The new opportunities for applying recommendation techniques within Social Web platforms and applications as well as the various new sources of information which have become available in the Web 2.0 and can be incorporated in future recommender applications are a strong driving factor in current recommender system research for various reasons:

(1) Social systems by their definition encourage interaction between users and both online content and other users, thus generating new sources of knowledge for recommender systems. Web 2.0 users explicitly provide personal information and implicitly express preferences through their interactions with others and the system (e.g. commenting, friending, rating, etc.). These various new sources of knowledge can be leveraged to improve recommendation techniques and develop new strategies which focus on social recommendation.

(2) New application areas for recommender systems emerge with the popularity of the Social Web. Recommenders cannot only be used to sort and filter Web 2.0 and social network information, they can also support users in the information sharing process, e.g., by recommending suitable tags during folksonomy development.

(3) Recommender technology can assist Social Web systems through increasing adoption and participation and sustaining membership. Through targeted and timely intervention which stimulates traffic and interaction, recommender technology can play its role in sustaining the success of the Social Web.

(4) The Social Web also presents new challenges for recommender systems, such as the complicated nature of human-to-human interaction which comes into play when recommending people and can require more interactive and richer recommender systems user interfaces.

The technical papers appearing in these proceedings aim to explore and understand challenges and new opportunities for recommender systems in the Social Web and were selected in a formal review process by an international program committee.

Overall, we received 13 paper submissions from 12 different countries, out of which 7 long papers and 1 short paper were selected for presentation and inclusion in the proceedings. The submitted papers addressed a variety of topics related to Social Web recommender systems from the use of microblogging data for personalization over new tag recommendation approaches to social media-based personalization of news.


This research project has assessed the social and techno-economic aspects of photovoltaic (pv) manufacture and dissemination in the Gambia as an appropriate alternative source of energy for development. The research has also considered the relationship between energy and development, the need to conserve and use fuelwood and to utilise the other conventional energy sources more efficiently.
The Gambia's energy balance has been presented for 1988/89 to 1991/92 indicating its energy demand pattern. The importance of an integrated energy plan has been indicated with the need to conserve and use energy more efficiently.
The project has considered some of the renewable energy technologies that might be appropriate sources of energy for development with emphasis on PV.
The techno-economic benefits of PV lighting, PV water pumping and PV vaccine refrigeration compared to the conventional systems have been assessed. The technical performance, reliability, efficiency and costings have been presented for PV systems compared to existing or potential conventional systems in order to assess their technical feasibilities and economic viabilities.
A specific case study has been investigated into the techno-economic feasibility of installing PV stand alone, diesel or PV/diesel hybrid systems at Banjul International Airport.
Different models of technology transfer to developing countries have been discussed. An assessment has been made of the needs and associated problems for developing countries and the Gambia in particular. The appropriate models and strategy for PV manufacture and dissemination in the Gambia have been identified. Means of transferring these technologies into the Gambia have been suggested.
An assessment of the relevant criteria for the Gambia to acquire the PV technology was carried out. Several levels of acquiring PV technology through technology transfer have been identified. A strategy for acquiring PV technology and the dissemination procedure in the Gambia has been suggested.


Chitosan derivative with aqueous solubility and containing polymerisable and crosslinkable functional groups were synthesized through chemical modification using chloroacetic acid and glycidyl methacrylate (GMA). FTIR analysis showed that GMA reacted with carboxymethyl chitosan(CMCS)by a ring opening reaction and the resultant(CMCS-GMA)could polymerize using ammonium persulphate as initiator. Thin films of CMCS-GMA polymer were formed on the surface of polystyrene microplates and were applied to imprint haemoglobin (Hb) in aqueous medium. The imprinted chitosan derivative has much higher binding capacity for Hb than the non-imprinted polymer with the same chemical composition. Protein assay of lysozyme, a structural analogue of haemoglobin, showed that the imprinted polymer also exhibits a higher selectivity for the imprinted molecule.


Background: Eclampsia is a serious obstetrical complication especially in developing countries. Eclampsia is the occurrence of fits in pregnancy without any cerebral disorders after 24 weeks of pregnancy.Objectives: The aim of this study was to enlist the maternal benefits and complications in eclamptic patients in immediate caesarean sections versus delivery after induction of labour.Methodology: It was an analytic study was carried out Lady Aitchison Hospital, Lahore during 6 months from June 2014 November 2014. Obstetric patients with established eclampsia, gestational age more than 28 weeks and fetus alive on admission were included in this study. Total 60 patients were selected in the study and all the patients divided into 2 groups Group-A; Patients who deliver by immediate LSCS.  Group-B: Patients who deliver after induction of labour. Maternal outcome in the term of complications and mortality was compared in both groups.Results: In group A 30 patients were delivered by cesarean section without induction and in group B 30 patients were induced and out of them 12 were delivered by spontaneous vertex delivery. Fourteen had to deliver by cesarean section due to indications including fetal distress, uncontrolled fits and failed induction and 4 had instrumental delivery. Recurrence of fits in group A occurred in 7(23.3%) patients, while recurrence fits in group B occurred in 15(50%) patients and on further distribution recurrences fits were significantly associated with antepartum as compare to intra-partum and postpartum period p-value 0.001. Complications and mortality rate was significantly more in group B as compare to Group A, while UTI was equally found in both groups.Conclusion: Eclampsia is the life threatening complication, however an improvement in hospital care and early delivery by cesarean section can improve maternal and perinatal outcome.


Past research generally suggests that East Asians tolerate opposing feelings or dialectical emotions more than North Americans. We tested the idea that North Americans would have fewer opposing emotions than East Asians in positive, but not in negative or mixed situations. Forty-seven European American, 40 Chinese, and 121 Japanese students reported the emotions that a protagonist of standardised positive, negative, and mixed situations would feel. Emotions were coded into three valence categories: pleasant, unpleasant, and neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant. As predicted, cultural differences in opposing emotion associations were found in positive situations only. Moreover, East Asians reported more neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant feelings, especially in mixed situations, possibly reflecting a deferral of valence appraisal due to expected change.


This is to evaluate the efficacy & safety of a modified ejaculation preservation Transurethral Resection of Prostate ( epTURP ) , in comparison with the traditional technique Transurethral Resection of Prostate ( TURP ) . A prospective controlled clinical interventional study whereby 40 Iraqi male patients scheduled for TURP were randomly assigned into 2 groups; group 1 treated with epTURP, and group 2 treated with TURP. Pre & post-operative evaluation of the patients included history taking, filling the international prostate symptom score ( IPSS ), the international index for erectile function ( IIEF – 15); questions 9,10,13 & 14, measurement of ejaculate volume, Uroflowmetry (Q-max) & measurement of Post Voiding Residual urine (PVR). Follow up schedule was at 6 weeks & 3 months post-operatively. The Mean age of patients was 59 year, mean prostate volume was 46 ml. Post-operatively 19/22 patients in the epTURP group & 3/18 patients in the TURP group had preserved their antegrade ejaculation, which led to a significant difference between the 2 groups in mean ejaculate volume & IIEF .There was a comparable improvement in post-operative values of IPSS, Q-max & PVR in both groups. Complications were minimal & manageable in both groups. In Conclusion The epTURP was in our experience a safe & effective technique in preserving antegrade ejaculation & improving urinary outflow in patients with prostate volume approaches 50 ml .


Based on Arjun Appadurai's concept of "mediascapes" as images produced and propagated by mass communication media in which "the lines between the realistic and the fictional landscapes […] are blurred", this essay explores the symbolic expressions of discontent in such diverse settings as the "Arab Revolution", the youth protests in Spain, the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the web attacks on major corporations following the imprisonment of Julian Assange from Wikileaks. I focus on the common rhetorical means, symbols, scripts and practices employed by the different groups behind these events. Additionally, I examine how they not only borrow from but also feed back into pop cultural products such as music, film and street art. Combining theories of social and cultural performance, the analysis discusses the importance of these events and movements as a communicative process in a globalised culture.


This study was dealt with the influences of sex on the estimation of genetic parameters for the major economic traits of average daily, age at 30kg, age at 90kg, backfat thickness and body height in Landrace on the basis of the data from 4,212 heads in the Landrace breed tested as S Swine Breeding Farm in Icheon, Kyunggy Do, Korea, according to the animal model MTDFREML. The least squares means of the major economic traits for Landrace were statistically significant (P<0.05) in sex. From the model, additive genetic heritabilities estimated including the maternal effect were all lower than it excluding the maternal effect. If sex was considered as fixed effect the genetic correlations of all traits studied were higher than in males while were lower than in females.


