The purpose of this study was to identify effective instructional programs for GED tests preparation for students in a large suburban school district. Three different nonrandom, unequal naturally occurring instructional groups at three different locations were examined. One group participated in a traditional instruction program, a second group in a test/retest program, and a third group in a computer-assisted program. The demographics of the district population, the GED population, and the individual study groups were catalogued and analyzed. The demographics of the GED population were similar to the district population but different from the GED passers. Student characteristics did affect GED success. Both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered. Random students in each of the three groups were interviewed about their experiences in GED preparation using a questionnaire. Quantitative data were analyzed using frequencies, means, correlations, and a multiple regression analysis. Since the GED credential is an alternative to the high school diploma, its use as a dropout alternative is important to every school district. The study found that instructional methods had little impact on students' success in receiving the GED credential. The overall success rate of students was low in each group. The student's reading achievement score, GPA, and IQ score were predictors of GED tests success. Little research has been done in the area of GED instruction; perhaps this lack of work is due to the known limited effectiveness of GED preparation. Districts hoping to build effective GED programs should screen students prior to admission to a GED program. High school GED instruction seems to be effective for students likely to be successful in the regular school setting but in need of an immediate credential because of pregnancy or parenting or the need to work full-time or the desire to begin college study. Districts should also design programs to help disenfranchised students in the regular program remain in school.


The investigation of cure kinetics of biphenyl epoxy (4,4-diglycidyloxy-3,3,5,5-tetramethyl biphenyl)-xylok resin system with four different catalysts was performed by differential scanning calorimeter using an isothermal approach. All kinetic parameters of the curing reaction including the reaction order, activation energy and rate constant were calculated and reported. The results indicate that the curing reaction of the formulations using triphenylphosphine (TPP) and 1-benzyl-2-methylimidazole (1B2MI) as a catalyst proceeds through a first order kinetic mechanism, whereas that of the formulations using diazabicyloundecene (DBU) and tetraphenyl phosphonium tetraphenyl borate (TPP-TPB) proceeds by an autocatalytic kinetic mechanism. To describe the cure reaction in the latter stage, we have used the semiempirical relationship proposed by Chern and Poehlein. By combining an nth order kinetic model or an autocatalytic model with a diffusion factor, it is possible to predict the cure kinetics of each catalytic system over the whole range of conversion


An experimental fiber link is being established between SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden in Borås and Chalmers University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The one way fiber length is about 60 km and implemented in SUNET (Swedish University Network). The aim of the project is to evaluate the signal quality when sending a stable optical frequency utilizing a wavelength in a DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) system fiber pair. The experiment uses a channel in the DWDM with the wavelength of 1542.14 nm. This wavelength is within the C band and is therefore compatible with common Erbium doped amplifiers in this network. Another aim of the system is to be ultra-stable which corresponds to a stability of 1×10-13 for τ = 1 s as well as providing the ability to distribute monitored ultra-stable frequency with a future traceability to UTC (SP) (National realization of Universal Time Coordinated within Sweden) to multiple users within the network. Measurements of an optical frequency transfer using a fiber-link based on unidirectional light signals in parallel fibers have shown promising results in a free-running setup and in a lab environment. The fractional frequency stability, analyzed as the Overlapping Allan deviation, is approximately 3×10-13 at τ = 10 s and almost 1×10-14 at 105 s.


: As per the recent studies, the volatile growth has been seen in the use of mobile devices as the supporting technology for accessing Internet based services, as well as for personal communication needs in networking. Various studies indicate that it is impossible to utilize strong cryptographic functions for implementing security protocols on mobile devices. Our research negates this. Explicitly, a performance analysis focused on the most commonly used cryptographic protocols based on the location address (latitude & longitude) of the user for mobile applications and projected provably secure authentication protocol that is more efficient than any of the prevailing authentication protocol is being used by the network security methods. Understanding the use of public key cryptography which makes potential use of discrete logarithms problem. The security of ECC depends on the difficulty of Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm . To provide secure communication for mobile devices, authenticated protocol is an important primitive for establishing trusted connection. In this paper, it has been shown that the location based system using improved Rabin Algorithm provides a better security and acquires much less energy consumption than the existing authentication protocols.


Purpose

The quality of voluntary sector-led community health programmes is an important concern for service users, providers and commissioners. Research on the fidelity of programme implementation offers a basis for assessing and further enhancing practice. The purpose of this paper is to report on the fidelity assessment of Living Well Taking Control (LWTC) – a voluntary sector-led, community-based education programme in England focussing on the prevention and management of type 2 diabetes.

Design/methodology/approach

This fidelity of implementation (FoI) study was conducted with the Devon-based LWTC programme. A fidelity checklist was developed to analyse audio records of group-based lifestyle education sessions – implementation was rated in terms of adherence to protocol and competence in delivery; the influence of wider contextual factors was also assessed. Kappa statistics (κ) were used to test for inter-rater agreement. Course satisfaction data were used as a supplementary indicator of facilitator competence.

Findings

Analysis of 28 sessions, from five diabetes prevention and two diabetes management groups (total participants, n=49), yielded an overall implementation fidelity score of 77.3 per cent for adherence (moderate inter-rater agreement, κ=0.60) and 95.1 per cent for competence (good inter-rater agreement, κ=0.71). The diabetes prevention groups consistently achieved higher adherence scores than the diabetes management groups. Facilitator competence was supported by high participant satisfaction ratings.

Originality/value

An appropriate level of implementation fidelity was delivered for the LWTC group-based education programme, which provides some confidence that outcomes from the programme reflected intervention effectiveness. This study demonstrates the viability of assessing the FoI in a voluntary sector-led public health initiative and the potential of this method for assuring quality and informing service development.


Iron and steel consumption is a vital indicator for the development of any industrialized country. The major steel consuming sectors are construction, automotive and machineries. The recent years have brought an increasing trend of steel consumption in the ASEAN countries due to the positive economic growth. So these countries are now expanding their steel producing capacities in order to achieve self-reliance in this sector. The construction of the first ever Blast Furnace-based steel plant in Malaysia is a landmark project for attaining sufficiency in meeting national steel demand. Generally, an iron and steel making plant has all the developed facilities starting from the handling of raw materials to the final finished products. Once in operation, these plants require periodic major overhauls and up-grading besides routine repairs and maintenance activities to ensure their smooth operations. This study discusses an integrated approach named 'Production+' which was envisioned for the revamping and expansion of a public sector iron and steel making plant in Pakistan. The plant was commissioned in 1984 – 85 and after 20 years of its successful operation in 2004, the then management decided to revamp and expand its production capacity of steel up to 3.0 million metric ton (mmt) per year. For achieving this objective, it was planned that numerous strategic decisions would be taken during the course of the revamping and expansion program. This mainly included the improvement of existing maintenance practices to a more advanced plant maintenance level, energy conservation program that cut down energy and utility costs, and process optimization to detect and remove bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the production process. So, in order to get the maximum synergy it was proposed to integrate all the revamping and expansion program activities under one program named Production+. The + (plus) stands for more production, profitability, quality and serviceability of the steel making facility on a sustainable basis


This research is concerned with the problems that occur in the rehabilitation of convicted terrorists or known as Violent Extremist Prisoners (VEP) inside the Indonesian prison system under the current global countering violent extremism (CVE) regime. In Indonesia, those problems consist of prisoners' rejection of existing rehabilitation programs, further radicalization of other inmates and the recruitments inside the prison to violent extremist organization. By using a combination of approaches in the tradition of discourse analysis and semi-structured interviews, this thesis questioned dominant discourses and theories of de-radicalization as way to rehabilitate convicted terrorists which is predominantly used by the Indonesian National Counter-Terrorism Agency (BNPT), International organizations, and several NGOs. The dominant discourses from both actors resulted to Daniel Koehler's classification of Type D and Type E de-radicalization model by emphasizing huge aspect of ideology and governmentality. This approach is likely to face rejection from inmates due to three factors: power-relations within securitization regime, solidarity, and identity construction in the anatomy of Salafi-Jihadism as the social movement. Therefore, this research finds that current discourse of de-radicalization maintain VEP to label government as 'infidels' and NGOs as 'strangers' as the reason of rejection. Studying disengagement and de-radicalization within social movement analysis will unpack the missing discourse hence bringing transformative manner for the current production of knowledge regarding policy of terrorist rehabilitation in the Indonesian context.
Relevance to


Gender strategies involve three fundamental sex phenotypes – female, male and hermaphrodite. Their frequencies in populations typically define plant sexual systems. Patterns of sex‐ratio variation in a geographical context can provide insight into transitions among sexual systems, because environmental gradients differentially influence sex phenotype fitness. Here, we investigate sex‐ratio variation in 116 populations of Sagittaria latifolia at the northern range limit in eastern N. America and evaluate mechanisms responsible for the patterns observed. We detected continuous variation in sex phenotype frequencies from monoecy through subdioecy to dioecy. There was a decline in the frequency and flower production of females in northerly populations, whereas hermaphrodite frequencies increased at the range limit, and in small populations. Tests of a model of sex‐ratio evolution, using empirical estimates of fitness components, indicated that the relative female and male contribution of males and hermaphrodites to fitness is closer to equilibrium expectations than female frequencies. Plasticity in sex expression and clonality likely contribute to deviations from equilibrium expectations.


