cold gas supplies.


Approaching acid-base disturbances is considered a medical problem among healthcare practitioners. Practicewise, system-based approach should be used to simplify the diagnosis and facilitate management. Flowcharts are considered education tools that can organize thoughts and standardize care. Using a flowchart approach make the practitioners solve any complex acid-base disturbance and facilitate the teaching of such topic.