Introduction Rectal prolapse is a prevalent disorder affecting up to 10% of patients in the United Kingdom. Components of the connective tissue other than collagen have been found to be involved in development of prolapse. Elastic fibre organisation differs between controls and subsets of patients with rectal prolapse. Transgenic mice have demonstrated the importance of elastic fibres for maintaining structural and functional integrity of the pelvic floor. Elastic fibres assembly is a complex process and fibulin-5 integral in this process. Mice with null mutation in fibulin-5 (Fbln5¡/¡) develop a prolapse that is remarkably similar to that of primates. Method Between January 2013 and February 2014, skin specimens were obtained prospectively during surgery from 20 patients with rectal prolapse and from 21 patients without prolapse undergoing surgery for other indications. Fibroblasts from the skin were cultured and levels of Fibulin -5 expression was determined on cultured fibroblasts, isolated from these specimens by Quantitative Real-Time PCR. Immunohistochemistry was performed on fixed tissue specimens to assess FIB-5 expression. Results FIB-5 mRNA expression and FIB-5 staining intensity was significantly lower in the young male patients with rectal prolapse when compared to age matched control groups. (FIB-5 mean +/- SD mRNA relative units) 1.1 +/- 0.41 vs. 0.53 +/- 0.22, p = 0.001] and Intensity score, median (range), 2 (0–3) vs. 1 (0–3), p = 0.05]. There was no significant differences in expression of FIB-5 in women with rectal prolapse compared with control. Conclusion FIB-5 maybe implicated in the aetiology of rectal prolapse in a subgroup of young male patients. Disclosure of interest None Declared.


This paper addresses the future of labor law from a critical perspective. For these purposes, the question about the future is contextualized from the perspective of the south, thus confirming that labor law has undergone multiple crises since its consolidation in the 20th century. The permanent crisis of this field of law - both in developed and developing countries - makes it possible to properly asses the current situation, on the one hand, and to avoid dramatizing the future of this discipline, on the other. A narrative from the south enables us to see that individual labor law seems to be a key element in any type of capitalism. The global tendency regarding individual labor law is to slightly increase worker protection, unlike other alarmist approaches from Northern countries, who see the crisis of this field of law as a serious -if not terminal- decadence.


The state-of-the-art interpretation of stem radius changes (DRTotal) for tree water relations is based on knowledge from mostly slow growing tree species. The ratio between diurnal size fluctuations of the rigid xylem (DRXylem) and the respective fluctuations of the elastic bark (DRBark) is known to be small (<0.4) and is of importance for the localisation of water storage dynamics in stems. In this study, fast growing Eucalyptus globulus Labill. in Tasmania were investigated by point dendrometers in order to investigate tree water relations. Unexpectedly, DRXylem was found to be the main driver of DRTotal with the bark acting as a passive layer on top of the fluctuating xylem under most conditions. Accordingly, the ratio between the diurnal fluctuations of the two tissues was found to be much higher (0.6-1.6) than everything reported before. Based on simulations using a hydraulic plant model, the high tissue-specific elasticity of the Eucalyptus xylem was found to explain this atypical response and not osmotically-driven processes or species-specific flow resistances. The wide zone of secondary thickening xylem in various stages of lignification is proposed to be an important component of the high wood elasticity. The tissue acts as additional water storage like the bark and may positively affect the water transport efficiency.


: Edwards (or trisomy 18) syndrome, with a frequency of about 1 over 8000 births, is commonly characterized by a very short survival; those rare cases reported with ages of 12 months or more, always were demonstrated to be chromosomic mosaicisms. Two affected children with completely different outcomes are here described; the first with a classic short-life evolution, in opposition to the second with long survival, the last a good example of all those various biological, psychological and social support interventions in these circumstances, very rare to match with, for this appears to be a trisomy 18 without mosaicism.


The relaxin/insulin-like gene family includes signaling molecules that perform a variety of physiological roles mostly related to reproduction and neuroendocrine regulation. Several previous studies have focused on the evolutionary history of relaxin genes in anthropoid primates, with particular attention on resolving the duplication history of RLN1 and RLN2 genes, which are found as duplicates only in apes. These studies have revealed that the RLN1 and RLN2 paralogs in apes have a more complex history than their phyletic distribution would suggest. In this regard, alternative scenarios have been proposed to explain the timing of duplication, and the history of gene gain and loss along the organismal tree. In this article, we revisit the question and specifically reconstruct phylogenies based on coding and noncoding sequence in anthropoid primates to readdress the timing of the duplication event giving rise to RLN1 and RLN2 in apes. Results from our phylogenetic analyses based on noncoding sequence revealed that the duplication event that gave rise to the RLN1 and RLN2 occurred in the last common ancestor of catarrhine primates, between ∼44.2 and 29.6 Ma, and not in the last common ancestor of apes or anthropoids, as previously suggested. Comparative analyses based on coding and noncoding sequence suggests an event of convergent evolution at the sequence level between co-ortholog genes, the single-copy RLN gene found in New World monkeys and the RLN1 gene of apes, where changes in a fraction of the convergent sites appear to be driven by positive selection.


The paper is concerned with an experimental investigation of the drag reduction in turbulent channel flow over the mechanical chain. A circulating loop for the fluid flow with 0.0381 inside diameter of pipe is set up. The testing length of the system is 1.5m.Wall shear stress reduction performance has been investigated experimentally for various design geometry surfaces including a replica of bent consisting of stainless steel model scales. Attempts to optimize the net drag reduction by varying the design geometry and alignment are also discussed. The study indicated that the mechanical chain taken in water flow is capable to decrease the friction drag of a turbulent flow up to 40%. The maximum percentage was achieved in 39.37L/D at RE equal to 56733. The results show that a substantial drag reduction can be achieved by this mechanical chain in aqueous media.


The galling thrips Gynaikothrips uzeli Zimmermann (Phlaeothripidae) has attained pest status by attacking the leaves of the weeping fig, Ficus benjamina. Another thrips species, Androthrips ramachandrai Karny (Phlaeothripidae), was recently reported feeding on G. uzeli immatures. Here we conducted choice tests with adults of A. ramachandrai to evaluate any preference for the immature stages of G. uzeli (egg, larva or pupa) in artificial arenas. Nochoice experiments were also conducted to measure the rate of feeding on each immature stage of the galling thrips by adults of A. ramachandrai in a period of 24 h. There was no significant preference by the predators for the different immature stages of G. uzeli, but adults consumed more eggs than larvae or pupae of the gall thrips. Here we discuss the predatory behavior of this thrips and its potential as a biological control agent against G. uzeli.


This paper explores the possibilities of motion capture as a tool to preserve and study Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) practices such as playing instruments. The Uilleann pipes are both an instrument and a culture with a now strong community following and recovering after being almost extinguished several times in Ireland. The playing and making of the Uilleann pipes was incorporated into the Representative list of the UNESCO Convention of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2017. This experience was performed in collaboration with several Uillean pipe players who contributed at every stage of the performance recording with comments and orientation. Some of these comments were also later formally kept as interviews to the players. The technical capture of the movements was done using a Rokoko Smart suit and paired Smart gloves which the piper wears for the performance. The resulting motion file was then cleaned and redirected to Blender 3D, a community made software package that allows the incorporation of a renderable avatar that helps for the dissemination of the performance. This recording process, called Inertial system, allows performers to perform almost anywhere and to capture the movements of the players with good accuracy. This process of recording and collaboration with the community is a cost-effective solution that can be of particular interest for scholars as well as for cultural communities wishing to archive these practices quickly. This design of technology and collaborative recording allows for a round experience that combined the detail of the technically enhanced recording with the interpretive nuance of the player that enriches the capturing process with mentions to how it is 'relatively' comfortable for the player and how efficient it is in terms of resulting detail. This collaboratively designed experience also provides the three aspects of intangible heritage preservation: supports the community -who can learn from the resulting animation; helps situating the practice within the cultural practice of the community-as they are part of the process; and helps materialise the output permitting its digital cataloguing, archival, and storage.


Multiple drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus is one the most common nosocomial pathogen worldwide. The timely identification of this hospital acquired pathogen and detection of the various antibiotic resistant genes harbored is one of the most important function of the microbiology laboratory. In this study, we report the development of a multiplex PCR system for the diagnosis of S. aureus and the detection of clinically relevant antibiotic resistance genes harbored by some isolates. This system was designed to identify S. aureus at species level and to detect methicillin, gentamycin, erythromycin, vancomycin and mupirocin resistant genes, respectively from a single colony in a single tube reaction. All isolates amplified a 108 bp fragment (conserved in S. aureus) confirming the identity of S. aureus, 23 isolates produced a band at the position of 533 bp, 28 isolates at 139 bp and 30 isolates at 174 bp evidencing the presence of mecA (methicillin or oxacillin resistance), ermA (erythromycin resistance), aac (6`)-aph (2``) (gentamycin resistance) genes. None of the isolates amplified van A (vancomycin resistance) and ileS-2 (mupirocin resistance) genes showing the absence of their resistance in the isolates studied. These genotypic results when compared with classical antibiotic susceptibility tests showed less correlation. Overall, we found a correlation between phenotypic and genotypic methods of 60% for methicillin, 36.7% for gentamycin, 43.3% for erythromycin, 100% for vancomycin and mupirocin. This suggests that classical antibiotic sensitivity test is not accurate, but need to be supplemented with other methods to be applied in a clinical laboratory. The system developed in this study offers a rapid, simple specific and accurate detection of multiple antibiotic resistant genes in clinical S. aureus isolates and thus could be systematically applied as a diagnostic test in clinical microbiology laboratories, facilitating the design and use of antibiotic therapy.


