Present study is aimed at evaluating the effect of rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) on anxiety and irrational beliefs among infertile women. To assess the level of anxiety and irrational beliefs, 50 infertile women were selected randomly from Mediwave IVF and fertility research hospital in Mysore city and were administered Cattle questionnaires for surveying anxiety and The shortened general attitude and belief scale (SGABS) for measuring irrational beliefs due to the duration of infertility. Out of 50 infertile women, 40 infertile women were randomly assigned to experimental (n=20) and control group (n=20). Experimental group received 24 sessions of manual based intervention. Results of repeated measure ANOVA indicate that the REBT was effective in reducing anxiety and irrational beliefs in experimental group from pre to post assessment and follow up. Results provide evidence that REBT strategies can be effective in reducing anxiety and irrational beliefs in women undergoing infertility medical treatment. REBT helped in positive coping statements, pleasurable activities and helped them to reduce negative affect associated with infertility and feeling of hopelessness. Further REBT led to a gain in confidence over coping with problems related to infertility. Findings indicate that REBT intervention is a useful technique to alleviate of anxiety and irrational beliefs among infertile women.


This study identifies the effects of the 1992 and subsequent CAP reforms on arable farmland price in Belgium. We first propose a brief literature review of studies identifying the determinants of farmland price. Afterwards, we use a panel data set to estimate a capitalization model of farmland price. We first show that the compensatory payments introduce by the 1992 CAP reform exert a positive effect on the arable farmland price in Belgium. We also identify a structural break in the land price equation after the adoption of the new support instruments as well as a regional break between Wallonia and Flanders.


We studied a case of leiomyoma of the bladder floor in a woman with excretion urography, voiding cystourethrography, abdominal echography, computed tomography scan, and transvaginal echography. This last technique gave us the most accurate information about localization of the mass and its relation to adjacent organs. With these data we were able to indicate the most suitable surgical access. We think that this new application of the transvaginal echography should be included in the study of bladder flow masses in the female.


This paper focuses on young adults in the US living with their parents and studies the role of peers. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health we analyse the influence of high school friends on the nest-leaving decision of young adults. We achieve identification by exploiting the differences in the timing of leaving the parental home among peers, the individual-specific nature of the peer groups, and by including school and grade fixed effects. Our results indicate that there are statistically significant peer effects on the decision of young adults to leave parental home. This is true even after we control for labour and housing market conditions and for a comprehensive list of individual and family-of-origin characteristics that are not usually observed by the econometrician. We discuss various mechanisms and we confirm the robustness of our results through a placebo exercise. Our findings correspond with the increasing trend of young adults living with their parents that has been observed in the US during the last 50 years.


Mercury, like its inner Solar System planetary neighbors Venus, Mars, and the Moon, shows no evidence of having ever undergone plate tectonics. Nonetheless, the innermost planet boasts a long record of tectonic deformation. The most prominent manifestation of this history is a population of large scarps that occurs throughout the planet's cratered terrains; some of these scarps rise kilometers above the surrounding landscape. Mercury's smooth plains, the majority of which are volcanic and occupy over a quarter of the planet, abound with low-relief ridges. The scarps and ridges are underlain by thrust faults and point to a tectonic history dominated by crustal shortening. At least some of the shortening strain recorded by the ridges may reflect subsidence of the lavas in which they formed, but the widespread distribution of scarps attests to a planetwide process of global contraction, wherein Mercury experienced a reduction in volume as its interior cooled through time.
 The onset of this phenomenon placed the lithosphere into a net state of horizontal compression, and accounts for why Mercury hosts only a few instances of extensional structures. These landforms, shallow troughs that form complex networks, occur almost wholly in volcanically flooded impact craters and basins and developed as those lavas cooled and thermally contracted. Tellingly, widespread volcanism on Mercury ended at around the same time the population of scarps began to form. Explosive volcanism endured beyond this point, but almost exclusively at sites of lithospheric weakness, where large faults penetrate deep into the interior. These observations are consistent with decades-old predictions that global contraction would shut off major volcanic activity, and illustrate how closely Mercury's tectonic and volcanic histories are intertwined.
 The tectonic character of Mercury is thus one of sustained crustal shortening with only localized extension, which started almost four billion years ago and extends into the geologically recent past. This character somewhat resembles that of the Moon, but differs substantially from those of Earth, Venus, or Mars. Mercury may represent how small rocky planets tectonically evolve and could provide a basis for understanding the geological properties of similarly small worlds in orbit around other stars.


SUMMARY 1. Body contraction in the sabellid worm, Pseudopotamilla occelata, during the rapid withdrawal reflex occurred only in the anterior half of the body. End-to-end shortening was never observed. The longitudinal muscles are well-developed in the anterior half, and poorly developed in the posterior half. 2. Conduction of action potentials along the giant axons was blocked at the midbody, and was responsible for the anteriorly restricted body contraction. 3. Electrophysiological and histological studies excluded the possibility that conduction block resulted from a safety factor attributable to the special geometry of the axons. 4. Current injection across the giant axon membrane in the region of the conduction block indicated that changes in the properties of the membrane were responsible for the conduction block.


This paper examines spatial spillovers associated with the adoption of organic dairy farming. We hypothesize that neighboring farmers can help to reduce the uncertainty of organic conversion by lowering the fixed costs of learning about the organic system. A spatially explicit 10-year panel dataset of more than 1,900 dairy farms in southwestern Wisconsin is used as input into a reduced-form econometric model of the decision to convert to organic production. Using an identification strategy that exploits the panel aspect of the micro dataset, we find evidence that the presence of neighboring organic dairy farms affects the conversion decision. (JEL Q15, Q24)


The currently dominant programming models to write software for multicore processors use threads that run over shared memory. However, as the core count increases, cache coherency protocols get very complex and ineffective, and maintaining a shared memory abstraction becomes expensive and impractical. Moreover, writing multithreaded programs is notoriously difficult, as the programmer needs to reason about all the possible thread interleavings and interactions, including the myriad of implicit, non-obvious, and often unpredictable thread interactions through shared memory. Overall, as processors get more cores and parallel software becomes mainstream, the shared memory model reaches its limits regarding ease of programming and efficiency.
 This position paper presents two ideas aiming to solve the problem. First, we restrict the way the programmer expresses parallelism: The program is a collection of possibly recursive tasks, where each task is atomic and cannot communicate with any other task during its execution. Second, we relax the requirement for coherent shared memory: Each task defines its memory footprint, and is guaranteed to have exclusive access to that memory during its execution. Using this model, we can then define a runtime system that transparently performs the data transfers required among cores without cache coherency, and also produces a deterministic execution of the program, provably equivalent to its sequential elision.


Title: Design for change – Generation Y consumers' perception of sustainability in the fast fashion industry Research Questions: "What knowledge do Generation Y consumers' have about sustainability in the fast fashion industry?" and "How do the factors of the attitude-behavior gap influence the Generation Y consumers in their decision making for fast fashion clothes?" Problem Formulation: Sustainability as a topic has regained great attention over the last couple of years. Generation Y consumers' demand for more sustainable actions, especially in fast fashion, puts increasing pressure on the industry. As the biggest consumer cohort, it is important for fast fashion companies to meet their needs and demands for more sustainable actions to stay competitive. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explore the perception of sustainability of Generation Y consumers' in the fast fashion industry by looking at eight factors that influence the attitudebehavior gap, namely Price Sensitivity, Ethical Obligation, Lack of Information, Subjective Norm, Quality, Inertia, Cynicism and Guilt. Additionally, the previous knowledge about sustainability in the fast fashion industry of this generation will be investigated by using the triplebottom line approach of economic, environmental and social aspects. Methodology: This thesis utilized a qualitative methodology by conducting semi-structured interviews. The research consists of 6 participants from the Generation Y. The interviews were performed personally face-to-face. Findings/Conclusions: The findings indicate that the factors of the attitude-behavior gap still influence Generation Y consumers' in their purchase decisions for fast fashion brands. They are more hesitant to invest in acquiring clothes from fast fashion retailers, as they see them as violating to the society and the environment. Therefore, Generation Y consumers would rather purchase sustainable clothes from sustainable companies that are behaving and producing their clothes in a right, sustainable and ethical way. Hence, their attitude indicates to be similar to their potential purchasing behavior. Furthermore, Generation Y consumers' hold a broad, detailed knowledge about sustainability of all three parts of the triple bottom line.


ABSTRACT Introduction Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has emerged as one of the biggest global health issues. Spike protein (S) and nucleoprotein (N), the major immunogenic components of SARS-CoV-2, have been shown to be involved in the attachment and replication of the virus inside the host cell. Areas covered Several investigations have shown that the SARS-CoV-2 nucleoprotein can elicit a cell-mediated immune response capable of regulating viral replication and lowering viral burden. However, the development of an effective vaccine that can stop the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 remains a matter of concern. Literature was retrieved using the keywords COVID-19 vaccine, role of nucleoprotein as vaccine candidate, spike protein, nucleoprotein immune responses against SARS-CoV-2, and chimera vaccine in PubMed, Google Scholar, and Google. Expert opinion We have focussed on the use of chimera protein, consisting of N and S-1 protein components of SARS-CoV-2, as a potential vaccine candidate. This may act as a polyvalent mixed recombinant protein vaccine to elicit a strong T and B cell immune response, which will be capable of neutralizing the wild and mutated variants of SARS-CoV-2, and also restricting its attachment, replication, and budding in the host cell.