Bowel obstruction is a documented but rare
presentation of adrenal insufficiency (AI). We report a case of acute AI
manifesting as intestinal pseudo-obstruction (IPO) in a patient with
underlying iatrogenic adrenal suppression. An 83 years old female was admitted
for partial small bowel obstruction that failed to resolve with conservative
management. She then underwent exploratory laparotomy where no mechanical
obstruction was found and the small bowel was manually decompressed. Postoperatively she
developed acute swelling of her right ankle which was similar to mono-articular
attacks in the past. This was diagnosed clinically as gout. Her obstruction
failed to settle and a second laparotomy was done which yielded the same as the
first. Given her past account of arthritic pain, direct questioning of steroid
use unearthed a history of multiple intra-articular corticosteroid injections
for analgesia. She also described several short courses of high dose oral
steroids for respiratory tract infections, including a recent course which
was abruptly stopped two days prior to presentation. Clinical suspicion of AI
was supported by biochemical testing of stress cortisol levels and change in
the serum cortisol in response to 250 μg of synthetic adrenocorticotropic
hormone. Moreover, her improvement
following a therapeutic trial of steroid replacement was dramatic and strongly supports this diagnosis.
It is therefore worthwhile to consider a diagnosis of AI in cases of bowel obstruction in patients with comorbidities that predispose to steroid use and
especially in settings where steroid abuse is prevalent.


A novel constitutive theory is presented in this paper to model the non-linear response of fiber reinforced concrete composites (FRCCs). A FRC Mortar-Mortar fracture-based interface formulation is used to simulate the failure behaviour of FRCC at mesoscopic level of observations. This novel interface model considers a quadratic hyperbolic criterion for simulating the interaction between shear and normal stresses at the interface resulting in crack initiation. The well-known "Mixture Theory" is adopted for modelling the mortar-mortar interfaces taking into account the action of fibers (made out of either steel or plastics) crossing the above mentioned interfaces. Both the axial force induced on fibers by relative displacements orthogonal to the plane of the joint and the dowel action deriving by transverse displacements are considered. Finally, the proposed model is validated by comparing its numerical predictions with experimental results available in the scientific literature.


ABSTRACT Entry of mammalian reovirus virions into target cells requires proteolytic processing of surface protein σ3. In the virion, σ3 mostly covers the membrane-penetration protein μ1, appearing to keep it in an inactive form and to prevent it from interacting with the cellular membrane until the proper time in infection. The molecular mechanism by which σ3 maintains μ1 in this inactive state and the structural changes that accompany σ3 processing and μ1 activation, however, are not well understood. In this study we characterized the early steps in σ3 processing and determined their effects on μ1 function and particle infectivity. We identified two regions of high protease sensitivity, "hypersensitive" regions located at residues 208 to 214 and 238 to 244, within which all proteases tested selectively cleaved σ3 as an early step in processing. Further processing of σ3 was required for infection, consistent with the fact that the fragments resulting from these early cleavages remained bound to the particles. Reovirus type 1 Lang (T1L), type 3 Dearing (T3D), and T1L × T3D reassortant virions differed in the sites of early σ3 cleavage, with T1L σ3 being cleaved mainly at residues 238 to 244 and T3D σ3 being cleaved mainly at residues 208 to 214. These virions also differed in the rates at which the early cleavages occurred, with cleavage of T1L σ3 occurring faster than cleavage of T3D σ3. Analyses using chimeric and site-directed mutants of recombinant σ3 identified carboxy-proximal residues 344, 347, and 353 as the primary determinants of these strain differences. The spatial relationships between these more carboxy-proximal residues and the hypersensitive regions were discerned from the σ3 crystal structure. The results indicate that proteolytic processing of σ3 during reovirus disassembly is a multistep pathway with a number of molecular determinants.


This paper has updated the assessment of the Commission's forecasts' track record from 1999 by extending the observation period from 1969-1997 to also take into account the forecasts and outcome for the years 1998-2005. This update has also included some further tests on e.g. informational efficiency and undertaken a comparison with the forecasts of other international institutions and those of market participants. The tests were carried out on the forecasts for real GDP growth, total investment, inflation, the unemployment rate, the general government balance and the current account to GDP ratio. Data have been processed in a broadly similar manner compared to the study of 1999 to ensure comparability to the greatest degree possible. Overall, the Commission's forecasts continue to dispose a reasonable track record. For instance, the forecast error for the GDP forecast, as measured by the mean absolute error, has improved by 0.03 percentage point (pp.) to 0.5 pp. for the current-year outlook and by 0.08 pp. to 0.86 pp. for the year ahead. This implies that the Commission's forecasts for GDP growth has, on average, proven to be 0.5 pp. too high / low for the current year. Forecasts for the EU generally seem to be unbiased, efficient and display a high success rate for directional accuracy. The same holds true for the outlook for most Member States, although there are individual examples to the contrary. Moreover, in view of the importance of the international environment in explaining past forecast errors, it is reassuring to note that the forecasts for the largest non-EU countries generally seem to perform well. Finally, the Commission's forecasts' track record for GDP is broadly comparable with the ones of Consensus, the IMF and the OECD.


The Orai family of calcium channels includes the store-operated CRAC channels and store-independent, arachidonic acid (AA)-regulated ARC channels. Both depend on STIM1 for their activation but, whereas CRAC channel activation involves sensing the depletion of intracellular calcium stores via a luminal N terminal EF-hand of STIM1 in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membrane, ARC channels are exclusively activated by the pool of STIM1 that constitutively resides in the plasma membrane (PM). Here, the EF-hand is extracellular and unlikely to ever lose its bound calcium, suggesting that STIM1-dependent activation of ARC channels is very different from that of CRAC channels. We now show that attachment of the cytosolic portion of STIM1 to the inner face of the PM via an N terminal Lck-domain sequence is sufficient to enable normal AA-dependent activation of ARC channels, while failing to allow activation of store-operated CRAC channels. Introduction of a point mutation within the Lck-domain resulted in the loss of both PM localization and ARC channel activation. Reversing the orientation of the PM-anchored STIM1 C terminus via a C-terminal CAAX-box fails to support either CRAC or ARC channel activation. Finally, the Lck-anchored STIM1 C-terminal domain also enabled the exclusive activation of the ARC channels following physiological agonist addition. These data demonstrate that simple tethering of the cytosolic C-terminal domain of STIM1 to the inner face of the PM is sufficient to allow the full, normal and exclusive activation of ARC channels, and that the N-terminal regions of STIM1 (including the EF-hand domain) play no significant role in this activation.


The world has become increasingly complex. Curriculum methods for the gifted are likewise.
Extracted from these seminal and ongoing curriculum approaches are six rules based on best
practices and research from our field, which can be grasped easily and applied by teachers
anywhere. When teachers work from a set of principles they can adapt to needs of students
and support growth, regardless of context. Using principles strengthens teaching and supports
gifted students, and perhaps all students. The six principles include: a) focus on unique pattern
of strengths, b) group students by interests or abilities at least part of the time, c) move as
far and as fast in the basic skills as possible, d) enrich individual interests, e) offer mediation,
counseling, mentoring and facilitation, and f) provide the tools for life-long learning.


Giardia intestinalis is among the protozoa that is commonly found in the human fecal samples throughout the world. The prevalence of infection is higher among people living in developing countries than developed countries. One hundred and eleven Orang Asli children at Pos Titom, Pahang participated in this study. The prevalence study was conducted in accordance to gender, age groups and the diagnostic techniques employed. Fecal samples were collected and examined for the presence of G. intestinalis using three diagnostic techniques ie; the direct fecal smear, formalin-ether concentration and the trichrome staining technique. The overall prevalence of G. intestinalis infection among Orang Asli children at Pos Titom was 23.42%. The infection was higher among females (25%) as compared to males (21.57%) eventhough it was not statistically significant (p>0.05). In terms of age groups, no positive case was observed among preschoolers whose age were below seven-years while the school aged children (7 to 12-years old) showed 24.53% infection. The trichrome staining technique was the most sensitive with a detection rate of 22.52% followed by the formalin-ether concentration technique with a detection of 19.82% whilst the direct smear technique only detected 12.61% of cases. The prevalence of giardiasis amongst the Orang Asli children at Pos Titom, Pahang was still high despite various efforts made and improvements in basic infrastructural facilities undertaken for their community. The health care status and personal hygiene of Orang Asli children remains poor and needs to be further improved. DOI :  http://dx.doi.org./10.17576/JSKM-2018-13


The i(12p) chromosome has been shown to characterize more than 80% of male germ cell tumors (GCTs) and is an important diagnostic marker. Although recent cytogenetic analyses of GCTs have defined nonrandom chromosome abnormalities in these tumors, no attempt has so far been made to compare i(12p)‐positive and ‐negative tumors in terms of their cytogenetic, histologic, and clinical features. During a 5‐year period, we have ascertained 202 GCTs, of which 117 had clonally abnormal karyotypes. Among the latter, 91 had one or more copies of i(12p), whereas 26 lacked an i(12p). We report here the karyotypic analysis of these 26 i(12p)‐negative GCTs. In this group, nonrandom sites of chromosomal rearrangements included 12p13 (9/26) and 1p11‐q11 (5/26). Comparison of the cytogenetic features of i(12p)‐negative tumors with i(12p)‐positive tumors revealed the only significant difference to be rearrangements affecting 12p 13 in the former (35%) as compared to their absence in the latter (3%). Hybridization of metaphase preparations of 9 i(12p)‐negative tumors with a chromosome 12 painting probe and with a microdissected 12p painting probe revealed extra copies of chromosome 12 segments incorporated into marker chromosomes whose composition could not otherwise be resolved by banding analysis; all were shown to be derived from 12p. These data demonstrate that both i(12p)‐negative and ‐positive groups are characterized by an increased copy number of 12p, which is consistent with a lack of significant clinical or biological difference between them. An increased 12p copy number thus is a specific aberration of significance to the development of germ cell tumors. © 1993 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