Th e potential for modern agribusiness to promote broad-based economic growth in developing and emerging market economies is significant. Food retailers, wholesalers, and processors have the potential to link smallholder producers to dynamic domestic and regional markets. They can contribute technical and managerial capacity building and investment. However,this potential is often underutilized, and in many countries, smallholder producers and small- and medium-scale enterprises are relegated to lower value markets. While agribusiness is not, nor should it be, driven primarily by a development imperative, the retail and processing stages rarely see the reach of their actions at the production level, including the implications for smallholder producers. Furthermore, many recent initiatives, often working with development partners, seldom result in any lasting economic empowerment or sustained market engagement of smallholder farmers or their organizations. In many countries, there is little policy dialogue between the private and public sectors and other key stakeholders, including farmers' organizations and civil society. This paper explores the business challenge of and case for smallholder producers' market inclusion. It looks at some of the evidences that demonstrates how business models and business processes can succeed in securing market inclusion. It includes producer- and buyer-driven business models, the development of new market intermediaries, changes in mainstream procurement policy, the development of domestic codes of good business practice, and global initiatives. Th is paper draws largely on business models and policy innovation from empirical research, case studies, and country-level multistakeholder chainwide learning events undertaken through a global program entitled Regoverning Markets program.


Ethical and social issues surround the issue of sexuality and parenting for people with intellectual disabilities. The traumatic history of eugenics is encapsulated in Nazi Germany's description of those with intellectual disability as unworthy of life and the 250 000 children and adults who were gassed but conscious and unconscious wishes to deny sexual and procreative rights to those with an intellectual disability is world-wide and contemporary despite legislative change. However, given the high levels of sexual abuse and exploitation that come from internal and external stigmatisation and trauma the movement towards greater human rights, sexual education and access to psychotherapy heralds new hope for children and adults with an intellectual disability and the wider community.

Key Concepts:

In working with people with intellectual disability on the themes of sexuality and procreation a multi-disciplinary approach is needed.

Ethics, human rights, genetics and psychotherapy are all relevant in working with sexuality and procreation in people with intellectual disability.

A history of trauma and eugenics is a necessary prerequisite to understanding the controversial topic of disability, sexuality and procreation.

Co-operation with geneticists is important in considering procreation and disability.

People with an intellectual disability have a right to their own sexuality.

Keywords:

disability;
parenting;
sexuality;
competence;
reproduction;
eugenics


The flashover across semiconducting materials disables many high power semiconductor devices from their further application under high electric field. Up to now, the physical mechanism of the flashover was still not understood clearly. Surface flashover experiments of silicon and gallium arsenide were performed under pulsed high voltage. The filament current channels on their surface were observed in the infrared photographs, and the infrared radiation bright spot was found in the central region between the electrodes. On the surface of different samples undergone flashover events for several times, the filament damage phenomena were observed, and for the n100 silicon sample, some circular pits were found around the filament channel, with a conical jut in the center of each pit. According to the damage phenomena at the edge of electrodes, the thermal injection and relaxation characteristics of majority carriers were discussed. An injection model induced by minority carriers was proposed, which emphasizes the surface field enhancement by non-equilibrium carrier channel, which possibly leads to the ionization of the ambient gas above the filament channel. The model was consistent with the observed experimental results.


Micropaleontological biozonation of the Jurassic of the Middle East is poorly developed and shown to have limited regional applicability. This difficulty is based on the inability to apply global schemes based on open marine forms, such as planktonic foraminifera and calpionellids, to the extensive and relatively shallow, often hypersaline carbonate platforms that persisted throughout much of the Jurassic. Intrashelf basins with restricted open marine access further inhibited the use of standard global tropical planktonic biozonations. The Arabian Platform was a shallow marine, predominantly carbonate, setting during most of the Jurassic and peri-Tethyan age-indicative foraminiferal species are relatively poorly represented. Pioneer fieldwork established chronostratigraphic constraint to the various Jurassic formations and members, using ammonite and nautiloid stratigraphy but such macropaleontological schemes are impossible to use in subsurface-derived limited rock sample volumes such as those from cuttings, sidewall cores and cores of lithified carbonates. A thin-section reassessment of the Saudi Arabian Jurassic using field samples and core-based micropaleontology has revealed a hybrid benthic foraminiferal and microfossil bioevent scheme that should assist assignment to the various formations, members and reservoirs as well as assisting in paleoenvironmental interpretation. Twenty-three thin-section based local biozones (Him-3–Mm) are proposed, and serve as an initial scheme with an alphanumeric arrangement to permit refinement when additional events are encountered. These biozones are applied to the Marrat Formation (Mm; Toarcian), the Dhruma Formation (Dm-1 to Dm-6; Bajocian–Bathonian), the Tuwaiq Mountain Formation (Tm-1 to Tm-5; Callovian), the Hanifa Formation (Hm-1 to Hm-2; Oxfordian), the Jubaila Formation (Jm-1 to Jm-2; Kimmeridgian), Arab Formation (Am-1 to Am-4; Kimmeridgian), and Hith Formation (Him-1 to Him-3; Tithonian). In the absence of other disciplines, this scheme is intended to assist chronostratigraphic and lithostratigraphic assignment to field samples and for exploration single well studies to provide calibration and correlation for multiwell single field and regional reservoir characterisation studies. Rapid age and lithostratigraphic determinations of "hot-shot†exploration samples will also be facilitated using this scheme.


It has recently been discovered that some, if not all, classical novae emit GeV gamma-rays during outburst, but the mechanisms involved in the production ofgamma-rays are still not well understood. We present here a comprehensive multiwavelength data set—from radio to X-rays—for the most gamma-ray-luminous classical nova to date, V1324 Sco. Using this data set, we show that V1324 Sco is a canonical dusty Fe ii-type nova, with a maximum ejecta velocity of 2600 km s−1 and an ejecta mass of a few . There is also evidence for complex shock interactions, including a double-peaked radio light curve which shows high brightness temperatures at early times. To explore why V1324 Sco was so gamma-ray luminous, we present a model of the nova ejecta featuring strong internal shocks and find that higher gamma-ray luminosities result from higher ejecta velocities and/or mass-loss rates. Comparison of V1324 Sco with other gamma-ray-detected novae does not show clear signatures of either, and we conclude that a larger sample of similarly well-observed novae is needed to understand the origin and variation of gamma-rays in novae.


The research and development of new tools and strategies for disease intervention planning requires resources, data, and computation spread across multiple institutions and individuals. Whether this is towards an objective such as drug discovery or informing intervention policy, it should be possible for these tools to be flexibly deployed to meet the decision support needs of the Global Health community. In this work we introduce a new platform to demonstrate the utility of a scalable computational infrastructure, blockchain based validation and machine learning (ML) algorithms, to assist in the generation of validated novel policies for malaria control. We have conducted preliminary tests in the generation of simulation-based evidence to guide policy level decision making. Specifically to assess the performance of; the scalable infrastructure under different simulation complexities and distributed compute; Hyperledger Fabric to provide validation of shared information within our application; and ML approaches to generate novel policy insights. Finally the components of the platform may be leveraged via a non-technical user or policy-maker through an Interactive Dashboard, bridging the gap between research and immediate needs in Disease Intervention Planning.


The Ontario government's passage of the Family Statute Law Amendment Act, 2005 ostensibly precluding the enforcement of faith-based decisions issued by arbitration panels pursuant to the Arbitrations Act, 1991, in the area of family law, brought to the fore a debate that has been raging in liberal democracies for some time. Those opposed to allowing the use of religious principles in resolving family disputes using the Arbitrations Act, 1991, raised some legitimate concerns about gender rights within religious communities. They also questioned the role of religion in secular society and opposed what they saw as privatization of the legal system. Opponents contended that religious groups should be able to govern their lives according to their conscience within the parameters of law if the constitutional right to freedom of religion and association is to have any real value. Consenting and informed adults, they argued, must be able to make religious choices even if others do not believe these are "correct" choices. The issues, of course, transcend dispute resolution and tug at fundamental tensions surrounding multiculturalism and national identity, the limits of accommodation and legal pluralism within a liberal democracy and the separation of church and state. I argue that Ontario lost a timely opportunity to devise a way to balance these competing rights and interests in a manner that respects all parties and protects the vulnerable. The controversy was a prime case to examine whether Islamic law and liberal democracy can co-exist within a liberal constitutional framework. Moreover, I also argue that Ontario also delayed an opportunity to indigenize or Canadianize Islamic law rulings in a manner that would help in the integration process of its Muslim citizens.The Flow Chart for this paper is available at the following URL: http://ssrn.com/abstract= 2501095


Concentrations of both serum calcium, adjusted for albumin, and serum magnesium of siblings from 23 families were found to cluster around different concentrations within the normal reference Interval. Variation between families accounted for 37% of the total variation In calcium and 28% of that in magnesium. A disturbance of serum calcium or magnesium homeostasis In an indMdual resulting in an altered serum concentration that remains within the reference interval might be recognized by examiningvalues in siblings.