To understand the weather is one of the significant tasks in any fishing activity; this is to save lives and protect properties. This ethnoclimatological study explored the culture-based knowledge of fisherfolks in predicting weather conditions using nature signs and indicators, the practices upon their prognoses, and the natural phenomenon they encountered. Thirty fisherfolks from Gigantes Island, Carles, Iloilo, Philippines (11° 35′ 39′′ N, 123° 20′ 11′′ E) participated in the interview, observation, and focus group discussion. Themes were identified using Creswell's (2012) steps for data analysis and were triangulated. Results revealed that fisherfolks use wind, clouds, mountains' appearance, the scent of mud, and burned cogon grass to determine weather conditions. They believed that fishing is relative to weather. While venturing the sea, they encountered natural phenomena such as Pugada and typhoons, which put their lives and properties in danger. Hence, fishing in safe settings is dependent on the state of nature, which requires fundamental knowledge and practices. Thus, government and non-government organizations may uncover indigenous knowledge and practices in weather forecasting, evaluate their efficacy, and integrate them into natural disaster management systems to create a holistic program that addresses the long-term future of the fisherfolks. Keywords: Ethnoclimatology, Fisherfolks, Indigenous Knowledge, Natural Phenomena, Practices, Weather Forecasting


Abstract Sweet corn is seeded under a wide range of population densities; however, the extent to which variable population density influences weed suppression is unknown. Therefore, field studies were undertaken to quantify the influence of sweet corn seeding level on growth, seed production, and post-harvest seed germination of wild-proso millet, one of the most problematic weeds in the crop. As crop seeding level increased, path analysis results indicated the crop canopy became taller and thicker, resulting in less wild-proso millet biomass, seed production, and germinability. However, at the level of individual fields, reductions in wild-proso millet growth and seed production were modest, at best, between a crop population currently used by growers and a higher crop population known to optimize yield of certain hybrids. These results indicate near-future increases in sweet corn seeding levels may play a minor role in improving weed management in individual sweet corn fields. Nonetheless, a reduction in crop populations, via weather- or management-driven phenomenon, increases risk of greater wild-proso millet seed production. Nomenclature: Wild-proso millet, Panicum miliaceum L.; sweet corn, Zea mays L.


: A review of the recent literature concerning the Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) and Multiple Organ Failure (MOF) is presented. We hypothesize that the two syndromes probably have a common pathophysiology, with ARDS as the first occurring organ failure. The clinical situations that may cause ARDS and MOF are characterized by massive and prolonged activation of the complement system. This results in activation of granulocytes with ensuing release of lysosomal enzymes, toxic oxygen products and prostaglandins, which collectively cause endothelial damage and permeability changes. In the lungs interstitial and alveolar edema develops, with an impaired alveolo-capillary gas exchange. Oxygen diffusion in the peripheral tissues is impeded by the same mechanism, ultimately resulting in organ failure. Hypoxia may cause additional microvascular lesions, as toxic oxygen radicals are produced during reoxygenation. The implications of this hypothesis for the prevention and therapy of ARDS and MOF are discussed.


BACKGROUND
High blood pressure represents a major public health problem. Worldwide, approximately one-fourth of the adult population has hypertension. Epidemiological and experimental studies suggest a link between hyperuricemia and hypertension. Hyperuricemia affects 25% to 40 % of individuals with untreated hypertension; a much lower prevalence has been reported in normotensives or in the general population. However, whether lowering serum uric acid (UA) might lower blood pressure (BP) is an unanswered question.

OBJECTIVES
To determine whether UA-lowering agents reduce BP in patients with primary hypertension or prehypertension compared with placebo.

SEARCH METHODS
The Cochrane Hypertension Information Specialist searched the following databases for randomized controlled trials up to February 2016: the Cochrane Hypertension Specialised Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (2016, Issue 2), MEDLINE (from 1946), Embase (from 1974), the World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry Platform, and ClinicalTrials.gov. We also searched LILACS up to March 2016 and contacted authors of relevant papers regarding further published and unpublished work.

SELECTION CRITERIA
To be included in this review, the studies had to meet the following criteria: 1) randomized or quasi-randomized, with a group assigned to receive a UA-lowering agent and another group assigned to receive placebo; 2) double-blind, single-blind or open-label; 3) parallel or cross-over trial; 4) cross-over trials had to have a washout period of at least two weeks; 5) minimum treatment duration of four weeks; 6) participants had to have a diagnosis of essential hypertension or prehypertension, and hyperuricemia (serum UA greater than 6 mg/dL in women, 7 mg/dL in men and 5.5 mg/dL in children/adolescents); 7) outcome measures assessed included change in clinic systolic, diastolic or 24-hour ambulatory BP.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
The two review authors independently collected the data using a data extraction form, and resolved any disagreements via discussion. We assessed risk of bias using the Cochrane Collaboration' Risk of bias' tool.

MAIN RESULTS
In this review update, we examined the abstracts of 349 identified papers and selected 21 for evaluation. We also identified three ongoing studies, the results of which are not yet available. Three other randomized controlled trials (RCTs) (two new), enrolling individuals with hypertension or prehypertension, and hyperuricemia, met the inclusion criteria for the review and were included in the meta-analysis. Low quality of evidence from three RCTs indicate no reduction in systolic (MD -6.2 mmHg, 95% CI -12.8 to 0.5) or diastolic (-3.9 mmHg, 95% CI -9.2 to 1.4) 24-hour ambulatory BP with UA-lowering drugs compared with placebo. Low quality of evidence from two RCTs reveal a reduction of systolic clinic BP (-8.43 mmHg, 95% CI -15.24 to -1.62) but not diastolic clinic BP (-6.45 mmHg, 95% CI -13.60 to 0.70). High quality of evidence from three RCTs indicates that serum UA levels were reduced by 3.1 mg/dL (95% CI 2.4 to 3.8) in the participants that received UA-lowering drugs. Very low quality of evidence from three RCTs suggests that withdrawals due to adverse effects were not increased with UA-lowering therapy (RR 1.86, 95% CI 0.43 to 8.10).

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
In this updated systematic review, the RCT data available at present are insufficient to know whether UA-lowering therapy also lowers BP. More studies are needed.


Several independent studies have reported the roles of the E3 ubiquitin ligase, carboxy-terminus Hsc70 interacting protein (CHIP) in various types of cancers. However, the biological effects of CHIP vary in regards to different cancers, and the role of CHIP in head and neck cancers (HNCs) remains unknown. In the present study, CHIP overexpression plasmids and CHIP knockdown lentivirus were constructed to affect the expression levels of CHIP protein and biological behaviors in HNC cell lines bilaterally. The biological behaviors regulated by CHIP in HNCs were investigated both in vivo and in vitro with a series of assays and analyses. A tissue microarray was stained and analyzed for the clinical significance of CHIP expression in HNCs. We identified that CHIP suppressed the malignant behaviors of HNCs in a series of in vitro and in vivo experiments, but not its two loss-of-function mutants. However, we observed an altered expression pattern of CHIP from a well, moderate, to poor differentiation pathological status in HNC specimens. In a retrospective cohort of HNCs, lower expression of CHIP indicated a poor differentiation status in tumors and a lower overall survival rate. The present study demonstrated that CHIP functions as a tumor suppressor in HNCs. In conclusion, we demonstrated that suppressed expression of CHIP may result in the progression of HNCs.


The proliferation of network-connected devices, also known as the "Internet of Things" (IoT), offers unprecedented opportunities for consumers and businesses. Yet devices such as fitness trackers, personal home assistants (e.g., Amazon Echo, Google Home), and digital appliances are changing the nature of privacy as they operate silently in the background while transmitting data about a broad range of human activities and behaviors.

As "smart" becomes the new default setting for devices, consumers are further losing the ability to monitor and control the data collected about them, and they often have little awareness of what is done with their data downstream. The risks of sharing data through smart devices are not always clear, particularly as companies combine data from different sources to infer an individual's habits, movements, and even emotions.

This report provides an overview of some of the key privacy issues resulting from the expansion of the IoT, as well as emerging frameworks that could help policymakers and corporate leaders reduce potential harms through regulation and product design. Among the findings outlined in this paper:

• The IoT has the potential to diminish the sanctity of spaces that have long been considered private, and could have a "chilling effect" as people grow aware of the risk of surveillance. Yet the same methods of privacy preservation that work in the online world are not always practical or appropriate for the personal types of data collection that the IoT enables.

• Several frameworks have emerged for addressing the privacy issues that the IoT presents. Some focus on giving users more meaningful, granular control over the data that is collect- ed, when data is collected, and how it is shared, while others focus on the accessibility and correct timing of privacy notices.

• Policymakers should take steps to regulate the privacy effects of IoT before mass sensor data collection becomes ubiquitous, rather than after. Omnibus privacy legislation can help regulate how data is handled in the grey areas between sectors and contexts. Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), coming into force in 2018, will have an impact initially on IoT devices created and sold in the EU, and will affect those from the US as well over time.

• Having broad non-specialist conversations about the use, collection, and effects of IoT data is essential to help the populace understand technological changes in this space and how they affect privacy expectations.

• Makers of IoT products and services should employ a variety of standard measures to provide greater user management and control, as well as more effective notification about how personal data is captured, stored, analyzed, and shared.

The findings in this paper were developed through two workshops, seventeen semi-structured interviews, and an extensive literature review. A detailed analysis can be found in the full research report, Clearly Opaque: Privacy Risks of the Internet of Things, which was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Sample quotations from these interviews and workshops are included throughout this paper.