The background to this paper is the collaborative creation of a music theatre work, Arachne. The collaborators' own backgrounds are diverse, encompassing work in devised theatre, contemporary choral music, baroque performance practice, notated acoustic and laptop-based electronic composition. Initial musical material was sketched in 2011-12 but the bulk of Arachne has been developed using a devising process in which all participants have contributed to the narrative, theatrical, musical and dramaturgical evolution of the work. The diverse mix of participants and their working method are clearly suited to the study of distributed creativity (Sawyer and DeZutter, 2009) but what makes Arachne particularly distinctive is the presence of pre-existing collaborative teams within the main group; these form sub-groups each with a track record of successful collaborations. Arachne is a practice-led research project from which three research questions have emerged: how does such a diverse, interdisciplinary team (two composers, three performers, one director) collaborate in the notoriously difficult and contingent process of devising new music theatre; do participants' working practices change as a result of such collaboration and, if so, in what ways; are the participants' differing backgrounds and past collaborations a spur or hindrance to creativity? In addressing these questions the paper will aim to evaluate the success of the collaborative strategies employed, uncover group members' understandings of their roles and track this particular instance of the creative process peculiar to the act of marrying music and theatre. The paper will be presented by a performer and a composer-researcher from within the project team; its content will draw on audiovisual documentation (rehearsal footage, recordings of discussions between the collaborators, performance excerpts), live performance examples and data from a focus group interview with the participants that was conducted after the first live iteration of Arachne. The paper will trace the evolution of selected elements by examining their successive iterations through the collaborative process, identifying sources of obstruction, generators of momentum and points of failure and success. Key areas of focus include notational strategies, the role of improvisation and the notion of 'play'. The content will reveal the degree to which compositional, performative and improvisational creativities have been imbricated through the key collaborative dynamics of mutuality and complementarity. (John-Steiner, 2000) The significance of this paper lies in the field under investigation. Arachne is part of a lineage of theatre and music theatre practice that encompasses the work of artists as various as the Wooster Group, Robert Lepage, Heiner Goebbels and Orlando Gough. Two members of the performing team (the singers Melanie Pappenheim and Rebecca Askew) and the director, Emma Bernard, work within this tradition. Whilst this repertoire has received attention in the performance and theatre studies literature, it is underrepresented in musicological writing; given that such work models a very different relationship between composers/writers and performers it is time that its creative practices were brought to the attention of the musical academic community, which is what this paper sets out to do.


Recently, smart home applications are increasing fast, including but not limited to occupancy-dependent control of lighting, heating and cooling. Passive infrared (PIR) sensors play an important role in these applications to perceive the presence and/or the motion of human. However, PIR sensors are not able to detect stationary occupants while stationary presence takes up most time of the day. And thus, the resulted false negative detection leads to uncomfortable light/temperature swings, shortened equipment's lifespan, and/or energy waste, etc. To address this issue, our group has developed Synchronized Low-Energy Electronically-chopped PIR (SLEEPIR) sensors that integrate an electronic liquid crystal (LC) infrared shutter with an off-the-shelf PIR sensor. In this work, the infrared shutter made of polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) sandwiched by two germanium windows is proposed to periodically chop the long-wave infrared signal received by the PIR sensor so that stationary human presence can still be detected due to the electronical shuttering. A sensor module is fabricated, consisting of a wireless microcontroller, a SLEEPIR sensor and a traditional PIR sensor, with a field of view of 103° × 103°. Then, a sensor network consists of two sensor modules is developed. Three types of experiments are conducted in this paper: individual action-based, continuous activity-based, and daily routine-based. The detection logic is made by using the threshold value classification method, where the threshold values are determined from the action-based dataset and applied to the other two datasets. The results show that for activity-based dataset, the average accuracy reached 98.96%. For daily routine-based dataset, the average accuracy is 99.57%.


In mission-critical activities, each user is allowed to access some specific, but not all, data gathered by wireless sensor networks. Yu et al~\cite{YRL09} recently proposed a centralized fine grained data access control mechanism for sensor networks, which exploits a cryptographic primitive called attribute based encryption (ABE). There is only one trusted authority to distribute keys to the sensor nodes and the users. Compromising the single authority can undermine the whole network. We propose a fully distributed access control method, which has several authorities instead of one. Each sensor has a set of attributes and each user has an access structure of attributes. A message from a sensor is encrypted such that only a user with matching set of attributes can decrypt. Compared to \cite{YRL09}, our schemes need simpler access structure which make secret key distribution more computation efficient, when user rights are modified. We prove that our scheme can tolerate compromising all but one distribution centers, which independently distribute their contributions to a single user key. Our scheme do not increase the computation and communication costs of the sensors, making it highly desirable for fine grained access control.


The VisTrails system supports the creation of reproducible experiments. VisTrails integrates data acquisition, derivation, analysis, and visualization as executable components throughout the scientific exploration process, and through systematic provenance capture, it makes it easier to generate and share reproducible results. Using VisTrails, authors can link results to their provenance, reviewers can assess the experiment's validity, and readers can repeat and utilize the computations.


To investigate a possible peroral route of infective endocarditis (IE), the occurrence of staphylococci in the oral cavity was examined using saliva and supragingival plaque specimens from 56 systemically and periodontally healthy adults aged 22-43 years old (27.1+/-5.3). Nine Staphylococcus species and 334 isolates were identified. In saliva, the total occurrence rate was 83.9 % and the total number of bacteria was 10(2)-10(4) c.f.u. ml(-1). Staphylococcus aureus was the most frequent species (46.4 %), followed by Staphylococcus epidermidis (41.1 %) and others (Staphylococcus hominis, Staphylococcus warneri, Staphylococcus intermedius, Staphylococcus capitis, Staphylococcus haemolyticus, Staphylococcus lugdunensis and Staphylococcus gallinarum, isolation frequencies ranging in order from 12.5 to 1.8 %). A similar isolation tendency was observed in supragingival plaque, with a total occurrence rate of 73.2 % and amounts of bacteria ranging from 10(2) to 10(5) c.f.u. g(-1). Four common Staphylococcus species (S. aureus, S. epidermidis, S. lugdunensis and S. hominis) were isolated from nasal swab samples taken from the oral staphylococci-positive subjects. Genotyping of all 18 combinations of oral- and nasal-derived isolates by PFGE indicated that identical clones or close relatives were commonly distributed in these two cavities. Since the provision of micro-organisms from the nasal cavity was shown and occurrence rates in the oral cavity were adequate, these results suggest a possible peroral route of staphylococcal IE, as in cases of viridans streptococcal IE.


SUMMARY Thermal water therapies have a role in treating various inflammatory disorders dating back to ancient Greece. Several studies have demonstrated beneficial effects of thermal water inhalations for upper respiratory disorders, such as improvement of mucociliary function and reduction of inflammatory cell infiltration. This experimental study describes the numerical investigation and clinical implications of thermal water droplet deposition in the nasal cavity of a single patient. To our knowledge, the numerical flow simulations described are the first investigations specifically designed for thermal water applications. To simulate nasal airflow, a patient-specific 3D computer model was created from a CT scan. The numerical approach is based on the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) technique and builds entirely upon open-source software. Deposition on mucosa was studied for two droplet sizes (5 and 10 μm diameter), corresponding to common thermal therapy applications (aerosol and vapour inhalation). The simulations consider steady inspiration at two different (low and moderate) breathing intensities. The results of this preliminary study show specific deposition patterns that favour droplet deposition in the middle meatus region to the inferior meatus, with particle size- and breathing intensity-related effects. These global data on particle deposition differ from findings related to the single-phase nasal airflow, which is more evenly distributed between the middle and inferior meatus. The potential clinical consequences of deposition data are discussed. The study furthermore provides evidence for the effectiveness of thermal aerosol and vapour inhalation therapies in reaching important areas of nasal mucosa with considerable clinical significance.


The microbiota of both nasal cavities were investigated in 37 dogs by both aerobic and anaerobic techniques. The predominant microorganisms were composed of enterococci and staphylococci. A surprisingly high incidence (46%) of Gram-negative rods was noted from the inferior portion of the nose. Microorganisms from the superior region of the nose, as obtained with a surgical approach, differed both qualitatively and quantitatively from the respective transnasal cultures. Thus, it appears that different bacterial populations are present within various anatomic regions of the nose and a routine transnasal culture cannot accurately reflect the microbiology of the entire nasal cavity.


To tackle a problem of food waste (FW), a better understanding of consumer food
waste (CFW) behaviour is essential. This thesis aims to investigate CFW behaviour in
meal settings by comparing British and Thai consumers with the focus on their decision
to save leftover food. This thesis highlights five key factors; commensality, place of
dining, food price, the amount of leftover food, and future meal planning. The research
is based on three projects. First, we conducted in-depth interviews with 20 Thai food
service providers to gain an understanding of the CFW situation in Thailand. Results
from this study show that consumers left food uneaten in a restaurant due to
demographic factors, food satisfaction, over-ordering, hunger status, and food safety
concerns. However, some consumers adjusted their food (e.g. amount, taste, and
ingredients added into dishes) and asked for leftovers food to be taken away to prevent
plate waste. Second, an online survey provided quantitative data from 208 British
participants and 209 Thai participants. The results show that cost is a significant factor
affecting CFW decisions for both British and Thai consumers. While the place of dining
is an important factor for the British, it is not for the Thais. The interaction effect
between factors of commensality and amount of leftover has a significant effect on
British consumers plate waste decision whereas it is the interaction between the
commensality factor and the place of dining that significantly affect Thai consumers.
Third, a qualitative method using focus group discussion technique was carried out to
gain in-depth opinions and experience from consumers from both countries. The
results proved that consumers tend to save more expensive food, British consumers
have higher self-conscious when dining out in a restaurant and tend not to ask for a
doggy bag for their leftovers but it would depend on the amount of the leftovers.
Moreover, we also found a complex connection of factors affecting CFW decisions.
This thesis concludes that food cost has a significant effect on all consumers whereas
the place of dining only affects British consumers. The commensality is significant
when being considered with the amount of food remaining for British and with the place
of dining for Thai consumers. We hope to provide information for policymakers and
stakeholders to solve the problems of CFW.