Myotonic dystrophy type 2 (DM2) is a dominantly inherited disorder with multisystemic clinical features, caused by a CCTG repeat expansion in intron 1 of the zinc finger protein 9 (ZNF9) gene. The mutant transcripts are retained in the nucleus forming multiple discrete foci also called ribonuclear inclusions. The size and the somatic instability of DM2 expansion complicate the molecular diagnosis of DM2. In our study fluorescence-labeled CAGG-repeat oligonucleotides were hybridized to muscle biopsies to investigate if fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), a relatively quick and simple procedure, could be used as a method to diagnose DM2. When FISH was performed with (CAGG)5 probe, nuclear foci of mutant RNA were present in all genetically confirmed DM2 patients (n=17) and absent in all patients with myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1; n=5) or with other muscular disease (n=17) used as controls. In contrast, foci were observed both in DM1 and DM2 myonuclei when muscle tissue were hybridized with (CAG)6CA probe indicating that this probe is not specific for DM2 identification. The consistent detection of ribonuclear inclusions in DM2 muscles and their absence in DM1, in agreement with the clinical diagnosis and with leukocyte (CCTG)n expansion, suggests that fluorescence in situ hybridization using (CAGG)5 probes, may be a specific method to distinguish between DM1 and DM2. Moreover, the procedure is simple, and readily applicable in any pathology laboratory.


Some compromise on compression is known to be necessary, if the relative positions of the information stored by semi-structured documents are to remain accessible under queries. With this in view, we compare, on an example, the 'query-friendliness' of XML documents, when compressed into straightline tree grammars which are either regular or context-free. The queries considered are in a limited fragment of XPath, corresponding to a type of patterns; each such query defines naturally a non-deterministic, bottom-up 'query automaton' that runs just as well on a tree as on its compressed dag.


—With the advancement of Edge AI and autonomous systems, AI applications are increasingly subject to energy, latency and environmental constraints. Biological neural systems naturally adhere to these constraints and, as such are a source of inspiration. Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) are a more detailed model of biological neural processing. Recent work shows that they perform well in object recognition and detection in general, and in Autonomous Driving tasks based on ranged LIDAR data in particular. However, these LIDAR-SNN approaches do not optimize for latency, as they require the entire frame to be scanned before processing. They also require large SNNs, limiting the energy efficiency achieved. To reach both low-latency and high energy efficiency in LIDAR object recognition, we develop a compact recurrent SNN. First, we propose and examine an open LIDAR labeled dataset by processing the point clouds from the KITTI Vision Benchmark. We then train our recurrent SNNs on this dataset and propose specific optimizations, including input encoding, sparse connectivity and truncation of error-backpropagation. With these optimizations, we show that compact recurrent SNNs can exceed the performance of classical RNNs like LSTMs and approach the performance of large non-spiking CNNs. Additionally, they significantly reduce latency by allowing early and online object classification before the end of the sequence.


Ions induce changes in the H-bond network of water that extend by >20 nm, vary for H2O and D2O, and lead to surface tension anomalies. Electrolytes interact with water in many ways: changing dipole orientation, inducing charge transfer, and distorting the hydrogen-bond network in the bulk and at interfaces. Numerous experiments and computations have detected short-range perturbations that extend up to three hydration shells around individual ions. We report a multiscale investigation of the bulk and surface of aqueous electrolyte solutions that extends from the atomic scale (using atomistic modeling) to nanoscopic length scales (using bulk and interfacial femtosecond second harmonic measurements) to the macroscopic scale (using surface tension experiments). Electrolytes induce orientational order at concentrations starting at 10 μM that causes nonspecific changes in the surface tension of dilute electrolyte solutions. Aside from ion-dipole interactions, collective hydrogen-bond interactions are crucial and explain the observed difference of a factor of 6 between light water and heavy water.


In this paper, the different theories about science and technology relationships are analyzed. All of them have some virtues, but also one main defect: these theories do not take into account other well-founded possible relationships. The origin of this problem is the narrow view about science and technology. In this paper another characterization about technology based on Ronald Giere's perspective is suggested. In the light of this new description, six different relationships between science and technology arise. Some of these relations had been explained in the before analyzed theories, but others emerge from the new portrayal.


The challenges, pitfalls and pleasures of devoting museum exhibits to sensitive subjects in often highly politicized cultural environments became a staple of discussion in the literature of public history during the 1990s. Moving away from the more familiar ground of race, class, and gender to the terrain of technology, this essay discusses the politics of commemoration with reference to a massive engineering project of comparative youth. In 1997/98, the Smithsonian mounted a six-month exhibit to mark the twentieth anniversary of the completion of one of the most celebrated - and controversial - engineering projects in U.S. history. Stimulated by a visit to the pipeline exhibit, this essay examines its context, content, character, and reception. It also ponders some of the broader implications of commemorative acts that elevate contested items of material culture into seductive icons of heritage. How, when - and where - should we commemorate a technological `wonder9 that, in 2001, is still far from obsolete, but is ultimately slated for removal at the end of its working days? Is a museum in fact the most effective place to remember a project of such grand scale that it prompted analogies with the transcontinental railroads, Panama Canal, and Great Wall of China?


Solar eclipses provide a rapidly changing solar radiation environment. These changes can be studied using simple photodiode sensors, if the radiation reaching the sensors is unaffected by cloud. Transporting the sensors aloft using standard meteorological instrument packages modified to carry extra sensors, provides one promising but hitherto unexploited possibility for making solar eclipse radiation measurements. For the 20 March 2015 solar eclipse, a coordinated campaign of balloon-carried solar radiation measurements was undertaken from Reading (51.44°N, 0.94°W), Lerwick (60.15°N, 1.13°W) and Reykjavik (64.13°N, 21.90°W), straddling the path of the eclipse. The balloons reached sufficient altitude at the eclipse time for eclipse-induced variations in solar radiation and solar limb darkening to be measured above cloud. Because the sensor platforms were free to swing, techniques have been evaluated to correct the measurements for their changing orientation. In the swing-averaged technique, the mean value across a set of swings was used to approximate the radiation falling on a horizontal surface; in the swing-maximum technique, the direct beam was estimated by assuming that the maximum solar radiation during a swing occurs when the photodiode sensing surface becomes normal to the direction of the solar beam. Both approaches, essentially independent, give values that agree with theoretical expectations for the eclipse-induced radiation changes. This article is part of the themed issue 'Atmospheric effects of solar eclipses stimulated by the 2015 UK eclipse'.


A glacial varve chronology from New England spanning the 4000-year period from 17,500 to 13,500 calendar years before the present was analyzed for evidence of climate variability during the late Pleistocene. The chronology shows a distinct interannual (3 to 5 years) band of enhanced variability suggestive of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) teleconnections into North America during the late Pleistocene, when the Laurentide ice sheet was near its maximum extent and climatic boundary conditions were different than those of today. This interannual variability largely disappears by the young end of the 4000-year chronology, with only the highest frequency components (roughly 3-year period) persisting. This record provides evidence of ENSO-like climate variability during near-peak glacial conditions.


The relationship between drug use and aggressive behaviour and its consequences on social and financial burden on society is a source of recent concern. This study, therefore, examined the effects of acute exposure to Codeine and Tramadol on aggressive behaviour. Twenty-Eight (28) participants (Female Albino Rats) weighing between 120-150g and 4-6 weeks old, collected from the University of Ibadan Veterinary animal farm were used for this study. They were divided into 5 experimental groups of Codeine, Tramadol, combined Codeine and Tramadol, Control and intruder groups with 6 rats in each group except the intruder group with 4 rats. They were exposed to, 8mg/kg of codeine for the codeine group, 20mg/kg of tramadol for the tramadol group, combined 8mg/kg of codeine and 20mg/kg of tramadol for the combined group, normal saline for the control group and no treatment for the intruder group for 28 days. The rats were observed daily after treatment for, biting, dominant posture and scratching as attributes of aggressive behaviour. Randomized block ANOVA showed a significant effect of Codeine and Tramadol on aggressive behaviour among female albino rats, F (3,2010) = 53.53, p < 0.001, η2= .07. Female albino rats in the tramadol treatment group significantly exhibited more aggression (x ̅= 14.08) than control group (x ̅=11.53) codeine group (x ̅=11.41) and combined group (x ̅=7.36). The mean differences were significant (p<.001). It was concluded that chronic exposure to tramadol has implications for aggressive tendencies and combined exposure to tramadol and codeine may be injurious to health.


Revitalizing endangered minority languages is important from the perspective of preserving cultural diversity. Games and gamified application can provide ways to support learning minority languages and their dialects. We present user experience insights from a small-scale user study conducted for a selection of freely available Karelian language and culture related games. By sharing our findings, we want to raise discussion about how gamification and serious games can help in revitalizing minority languages such as Karelian language. It is important to find out different ways for co-creation and cooperation in minority language also from the perspective of game development. For this study we recruited five participants, whose age varied between 4 to 72. The reception of games depended on the previous experiences of Karelian language and personal history. We noticed that the expectations for learning games vary with different aged participants.