Antibacterial drug treatment increases the bile acid pool size and hepatic bile acid concentration through the elevation of hepatic bile acid synthesis. However, the involvement of intestinal bile acid absorption in the increased bile acid pool size remains unclear. To determine whether intestinal bile acid absorption contributes to the increased bile acid pool in mice treated with antibacterial drugs, we evaluated the levels of bile acid transporter proteins and the capacity of intestinal bile acid absorption. Ileal apical sodium-dependent bile acid transporter (ASBT) mRNA and protein levels were significantly increased in ampicillin (ABPC)-treated mice, whereas organic solute transporter α (OSTα) mRNA levels, but not protein levels, significantly decreased in mice. Similar alterations in the expression levels of bile acid transporters were observed in mice treated with bacitracin/neomycin/streptomycin. The capacity for intestinal bile acid absorption was evaluated by an in situ loop method. Increased ileal absorption of taurochenodeoxycholic acid was observed in mice treated with ABPC. These results suggest that intestinal bile acid absorption is elevated in an ASBT-dependent manner in mice treated with antibacterial drugs.


This essay discusses the policy debate concerning optimal taxation and the distribution of income. It begins with a brief overview of trends in income inequality, the leading hypothesis to explain these trends, and the distribution of the tax burden. It then considers the normative question of how the tax system should be designed. The conventional utilitarian framework is found to be wanting, as it leads to prescriptions that conflict with many individuals' moral intuitions. The essay then explores an alternative normative framework, dubbed the Just Deserts Theory, according to which an individual's compensation should reflect his or her social contribution.


Parents have long served a crucial role in their children's postsecondary success through guidance and support. In an effort to help Latina/o parents in emerging immigrant communities overcome any limits to their knowledge around college-going practices, this study evaluates the feasibility and beginning efficacy of a parent-focused, Spanish-language psychoeducational program (Padres Promoviendo Preparacion). The program is novel in that it centers on increasing parent college-going knowledge and self-efficacy for guiding their children forward; it was delivered in both school and congregational settings; and the content was delivered in Spanish by community advocates working in collaboration with university-based personnel. The quantitative pre/post measures indicate that the program was successful at increasing par¬ents' knowledge and self-efficacy, and the qualitative data help to expand upon the ways that parents perceived the impact or benefit of the program for their families. Implications for educators, advocates, and policymakers center on the impact of parent-focused programs on knowledge gains and how that knowledge transforms the parent–child relationship. As schools and communities seek to engage with families to increase Latina/o student post-high school options, this program and these findings can provide both context and content for doing so.


The morphologic observations of uterine leiomyoma in 100 cases and the histogenetic study on the uterine muscles of three-month to full-term fetuses in 14 cases have been made. It is found that there exists a transitional feature of perithelial cells, which probably are the cellular anlagen of hysteromyoma and uterine smooth muscle of fetus. Those cells are similar to the fifth month fetal uterine wall cells and might belong to the rudimentary mullerian tissue. Histologically, the hysteromyoma could be divided into five cellular types: mature cell type, proliferative cell type, blastocyte type, retrogressional cell type and mixed cell type. The blastocyte type might be related to an elevated level of estrogen and 59% of retrogressional cell type occurs in the patients above 50 years old.


Allele-Specific Gene Expression May Influence Mental Health During brain development, neurons may preferentially silence genetic alleles inherited from one parent, according to a recent study published in Neuron. This differential activation affects about 85% of genes in the developing brain, and as the brain matures, neurons increasingly express both parents' alleles equally. For at least 10% of genes, however, maternal and paternal copies continue to be differentially expressed in the adult brain. The study, led by investigators at the University of Utah School of Medicine, suggests that periods when one gene copy is turned off could be critical windows during which the other copy is vulnerable to mutation. This could have considerable clinical implications because mutations causing mental illness are often heterozygous, affecting just 1 gene copy. Indeed, the researchers uncovered allelic effects in the primate brain that affect genes implicated in mental illness and that create mosaics of neurons differentially expressing mutant vs normal alleles. They also found that these allelic effects differ between cells and brain regions. Although scientists have long known that certain genes differentially activate the related maternal and paternal copies in the brain as a result of genomic imprinting and random X-inactivation, this study reveals nongenetic allele-specific activation in neurons that varies according to age, cell type, and brain region. Understanding the mechanisms involved could lead to new therapeutic approaches that activate silent healthy gene copies in the brain. The scientists' in vivo genome-wide screening approach may also be used to study allele-specific gene expression in other cell and tissue types.


Agriculture is a multi-dimensional sector directly linked to the malnutrition and food security of the country. This paper provides an effusive farmer supporting system called "Third generation agricultural support system development" where it assess the various classification techniques of data mining and apply them to a soil science database to establish if meaningful relationships can be found. In data mining conception, clustering and classification technique make efficient knowledge exploration and knowledge acquisition from integrated organic farming and produces better solution to the farmers about their cultivation. The agricultural support system development consists of collecting soil information's with computational approach which is followed in organic way of farming huddling using clusters(k-means) and gives best result using classification(orthogonal array) from the databases to the farmers along with beneficial microbes to release nutrients to crops for increased sustainable production in an ecological – intensification and pollution free environment.


This is a preliminary investigation aimed at assessing the influence of individual metallic elements on the sealing characteristics of glass-ceramic-to-metal seals in order to aid in the analysis of interfacial reactions in more complex practical alloy systems. In the present study, a lithium zinc silicate (LZS) glass nucleated with P2O5 has been sealed to high purity Fe, Ni and Cr metals and the resultant diffusion into the glass of each metal monitored as a function of sealing temperature and time. The initial data obtained are compared with similar data noted for multi-component alloys.


ABSTRACT The need for rapid methods to accurately detect methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is widely acknowledged, and a number of molecular assays are commercially available. This study evaluated the Xpert MRSA assay, which is run on the GeneXpert real-time PCR platform (Cepheid) for use in a clinical laboratory. The following parameters were investigated: (i) the limits of detection (LoDs) for four MRSA strains; (ii) the ability to detect isolates of MRSA from a collection representative of MRSA in Ireland since 1974 (n = 114) and the ability to detect control strains with staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec types IVa (IV.1.1.1), IVb (IV.2.1.1), IVc (IV.3.1.1), IVd (IV.4.1.1), V (V.1.1.1), VT, and VI; and (iii) performance in a clinical trial with swabs from nose, throat, and groin/perineum sites from 204 patients, where results were compared with those obtained by direct and enrichment cultures. The average LoD of the four test strains was 610 CFU/ml (equivalent to 58 CFU/swab). All 114 MRSA isolates and 7 control strains tested were detected. Sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values for clinical specimens from all sites investigated were 90%, 97%, 86%, and 98%, respectively, but throat specimens yielded poor sensitivity (75%). Sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values for nasal specimens were 95%, 98%, 90%, and 99%, respectively. Overall, the assay was rapid and easy to perform, but performance might be enhanced by the inclusion of an equivocal interpretive category based on analysis of all available amplification data.


This paper is a review of Fuzzy Petri Nets. The basic theory of Fuzzy Logic and Petri Nets are presented. High Level Fuzzy Petri Nets are also discussed. The relationship between Fuzzy Petri Nets and Fuzzy Logic Programming is investigated.


Econometric methods for assessing the degree of market power typically rely on a maintained hypothesis of price-taking behavior on one side of the market or the other. In the analysis of bilateral oligopoly, however, one would like to leave open the question of whether buyers or sellers (or both) behave competitively while allowing for the possible exercise of market power on either side. In this paper, we address the problem of measuring market power in bilateral oligopoly. This requires that we first distinguish among three candidate equilibrium concepts: bilateral price-taking, seller price-taking, and buyer price-taking. Choosing among them comes down to a test of nonnested, nonlinear, simultaneous equation models. Our application to the U.S. wholesale market for beef, characterized by high degrees of concentration among both sellers (beef packers) and buyers (primarily retail grocery chains), reveals seller price-taking among the three candidates to be the most consistent with the data. In particular, the hypothesis of price-taking conduct on both sides of the market can be rejected. This is a conclusion that would not have been reached had we considered monopoly conduct by sellers as the only alternative to perfect competition.


Xanthoceras Sorbifolia Bunge crust was used as source material to make carbon by chemically impregnated by sodium hydroxide、carbonized at 220°C and activated under the protection of the nitrogen. Experiments were carried out as function of contact time, pH (4-10) and temperature (293,303 and 313K). Adsorption isotherms were modeled with the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. Adsorption isotherms of Basic Fuchsin on Xanthoceras Sorbifolia Bunge crust activated carbon are consistent with Langmuir equation. The Langmuir monolayer saturation capacities of BF adsorbed onto activated carbon were 286.545, 303.617 and 323.816 mg/g at 293,303, and 313 K, respectively.and adsorption kinetics were found to conform to the pseudo-second-order kinetics with good correlation.Using the equilibrium concentration contents obtained at different temperatures, various thermodynamic parameters,such as △G,△H and △S, have been calculated. The thermodynamics parameters of system indicated spontaneous and endothermic process.