Deep-sea sediments of the eastern Mediterranean harbour a series of dark, organic carbon-rich layers, so-called sapropels. Within these layers, the carotenoid isorenieratene was detected. Since it is specific for the obligately anaerobic phototrophic green sulfur bacteria, the presence of isorenieratene may suggest that extended water column anoxia occurred in the ancient Mediterranean Sea during periods of sapropel formation. Only three carotenoids (isorenieratene, beta-isorenieratene and chlorobactene) are typical for green sulfur bacteria and thus do not permit to differentiate between the approximately 80 known phylotypes. In order to reconstruct the paleoecological conditions in more detail, we searched for fossil 16S rRNA gene sequences of green sulfur bacteria employing ancient DNA methodology. 540 bp-long fossil sequences could indeed be amplified from up to 217 000-year-old sapropels. In addition, such sequences were also recovered from carbon-lean intermediate sediment layers deposited during times of an entirely oxic water column. Unexpectedly, however, all the recovered 16S rRNA gene sequences grouped with freshwater or brackish, rather than truly marine, types of green sulfur bacteria. It is therefore feasible that the molecular remains of green sulfur bacteria originated from populations which thrived in adjacent freshwater or estuarine coastal environments rather than from an indigenous pelagic population.


We report a new version of the UMIST database for astrochemistry. The previous (1995) version has been updated and its format has been revised. The database contains the rate coefficients, temperature ranges and – where available – the temperature dependence of 4113 gas-phase reactions important in astrophysical environments. The data involve 396 species and 12  elements. We have also tabulated permanent electric dipole moments of the neutral species and heats of formation. A new table lists the photo process cross sections (ionisation, dissociation, fragmentation) for a few species for which these quantities have been measured. Data for Deuterium fractionation are given in a separate table. Finally, a new online Java applet for data extraction has been created and its use is explained in detail. The detailed new datafiles and associated software are available on the World Wide Web at http://www.rate99.co.uk.


Objective: Hallervorden–Spatz disease is a rare autosomal recessive condition, with early onset of predominantly extrapyramidal dysfunction. The symptoms of the disease are dystonia, rigidity, choreoathetosis, pyramidal signs, and intellectual decline. Recent genetic studies mapped the disease to chromosome 20p12.3‐p13, and identified mutations in the pantothenate kinase gene. This report describes a childhood onset case of Hallervorden–Spatz disease with schizophreniform psychotic symptoms. Former reports about the psychiatric comorbidity generally included depressive disorder.


This thesis documents the investigation into the acquisition of knowledge from
biological data using computational methods for the discovery of significantly frequent patterns in gene location and phylogeny.
Beginning with an initial statistical analysis of distribution of gene locations in
the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana, we discover unexplained elements of order.
The second area of this research looks into frequent patterns in the single
dimensional linear structure of the physical locations of genes on the genome
of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This is an area of epigenetics which has, hitherto,
attracted little attention. The frequent patterns are patterns of structure represented
in Datalog, suitable for analyses using the logic programming methodology
Prolog. This is used to find patterns in gene location with respect to various gene
attributes such as molecular function and the distance between genes. Here we
find significant frequent patterns in neighbouring pairs of genes. We also discover
very significant patterns in the molecular function of genes separated by distances
of between 5,000 and 20,000 base pairs. However, in complete contrast to the
latter result, we find that the distribution of genes of molecular function within a
local region of ?20, 000 base pairs is locationally independent.
In the second part of this research we look for significantly frequent patterns of
phylogenetic subtrees in a broad database of phylogenetic trees. Here we investigate the use of two types of frequent phylogenetic structures. Firstly, phylogenetic pairs are used to determine relationships between organisms. Secondly, phylogenetic triple structures are used to represent subtrees. Frequent subtree mining is then used to establish phylogenetic relationships with a high confidence between a small set of organisms. This exercise was invaluable to enable these procedures to be extended in future to encompass much larger sets of organisms. This research has revealed effective methods for the analysis of, and has discovered patterns of order in the locations of genes within genomes. Research into phylogenetic tree generation based on protein structure has discovered the requirements for an effective method to extract elements of phylogenetic information from a phylogenetic database and reconstruct a single consensus tree from that information. In this way it should be possible to produce a species tree of life with high degree of confidence and resolution.


Introduction/purpose Endovascular coil embolization with or without stenting for the treatment of posterior communicating artery (PcommA) aneurysms is well established. However, if the PcommA originates from the base of the aneurysm, complete aneurysm obliteration with preservation of the PcommA may not be possible without the use of stent-assisted coiling (SAC). Depending on the angle of the origin of the PcommA, the use of an anterograde approach from the proximal carotid to distal PcommA may not be possible. However, the use of a retrograde approach from the PcommA to the distal carotid may be possible. We present three patients with wide necked PcommA aneurysms in which the neck of the aneurysm was approached retrograde through the posterior circulation to allow for SAC in order to allow for complete aneurysm obliteration with preservation of the PcommA. Materials/methods We retrospectively reviewed all cases of SAC performed by the senior author from June 2009-January 2014 to identify cases in which a PcommA aneurysm was treated via the retrograde approach. Three patients met the inclusion criteria. Medical records were reviewed for clinical course and imaging characteristics of the aneurysms. We also reviewed the operative reports and angiographic imaging of each endovascular treatment of each patient. All procedures were performed under general anesthesia and patients were started on Clopidogrel and Aspirin prior to stenting. Bifemoral access was obtained to allow 1)a coiling microcatheter access to the aneurysm via an anterograde approach through the carotid circulation, and 2)a stent delivery catheter across the neck of the aneurysm from the posterior communicating artery to the distal internal carotid artery via the posterior circulation. Following stent deployment, coil embolization was performed. Results Retrograde SAC was performed in three patients with an average age of 58±8 years. Two patients had previously treated aneurysms and one had an untreated aneurysm. The average size of filling aneurysm was 7.03±2.66 mm. The Enterprise® stent (Codman & Shurtleff, Inc., Raynham, MA) was used in all cases. Immediate angiographic results in two cases revealed no residual filling, and the third case had only trace residual filling. However at over 1-year follow-up angiography, this aneurysm was completely occluded. The patency of the PcommA was maintained in all three cases. There were no clinical complications associated with retrograde SAC in this series. Conclusion The retrograde approach for SAC of PcommA aneurysms is a viable method to allow for complete aneurysm obliteration and preservation of the PcommA when other approaches would risk either incomplete obliteration with preservation of the PcommA or complete obliteration at the risk of occlusion of the PcommA. This approach may allow for complete and safe treatment of PcommA aneurysms that would have otherwise required microsurgical clipping for vessel reconstruction of the PcommA to maintain its patency. To our knowledge, we present the largest series to date of patients undergoing retrograde SAC of PcommA aneurysms. Learning objective Retrograde stent assisted coiling is a useful technique which allows for complete aneurysm obliteration while maintaining the patency of the posterior communicating artery in select aneurysm of the posterior communicating artery. Disclosures J. Caplan: 6; C; Stryker. J. Huang: None. R. Tamargo: None. M. Radvany: 1; C; Siemens Medical. 6; C; CeloNova Biosciences, Inc.


With the advent of dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) total body scans can be done in only 10-20 minutes rather than the 60-80 minutes required by dual-photon absorptiometry (DPA). The DXA approach replace the Gd153 radionuclide source of DPA and provides substantially greater output intensity. The higher radiation flux achievable provides several advantages over conventional DPA: this makes total body scans routinely accessible. The measures of the entire skeleton and its major subregions cut down the problems of representativeness and relocation. The short term precision (coefficient of variation) was 0.5% for total body-bone mineral density (BMD) and about 1% for regional-BMD. We studied 885 women; study cohort consisted of 161 healthy postmenopausal women, 357 healthy postmenopausal women and 367 osteoporotic women with one or more vertebral crushes. The results indicate that bone mass begin decreasing during the last period of the premenopausal phase; the advent of menopause brings about a dramatic reduction of both total body and single area BMD: this phenomenon is particularly marked in subjects with osteoporosis. The single most important factor in determining BMD changes, is years since menopause. In order to assess the ability of DXA total body to distinguish women with postmenopausal osteoporosis of variable radiological degress from healthy postmenopausal women, we studied 330 postmenopausal females aged 42-85 years. There were 63 healthy women who were considered controls (Group 1).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


The study has produced a generic conceptual framework for action-oriented research to guide such research in multiple domains of application. The conceptual framework has been expressed in terms of the "vocabulary of agency." It contains the notions of agency, enhancing agency, resource, roles, mobility, form of interaction, agency-enhancing device, local learning, global learning, operational coupling, etc. The conceptual framework has been subjected to a multi-stage process of assessment. The assessment shows that the conceptual framework has a certain generality in addressing a whole range of issues being discussed in management systems thinking and action research fields. Besides, the framework also seems capable of functioning as an effective guide in designing and conducting action-oriented research projects in several domains of application. The framework is expected to facilitate transfer of insights from research fields which investigate complex, interactive, and collective phenomena. It is also expected to guide action-oriented research in the direction of increasing the general capacity to bring forth new and useful resources in multiple domains.