In this study, the urethane reaction of several phenols with isocyanate was monitored with in-situ FT-IR. Reaction rate constants were calculated out to investigate the effect of substituents in phenols, as well as the polarity of different solvents. It showed that the polarity of solvents largely affected the reaction rate even without catalyst. The reactivity increased in the following order: Xylene < 1,4-Dioxane < Cyclohexanone. Furthermore, an electron-withdrawing substituent in phenols increased the reactivity of hydroxyl with isocyanate. The reason may be that the H-O bond in phenols could be easily polarized under the influence of electron-withdrawing substituent, where the hydrogen atom was more likely to attack the nitrogen atom of -NCO, thus the nucleophilic addition happened easier.


The conclusions to be reported in this paper are based on results obtained from 250 experiments on dogs. The animals rested quietly in a respiration calorimeter, at an environmental temperature of 26 C. (78.8 F.), and were subjected to different dietary conditions. Under these circumstances the simplest nutritional elements can be given and their effect on the heat production can be noted in hourly periods. This gives an idea of the interplay between the nutrient particles and the oxidizing tissues. Dr. Du Bois will present the story from the point of view of investigations made with a similar though larger respiration calorimeter devised to determine the nutritional condition of the human being in disease. All nutrient proteins, starches and compound sugars undergo fragmentation in the intestinal tract into simple chemical substances which are soluble in the fluids of the body. A polysaccharid like starch is broken up into glucose molecules;


The result of experimental study of removal of sublaminar wires was reported. The experimental shows that sublaminar wires when with drawn at 45-degrees is safer than that at 90-degrees. Because of bony fusion, clinically could be drawn out only vertically either by rolling it up ward or down ward confirmed that there is no difference between this two methods. The cut end of wire should be short and straight. All the fixing wires became useless because of their loosening. Impressions were found on the inner face of lamina, fibrous sheaths. There is no different reactions between twisted and parallel double wires, but we recommend double parallel wires.


What can be revealed if we open a process which is normally closed to view, exposing it to vulnerabilities and misinterpretation? To investigate the notion of hidden spaces we decided to treat the development of an abstract as a practical collaborative drawing project. Our aim was to use drawing as the site of an active research project and look at the relationship between processes of thinking and the state of drawing. Within this methodology it was our intention to use drawing as a process in which concepts are formed, where an idea is in constant flux, in a space of experiment and change. This subsequent paper 'Dilemmas and practices' deconstructs and represents the artist's process in the context of the Research Spaces Conference – Telling Places: Narrative and Identity in Art and Architecture, Bartlett/Slade U.C.L. December 2007. It questions our methodologies both in relation to the constraint of abstract writing and the conventions of conference presentation. The narrative is a process of re-tracking, of loss, of choices in relationship to the challenge posed to us. Outcomes relate both to our specific practice, where we actively seek to search through difference and open up gaps, and the context of research space. We conclude that the process of drawing aids recognition of what we need to understand better in the quest for something to become known.


Current study sheds the light on the financial development-energy nexus in 32 Belt and Road economies during 2000-2015. Financial development is proxied by domestic credit to private sector. We first examine the order of integration by employing five different panel unit-root tests. Further, we confirm long-term relationship between the variables by running Pedroni and Kao panel cointegration tests. Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) regression reveal positive long-term relationship between financial development and energy use. Results of Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality test fail to reveal causal relationship between financial development and energy in our sample.


Behavioral finance argues that some financial phenomena can plausibly be understood using models in which some agents are not fully rational. The field has two building blocks: limits to arbitrage, which argues that it can be difficult for rational traders to undo the dislocations caused by less rational traders; and psychology, which catalogues the kinds of deviations from full rationality we might expect to see. We discuss these two topics, and then present a number of behavioral finance applications: to the aggregate stock market, to the cross-section of average returns, to individual trading behavior, and to corporate finance. We close by assessing progress in the field and speculating about its future course.


ABSTRACT Dissimilatory microbial reduction of solid-phase Fe(III)-oxides and Fe(III)-bearing phyllosilicates (Fe(III)-phyllosilicates) is an important process in anoxic soils, sediments and subsurface materials. Although various studies have documented the relative extent of microbial reduction of single-phase Fe(III)-oxides and Fe(III)-phyllosilicates, detailed information is not available on interaction between these two processes in situations where both phases are available for microbial reduction. The goal of this research was to use the model dissimilatory iron-reducing bacterium (DIRB) Geobacter sulfurreducens to study Fe(III)-oxide vs. Fe(III)-phyllosilicate reduction in a range of subsurface materials and Fe(III)-oxide stripped versions of the materials. Low-temperature (12 K) Mossbauer spectroscopy was used to infer changes in the relative abundances of Fe(III)-oxide, Fe(III)-phyllosilicate, and phyllosilicate-associated Fe(II) (Fe(II) phyllosilicate). A Fe partitioning model was employed to analyze the fate of Fe(II) and assess the potential for abiotic Fe(II)-catalyzed reduction of Fe(III)-phyllosilicates. The results showed that in most cases Fe(III)-oxide utilization dominated (70–100%) bulk Fe(III) reduction activity, and that electron transfer from oxide-derived Fe(II) played only a minor role (ca. 10–20%) in Fe partitioning. In addition, the extent of Fe(III)-oxide reduction was positively correlated to surface area-normalized cation exchange capacity and the Fe(III)-phyllosilicate/total Fe(III) ratio. This finding suggests that the phyllosilicates in the natural sediments promoted Fe(III)-oxide reduction by binding of oxide-derived Fe(II), thereby enhancing Fe(III)-oxide reduction by reducing or delaying the inhibitory effect that Fe(II) accumulation on oxide and DIRB cell surfaces has on Fe(III)-oxide reduction. In general our results suggest that although Fe(III)-oxide reduction is likely to dominate bulk Fe(III) reduction in most subsurface sediments, Fe(II) binding by phyllosilicates is likely to play a key role in controlling the long-term kinetics of Fe(III) oxide reduction


The enormity of the problem of adolescent suicide-attempts and completions-mandates that each attempt be evaluated with the context of the adolescent's social, psychological, and biological history. The assessment of risk, including the mental status exam, and prevention and treatment are covered.


Making negative inferences for negative events, ruminating about them, and retrieving negative aspects of memories have all been associated with depression. However, the causal mechanisms that link negative inferences to negative mood and the interplay between inferences, rumination, and memory have not been explored. In the current study, we used a cognitive-bias modification (CBM) procedure to train causal inferences and assessed training effects on ruminative thinking, memory, and negative mood among people with varying levels of depression. Training had immediate effects on negative mood and rumination but not after recall of a negative autobiographical memory. Note that training affected memory: Participants falsely recalled inferences presented during the training in a training-congruent manner. Moreover, among participants with high levels of depression, training also affected causal inferences they made for an autobiographical memory retrieved after training. Our findings shed light on negative cognitive cycles that may contribute to depression.


Introduction Health information is one of the most frequently searched topics on the internet. In this observational cross-sectional study, we evaluated the content of the highest indexed Google search results related to migraine management. Methods We identified the five most used search terms related to migraine management via Google Trends in the time period 1 January 2004 to 2 October 2019. We entered each search term into Google's search engine and retrieved the search results from the first three pages from each search query. We stratified the recommended treatment options and evaluated the websites using the DISCERN tool. Results In total, 73 unique websites recommended a total of 77 different migraine treatment options, consisting of 35 (45%) acute and 42 (55%) preventive treatments. For acute treatments, pharmacological options were more frequently recommended (88% of websites), whereas non-pharmacological options were more frequent among preventive treatments (67%). Evaluation of the consumer health information using the DISCERN tool showed that non-governmental organizations had the highest mean total score with 3.8 (±0.19). Conclusions Googling when looking for migraine treatments reveals a multitude of management proposals of varying quality. Non-governmental organizations provide the overall highest quality of written consumer health information on migraine treatments among search results. We encourage stakeholders to optimize and distribute high-quality and peer-reviewed information on migraine management.


The textbook for creative literary universities and masters of philological faculties of universities is the first scientifically based (linguistically, literary, methodically) and creatively tested domestic course of literary mastery, developed by the author in the process of teaching (literary mastery in the Union of writers of Russia, rhetorical poetics in the Literary Institute. A. M. Gorky, in the process creative occupational-training). The methodological basis of the course is the linguo-symbolic concept of literary text as a narrative discourse in conjunction with the system of methods for the allocation of its structural and semantic elements and operational technologies for teaching their creation. The theory of the subject is based on the synthesis of linguistics and literary studies: discourse analysis, text linguistics; hermeneutics, structural semantics; classical and modern rhetoric; stylistics and poetics, theory and history of literature. The methodical complex consists of creative and analytical tasks, texts for analysis, exercises, recommended literature. The course and method have been tested and proved to be effective when working with novice authors. Foreign analogue is widely used in the training of professionals in various fields and specialties of the subject of CREATIVE WRITING. The result of the course - knowledge of the basics of technology of creation of creative verbal texts: artistic, advertising, journalistic, popular science - all those that are built with the help of symbolic symbolic structures. The final competence is defined as verbal artistic creativity (literary creativity based on the knowledge of linguistic, rhetorical, psychological, poetic mechanisms of influence on the reader and interaction with him in the space of the created text, as well as on the possession of the main means of such influence).