In the canonical approach to Lorentzian quantum general relativity in four spacetime dimensions an important step forward has been made by Ashtekar, Isham and Lewandowski some eight years ago through the introduction of a Hilbert space structure, which was later proved to be a faithful representation of the canonical commutation and adjointness relations of the quantum field algebra of diffeomorphism invariant gauge field theories by Ashtekar, Lewandowski, Marolf, Mourão and Thiemann. This Hilbert space, together with its generalization due to Baez and Sawin, is appropriate for semi-classical quantum general relativity if the spacetime is spatially compact. In the spatially non-compact case, however, an extension of the Hilbert space is needed in order to approximate metrics that are macroscopically nowhere degenerate. For this purpose, in this paper we apply the theory of the infinite tensor product (ITP) of Hilbert Spaces, developed by von Neumann more than sixty years ago, to quantum general relativity. The cardinality of the number of tensor product factors can take the value of any possible Cantor aleph, making this mathematical theory well suited to our problem in which a Hilbert space is attached to each edge of an arbitrarily complicated, generally infinite graph. The new framework opens access to a new arsenal of techniques, appropriate to describe fascinating physics such as quantum topology change, semi-classical quantum gravity, effective low-energy physics etc from the universal point of view of the ITP. In particular, the study of photons and gravitons propagating on fluctuating quantum spacetimes should now be in reach.


This thesis examines the photograph albums created by fifteen women born during the reign of Queen Victoria living in the Canterbury region of New Zealand between the years 1890-1910. It will investigate how it was that these women, often working in close association with other members of their family, became involved in photography as an amateur recreational pastime. It will pursue this investigation within the conceptual and structural framework in which these women's photographs were produced, collected or processed, and organized into albums, arguing that the making of such albums was as much a cultural and social practice as a representational one.  Photograph albums are often considered to be generic objects. However this study will treat albums as distinctive and unique documents, comparable to other more-widely consulted primary sources such as letters and diaries. In particular, it will explore the capacity of the album to be a pictorial artefact that provides its own conditions for viewing images over time and space and contribute to a growing body of literature that insists that the photograph album is an important object of study within social history, and indeed within the history of photography in general.  In drawing attention to the album making as a gendered pastime I am acknowledging the significance of this activity for women from within the upper and middle classes as a significant aspect of feminine cultural production at this period in our colonial history. As cameras became easier to operate towards the end of the nineteenth century these improvements saw women begin to take their own photographs, and also to print and distribute them within their extended families and beyond. This reflects the extent to which the practices of photography and album-making had become integrated practices by this date. Thus, the role of the album compiler working in the domestic sphere was effectively transformed from a passive consumer (collecting photographs) into an active producer of photographs.  However, the extent to which the practice of photography was undertaken by women within colonial New Zealand is only now beginning to be realized. To date, the published evidence for this has been slight. This thesis endeavours to shed light on the contribution of these women working within the domestic sphere, but also those of their number who subsequently ventured to use this knowledge outside this limited sphere, and on their visual legacy at this formative period in New Zealand's history.


Modern distributed computing frameworks such as Apache Hadoop, Spark, or Storm distribute the workload of applications across a large number of machines. Whilst they abstract the details of distribution they do require the programmer to set a number of configuration parameters before deployment. These parameter settings (usually) have a substantial impact on execution efficiency. Finding the right values for these parameters is considered a difficult task and requires domain, application, and framework expertise. In this paper, we propose a machine learning approach to the problem of configuring a distributed computing framework. Specifically, we propose using Bayesian Optimization to find good parameter settings. In an extensive empirical evaluation, we show that Bayesian Optimization can effectively find good parameter settings for four different stream processing topologies implemented in Apache Storm resulting in significant gains over a parallel linear approach.


Introduction: Recent advances regarding mechanisms of chronic pain emphasize the role of corticolimbic circuitry in predicting risk for chronic pain, independently from the site of injury-related parameters. These results compel revisiting the role of peripheral nociceptive signaling in chronic pain. We address this issue by examining what information brain circuitry transmits regarding the intensity of chronic pain and how this information may be related to a common comorbidity, depression. Objectives: To identify what information brain circuitry transmits regarding intensity of chronic somatic pain. Methods: Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging was used in a large group of patients with chronic pain (n = 40 chronic back pain and n = 44 osteoarthritis patients), and in comparison with healthy subjects (n = 88). We used a graph theoretical measure, degree count, to investigate voxelwise information sharing/transmission in the brain. Degree count, a functional connectivity–based measure, identifies the number of voxels functionally connected to every given voxel. Subdividing the chronic pain cohort into discovery, replication, and also for the overall group, we show that only degree counts of diencephalic voxels centered in the ventral–lateral thalamus reflected intensity of chronic pain, independently of depression. Results: Pain intensity was reliably associated with degree count of the thalamus, which was correlated negatively with components of the default mode network and positively with the periaqueductal gray (in contrast to healthy controls). Depression scores were not reliably associated with regional degree count. Conclusion: Collectively, the results suggest that, across 2 types of chronic pain, nociceptive-specific information is relayed through the spinothalamic pathway to the lateral thalamus, potentiated by pronociceptive descending modulation, and interrupting cortical cognitive processes.


Fragmentation of metastable anions of all deoxynucleosides and nucleosides constituting DNA and RNA has been studied experimentally and by computer simulations. The ions were formed through deprotonation in matrix assisted laser desorption/ionisation (MALDI). Clear difference in fragmentation patterns was obtained for nucleosides containing purine vs. pyrimidine bases. To elucidate the role of various potential deprotonation sites, systematic blocking by chemical modification was performed and this gave unambiguous correlation between deprotonation sites and fragments observed. Classical dynamics simulations of the fragmentation process, using density functional theory to describe the electronic degrees of freedom, were performed for the various deprotonation sites. These were found to reproduce the observed fragmentation patterns remarkably well.


Aiming at the performance evaluation problem of tidal energy turbines in the application of periodic time-varying flow velocity, with the goal of maximizing the efficiency of energy harvesting in practical applications, an evaluation system combining the characteristics of flow velocity changes in practical applications is proposed. After long-term monitoring of tidal current flow velocity in the applied sea area, the actual measured tidal current periodic flow velocity is divided into several flow velocity segments by using statistical segmentation, and the evaluation flow velocity of each flow velocity segment and its time proportion in the tidal current cycle are obtained. A test device with constant torque regulation is built, and capture power tests of different torque loads are carried out under each evaluation flow rate. After comparison, the maximum captured power at each evaluation flow rate is determined. We calculate the weight based on the time proportion of each evaluation flow velocity and obtain the turbine average power of the tidal cycle, thereby evaluating the overall energy capture performance of the turbine under the periodic time-varying flow velocity. Finally, the application test of the turbine in the actual sea area shows that the thin-walled airfoil turbine is more suitable for the sea area, which is the same as the pool evaluation result. The result shows that the evaluation system is reliable and effective and has significance for guiding practical engineering.


: Effect of combined use of doxorubicin and ceftriaxone on 5 strains of Staphylococcus aureus (standard S. aureus ATCC 29213 and 4 isolated strains) was studied. The method of passages in meat-pepton broth with constant and increasing concentrations of ceftriaxone in presence of 1/2 and 1/4 minimum inhibitory concentration of doxorubicin was used. It has been shown that doxorubicin in such concentrations does not influence on the development of resistance of tested strains to ceftriaxone. The combination of doxorubicin as anti-tumor drug with intercalary action and ceftriaxone does not increase the risk of development of resistance of staphylococci to antibiotics, which has a matter during their combined use.


With the creation of nitrogen (NV) in 1b diamond it is common to find that the absorption and emission is predominantly of negatively charged NV centres. This occurs because electrons tunnel from the substitutional nitrogen atoms to NV to form NV−–N+ pairs. There can be a small percentage of neutral charge NV0 centres and a linear increase of this percentage can be obtained with optical intensity. Subsequent to excitation it is found that the line width of the NV− zero-phonon has been altered. The alteration arises from a change of the distribution of N+ ions and a modification of the average electric field at the NV− sites. The consequence is a change to the Stark shifts and splittings giving the change of the zero-phonon line (ZPL) width. Exciting the NV− centres enhances the density of close N+ ions and there is a broadening of the ZPL. Alternatively exciting and ionizing N0 in the lattice results in more distant distribution of N+ ions and a narrowing of the ZPL. The competition between NV− and N0 excitation results in a significant dependence on excitation wavelength and there is also a dependence on the concentration of the NV− and N0 in the samples. The present investigation involves extensive use of low temperature optical spectroscopy to monitor changes to the absorption and emission spectra particularly the widths of the ZPL. The studies lead to a good understanding of the properties of the NV−–N+ pairs in diamond. There is a critical dependence on pair separation. When the NV−–N+ pair separation is large the properties are as for single sites and a high degree of optically induced spin polarization is attainable. When the separation decreases the emission is reduced, the lifetime shortened and the spin polarization downgraded. With separations of <12 A0 there is even no emission. The deterioration occurs as a consequence of electron tunneling in the excited state from NV– to N+ and an optical cycle that involves NV0. The number of pairs with the smaller separations and poorer properties will increase with the number of nitrogen impurities and it follows that the degree of spin polarization that can be achieved for an ensemble of NV− in 1b diamond will be determined and limited by the concentration of single substitutional nitrogen. The information will be invaluable for obtaining optimal conditions when ensembles of NV− are required. As well as extensive measurements of the NV− optical ZPL observations of Stark effects associated with the infrared line at 1042 nm and the optically detected magnetic resonance at 2.87 GHz are also reported.