In a randomized controlled trial of recombinant alpha-2a interferon for chronic hepatitis B, interferon antibodies developed in 21 (39%) of 54 Chinese adults who received IFN. No correlation was observed between sex, age, pretreatment serum ALT level or liver histological findings and the development of interferon antibodies. Antibodies were significantly more likely to develop in patients who received lower doses (2.5 or 5 MU/m2) of alpha-2a interferon than in those who received a higher dose (10 MU/m2): 53% vs. 11% (p = 0.006). The development of interferon antibodies appeared to reverse the initial antiviral response to treatment, with reappearance of hepatitis B virus DNA in serum in 12 patients and HBeAg in three patients. Sustained clearance of HBeAg was achieved in only one (5%) patient but was achieved in seven (21%) patients without interferon antibodies. The mere presence of interferon antibodies did not preclude an antiviral response to interferon therapy, but patients with high titer neutralizing antibodies were less likely to respond. These findings suggest that interferon antibodies may negate the antiviral effects of alpha-2a interferon. A higher incidence of interferon antibodies in Chinese vs. white patients with chronic hepatitis B may contribute to the poorer antiviral response in Chinese patients.


Chemical and pharmaceutical research have provided physicians with an array of drugs that have beneficial effects on a variety of diseases. Such drugs, however, mostly help in controlling the manifestations of the pathological condition but do not permanently modify the underlying cause. Hence the necessity of new forms of therapy that change drastically the current approach to medical treatment. Gene therapy, with its potential to correct the malfunctioning genes at the origin of variety of diseases, seems to fulfill the requirements of this therapeutic "revolution". The feasibility of such an approach is underscored by the improved knowledge of the molecular mechanism and/or gene defects at the origin of acquired diseases widely spread in the population, and of more rare congenital conditions. The technical advances in molecular biology and genetic engineering achieved in the last ten years, offer the tools necessary to implement such therapeutic interventions. Here we present the approaches currently employed for gene therapy in the context of recent clinical trials. The scientific, ethical and economical implications deriving from a prospective routine use of gene therapy in the clinical setting are discussed.


The events which lead to airway narrowing in bronchial asthma are complex. There is little doubt that mast cell-derived pharmacological agents are involved, at least in part, in the initiation of the asthmatic response. However, the inflammatory response which follows mast cell activation might have more relevance to the daily pattern of asthma than the direct effects of mediators on bronchial tissue. Although the IgE mediated release of mediators from sensitized mast cells seems to play a role in pathogenesis in some individuals for some of the time, there is now increasing awareness that mast cells are also triggered by a number of non-immunological stimuli such as exercise/cold air, infection and agents which activate the complement system. Mast cell mediators are either pre-formed within granules or generated from membrane-bound phospholipids. The pre-formed mediators include histamine, various chemotactic peptides including ECF-A and the high molecular weight neutrophil chemotactic factor (NCF), proteases, glycosidases, and the heparin proteoglycan. The membrane-derived agents include the lipoxygenase products (e.g. LTB4 and the "SRS-A" leukotrienes-LTC4/D4/E4), prostaglandins and thromboxane in addition to the PAF-ace-tether (AGEPC). The mediators are diverse both in chemical composition and modes of actions. However, many of the pathological features of bronchial asthma can be explained on the basis of their recognised actions. These can be summarised as follows. Bronchial smooth muscle constriction (histamine, LTC4, LTD4, LTE4, PGF2 alfa, PGD2 and PAF); mucosal oedema (increased permeability--histamine, LTC4, LTD4 and PAF; vasodilation--PGD2, PGE2); mucous plugging (histamine, mono-HETEs and LTC4); inflammatory cell infiltrate (NCF, ECF-A peptides, HETEs, LTB4 and PAF); desquamation of epithelium (proteases, glycosidases, together with lysosomal enzymes, and basic proteins derived from neutrophils and eosinophils). It is likely that mild, easily reversible, episodic asthma is due largely to bronchial smooth muscle contraction whereas the late sustained response is more indicative of an inflammatory response, and dependent on the infiltration of neutrophils and eosinophils as the result of mediators which recruit and activate leucocytes. Much of the evidence for this is based on the demonstration that NCF concentrations in the serum are elevated during early and late phase, antigen- and exercise-induced asthma. Moderate to severe asthma is likely to be largely dependent on a subacute/chronic inflammation of the bronchi with eosinophils and mononuclear cells being prominent.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)


Recent scholarship on Jewish and Christian authors from the turn of the era often emphasizes the influence of Greek philosophical terms and concepts, but there is still some question as to how early this influence can be discerned, especially in Judea as opposed to Egypt. The Greek notion of ἐγκράτεια, or self-mastery, has been a central part of this investigation. After a consideration of ἐγκράτεια in Greek philosophy and of analogous approaches in Israelite moral psychology as found mainly in Proverbs and in the transitional case of Ben Sira, it is argued that four aspects of the book of Judith reflect Greek philosophical influence: (1) Judith's determination suggests Greek self-mastery (ἐγκράτεια); (2) the angry foreign tyrants suggest ἀκρασία, or lack of self-mastery; (3) Judith's division of time into past, present, and future reflects Greek philosophical discourse about time; and (4) Judith's criticism of the Bethulians' prayer calls to mind the Greek philosophical reflections on rational prayer. Greek philosophical expressions are not unambiguously present, however; this text likely reflects the changing conditions of the interrelations of Israelite and Greek discourse in Judea.


A male premature infant born at 26 weeks of gestation is now at 32 weeks corrected age. He has developed chronic lung disease and is currently on low-flow oxygen. His growth has been faltering, falling below the 10th centile despite 180 mL/kg/day of fortified mother's own milk. Postprandial regurgitation of milk has been occurring, with suspected gastro-oesophageal reflux. Ultrasound of the abdomen reveals no evidence of pyloric stenosis. Despite a trial of Gaviscon, he continues to regurgitate milk and his growth rate remains inadequate, so a decision is made to commence domperidone. Prior to initiation of therapy, an ECG performed to exclude prolonged QT interval reveals a corrected QTc of 400msec and an electrolyte panel was found to be entirely within normal range. You are asked to consider whether the risk of harm in developing a prolonged QTc and sudden death from a cardiac arrhythmia while receiving domperidone is low enough to warrant the introduction of this medication and whether follow-up ECGs are indicated.

In the case of inpatient infants with GORD ( population ), does domperidone administration ( intervention ) cause clinically relevant QTc prolongation and/or arrhythmia ( outcomes ) when compared with baseline ( control )?

PubMed, MEDLINE ( via EBSCOhost) and Cochrane CENTRAL databases were searched from article inception to 01/09/2019 with the following strategy: '((infant) OR (neonate) OR (newborn)) AND (domperidone) AND ((QT) OR (QTc) OR (prolonged) OR (ECG) OR (EKG) OR (arrhythmia))'. In all, 37 abstracts were identified (Medline 21, Embase 16, Cochrane 0) with 21 unique studies, of which five were included (table 1). Of the articles excluded, three were concerned with the use of domperidone as a galactagogue agent in lactating …


The recognized disadvantages of pigment printing are the stiff hand feel owing to the large particle size of the binder and pigments and the crosslinked binder introducing rigidity. In the current study, fluorescent pigment latex (FPL) was prepared via mini-emulsion polymerization and further applied on cotton fabric printing in the absence of binder. The mini-emulsions were prepared by dispersing the fluorescein in the monomers methyl methacrylate (MMA) and butyl acrylate (BA) with DNS-86 as emulsifier, hexadecane as co-emulsifier, and ammonium persulfate as initiator. The Fourier-transform infrared-attenuated total refraction, transmission electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, and thermogravimetric analysis showed that the fluorescein was successfully encapsulated into P(MMA-co-BA) and the polymer content was 91.22%. The surface morphology study revealed that compact and smooth film was formed onto the surface of FPL printings, which resulted in better hand feel and rubbing fastness as compared to the conventional printings with a large amount of binder. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017, 134, 45826.


We describe eecient constructions of small probability spaces that approximate the joint distribution of general random variables. Previous work on eecient constructions concentrate on approximations of the joint distribution for the special case of identical, uniformly distributed random variables.


Abstract Reducing separated weapon grade (WG) plutonium is very crucial since this plutonium may be misused and/or released accidentally into the environment. Burning WG plutonium in nuclear reactors can help to solve this serious problem effectively. In this study, the incineration of WG plutonium mixed with thorium in a (DT) fusion driven high power density hybrid reactor was investigated for an operation period of 24 months. Furthermore, the effect of using different coolants on the burning of WG plutonium in the hybrid blanket was examined. Numerical calculations showed that WG plutonium can be denatured to reactor grade level within a very short time by using a high power density hybrid reactor. Moreover, addition of WG plutonium to thorium improved the neutronic performance of the reactor significantly.


In the domain of pension statistics comparability of pension entitlements across countries improved substantially due to new SNA/ESA recommendations. In the near future, inclusion of unfunded employment related pension schemes in the core accounts or in the supplementary table on pensions will become the standard. This paper analyses pension entitlements for twelve OECD-countries according to the new compilation standards. In spite of constructive European harmonisation efforts, the paper identifies a number of measurement differences that may hamper a fair comparison of pension liabilities.