Innovations in farm organization, business arrangements, and production practices have allowed farmers to produce more with less. Fewer labor hours and less land are used today than 30 years ago, and practices such as the use of genetically engineered seeds and no-till have dampened increases in machinery, fuel, and pesticide use. Likely aided by the increased use of risk management tools such as contracts and crop insurance, U.S. agricultural productivity has increased by nearly 50 percent since 1982. Future innovations will be necessary to maintain, or boost, current productivity gains in order to meet the growing global demands that will be placed upon U.S. agriculture.


We develop a model of endogenous skill-biased technical change in developing countries. The model reconciles wildly dispersed existing estimates of the elasticity of substitution between more and less educated workers. It also produces an estimating equation for the elasticity, which allow us to produce overdue estimates for developing countries. With four types of data, elasticity estimates for developing countries are consistently about 2. In a skill-biased technical change framework, this estimate makes sense of what appears to be little or no correlation between relative skill supply and wage inequality.


Human performance and navigation activity in virtual environments can be measured and assessed with the aim to draw specific conclusions about human cognition. This paper presents an original virtual geographic environment (VGE) designed and used for this purpose. The presented research is rooted in an interdisciplinary approach combining knowledge and principles from the fields of psychology, cartography, and information technologies. The VGE was embedded with user logging functionality to provide a basis from which conclusions about human cognitive processes in a VGE could be drawn. The scope of this solution is introduced, described, and discussed under a behavioral measurement framework. An exploratory research design was adopted to demonstrate the environment's utility in proof-of-concept user testing. Twenty participants were observed in interactive, semi-interactive and non-interactive tasks, their performance and individual differences were analyzed. The behavioral measurements were supplemented by Object-Spatial Imagery and a Verbal Questionnaire to determine the participants' cognitive styles. In this sample, significant differences in exploration strategies between men and women were detected. Differences between experienced and non-experienced users were also found in their ability to identify spatial relations in virtual scenes. Finally, areas for future research areas and development were pinpointed.


Although different methods for NOAA AVHRR image navigation have already been established, the multitemporal and multi-satellite character of most studies requires automatic and accurate methods for navigation of satellite images. In the proposed method, a simple Kepplerian orbital model for the NOAA satellites is considered as reference model, and mean orbital elements are given as input to the model from ephemeris data. In order to correct the errors caused by these simplifications, errors resulting from inaccuracies in the positioning of the satellite and failures in the satellite internal clock, an automatic global contour matching approach has been adopted. First, the sensed image is preprocessed to obtain a gradient energy map of the reliable areas (sea-land contours) using a cloud detection algorithm and a morphological gradient operator. An initial estimation of the reliable contour positions is automatically obtained. The final positions of the contours are obtained by means of an iterative local minimization procedure that allows a contour to converge on an area of high image energy (edge). Global transformation parameters are estimated based on the initial and final positions of all reliable contour points. Finally, the performance of this approach is assessed using NOAA 14 AVHRR images from different geographic areas.


Abstract Objective: To analyse over 700,000 cross-sectional measurements from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MHSA) and develop statistical models to predict noise exposure for a worker. Design: Descriptive statistics were used to summarise the data. Two linear regression models were used to predict noise exposure based on MSHA-permissible exposure limit (PEL) and action level (AL), respectively. Twofold cross validation was used to compare the exposure estimates from the models to actual measurement. The mean difference and t-statistic was calculated for each job title to determine whether the model predictions were significantly different from the actual data. Study sample: Measurements were acquired from MSHA through a Freedom of Information Act request. Results: From 1979 to 2014, noise exposure has decreased. Measurements taken before the implementation of MSHA's revised noise regulation in 2000 were on average 4.5 dBA higher than after the law was implemented. Both models produced exposure predictions that were less than 1 dBA different than the holdout data. Conclusion: Overall noise levels in mines have been decreasing. However, this decrease has not been uniform across all mining sectors. The exposure predictions from the model will be useful to help predict hearing loss in workers in the mining industry.


The central idea in trust-reform is to improve service delivery by granting professional autonomy and acknowledging the experiential knowledge of professionals. In this article, we study trust-reform bottom-up from the perspective of frontline care workers. Our aim is to discuss the challenges for care work and care workers who have been organised in self-managing teams, paying particular attention to the organising of the daily work in the teams. This study draws on data from four months of fieldwork in Norwegian municipal home care services for older people. The article sheds light on some problematic aspects in trust-reform regarding the relationship between frontline workers' autonomy and responsibility on the one hand and the lack of authority and managerial support on the other hand. The study demonstrates that trust-reforms within public service delivery can be experienced as delegation of logistical tasks and enhanced responsibility instead of delegation of the authority that is necessary for professional care work to be performed. As such, trust-reforms risk obstructing rather than advancing their declared intentions of strengthening professional agency in care work, and rather than distributing management tasks, trust-reforms need to strengthen the management function in order to succeed.


SARS-CoV-2, a member of the coronavirus family, is an RNA virus characterized by a single-stranded genome and is responsible for the development of COVID-19. The emergence of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 in 2021 marked a significant variation recognized by the World Health Organization. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the spike glycoprotein of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 and identify potential immunogenic epitopes in order to design multi-epitope vaccine constructs. Among the other major structural proteins of the coronavirus, the spike glycoprotein stands out as the largest. Importantly, individuals who have recovered from SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 were found to possess antibodies that target the spike glycoprotein. This article asserts that the vaccine presented in this study has the potential to elicit immune responses against previous variants, including the Omicron variant, as well as future variations. This is attributed to the utilization of a Java-based tool, which facilitated the identification of conserved epitopes with high immunogenicity scores, ensuring their non-toxic and non-allergenic properties. Our analysis provides strong evidence for the conservation of these epitopes across all coronavirus sequences detected in various countries since the beginning of the pandemic. The vaccine was subsequently constructed by integrating the identified conserved epitopes with linkers and adjuvants. The vaccine was subsequently evaluated through computational tests to assess their efficacy and performance.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.


Purpose Acute rheumatic fever (ARF) remains a major problem worldwide. We have seen over 600 cases of ARF in the past 15 years (NEJM 316:421-427, 1987, J. Peds. 124:9-15 1994, Ped. 113:168-172, 2004). The specific pathogenesis of ARF and especially rheumatic heart disease (RHD) remains unknown. Previous studies have suggested molecular mimicry between components of strains of the group A streptococcus (GAS) and human tissue resulting in an immune response directed at these tissues. Methods We employed a multiplexed fluorescent microsphere system to develop an assay requiring only 5 μl of serum to simultaneously assess the serum concentration of two non-specific streptococcal antibodies (anti-streptolysin O (ASO), anti-DNase B) and four antibodies specific to human tissues (myosin, collagen I, collagen IV, and fibronectin). Results We found significantly higher antibody activity in the ARF patients (n=20) to nonspecific streptococcal enzymes ASO and DNase B compared to pharyngitis patients (n=10) (ASO: 2519 mean fluorescent intensity vs. 1412 MFI p=0.005, anti-DNase B: 4795 MFI vs. 2268 MFI p=0.0006). We also found significant increases in antibody to collagen I, a component of heart valves, collagen IV, a component of basement membrane in several tissues, and fibronectin (anti-collagen I: 277 MFI vs. 136 MFI p=0.029, anti-collagen IV: 200 MFI vs. 50 MFI p=0.005, anti-fibronectin 1279 MFI vs. 1169 MFI p=0.007). In contrast, we did not see significantly elevated antibody to myosin which is associated with myocarditis (anti-myosin 649 MFI vs. 310 MFI p=0.069). In 10 patients with ARF with carditis vs. 10 patients with ARF without carditis, we found significantly higher levels of ASO, anti-DNase B, and anti-myosin (ASO: 2968 MFI vs. 2071 MFI p=0.035, anti-DNase B: 6037 MFI vs. 3554 MFI p=0.015, anti-myosin: 1037 MFI vs. 262 MFI p=0.019). Conclusion Employing this system, we have shown that ARF patients are hyper-responsive to all of these antigens, and carditis patients have a higher response to specific antigens than non-carditis patients. Such data derived from this multi-analyte system, may allow us to dissect the critical role of this molecular mimicry in the pathogenesis of acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease.