Justifying the relevancy of a Manned Military Space Station (MMSS) and subsequently proposing its deployment to capitalize upon the United States' national security interests is the essence and purpose of this group study project. The MMSS is intended to perform a two-fold purpose: (1) facilitate military peacetime operations while simultaneously supporting and promoting civilian space initiatives; and, (2) act as a force multiplier for space and terrestrial force operations in the event of conventional, theater nuclear, and/or strategic nuclear war. Data to support the future value of the MMSS was obtained from individual and group research using unclassified sources such as professional journals, books, US Air Force Staff College reference material, and information from the US Air Force space coordinating staff in Washington, DC. The importance of space to our future and especially of a MMSS by America's national leaders and its people has yet to be fully appreciated and/or realized. The significance of space and its nexus to the United States' national security has been growing dramatically in importance since the launching of the Sputnik in 1957 by Russian. Space, as the forth dimension, cannot and should not be understated in importance as it relates to commercialism, deterrence tomore » war, and to the stability of world order.« less


While achievement test results lead to after-the-fact AYP results, this research delves into measures behind and beyond test scores, the matter-of-fact workplace norms of schools. Elementary teachers completed items in the VISTAA survey as analysis revealed five constructs of school culture: commitment to student learning, commitment to collegiality, discourse, efficacy, and sensemaking. As a single aggregate factor, defined standard deviation gains in the school culture composite increased the likelihood of attaining AYP by 81%. The results also show positive associations for individual predictors concerning the infrastructure of school culture with the outcome of AYP.


Background The prognosis in childhood non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) has improved dramatically during recent decades. The authors report the results from a 6-year population-based study of clinical characteristics and treatment results of NHL from the five Nordic countries. Methods All children younger than 15 years of age at diagnosis with NHL diagnosed from 1995 to 2000 were stratified and treated according to immunophenotypic classification and stage of disease. Results A total of 230 patients were diagnosed with primary NHL, which gives an annual incidence of 0.9/100.000 children, with a median age of 8 years. Seven percent of the children were below 3 years of age at diagnosis. The male/female ratio was 2.3 and was unrelated to age. Patients with pre-B and T-cell NHL constituted 33%, B-cell NHL 53%, and anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) 14%. According to Murphy's classification, 14% had stage 1, 17% stage 2, 50% stage 3, and 19% stage 4 disease, 12 of whom (28%) had central nervous involvement (CNS) at diagnosis. By January 1, 2003, four children had died during induction, three children died in remission (2, 6, and 26 months from diagnosis), and 24 children experienced a relapse. At 5 years, the probability of event-free survival (p-EFS) was 86 ± 2% for all children. The 5-year p-EFS values for stages 1 through 4 were 94%, 97%, 83%, and 79%, respectively. The 5-year p-EFS values were 91% for B-cell, 87% for pre-B, 81% for ALCL, and 79% for T-cell NHL. The 12 patients with CNS involvement at diagnosis had a significantly poorer outcome than stage 4 patients with CNS involvement (p-EFS = 50% vs. 90%, P < 0.01). The 218 patients without CNS disease at diagnosis had a 5-year p-EFS of 88%. Conclusions With modern intensive chemotherapy, more than 85% of NHL patients will achieve long-lasting first remission. In the future, preventing death during induction and remission and improving therapy for patients with CNS disease would have a major impact on the overall p-EFS.


Public involvement in transportation planning and design has a problematic history. Professionals lack access to a coherent, organized method for communicating with the public, and some important principles of public involvement known to community design professionals are still being discovered by transportation professionals. A protocol, structured public involvement (SPI), is proposed. SPI was designed to ensure that public involvement is meaningful to the professional and the public. Principles of SPI are presented, and a series of steps useful for engaging the general public in a complex design or planning problem is given. SPI is intended to be transparent, accountable, democratic, and efficient. SPI places the use of technology within a public involvement framework built on community design experience. While technology can be useful, it must be placed in a social context. That is, various technologies are used because they can address such problems as lack of access to information, inconvenient and time-consuming meetings, confusing terms and graphics, and one-way communication. Highlights and examples are drawn from practical experience, where SPI protocols have been designed and used to solve problems of route planning, highway design, and transit-oriented development. While each problem set called for a different mix of technical tools, the protocol within which those tools were used was the same, with similar encouraging results. With SPI, public participation is less contentious and more informed, and the professional has information of high quality with which to begin the design process.


This article studies the performance and return deviation of real estate leveraged exchange-traded funds (RE LETFs) tracking the Dow Jones U.S. Real Estate Index (DJUSRE) and the Morgan Stanley U.S. REIT Index (RMZ) from their inception to March 2011. Relative to the broad-market LETFs tracking the S&P 500 Index, the RE LETF market is marked with greater daily market inefficiency, less-predictable management tracking error, and much more pronounced negative compounding deviation. To avoid sample-specific bias, we also simulate the target performance of RE LETFs using the entire history of the DJUSRE from 1992 and show much less severe negative compounding deviation along with a consistent set of determinants. While the introduction of RE LETFs has provided investors with innovative financial instruments to leverage their long or short exposure to the traditional illiquid real estate sector, this article suggests that the behaviors, sources, and determinants of the return deviation on RE LETFs should be taken into consideration when formulating effective asset allocation strategies.


One of the more important agricultural production centers in Colombia is the R.U.T. Irrigation District, located in the Valle de Cauca. This study evaluated the spatial distribution of ratios of Ca2+, Mg2+, Na+ and K+, along with the percentage of saturation of these bases in the cation exchange capacity. 100 samples were taken at two depths to determine the EC, pH, Ca2+, Mg2+, Na+ and K+. The interpolations were made using the Geostatistical Analyst extension of ArcGis 10.3.1. The best fit semivariogram model was used, obtaining a raster surface with values of each chemical property, with which the plans were generated. The central area of the (La Union) irrigation district was more affected, with percentages of exchangeable magnesium between 40% and 75%, an inverted Ca2+/Mg2+ ratio, and a low calcium saturation percentage. The ratios were high for Mg2+/K+, normal for K+/Mg2+, high for Ca2+/K+, and broad for (Ca2+ + Mg2+)/K+, indicating a probable potassium deficiency that affected fertility. An ionic imbalance in the exchange complex was evident in the main bases of change, which may indicate degradation processes for fertility.


Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is an aggressive and lethal form of breast cancer. It is also an entity for which no consensus exists regarding its clinical definition. The current nomenclature is considered a misnomer since its clinical presentation is not caused by inflammatory components but mainly by lymphatic obstruction.


Injectable products are often the formulation of choice for new therapeutics; however, formulation in liquids often enhances degradation through hydrolysis. Thus, freeze-drying (lyophilization) is regularly used in pharmaceutical manufacture to reduce water activity. Here we examine its contribution to 'state of the art' and look at its future potential uses. A comprehensive search of patent databases was conducted to characterize the international patent landscape and trends in the use of freeze-drying. A total of 914 disclosures related to freeze-drying, lyophilization or drying of solid systems in pressures and temperatures equivalent to those of freeze-drying were considered over the period of 1992-2014. Current applications of sublimation technology were contrasted across two periods those with patents due to expire (1992-1993) and those currently filed. The number of freeze-drying technology patents has stabilized after initial activity across the biotechnology sector in 2011 and 2012. Alongside an increasing trend for patent submissions, freeze-drying submissions have slowed since 2002 and is indicative of a level of maturity.


Attenuation correction of SPECT cardiac perfusion images requires a patient-specific attenuation map. Such a map can be estimated from segmenting both the Compton scatter and photopeak data to identify the regions of the lungs and other soft tissues, and assigning appropriate attenuation coefficients to the regions. Using simulated images produced by Monte Carlo techniques, we have previously demonstrated that a reasonable segmentation can be obtained. This work was extended to investigate the relative accuracy of attenuation correction applied to Monte Carlo images using such maps, with respect to correction with the true attenuation maps. Results demonstrated that the regions of the lungs segmented in the Compton scatter window images were smaller in size than the true lungs by about 17 to 28%. However, this error did not create a significant bias in the polar maps. The bias was seen primarily in the anterior septal region near the base of the heart.<<ETX>>


The increasing focus on energy efficient systems and energy recuperation functionalities calls for multi actuator hydraulic systems to be tightly integrated with regards to energy distribution. Such systems need to allow power to pass back and forth between loads and the supply, while also enabling the ability to store energy. Here two approaches are obvious; namely the usage of hydraulic transformers interconnected via common pressure rails containing accumulators, and variable-speed pumps interconnected via a common electric dc-bus containing capacitors and/or batteries, both having the potential for energy storage and power sharing. A main question is when to apply which of these technologies, when considering specific requirements to actuator dynamics and control features. This paper presents an investigation into the analogy between hydraulic transformers and variable-speed pumps. The investigation takes offset in model based analyses of these technologies regarding their actuation dynamics related to torque generation, input-to-output pressure dynamics with and without a cylinder load. Finally a numerical study is presented, verifying and comparing their transient characteristics and energy losses. It is found that, disregarding the conventional speed control loop in variable-speed pumps, these are in fact equivalent with hydraulic transformers regarding secondary control abilities, dynamics and energy recovery, wheres hydraulic transformers generally must be expected to be more efficient than variable-speed pumps.