This report was jointly commissioned by the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit (NRU) in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) and the Economic and Social Research Council. It contains both full and summary reports of a literature review of neighbourhood change, undertaken with the primary aim of establishing what is known about neighbourhood change in the UK and identifying gaps in that knowledge, in order to inform the future research agenda and, ultimately, the development of policy. The work was carried out in tandem with a parallel review (undertaken by the Social Disadvantage Research Unit at Oxford University) of the challenges and potential involved in using and combining data to address questions at the neighbourhood level. Both reviews were presented at a seminar of the ODPM Urban and Neighbourhood Studies Research Network on 30th March 2004, and will in due course be published via the ODPM website. The review followed the traditional approach used in the social sciences. Books, articles and reports were searched for, initially with a broad focus on the concept of neighbourhood change and developing to explore more specific topics and ideas such as 'gentrification' and 'neighbourhood renewal' and 'concentrated poverty'. There was no strict delimitation of space or time, although initial searches concentrated on more recent literature, from the 1990s, partly on the understanding that these would often summarise or refer to other work, and on UK evidence, although sources from other countries in the developed world were investigated where these appeared to provide evidence particularly relevant to the UK context. The review was also informed by the contributions of participants at a workshop on neighbourhood change held at the LSE in January 2004 and by a limited consultation within the academic community. While no small-scale review of this kind can claim to be completely comprehensive, we hope that the report will be a useful summary of the state of knowledge at the current time, and that it will help to point the way for the future development of research in this field.


Global climate and weather models are a key tool for the prediction of future crop productivity, but they all rely on parameterizations of atmospheric convection, which often produce significant biases in rainfall characteristics over the tropics. The authors evaluate the impact of these biases by driving the General Large Area Model for annual crops (GLAM) with regional-scale atmospheric simulations of one cropping season over West Africa at different resolutions, with and without a parameterization of convection, and compare these with a GLAM run driven by observations. The parameterization of convection produces too light and frequent rainfall throughout the domain, as compared with the short, localized, high-intensity events in the observations and in the convection-permitting runs. Persistent light rain increases surface evaporation, and much heavier rainfall is required to trigger planting. Planting is therefore delayed in the runs with parameterized convection and occurs at a seasonally cooler time, altering the environmental conditions experienced by the crops. Even at high resolutions, runs driven by parameterized convection underpredict the small-scale variability in yields produced by realistic rainfall patterns. Correcting the distribution of rainfall frequencies and intensities before use in crop models will improve the process-based representation of the crop life cycle, increasing confidence in the predictions of crop yield. The rainfall biases described here are a common feature of parameterizations of convection, and therefore the crop-model errors described are likely to occur when using any global weather or climate model, thus remaining hidden when using climate-model intercomparisons to evaluate uncertainty.


In this paper we will try to answer the question: how to evaluate the quality of software automatically produced by code generation process in the domain of aeronautical embedded systems? To do so, we will introduce our new Open Source tool " METRIX " capable of computing different software quality metrics. Each of them gives information on quality of both the source code and the binary software for the embedded system we want to assess. METRIX is able to evaluate software written in C and ADA languages. There is a specific module which is able to compute the most efficient line of compilation in order to minimize size of code or time of execution for the final binary. Lots of metrics can be considered for software evaluation but in this paper, we will discuss only the three most popular: Lines of Code (LoC), metrics of Halstead (volume of source code, complexity of the algorithm) and cyclomatic complexity of McCabe. This research may help software engineers to improve their aeronautical system verification and validation process and this paper will give them a complete overview of how METRIX software works, how it produces a quality software comparison and how it proposes enhanced visualization features (Kiviat and City map diagrams for instance). A specific aeronautical case study (secure embedded aeronautical router) will be discussed and will demonstrate how this new software can improve the verification and validation steps of a complete industrial project.


. Outdoor recreation is increasingly recognized to impact nature and wildlife, yet few studies have examined recreation within large natural landscapes that are critical habitat to some of our most rare and potentially disturbance-sensitive species. Over six winters (2010 – 2015) and four study areas ( > 1.1 million ha) in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, we studied the responses of wolverines ( Gulo gulo ) to backcoun-try winter recreation. We fi t Global Positioning System (GPS) collars to 24 individual wolverines and acquired > 54,000 GPS locations over 39 animal-years during winter (January – April). Simultaneously, we monitored winter recreation, collecting ~ 6000 GPS tracks ( ~ 200,000 km) from backcountry recreationists. We combined the GPS tracks with trail use counts and aerial recreation surveys to map the extent and relative intensity of motorized and non-motorized recreation. We integrated our wolverine and backcountry recreation data to (1) assess patterns of wolverine habitat selection and (2) evaluate the effect of backcoun-try recreation on wolverine habitat relationships. We used resource selection functions to model habitat selection of male and female wolverines within their home ranges. We fi rst modeled habitat selection for environmental covariates to understand male and female habitat use then incorporated winter recreation covariates. We assessed the potential for indirect habitat loss from winter recreation and tested for functional responses of wolverines to differing levels and types of recreation. Motorized recreation occurred at higher intensity across a larger footprint than non-motorized recreation in most wolverine home ranges. Wolverines avoided areas of both motorized and non-motorized winter recreation with off-road recreation eliciting a stronger response than road-based recreation. Female wolverines exhibited stronger avoidance of off-road motorized recreation and experienced higher indirect habitat loss than male wolverines. Wolverines showed negative functional responses to the level of recreation exposure within the home range, with female wolverines showing the strongest functional response to motorized winter recreation. We suggest indirect habitat loss, particularly to females, could be of concern in areas with higher recreation levels. We speculate that the potential for backcountry winter recreation to affect wolverines may increase under climate change if reduced snow pack concentrates winter recreationists and wolverines in the remaining areas of persistent snow cover.


Samuel 0. Regalado. Nikkei Baseball: Japanese American Players from Immigration and Internment to the Major Leagues. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013. 208pp. Paper, $25. Robert A. Moss In Nikkei Baseball, Samuel Regalado, professor of history at California State University--Stanislaus, offers a cultural and social history of Japanese immigration and acclimatization in the United States, as refracted through the prism of Japanese American (or Nikkei) baseball. His chronology stretches from the Meiji restoration in Japan in 1870 to the imported Japanese major-league players and their Nikkei counterparts of the late twentieth century and early 2000s. In between, we get a bird's-eye view of Nikkei baseball as it developed in the cities and towns of the western United States: Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Stockton, Sacramento, Portland, and Fresno. Nikkei Baseball is highly detailed; its relatively short text is buttressed by 44 pages of notes, sources, bibliography, and index. It ably charts the growth of Japanese American baseball from the first all-amateur Nikkei team in San Francisco in 1903, through the development of regional Nikkei tournaments, which recapitulated the growth of baseball in nineteenth-century America, to the formation of Nikkei leagues in the 1920S. Regalado posits that during the Meiji restoration in Japan, the feudal Samurai code of bushido melded with Western ideas of competitiveness and modernity, so as to reorder Japanese society while preserving Japanese traditions and identity. Baseball, introduced to Japan in 1872 by Horace Wilson, an educational reformer hired by the government, came to be viewed as an accompaniment of patriotism, industrial productivity, team play, and modernization. In 1878, Hiroshi Hiraoka, an engineer who had observed baseball in the United States, organized the first team in Japan, the Shimbashi Athletic Club. By 1890, Japanese universities were fielding nines, and in 1905 the Waseda University team toured the US, playing college teams in Washington, Oregon, and California. When the Issei (first generation) Japanese immigrants came to America, they brought baseball with them, and the generational aspect of baseball connected them with their children, the Nisei. To the Issei, the game "nourished traditional virtues of loyalty, honor, and courage" (52). In turn, the Nisei developed leagues and tournaments. By 1926, the Southern California Japanese Baseball League had formed, centered around the large Nikkei community of Los Angeles. In the Fresno area, Kenichi Zenimura organized a league of ten teams. Games were also played with Mexican American, Negro league, and Pacific Coast League teams. Trumpeted by the Japanese American press, sports--especially baseball--were seen as a bridge to assimilation and an escape from discrimination. In the absence of permitted advance in other spheres, baseball provided an outlet. The LA Nippons barnstormed Japan in 1931, compiling a record of 20-5, and the Tokyo Giants visited Los Angeles to play the Nippons in 1935 and 1936. The Nikkei experience mirrored similar pathways followed by other immigrant groups, for example, Jews and Italians. Regalado also devotes considerable attention to the emergence of talented Japanese teams in Hawaii. By 1920, an all Japanese American baseball league was in operation there, and the first Nikkei major leaguers came from Hawaii. …


This thesis is a reassessment of gay male politics in England and Wales during the period between the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in private in 1967 and the HIV epidemic of the early 1980s. It looks beyond the activities of the revolutionary Gay Liberation Front and its offshoots which have dominated previous accounts. Instead it considers a broader range of social and political organisations which developed for gay men in the seventies: including reformist NGOS such as the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, the gay club scene, and publications such as Gay News. Through a detailed consideration of these less formally radical enterprises it argues that the seventies saw the creation of a broadly Habermasian 'public sphere' of gay male life. The gay male public sphere was a set of social spaces, political campaigns, and communications media which were explicitly aligned to a gay male identity and had no direct precedent in previous queer public cultures. However, this was not precisely analogous to gay men 'Coming Out' as the GLF understood the term. Participation in the gay male public did not necessarily involve openly declaring your sexuality to all possible audiences. It was also not necessarily a radical challenge to the state and existing society and, this thesis argues, gay male politics in the seventies was characterised as much by people who wanted to work within existing systems as it was by those who wanted to overturn them. This thesis also considers the limits that were placed on the gay male public sphere, through an account of the operation of the Sexual Offences Act and Mary Whitehouse's prosecution of Gay News for blasphemous Libel. As such it is a contribution to debates about the nature and extent of Britain's postwar 'Permissive Society.'


for extraction and quantitation of carotenoid pigment production. Different culture conditions were used to determine optimum pigmentation such as type of culture media, different pH values, temperature, and finally daily bacterial sub-culturing for more than 2 weeks. Nutrient agar was found to be the best medium with the highest production (1.09). Optimum pH value was 6.5 and gave (1.8) carotenoid. Also results showed that pigment was produced at 37 o C more than at 42 o C. Daily repeated sub culturing had a negative impact on pigment production. Colonies gradualy lost pigmentation and became white in color. Also, sub-culturing was shown to affect the volume of the colonies as they became smaller on solid media.