Aflatoxins are carcinogenic secondary metabolites produced predominantly by the fungi Aspergillus flavus and parasiticus. The toxin contaminate maize grains and threatens human food safety. Survey in Ghana revealed aflatoxin contamination of maize in excess of 941 ppb which is way beyond WHO and USA approved limits of 15 ppb and 20 ppb respectively. Host plant resistance is considered as the best strategy for reducing aflatoxins. This study was designed to (1) identify and select suitable maize lines that combine aflatoxin accumulation resistance and good agronomic traits under tropical conditions and (2) assess the genetic diversity among the exotic and locally adapted maize genotypes using significant morphological traits. Thirty-six maize genotypes, 19 from Mississippi State University, USA and 17 locally adapted genotypes in Ghana were evaluated for aflatoxin accumulation resistance and good agronomic characteristics across six contrasting environments using a 6x6 lattice design with three replicates. Five plants each per genotype were inoculated with a local strain of Aspergillus flavus inoculum at a concentration of 9 x 107/3.4 ml, two weeks after 50% mid silking. Total aflatoxin in the kernels were determined at harvest using HPLC method. Statistical analysis for agronomic traits and aflatoxin levels were performed using PROC GLM procedure implemented in SAS. The result indicated that genotype by environment interaction was significant (p < 0.05) for aflatoxin accumulation resistance and many other agronomic traits. Five genotypes (MP715, NC298, MP705, MP719, CML287 and TZEEI- 24) consistently displayed stable resistance across the environments and may serve as suitable candidates for developing aflatoxin resistant hybrids. Cluster analysis showed two distinct groups (locally adapted and exotic genotypes), an indication of re-cycled alleles per region. Broad sense heritability estimates for grain yield and aflatoxin accumulation resistance were moderately high, which could permit transfer of traits during hybrid development.


From adjusted gross income to zoning and property taxes, the second edition of The Encyclopedia of Taxation and Tax Policy offers the best and most complete guide to taxes and tax-related issues. More than 150 tax practitioners and administrators, policymakers, and academics have contributed. The result is a unique and authoritative reference that examines virtually all tax instruments used by governments (individual income, corporate income, sales and value-added, property, estate and gift, franchise, poll, and many variants of these taxes), as well as characteristics of a good tax system, budgetary issues, and many current federal, state, local, and international tax policy issues. The new edition has been completely revised, with 40 new topics and 200 articles reflecting six years of legislative changes. Each essay provides the generalist with a quick and reliable introduction to many topics but also gives tax specialists the benefit of other experts? best thinking, in a manner that makes the complex understandable. Reference lists point the reader to additional sources of information for each topic. The first edition of The Encyclopedia of Taxation and Tax Policy was selected as an Outstanding Academic Book of the Year (1999) by Choice magazine.


Recently, the research of the gene using the transgenic mouse has been performed for the development of new medicines. However, 600,000 kinds of mice are produced for the elucidation of each gene function. For this reason, the intelligent microchips have been developed to obtain an individual identification and biological information. The ventricular rate of a mouse can be monitored by the micro pressure sensor mounted on the intelligent microchip. In this research, the detailed structure and functions of the micro pressure sensor were investigated by the FEM analysis, and the sensor-chips were manufactured on 6-inch silicon wafer. The wafer thickness had to be reduced owing to the size restriction of the intelligent microchip. The grinding of the 6-inch silicon wafer with 560 µm in thickness with 19200 sensor-chips was carried out by the newly developed thinning technology. After the basic characteristics of a sensor-chip were evaluated, the output profile containing small peaks corresponding to the heartbeat of a transgenic mouse was finally detected using a mounted sensor-chip.


In this paper, we present the first demonstration of the monolithic integration of Aluminum Nitride (AlN) micromechanical contour mode technology filters with dual-beam actuated MEMS AlN switches. This integration has lead to the development of the first prototype of a fully-integrated all-mechanical switchable filter. Integration has been demonstrated by using AlN contour-mode MEMS filters at two center frequencies, i.e. 98.7 and 279.9 MHz. The micromechanical switch design used here is a novel three-finger dual-beam topology that improves the isolation and insertion loss of the switch by decreasing the parasitic coupling between the DC and RF signals over a previous AlN MEMS dual beam design. With the use of just one switch fabricated right next to, and integrated with the filter, the AlN MEMS filter is effectively turned off and its pass-band transmission is lowered to the out of band level at 279.9 MHz.


Social Media has become indispensable for market penetration. It is a beneficial communication platform for understanding the customer focus. Effective use of this media for image creation, customer access, knowledge accumulation and trend analysis, creates competitive advantages. This research is designed to analyze social media strategies of global enterprises and evaluate the value of social media usage. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to model the performance decisions. The model is constructed based on the major evaluation criteria used by the global companies. AHP model expresses cause and effect relationships between companies and social media effects. Cases will be applied for Coca Cola, Turkish Airlines and Starbucks. Enterprise awareness and success of different evaluation criteria are benchmarked.


The present paper focus on ITC notebook and try to understand consumer social responsibility for cause related brand and how their preference level changes with different firm donations, and how this activity leads to brand loyalty in long run. An experimental design with 693 participants was used. The results shows that consumers like cause related marketing campaigns and ready to do extra effort for that brand, provided the donation amount invested by companies should be high as much high as company can provide for the cause. Elaborative offers and attitude toward the advertisement affect the social brand image of the company, and these two affects along with brand image produce positive results on brand loyalty among consumers for such low involvement products.


Objective: Cervix Cancer (CC) is one of the major health problems among Iranian women and elsewhere around the world. Considering the importance of this cancer, the present study was conducted to determine the age-standardized incidence rate (ASIR) and age-standardized mortality rate (ASMR) of CC in Iran.
Methods: A search was conducted using international databases (Medline/PubMed, ProQuest, Scopus, Embase and ISI/ web of knowledge), and national databases (Scientific Information Database, MagIran, IranMedex, and IranDoc). This systematic review was carried out according to the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) check list in 2018. Thereafter, Persian and English language papers referring to the ASIR and ASMR of CC in Iran were included. Data were independently extracted by two reviewers. The Joanna Briggs checklist was carried out to evaluate the quality of studies.
Result: A total of 522 papers were obtained in the initial search of the databases, and 25 articles were included to the review by further refinement and screening. Based on the random-effect model, the ASIR and ASMR of CC in Iran was 2.14 per 100000, 95% CI (1.89 to 2.38) and 0.93 per 100000, 95% CI (0.81 to 1.05), respectively.
Conclusion: The incidence and mortality of CC in Iran was lower than other parts of the world. It should be noted that because of the high heterogeneity of the results of this study, we must judge with caution regarding the results.


We introduce a framework in which design information can be represented using an automaton model. We present a novel scheduling algorithm under environmental constraints where both the design and constraints are represented using automata. This model offers the advantage of supporting different constraints (e.g. timing, resource, synchronization, etc.) with a uniform formalism. All feasible schedules are captured with a single product automaton. The automaton is constructed and traversed using efficient BDD-based implicit state-traversal techniques. We present an algorithm that generates a minimum-latency schedule. This approach is able to exploit degrees of freedom among interacting components of a multi-module system during scheduling.<<ETX>>


I participated in a NATO Advanced Research Workshop titled "Effects of Air Pollution on Forest Health and Biodiversity in Forests of the Carpathian Mountains," in Stara Lesna, Slovakia from May 22–26, 2001. Researchers from Canada, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, and the U.S. met to present their results from a three-year cooperative study of tree health and air quality monitoring in forests of the Carpathian Mountains in Central Europe. Much of the work reported related to assessing the crown condition of trees in permanent plots in natural or managed (planted) forests in the mountains. The endpoint was tree condition, with results extrapolated to the forests in the Carpathian range. From this I learned that, of the 50,000 trees evaluated, European beech (Fagus sylvatica) was the most healthy, while Norway spruce (Picea abies) (the principal forest tree) and white fir (Abies alba) sustained crown defoliation of up to 12.8%. The cause of this crown defoliation and tree decline was usually attributed to "air pollution" as a generic term and an automatic assumption. It is well known that deposition of heavy metals and acidic sulfur and nitrogen compounds can cause tree decline and predispose affected trees to bark beetles and climatic damage. Chemical analyses can also be done to detect metals and sulfur compounds in trees and soils. Sometimes these analyses were done, but most often the assumption was that crown defoliation was caused by air pollution. The assumption was that given sufficient exposure to high enough concentrations of toxic elements, sooner or later there will be a visible adverse response.


This PhD by portfolio comprises of a critical commentary reflecting on a visual art practice form 1988 to 2013 with a particular focus on four series of recent work: 'Dream' (2011-13) [Appendix B], 'Wide Shut' (2013) [Appendix D], 'Self contain' (2012-13) [Appendix C] and 'L'Inconnue de la Seine' (2010-) [Appendix A] and two exhibitions, Absurd Impositions (2011, V&A's Museum of Childhood) and Self Contained (2013, Freud Museum London). In exploring how the work suggests 'the vision of others' (Hilty, 1996) might be accommodated I exploit the meanings of the word vision. Initially concerned with how the work represents sight and looking, that is both how people become objects of sight as well as how thye see, I explore vision as the formation and communication of an individual outlook or view of the world, that is as dreams, deisres and sense of identity. To map this complexity, I suggest looking, materiality, and narrativity as the core concerns of my painting.