SUMMARY Safe navigation of robotic vehicles is considered as a key pre-requisite of successful mission operations within highly adverse and unconstrained environments. While there has been extensive research in the perception of positive obstacles, little progress can be accredited to the field of negative obstacles. This paper hypostatizes an elaborative attempt to address the problem of negative obstacle detection and traversability analysis in the form of gaps by processing 3-dimensional range data. The domain of application concerns Urban Search and Rescue scenarios that reflect environments of increased complexity in terms of diverse terrain irregularities. To allow real-time performance and, in turn, timely prevention of unrecoverable robotic states, the proposed approach is based on the application of efficient image morphological operations for noise reduction and border following the detection and grouping of gaps. Furthermore, we reason about gap traversability, a concept that is novel within the field. Traversability assessments are based on features extracted through Principal Component Analysis by exploring the spatial distribution of the interior of the individual gaps or the orientation distribution of the corresponding contour. The proposed approach is evaluated within a realistic scenario of a tunnel car accident site and a challenging outdoor scenario. Using a contemporary Search and Rescue robot, we have performed extensive experiments under various parameter settings that allowed the robot to always detect the real gaps, and either optimally cross over those that were traversable or otherwise avoid them.


AIM
to analyze whether nursing goals formulated for nursing diagnoses can be mapped to nursing outcomes classification and to identify the scales most appropriate to the outcomes mapped.

METHOD
a descriptive study was developed in an intensive care unit. Data collection involved extraction of goals in 44 medical records, content standardization, cross-mapping to the outcomes, identification of appropriated scales and validation. Descriptive analysis and agreement with the cross-mapping process were performed.

RESULTS
nursing goals (59) were mapped to (28) different outcomes, with agreement of 83% in the mapping process. All goals were mapped to outcomes, which allows to affirm that these outcomes contemplates the goals elaborated to patient care.

CONCLUSION
these results favor the inclusion of outcomes and scales validated in the planning and evaluation phases of the nursing process of a software in construction.


Cassava is a major food crop in sub-Saharan Africa where it is mostly cultivated by small scale farmers. Cassava mosaic disease (CMD) is a major cause of pathogen-associated yield loss in Africa and it is caused by cassava mosaic geminiviruses (CMGs). The genomic structure of CMGs consists of two genomic molecules, DNA-A and DNA-B, enclosed in a twinned icosahedral capsid. South African cassava mosaic virus (SACMV) is a CMG endemic to South Africa. SACMV infection in a plant triggers post transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS), a resistance mechanism intended to target viral mRNA post transcriptionally and to prevent viral proteins translation. SACMV and CMGs, in general, encode silencing suppressors that allow them to escape PTGS from the host. Using the ability of viruses to induce PTGS against their own mRNA, the virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) technology was developed. It involves using viruses as silencing vectors for functional genomics. In this study, SACMV-A partial dimer infectious clones were constructed to contain one copy of the coat protein (AV1) and was used to construct a SACMV-A VIGS vector and used to silence NbNOA1 in N. benthamiana, the model plant system for geminivirus infection studies. SACMV-A VIGS vector was constructed by replacing a portion of AV1 from SACMV-A infectious partial dimer with a multiple cloning site (MCS). A 403 bp of N. tabacum su-gene was introduced to silence the su gene in N. benthamiana and cassava. Silencing of su-gene in N. benthamiana and cassava resulted in bleaching of leaves, a phenotype observed in su-gene null mutations. SACMV-A VIGS vector was also used to silence NbNOA1 in N. benthamiana, a gene involved in disease resistance in N. benthamiana against the fungi Colletotrichum lagenarium and whose homolog in Arabidopsis, AtNOA1, is involved in disease resistance against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Attempts to amplify NbNOA1 homolog from cassava were unsuccessful, using AtNOA1 specific primers, and as a result NOA1 silencing experiments were not carried out in cassava. Positive silencing of NbNOA1 was quantified using quantitative real-time PCR at 14, 21 and 28 dpi. SACMV viral load in silenced plants was quantified at 14, 21 and 28 dpi using absolute quantitative PCR and was found to be elevated in plants infected with the silencing SACMV-A VIGS vector bearing the NbNOA1 than in plants infected with an empty VIGS vector. These results suggest a possible role of NbNOA1 in SACMV disease resistance in N. benthamiana.


This article shows that private enforcement of the U. S. antitrust laws-which usually is derided as essentially worthless-serves as a more important deterrent of anticompetitive behavior than the most esteemed antitrust program in the world, criminal enforcement by the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. The debate over the value of private antitrust enforcement long has been heavy with self-serving assertions by powerful economic interests, but light on factual evidence. To help fill this void we have been conducting research for several years on a variety of empirical topics. This article develops and then explores the implications of a startling finding. Even those who do not deride private enforcement usually believe its only function is to compensate victims of antitrust violations by modest amounts. Significant deterrence is commonly thought to be the effect only of government enforcement, especially criminal enforcement. Our article's conclusion that the amounts of payouts in private cases are actually staggeringly high-so high that they deter anticompetitive conduct more effectively than the criminal fines and prison sentences resulting from Department of Justice cases-is thus the opposite of the consensus within the antitrust community. Indeed, we hope this article causes many in both the United Sates and in Europe to reevaluate their views as to the overall efficacy of private antitrust enforcement.


Road safety is a very serious problem all across the world with 1.3 million people getting fatal injuries. Around 1.5 lakhs people die on Indian Roads with a rate of one death every 4 minutes. The contribution of vulnerable road users group is around 60% at national level. Along with the safety issue, sustainability, sustainable transportation and sustainable environment are the burning areas of discussion at present. The subject matters related to the meaning, assessment and realization of safe and sustainable transportation are discussed in this paper. The important concerns are various definitions of sustainability, the problems considered under sustainability, different perceptions, assessing sustainability and impact of various transport mode on sustainability. Now the broad areas covered while defining sustainable systems include ecological balance, social welfare and equity and health issues as well. Discrete scientific solutions may not be satisfactory for solving sustainability issues. How the transportation system may be made safe and sustainable through proper integration is the subject matter of the present paper.


Carbon dioxide (CO2) electrolysis is a promising route to utilise captured CO2 as a building block to produce valuable feedstocks and fuels such as carbon monoxide and ethylene. Very recently, CO2 electrolysis has been proposed as an alternative process to replace the amine recovery unit of the commercially available amine-based CO2 capture process. This process would replace the most energy-intensive unit operation in amine scrubbing while providing a route for CO2 conversion. The key enabler for such process integration is to develop an efficient integrated electrolyser that can convert CO2 and recover the amine simultaneously. Herein, this review provides an overview of the fundamentals and recent progress in advancing integrated CO2 conversion in amine-based capture media. This review first discusses the mechanisms for both CO2 absorption in the capture medium and electrochemical conversion of the absorbed CO2. We then summarise recent advances in improving the efficiency of integrated electrolysis via innovating electrodes, tailoring the local reaction environment, optimising operation conditions (e.g., temperatures and pressures), and modifying cell configurations. This review is concluded with future research directions for understanding and developing integrated CO2 electrolysers.


We conducted a controlled clinical trial designed to test caerulein for tolerability and effectiveness in post-operative patients recovering from abdominal surgery. The test product was administered 24 hours after surgery, by intravenous drip infusion, at the rate of 2 nanograms/kg/minute. The results were compared with parallel observations made in a matched group of patients receiving no drugs or manipulation likely to promote intestinal peristalsis with the exception of the application of a nasogastric tube for aspiration and the water and electrolyte replenishment customary in the post-operative period. The results of this study evince a clear-cut difference between the two groups of patients in regard to the restoration of intestinal peristalsis and the passing of flatus and faeces, as confirmed by statistical analysis (Cochran's test) demonstrating the significant (p less than 0.01) superiority of caerulein treatment relative to the untreated control group. Likewise, the study revealed the excellent tolerability of the test drug at the dosage employed.


This research concerns the collective identity of Korean diasporas who have settled in China, Japan, and post-Soviet central Asia, with special attention to Uzbekistan. The main research considers how the Korean diasporas define their collective identities in their respective host states, and the political implications of the constitution of such identities. The means by which a collective identity is secured vary, depending on a diaspora's relations and interactions with its homeland and host state, and vision of its own community. Despite sharing many features common to not being assimilated by host societies, the three Korean diasporas have maintained their distinctive identities in each case under this study. A diaspora's identity is thus to be understood as having a particular nature, which I see as a third type of national identity. I argue that the features of diasporas are generated by the following three factors: the homeland, the hostland, and the diaspora organisations. A diaspora identity is reflected in the intrinsic quandaries it experiences within this triangular structure. These quandaries are created by fundamental tensions; such as the dilemma between seeking a fuller degree of inclusion and maintaining autonomy, the psychological conflicts between the awareness of the need for collective resistance against assimilation and the aspiration for overcoming sub-national collectivity, and the difficulties that arise from the process of accepting a different national identity while not detached from their ancestral motherland. The Korean diasporas are nearing the point of creating self-determined communities with stable dual-national identities. The formation of such an identity has prerequisites; such as the knowledge and understanding of the two national cultures involved, clear and sufficient communication, the preservation of the diaspora's own history, and the sustaining of various forms of collective existence, all of which will legitimise a diaspora's aspiration for recognition.


We study risk-sensitive optimal control of a stochastic differential equation (SDE) of mean-field type, where the coefficients are allowed to depend on some functional of the law as well as the state and control processes. Moreover the risk-sensitive cost functional is also of mean-field type. We derive optimality equations in infinite dimensions connecting dual functions associated with Bellman functional to the adjoint process of the Pontryagin maximum principle. The case of linear-exponentiated quadratic cost and its connection with the risk-neutral solution is discussed.


The case describes successful distal tibial resection, fibular autograft, and ankle arthrodesis in two patients who had giant cell tumor in the distal tibia. At long-term followup, the patients had no pain and no limitation in daily or low-impact recreational activities. In conclusion, due to the large resection that is often necessary for aggressive tumors, fibular autograft and ankle arthrodesis may be a useful method in the distal tibia.