The shallow lake system, Luan Lauquen of semi-permanent regime, it's located in the eastern physiographic region, biogeographical Chaco domain, in La Pampa province. The aim of this contribution is to amplify the knowledge of the composition and distribution of algal species in the Pichi Luan, Ea. Ansin and Lonco-Che shallow lakes. The samples were collected in spring season 2010 and autumn 2011. The biological samples collected were set in formaldehyde at 4%. A total of 99 taxa were identified for the three shallow lakes of which 52% were Chlorophyta, 11 % Charophyta, 18% Cyanobacteria, 8% Ochrophyta and 11% remaining Euglenozoa. In autumn the algae species richness in the three shallow lakes, was higher in relation to the spring, where Chlorophyta of the Chlorococcales Order was found widely represented, corresponding the maximum number of species to the Pichi Luan shallow lake. In autumn for Lonco-Che, the Cyanobacteria species richness is stands out, while for the same date the Euglenozoa prevails in the Pichi Luan. The diatom species are equally distributed in spring at all sampling sites. Oscillatoria subbrevis, Pediastrum boryanum var. boryanum, Scenedesmus bijuga and Cyclotella meneghiniana taxa, were common in the three shallow lakes. The highest similarity S= 37%, according to Bray Curtis, was in spring between Pichi Luan and Lonco-Che shallow lakes.


When Asquith introduced his bill for Home Rule for Ireland in 1912, he sparked a decade of turbulence and violence for Ireland and her people. Michael Collins played a crucial role in rekindling Ireland's aspirations for freedom. A leading figure in the nation's bitter and bloody resistance to British Rule, he played a key part in reshaping Ireland's history as we know it today. Ulick O'Connor includes valuable new information about the secret war against England and provides a fresh and highly dramatic account of Ireland's fight for freedom. Using important material from the archives of General Richard Mulcahy, Collins's chief of staff, as well as personal interviews with Mulcahy, Eamon de Valera, and many other leading figures Michael Collins and the Troubles is a vivid and often horrifying account of a crucial time, the consequences of which are still felt today.


Trade economists have for long considered gravity models to estimate unexhausted potentials for bilateral trade. Similar to the discrepancy between "normal" and "actual" bilateral trade, one may ask the question about the difference between "normal" and actual bilateral multinational activity. However, with multinational activity, zero bilateral data and heteroscedasticity are very important, even more so than with trade data. Therefore, this paper suggests using generalized linear rather than log-linear models to specify "normal" FDI and obtain estimates of unexhausted FDI potentials. I use panel data on Austria's bilateral multinational activity across 25 countries and 7 country-blocs, 4 sectors and 13 years to illustrate the disadvantage of log-linear model estimation at quasi-maximum likelihood estimation. JEL-code: F14; F15; F21; F23


It is known that there is a correlation between hydration heat and physico-mechanical properties of wood based cement panels. Cement hydration is affected by many variables, such as chemical composition, water/cement ratio, wood/cement ratio, wood chemical properties, mineral additions and producing conditions. This study mainly aimed to investigate the effects of press temperature on some properties of three-layer cement bonded particleboard made from the particles of spruce (Picea orientalis) and poplar (Populus tremula). For this purpose, a total of 16 experimental board groups with 1200 kg/m3 target density and 1/3 wood-cement ratio were produced at the press temperatures of (20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80) °C. As cement curing accelerator, CaCl2 was used at a rate of 5 % (cement weight basis). The physical, mechanical and thermal properties of the boards were determined. The results indicated that the press temperature substantially affected the properties of cement-bonded particleboard depending on the wood species. In the light of this study, the optimum temperatures in producing of cement-bonded particleboard were found as 40 °C for poplar wood and 60 °C for spruce wood.


Discretized image signals might have a lower dynamic range than the display. Because of this, false contours might appear when the image has the same pixel value for a larger region and the distance between pixel levels reaches the noticeable difference threshold. There have been several methods aimed at approximating the high bit depth of the original signal. Our method models a region with a bended plate model, which leads to the biharmonic equation. This method addresses several new aspects: the reconstruction of non-continuous regions when foreground objects split the area into separate regions; the incorporation of confidence about pixel levels, making the model tunable; and the method gives a physics-inspired way to handle local maximal/minimal regions. The solution of the biharmonic equation yields a smooth high-order signal approximation and handles the local maxima/minima problems.


In the course of the tremendous downturn in global financial markets, it has become significantly harder for newly founded ventures to receive venture capital funding. Especially ventures from the electronic business sector face never before experienced financing challenges. In order to understand how the changed economic situation has influenced the decision making of venture capitalists, ten case studies were conducted among electronic business ventures from three German speaking countries (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) which received funding after March 2000. The qualitative content analysis of this rich data set provides evidence of changes in venture capitalists' management of the investment procedure.


Brazil is the largest producer of soybeans in the world. The vast extent of soybean plantations across the Brazilian territory exposes this crop to attack by several insects, including the velvetbean caterpillar, Anticarsia gemmatalis. One of the alternatives used to control this insect are the toxins produced by Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). However, in some cases, resistance to these toxins has been reported in the laboratory. Despite the ecological and economic impact of the velvetbean caterpillar, there are few studies on the genetic structure of this species, especially with regard to microsatellites. In this paper, we carried out a comparative transcriptional analysis of microsatellites in resistant (RES) and susceptible (SUS) strains of A. gemmatalis challenged and not challenged with Bt toxins. According to the number of sequences analyzed in each group, a 7.9% simple sequence repeat (SSR) rate was identified for the SUS library, and 7.4% for SUSBt. For the RES group, this value was 8.5% and for the RESBt 7.7%. Most of the fragments found showed a shorter repeat pattern, located in mono- and trinucleotide motifs. Among the 128 types of SSR motifs, it was possible to notice a large amount of adenine and thymine in relation to guanine and cytosine, which was also seen in chromosomes after staining with base-specific fluorochromes DAPI/CMA3, highlighting DAPI-positive regions. Although the participation of microsatellites in the resistance mechanism of A. gemmatalis to Bt is not clear, the results obtained in this work contribute to a better understanding of the repetitive DNA found in transcribed regions of a non-model organism.


The subject guide to Substance Abuse provides information on resources available from the Alvin Sherman Library, both in the library and online, related to Substance Abuse. This guide covers books, journal articles, web sites, and citing sources.


A partial taxonomy for cognitive maps is provided. The notions of NPN (negative-positive-neural) logic, NPN relations, coupled-type neurons, and coupled-type neural networks are introduced and used as a framework for cognitive map modeling. D-POOL a cognitive-map-based architecture for the coordination of distributed cooperative agents, is presented. D-POOL consists of a collection of distributed nodes. Each node is a cognitive-map-based metalevel system coupled with a local expert/database system (or agent). To solve a problem, a local node first pools cognitive maps from relevant agents in an NPN relation that retains both negative and positive assertions. New cognitive maps are then derived and focuses of attentions are generated. With the focuses, a solution is proposed by the local node and passed to the remote systems. The remote systems respond to the proposal, and D-POOL strives for a cooperative or compromised solution through coherent communication and perspective sharing. The utility of D-POOL is demonstrated using two examples in distributed group decision support. >


Background: The practices of early mobilization on mechanical ventilated patient is associated to decrease length of stay in intensive care unit, decrease ventilator associated pneumonia, prevent deep vein thrombosis and skin breakdown. However, in Malaysia, little is known about nurses' practices and barriers of early mobilization in intensive care unit.
Objective: The objective of this study is to assess nurses' practices regarding early mobilization among mechanically ventilated patient.
Methods: Descriptive cross-sectional survey was used to assess current nurses' practices and barriers on patient early mobilization among in intensive care unit of a teaching hospital in Malaysia. A convenient sampling approach was used. A participant self-administer checklist was distributed to assess the practices.
Results: Researcher found that half (n=99, 75%) of the nurses mobilize their mechanically ventilated patient 3 times or more per shift. There was no association between nurses demographic data and nurses' early mobilization practice.
Conclusions: ICU nurses able to meet the minimal practice of mobilize patient 3 times or more per shift work.


This paper investigates the factors that determined the party preferences in the 1987 and 1991 general elections and the 1989 local election in Istanbul, Turkey's largest metropolitan city. It argues that party preference is essentially an aspect of individual political behavior, which should be explained by the characteristics of individuals who are, in turn, affected by various macro factors. Theories developed for industrialized western countries are of limited use in developing countries and in need of revision. The research finds evidence for the importance of previous voting preferences and religious attitudes for the 1987 general election and the 1989 local elections. Predictions for the 1991 general election seem to be determined by region of birth, age, media follow-up, job status, political attitudes, years of residence in Istanbul, father's education, social class, the number of steps in migrating to Istanbul and the number of income-earners in the household.


This collection examines how power is exercised and experienced in the Further Education sector. The sequel to 'Further Education and the Twelve Dancing Princesses', this book is similarly playful, but deadly serious in intent.

Using Machiavelli's celebrated and contested treatise 'The Prince' as a metaphorical guide, the contributors each take a different perspective to interrogate leadership, agency and professionalism in FE. The scope of The Principal is as wide as the sector, with chapters on adult education and the FE systems throughout the UK and in Ireland and Australia. The writers share a fierce commitment to FE and this book is a must-read for anyone who cares about how and where the FE sector is being led.