Modern retail banking creates a kind of panopticon for consumer behaviour, ultimately promising to implement a mechanism that binds all of the financial activities undertaken by an individual to a single, unitary identity. In the age of Big Data, consumers have legitimate reasons to resist such surveillance, particularly in cases wherein monitoring is carried out without their knowledge and judgments based upon such monitoring are used to disincentivise or punish legitimate activities. The risk to consumers increases with the ever-increasing share of financial transactions that are performed electronically. Cryptocurrencies offer an alternative to traditional methods of electronic value exchange, promising anonymous, cash-like electronic transfers, but in practice they fall short for several key reasons. We consider the false choice between total surveillance, as represented by banking as currently implemented by institutions, and impenetrable lawlessness, as represented by privacy-enhancing cryptocurrencies as currently deployed. We identify a range of alternatives between those two extremes, and we consider two potential compromise approaches that offer both the auditability required for regulators and the anonymity required for users


Hexapods are finding increased use in telescope applications for positioning large payloads. Engineers from The University of Texas at Austin have been working with engineers from ADS International to develop large, high force, highly precise and controllable hexapod actuators for use on the Wide Field Upgrade (WFU) as part of the Hobby Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX)‡. These actuators are installed in a hexapod arrangement, supporting the 3000+ kg instrument payload which includes the Wide Field Corrector (WFC), support structure, and other optical/electronic components. In addition to force capability, the actuators need to meet the tracking speed (pointing) requirements for accuracy and the slewing speed (rewind) requirements, allowing as many observations in one night as possible. The hexapod actuator stroke (retraction and extension) was very closely monitored during the design phase to make sure all of the science requirements could be met, while minimizing the risk of damaging the WFC optical hardware in the unlikely event of a hexapod actuator or controller failure. This paper discusses the design trade-offs between stiffness, safety, back-drivability, accuracy, and leading to selection of the motor, high ratio worm gear, roller screw, coupling, end mounts, and other key components.


The sinus node (or sinoatrial node [SAN]), the pacemaker of the heart, is a functionally and structurally heterogeneous tissue, which consists of a large "head" within the right caval vein myocardium and a "tail" along the terminal crest. Here, we investigated its cellular origin and mechanism of formation. Using genetic lineage analysis and explant assays, we identified T-box transcription factor Tbx18-expressing mesenchymal progenitors in the inflow tract region that differentiate into pacemaker myocardium to form the SAN. We found that the head and tail represent separate regulatory domains expressing distinctive gene programs. Tbx18 is required to establish the large head structure, as seen by the existence of a very small but still functional tail piece in Tbx18-deficient fetuses. In contrast, Tbx3-deficient embryos formed a morphologically normal SAN, which, however, aberrantly expressed Cx40 and other atrial genes, demonstrating that Tbx3 controls differentiation of SAN head and tail cardiomyocytes but also demonstrating that Tbx3 is not required for the formation of the SAN structure. Our data establish a functional order for Tbx18 and Tbx3 in SAN formation, in which Tbx18 controls the formation of the SAN head from mesenchymal precursors, on which Tbx3 subsequently imposes the pacemaker gene program.


Data-based decision making has become more and more important for schools. Schools are increasingly held responsible for the education they provide and their pupils' learning progress, and one way in which they can take this responsibility is by basing their decisions on data. This study focused on the data team procedure, which is one of the methods of data-based decision making. The data team procedure learns teachers to collect, interpret and analyse data and to develop improvement measures for the educational problems within the school (Schildkamp, Poortman, & Handelzalts, submitted). The group of teachers who use the data team procedure, the data team members, will not be able to solve the educational problem by themselves. The data team members need the cooperation of the non-data team members to implement the improvement measures in the school, because mostly these concern school wide problems. Therefore, knowledge sharing between the data team and the non-data team members is important. Data team members can share two types of knowledge: knowledge on the data team procedure and data use in general, and knowledge about the educational problem they are studying. This study focused on whether these two types are shared with the non-data team members, how this knowledge is shared, and what factors promote and hinder this knowledge sharing.
The results showed that data team members shared both knowledge about the data team procedure and about the educational problem, although more knowledge was shared about the educational problem. With regard to the way knowledge was shared, the results showed that knowledge was mostly shared verbally at the team level and during formal moments. Knowledge sharing could be promoted by a stimulating school culture and the presence of formal opportunities to share knowledge (e.g., team meetings). A factor that seemed to hinder knowledge sharing was the organisational structure of the school, when there is not much communication between the different locations and departments within the school.
This study may be a helpful overview of knowledge sharing in schools for school leaders. They could use the results to promote knowledge sharing in their schools, for example by creating a stimulating school culture and by facilitating the data team members with enough formal opportunities to share their knowledge. Future research about knowledge sharing in the context of data teams is needed in order to gain more insight in which factors have a promoting and a hindering influence on knowledge sharing within schools.


This chapter discusses the important role that informed consent plays in healthcare and medical research involving genetic testing. The requirement of informed consent for treatment and research poses additional difficulties for certain populations. The ethical challenges posed by the informed consent process for newborns, children, adolescents and incompetent adults are each addressed separately. This chapter also highlights two recent developments that have implications for informed consent: next-generation genetic sequencing technologies and biobanking. These developments increase uncertainty over the predictive value of genetic test results. They also raise ethical concerns about the disclosure of the results of genetic tests to individuals and families, and the storage and future use of samples and data. In order to protect the interests of patients and research participants, these issues need to be addressed in the informed consent process.

Key Concepts:

Informed consent must be obtained before medical treatment or participation in medical research.

Parental consent is generally required for research involving children and adolescents. Parental consent must be exercised in the best interests of the child or adolescent. In some circumstances, adolescents may be authorised to consent themselves for medical care or research.

Whenever possible, assent from the child should be obtained according to his or her level of development and capacities.

Research involving children and adolescents should present no more than minimal risk, unless there is a prospect of direct benefit.

Explicit parental consent is not required for newborn screening since it is traditionally justified by the right of the child to receive the potential health benefits from screening.

The storage of newborn bloodspots has increased the demand that newborn screening samples be made available for research.

Biobanking involving children or newborn bloodspots has the potential to generate new medical knowledge but poses ethical challenges.

The volume of data produced by next-generation sequencing poses new challenges for informed consent, especially because of the possibility of discovery of incidental findings.

The return of results in paediatric genetic studies raises complex issues for the use of next-generation sequencing where incidental findings are revealed.

Genetic research and diagnostic testing can also pose challenges for competent adults given the familial nature of genetic information.

Research on incompetent adults is now allowed if it provides at least an indirect benefit to the related population, but few guidelines exist to allow legal representatives to make decisions about such participation.

Biobanking involves the storage of biological samples, often for future research of an uncertain nature. Broad consent has been used to address this issue. Re-consent of participants may be necessary if the research framework changes.

Keywords:

consent;
genetic research;
children;
genetic testing;
minors;
incompetent adults;
international;
biobanking;
parental consent;
assent;
next-generation sequencing


Successful normothermic machine perfusion of heart allografts (MPH) has led to rapid growth in transplantation of donation after circulatory death (DCD) heart allografts but has introduced complexity in the procurement process. This study examines the impact of MPH use in DCD procurements on warm ischemia time (WIT) and organ yield. DCD procurements from 2019 to 2020 were identified using the OPTN database. Procurements with and without the use of MPH were compared using propensity score matching. Observed to expected (O:E) yield ratios were calculated, where the expected values were obtained using the models developed by the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. In total, 1237 DCD procurements met inclusion criteria (MPH: 109 and control: 1128). After PSM, no difference was found between groups in median total WIT (24.0 min vs. 24.0 min, p = .89), but the MPH group demonstrated shorter median operative WIT (circulatory arrest to cross‐clamp; 8.7 min vs. 10.9 min, p = .003). The overall organ yield of DCD heart donors was observed to be 33% higher than expected (O:E 1.33; 95% CI: 1.22–1.45). Observed yield of non‐heart organs was not significantly different from expected for liver, kidney, lung, and pancreas grafts. MPH use in DCD procurements does not lead to delays in WIT and does not negatively affect organ yield of other concurrently procured organs.


The fundamental issue of imprecise search results arises due to the representation of the data on the Web. Although a large number of theoretical models have been reported in literature, the implementation into them in the real world is still at initial stage. This research is a systematic investigation on the basis of the ontology, agent and semantic mechanisms. A solution is to make use of the technologies that aim to achieve the vision of the 'The Semantic Web' technology. Using meta-data (XML) in Web pages and manipulating it using RDF, through aids from ontology and intelligent agents would make information content machine understandable and facilitate search facilities. The work reported here is successfully implemented into a system to achieve an accurate information search scenarios.


It is notoriously difficult to simultaneously deal with both probabilistic and structural representations in A.I., particularly because probability necessitates a uniform representation of the training examples. In this paper, we show how to build fully-specified probabilistic models from arbitrary propositional case descriptions about terrorist activities. Our method facilitates both reasoning and learning. Our solution is to use structural analogy to build probabilistic generalizations about those cases. We use these generalizations as a framework for mapping the structural representations, which are well-suited for reasoning, into features, which are well-suited for learning, and back again. Finally, we demonstrate how probabilistic generalizations are an excellent bridge for joining reasoning and learning by using them to perform a traditional machine learning technique, Bayesian network modeling, over arbitrarily high order structural data about terrorist actions, and further, we discuss how this might be used to facilitate automatic knowledge acquisition.