Parallelism has been used in the past as a high level architectural transformation for reducing the dynamic power consumption of FIR filters. However increasing the level of parallelism incurs an area penalty. In nanoscale CMOS circuits, leakage power is emerging as the dominant mode of power consumption. Leakage power is strongly correlated to the area and the total number of leaking transistors. This requires the classical area vs. power tradeoffs to be revisited. In addition to reducing the dynamic power, the increased timing slacks in the circuits with a higher degree of parallelism, can also be exploited for implementing the circuit using slower, low-leakage transistors. Hence the efficiency with which an architecture can trade area for increased timing slack is an important consideration for low power design in nanoscale CMOS. The current work shows that the algorithmic strength reduction achieved by fast filter algorithms (FFAs) can be used to design a class of time-shared FIR filters which are more area efficient than traditional structures, under specific conditions.


A newly proposed chemical-reaction-inspired metaheurisic, Chemical Reaction Optimization (CRO), has been applied to many optimization problems in both discrete and continuous domains. To alleviate the effort in tuning parameters, this paper reduces the number of optimization parameters in canonical CRO and develops an adaptive scheme to evolve them. Our proposed Adaptive CRO (ACRO) adapts better to different optimization problems. We perform simulations with ACRO on a widely-used benchmark of continuous problems. The simulation results show that ACRO has superior performance over canonical CRO.


This chapter outlines approaches to 'doing' historical research and the influence of feminist-inspired methodologies to excavate the past. It charts work within feminist historical geography that has pushed methodological boundaries in this area. Specifically, this chapter explores the practice of doing archival fieldwork and a range of ethical considerations that are often neglected. These methodological challenges are discussed in the context of reflexivity and other cornerstones of feminist-based work within the discipline. Overall, the chapter draws on several examples to illustrate current research and future trajectories in this area of scholarship and activism.


Impact evaluation of integrated livestock and food crop project micro analysis will concentrate  in the increase of farmers income, the increase of farmers food nutrient, and woman participation. Macro analysis has also been used to study on decentralization. The project has given 41.800 cattles for 19.000 farmers, 20.000 goats for 9 000 farmers, construct infrastructures (village road system, livestoc holding ground, etc), facilitate agroinputs for 28,000 package, training and extensions, and more others with total cost about US$ 34,200,000. The area covers South Sulawesi, North Sulawesi, Gorontalo , Maluku, and North East Maluku. Total number of samples which have been taken for the survey were 162, which consist of 27 women, 63 farmers, 18 project staf, and 18 respondent from outside project. The result from the survey has shown that farmers have got benefits from project and their income has increased. 79% farmers has satisfied with the credit they have received already, however, the repayment has moved slowly. Eventhough they have raised only chicken, however, the farmers' food nutrient has increased already.


The Gayndah‐Deniliquin index (GDI), a measure of the north‐south atmospheric pressure gradient across eastern Australia, is presented. The 113 year long GDI record reveals strong interannual to decadal scale variability in zonal geostrophic wind flow across eastern Australia. The GDI, as a measure of easterly geostrophic wind strength and associated moisture transport from the Pacific Ocean, is shown to be significantly correlated with summer rainfall over vast areas of the Australian continent, especially over the Murray Darling Basin and the state of New South Wales. The latest abrupt decline in the GDI, which commenced around 2001, corresponded with the onset of a severe prolonged drought across eastern Australia. We demonstrate that the northern and southern poles of the MSLP derived GDI are differentially influenced by El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). Understanding the effects of these interactions between SAM and ENSO on moisture transport to eastern Australia could have implications for future Australian climate variability and climate change.


The study investigated effects of marital conflicts on academic performance among primary school pupils in Temeke district. Repercussion resulted from parents" quarrels on children"s academic development was explored. Specific objectives of the study included; to investigate the daily social, economic, academic and psychological problems facing marital conflicts children; to examine the extent in which marital conflicts influence pupils" academic performance; to identify coping strategies adopted by marital conflicts children towards the enhancement of their academic performance; and to examine the role of school management in assisting pupils who experienced marital conflicts. The study was guided by attachment theory by Ainsworth & Bowlby (1991) that develops between the child and his/her primary care-givers. The study adopted the descriptive survey design, and sampling techniques were purposive and simple random in selecting a sample of 156 participants from twelve primary schools. Questionnaire and semi-structured interview guides were used to collect data. Quantitative data were analyzed with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16, and qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. The findings revealed problems facing pupils from marital conflicts families like insufficiency of school needs, lack of love from both parents, and absenteeism, which affected their academic performance. It was further reported that children from marital conflict families were performing poor in their studies compared to those with good parenting. It was therefore recommended that school management should develop strategies to provide psychological and academic assistance to children with different problems, which hinder their educational development. There is also a need for personal and group counseling in schools where students with challenged homes are counseled.


Magneto-optical and time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopies are employed to evaluate electronic structure of a bound exciton (BX) responsible for the 3.364 eV line (labeled as I1*) in bulk ZnO. From time-resolved PL spectroscopy, I1* is concluded to originate from the exciton ground state. Based on performed magneto-PL studies, the g-factors of the involved electron and hole are determined as being ge = 1.98 and gh∥(gh⊥) = 1.2(1.62), respectively. These values are nearly identical to the reported g-factors for the I* line in ZnO (Phys. Rev. B 86, 235205 (2012)), which proves that I1* should have a similar origin as I* and should arise from an exciton bound to an isoelectronic center with a hole-attractive potential.Magneto-optical and time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopies are employed to evaluate electronic structure of a bound exciton (BX) responsible for the 3.364 eV line (labeled as I1*) in bulk ZnO. From time-resolved PL spectroscopy, I1* is concluded to originate from the exciton ground state. Based on performed magneto-PL studies, the g-factors of the involved electron and hole are determined as being ge = 1.98 and gh∥(gh⊥) = 1.2(1.62), respectively. These values are nearly identical to the reported g-factors for the I* line in ZnO (Phys. Rev. B 86, 235205 (2012)), which proves that I1* should have a similar origin as I* and should arise from an exciton bound to an isoelectronic center with a hole-attractive potential.


The concept and content of project management in the networked collaborative design system is presented according to the mechanical product design typical process and its state-of-the-art requirement. The key technologies of the collaborative project management are studied mainly, the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (F-AHP) algorithm is employed to select collaborative partners, the method of Design Structure Matrix (DSM) is put forward in process of decomposing and assigning design tasks, and the weight-coefficient recursively statistic algorithm is used in controlling task schedule. The implementing technologies of the 3D networked collaborative design system oriented project management are researched simultaneously, such as collaborative data communication, conversation tool and design tool. The archetypal system platform was developed, it's proved that the 3D collaborative design system is qualified for complex mechanical product collaborative design by synergic team.


Since the middle of the 20th century concern about ethics in organisations, corporate responsibility (CSR) and environmental sustainability have been articulated by political, business, academic and other 'thought leaders'. However, in spite of regular and high profile global conferences and increasingly strident rhetoric in the professional and popular press, progress in these areas has been patchy. In a context of economic challenges and political vicissitudes the engine of change, it seems, has 'stalled'. Scholars and practitioners within the HRD field are well aware of the persistent and seemingly intractable consequences in relation to these issues associated with unitarist short-term market-facing organizational agendas fostered by a preoccupation with performance and profitability. In addressing these issues HRD scholars have traditionally made use of either functional, managerialist and instrumental approaches to learning and organizational development or have promoted humanist agendas which focus attention on the importance of individual development and transformation. A key theme of this special issue is that both are necessary but neither is sufficient of itself.


An effective algorithm for handling constraints to solve the generator maintenance scheduling (GMS) problem is presented. The proposed algorithm of constraint logic programming (CLP) synthesises logic programming, constraint satisfaction technique (CST), and branch and bound search schemes to provide an efficient and flexible approach to the problem. The constraints of the problem cannot only be conveniently managed by the logic programming but also be actively used to reduce the search space by the CST. Once the infeasible solutions are pruned away from the search space, the depth-first branch and bound search strategy is then used for determining the optimal solution. The practical GMS problem of Taiwan Power (Taipower) system is solved by the proposed CLP algorithm for demonstrating its effectiveness. To exhibit the efficiency of the proposed algorithm, the results obtained are compared with those from the established methods of simulated annealing (SA) and lagrangian relaxation (LR).


Background. Adverse health and social outcomes are known to occur more frequently following parental death during childhood, but evidence is lacking for comparing long-term risks of internalised v. externalised harm. Methods. This national register-based cohort study consisted of Danish persons born 1970– 2000. The Civil Registration System and National Causes of Death Register were linked to ascertain parental deaths by cause before cohort members' 15 birthdays. From age 15 years, hospital-treated self-harm episodes were ascertained through linkage to the National Patient Register and the Psychiatric Central Research Register, and violent crimes were identified via linkage to the National Crime Register. Hazard ratio and cumulative incidence values were estimated. Results. Self-harm and violent criminality risks were elevated following parental death during childhood. Covariate adjustment for gender, birth year and first-degree relatives' mental illnesses attenuated these associations, although significantly heightened risks persisted. The estimated hazard ratios did not differ greatly according to which parent died, but losing both parents conferred particularly large risk increases. Risks for both adverse outcomes were higher in relation to unnatural v. natural parental death; violent criminality risk was especially raised among individuals exposed to parental death by unnatural causes other than suicide. The association was strongest when pre-school age children experienced parental death. Conclusions. Effective early intervention is needed to help youngsters who have experienced the death of one or both parents to develop immediate and sustained coping strategies. Enhanced cooperation between health and social services and criminal justice agencies may mitigate risks for these two destructive behaviours.