Problem statement: An integrated water resource management is accepted technique to solve the water resource problems both water shortage and flood plane in order to improve human life. The combination between local wisdom and modern technology by farmer participation is a main part of integrated management. The mentioned techniques had been being applied for human life in the northeast region of Thailand. Approach: This study investigated the local wisdom of water resource management and an application of the local wisdom to manage water resource for developing the economic, society and culture of Lam Ta Kong's community, Nakhorn Ratchasima province, Thailand. Information was investigated from relevant document and field survey including questionnaire and interview. Results: The result founded that there were two types of the local wisdoms including an original local wisdom on water management and a combination of original and modern science local wisdom to manage available water. For original wisdom, there were earth dam, rock dam, rocks dyke, wooden weir, waterwheel and shallow well that were found in source and midst of the river basin. They constructed the dams and weirs barrier flow river along the Lam Ta Kong River in order to storage water for using purposes in dry season and to mitigate flood plane during rainy season as an early age of the local wisdom. The waterwheel was used to bail water from river to their community. For the combination of original and modern science, there were concrete dam, Watergate, irrigating tube, irrigation channel, water pump, water pump dynamo and underground water drilling that were found at the source, midst and tide tail of the river basin. These combined local wisdoms are considered as a current apparatus in water resource management of the area. The stored water was managed with annual rainfall for cultivation, industrial, family activity and residences for the necessaries of life. Conclusion/recommendations: The original local wisdom had the most important role to develop the Lam Ta Kong's community and farmer life from past to present that is disappearing. In the present, the community and farmers still have been being used the combined local wisdom to manage water for developing the economic, society and culture of Lam Ta Kong's Community.


The emergence of angiosperms in tropical forests at the expense of the gymnosperms, their ancestral relatives, was one of the most important events in the evolutionary history of terrestrial plants. Gymnosperms were nearly eliminated from the tropics after the evolution of angiosperms in the early Cretaceous, yet conifers of the Podocarpaceae are among the few gymnosperm families that persist in tropical forests worldwide. Podocarps are often considered to be restricted to montane sites in the tropics, a feature of their biogeography that is used by paleoecologists to reconstruct past forest communities. However, podocarps also occur in the lowland tropics, where they can be the dominant component of forest canopies. Podocarps have proved to be remarkably adaptable in many cases: members of the family have a semi-aquatic lifestyle, exhibit drought tolerance and resprouting, and include the only known parasitic gymnosperm. Other intriguing aspects of podocarp physiology include the mechanism of water transport in the leaves and the conspicuous root nodules, which are not involved in nitrogen fixation but instead house arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Perhaps most surprising, paleobotanical evidence indicates that far from being 'relict' members of tropical forest communities, podocarps have been dispersing into the tropics since the late Eocene epoch more than 30 million years ago. These and other aspects of the Podocarpaceae explored in this volume have far-reaching implications for understanding the ecology and evolution of tropical rain forests.


Team cognition plays an important role in predicting team processes and outcomes. Thus far, research has focused on structured cognition while paying little attention to perceptual cognition. The lack of research on perceptual team cognition can be attributed to the absence of an appropriate measure. To address this gap, we introduce the construct of perceived mutual understanding (PMU) as a type of perceptual team cognition and describe the development of a respective measure – the PMU-scale. Based on three samples from different team settings (NTotal = 566), our findings show that the scale has good psychometric properties – both at the individual as well as at the team-level. Item parameters were improved during a multistage process. Exploratory as well as confirmatory factor analyses indicate that PMU is a one-dimensional construct. The scale demonstrates sufficient internal reliability. Correlational analyses provide initial proof of construct validity. Finally, common indicators for inter-rater reliability and inter-rater agreement suggest that treating PMU as a team-level construct is justified. The PMU-scale represents a convenient and versatile measure that will potentially foster empirical research on perceptual team cognition and thereby contribute to the advancement of team cognition research in general.


Blade-vortex interaction noise measurements are analyzed for an AS350B helicopter operated at 7000 ft elevation above sea level. Blade-vortex interaction (BVI) noise from four, 6 degree descent conditions are investigated with descents flown at 80 knot true and indicated airspeed, as well as 4400 and 3915 pound take-off weights. BVI noise is extracted from the acquired acoustic signals by way of a previously developed time-frequency analysis technique. The BVI extraction technique is shown to provide a better localization of BVI noise, compared to the standard Fourier transform integration method. Using this technique, it was discovered that large changes in BVI noise amplitude occurred due to changes in vehicle gross weight. Changes in BVI noise amplitude were too large to be due solely to changes in the vortex strength caused by varying vehicle weight. Instead, it is suggested that vehicle weight modifies the tip-path-plane angle of attack, as well as induced inflow, resulting in large variations of BVI noise. It was also shown that defining flight conditions by true airspeed, rather than indicated airspeed, provides more consistent BVI noise signals.


. The Arctic sea ice cover has changed drastically over the last decades. Associated with these changes is a shift in dynamical regime seen by an increase of extreme fracturing events and an acceleration of sea ice drift. The highly non-linear dynamical response of sea ice to external forcing makes modelling these changes and the future evolution of Arctic sea ice a challenge for current models. It is, however, increasingly important that this challenge be better met, both because of the important role of sea ice in the climate system and because of the steady increase of industrial opera-tions in the Arctic. In this paper we present a new dynam-ical/thermodynamical sea ice model called neXtSIM that is designed to address this challenge. neXtSIM is a continuous and fully Lagrangian model, whose momentum equation is discretised with the finite-element method. In this model, sea ice physics are driven by the combination of two core components: a model for sea ice dynamics built on a mechanical framework using an elasto-brittle rheology, and a model for sea ice thermodynamics providing damage healing for the mechanical framework. The evaluation of the model performance for the Arctic is presented for the period September 2007 to October 2008 and shows that observed multiscale statistical properties of sea ice drift and deformation are well captured as well as the seasonal cycles of ice volume, area, and extent. These results show that neXtSIM is an appropriate tool for simulating sea ice over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.


To prevent the shrinkages by the densification during the application of unfired Al2O3-C refractories or Al2O3 castables in steel making conditions, MgO was added as aggregate or matrix powder and the expansion caused by spinel formation was studied. Because the spinel was formed at the contacting areas between Al2O3 and MgO particles and the volume of in-situ formed spinel increased more abnormally at the side of Al2O3 particles than MgO, the addition of MgO aggregates was not recommendable due to the formation of large voids around the MgO aggregates. Nevertheless, corrosion resistance was increased with the amount of fine MgO added, and the finer MgO powder added, the better residual expansion and minute structure formation was observed. In the contrary, in case of castables volume expansion due to spinel formation was not obvious because the degree of densification was less than high-pressure formed refractories. But CA6 phase would not form around alumina aggregates during corrosion so the corrosion resistance was much more enhanced.


Two types of miniaturized cooling systems for High-Temperature Superconducting (HTS) antennas were designed and built. In this paper, details of these systems, measured and simulated properties of patch antennas installed in these systems, and results of a seal-off trial for 1 month are reported. Both the systems had portable size and weight and could cool the HTS devices. When a patch antenna with resonant frequency of 4.9 GHz was installed in the 1st cooling system, the radiation pattern of the antenna was strongly focused in the forward direction. This is because the vacuum chamber in which the antenna was packaged influenced the microwaves radiated from the antenna. Due to this effect, the directive gain of the antenna was enhanced by 11.2 dB. In the 2nd system, a seal-off trial was carried out to investigate the airtight property that is necessary for thermal isolation. The temperature of the sample stage could be kept under the critical temperature of YBCO for 1 month without continuous vacuum pumping. The cooling systems developed in this work are expected to promote the practical use of HTS antennas.


While systems development projects have become associated with increasingly
sophisticated technologies and organisational changes, the models underlying the
process have not kept pace. The Legislation Systems Project (LSP) is an example of
a recent project where computerised technology was employed to improve the
creation of and access to legislation. This project was substantially delayed due to
unforeseen technical complexity and user acceptance was an ongoing concern. It will
de demonstrated that the underlying model of process, which broadly reflects the
dominant model of current best practice, is strongly linked with these problems.
This dissertation introduces and describes a multi-level process model which provides
an in-depth expose of the systems development process. This model reflects the
closely intertwined nature of the content, context and process of change (Pettigrew
1985) and the interconnected relationship between the micro, macro and institutional
levels of change.
As illustrated by descriptions of the LSP, the process can be viewed as the negotiation
of meaning and interest at a micro level. This involves active participation, the
creation and sustainment of coalitions of commitment and the application of authority
and expertise. This analysis builds on the work of Walsham and others who have
suggested the process of systems development should be viewed primarily as social
interaction.
However, there are other levels of analysis which should be considered. Process
implies change over time and Giddens' (1979) three levels of temporality provide a
framework for a multi-level model of the systems development process.
At an institutional level, Giddens' structuration theory provides a useful framework
for describing the manner in which change is deeply embedded in its organisational
context and facilitates the creation of new social institutions. Both this and the microlevel
processes can be described as emergent, both over time (chronologically) and in
terms of social relationships (hierarchically). This dissertation argues that the commonly used model of the process at a macro
level, the systems development lifecycle, is inadequate as it ignores the emergent
nature of the process at the micro and institutional level, the ongoing influence of the
organisational context and the socially negotiated nature of change. However, there
are existing alternative macro-level process models which do reflect both
chronological and hierarchical emergence and this dissertation suggests some
alternative ways of viewing system development initiatives such as the LSP.