The critical commentary is in three parts. The first, Vision, explores the ways in which portraiture opens up an awareness of the ethics of looking and depiction. Framed by notions of a gendered, embodied gaze explored in my earlier painting, I discuss the dynamics of sight within the painted portrait, in particular the reciprocity of look between the artist who originates the depiction, the subject depicted and the viewer for whom the work is made. This includes a discussion of Michael Fried's notion of 'absorption' and in particular what this might mean for depictions of children. The second part, 'Re-Vision', critically assesses how the 'touch' of drawing relates to sight and sightlessness in portraiture. This examination of the materiality of the work articulated how the processes of making inflect the work's meaning. It reflects on the use of the photograph and doubled imagery and on the different forms of mark making and geture employed in the drawings that I propose are able to bring a particular quality of ambivalence to a meditation on maternal gaze. 'Imaging Narrative', the last section, examines strategies for facilitating the reading of text as image and image as text. It explores my material choices, use of juxtaposition, the work's site and a notion of return and how these are deployed to encourage certain interpretations. Here I make a claim for a method of material juxtapositions that allows for a literary overshadowing of the visual, allowing the viewer as an active, imaginative part in the construction of meaning. The idea of autobiography as a fiction is utilised (via Anne Wagner and Paul de Man) in relation to self-portraiture and art-work by women, who are positioned by their gender outside their medium's history and heritage.

Through the work I argue there is a direct feminist perspective on the depiction of the gendered and maternal gaze. I draw on art historical and literary criticism to elucidate the work's potential for feminist enquiry. Ultimately these reflections tentatively propose that the work, via a feminist reading, might point the way to a recalibration of certain values within contemporary art practice in relation to genre, site and subject, and through the work's relation to portraiture, drawing, museums and children. My conclusion reflects on the difficulty of an ethical representation of others and its consequential dispersed notion of portraiture. However, I also claim that alongside what Maria Walsh has called within these works 'maternalised optics', 'a shared space of intimacy without judgement' [Walsh 2013: 69-76] there is a perverse and violent aspect to the version of the maternal gaze they propose, creating an undercurrent in the work which leads to a productive ambivalence.


Whilst economic, social and cultural rights benefit from a better protection worldwide than when they were first recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, they remain criticised for being too vague and, thus, not legally enforceable. This is particularly relevant to the right to health, since it embraces complex ethical, economic and legal issues often calling into question its substance. Such criticisms, nonetheless, threaten its implementation: how can key actors contribute to realising a right of which they do not understand the meaning? This thesis, therefore, aims at clarifying what the human right to health entails, and will focus on how this can be done through supranational monitoring. Mandated to supervise the implementation of human rights instruments, supranational human rights bodies (SNHRBs) embody the most authoritative interpretation of the right to health. When evaluating whether or not states comply with their obligations and when justifying why, SNHRBs effectively delineate the legal content of this right. Therefore, this thesis will analyse how SNHRBs contribute to clarifying the legal content of the right to health in the course of their quasi-judicial monitoring procedures, and how their interpretation can be optimised for that purpose. I will particularly study the interpretation of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (United Nations) and the European Committee of Social Rights (Council of Europe), for they are the most illustrative of how supranational monitoring of the right to health feeds into its substance, and vice versa. Such comparative analysis will enable me to develop a theoretical account assisting SNHRBs in interpreting the legal content of the right to health more clearly, to highlight 'best practice', and to discuss compatibility between universal and regional standards. As a result, this thesis lies primarily in international human rights law but will also involve aspects of public international law and, modestly, public health.


Acclaimed for its masterful new translation and insightful commentary, The David Story is a fresh, vivid rendition of one of the great works in Western literature. Robert Alter's brilliant translation gives us David, the beautiful, musical hero who slays Goliath and, through his struggles with Saul, advances to the kingship of Israel. But this David is also fully human: an ambitious, calculating man who navigates his life's course with a flawed moral vision. The consequences for him, his family, and his nation are tragic and bloody. Historical personage and full-blooded imagining, David is the creation of a literary artist comparable to the Shakespeare of the history plays.


Understanding human behavior in video data is essential in numerous applications including smart surveillance, video annotation/retrieval, and human-computer interaction. Recognizing human interactions is a challenging task due to ambiguity in body articulation, mutual occlusion, and shadows. Past research has focused on a coarse-level recognition of human interactions or on the recognition of a specific gesture of a single body part. It is our objective to develop methods to recognize human actions and interactions at a detailed level. The focus of this research is to develop a framework for recognizing human actions and interactions in color video. This dissertation presents a hierarchical graphical model that unifies multiple-level processing in video computing. The video—color image sequence—is processed at four levels: pixel level, blob level, object level, and event level. A mixture of Gaussian (MOG) model is used at the pixel level to train and classify individual pixel colors. A relaxation labeling with attribute relational graph (ARG) is used at the blob level to merge the pixels into coherent blobs and to register inter-blob relations. At the object level, the poses of individual body parts including head, torso, arms and legs are recognized using individual Bayesian networks (BNs), which are then integrated to obtain an overall body pose. At the event level, the actions of a single person are modeled using a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) with temporal links between identical nodes of the Bayesian network at time t and t + 1. At this event level, the results of the object-level descriptions for each person are juxtaposed along a common timeline to identify an interaction between two persons. The linguistic 'verb argument structure' is used to represent human action in terms of 〈agent-motion-target〉 triplets. Spatial and temporal constraints are used for a decision tree to recognize specific interactions. A meaningful semantic description in terms of 〈subject-verb-object〉 is obtained. Our method provides a user-friendly natural-language description of various human actions and interactions using event semantics. Our system correctly recognizes various human actions involving the motions of the torso, arms and/or legs, and our system achieves semantic descriptions of positive, neutral, and negative interactions between two persons including hand-shaking, standing hand-in-hand, and hugging as the positive interactions, approaching, departing, and pointing as the neutral interactions, and pushing, punching, and kicking as the negative interactions.


BACKGROUND: The American Board of Pediatrics charged a task force to examine fellowship training. As part of that process, a study was conducted to assess the perceptions of fellowship training by those who had recently completed training and those who were in the middle of their careers. METHODS: The American Board of Pediatrics provided a random sample of subspecialists stratified across all 14 subspecialties (N = 5072). Subspecialists were identified either as recent graduates (N = 2702), those who had completed fellowship within the last 5 years or as midcareer subspecialists (N = 2370), and those who completed fellowship 15 to 20 years ago. Two distinct 20-item structured questionnaires were administered by mail, 1 for each group, in January through March 2012. χ2 Statistics were used to assess differences between groups. RESULTS: Response rates were 77.8% for recent graduates and 73.8% for midcareer subspecialists. Overall, most subspecialists described their work primarily as a clinician (36%) or as a clinician-educator (48%). Fewer (12%) reported primarily research. The majority of subspecialists (55%) have full-time academic appointments, but recent graduates are more likely to do so than midcareer subspecialists (62% vs 48%; P < .0001). The majority (60%) believe that the overall length of training in their subspecialty should remain at 3 years. However, almost one-third (29%) believe there should be 2 different tracks in their subspecialty, shorter for clinicians and/or clinician-educators and longer for those pursuing an academic career. CONCLUSIONS: We found a significant range of opinion regarding subspecialty training. Some of this variation is undoubtedly due to differences between the individual subspecialties.


Author(s): Ly, Stephanie | Advisor(s): von Ehrenstein, Ondine S | Abstract: Child stunting, or linear growth faltering, affects 1 in 5 children under the age of five years. These 151 million stunted children predominantly live in low- and middle-income countries. For decades, clinicians and researchers considered stunting a form of chronic malnutrition but modest gains were made in eliminating stunting through nutritional interventions. This dissertation explored emerging areas in child stunting. Chapters 1 and 2 introduced stunting and provided backgrounds, respectively. The research was guided by the Social Ecological Model and Life Course Perspective in approaching stunting as embedded in macro structures at multiple levels over the life course of women and children. Chapter 3 described theoretical frameworks and an integrated model. The analyses focused on Madagascar and Zambia, which were ranked among countries with the highest proportions of child stunting. We used health data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and armed conflict data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) database in Madagascar and Zambia. Chapter 4 detailed the methodology, including multivariate logistic and linear regression models assessing child stunting and height-for-age z-score (HAZ) outcomes. Chapter 5 examined maternal anthropometry and child gender factors. Results indicated that short stature or underweight in mothers were associated with increased stunting odds while higher maternal height and BMI scores were associated with higher child HAZ. Chapter 6 investigated household water and sanitation measures. We found that households without piped water and finished flooring were associated with increased stunting odds. Stunting was associated with lack of an advanced flush toilet in Zambia but not in Madagascar. Chapter 7 explored proximity of armed conflict events during critical developmental periods with child stunting and height. Conflict exposure during pregnancy was associated with increased stunting odds and lower HAZ in Madagascar but decreased odds and higher HAZ in Zambia. This dissertation framed stunting as occurring over the life course and embedded in multiple external structures. These studies were among the first to examine population-level environmental enteric dysfunction risk factors and apply disaggregated conflict data to stunting. We also contributed stunting context in Madagascar and Zambia, which have been understudied.


The process model that has been mostly used in construction management tends to neglect the importance of flow activities in production. By contrast, the New Production Philosophy (Lean Production) states that both conversions and flows should be considered in production management. While the conversion management aspect of production seems to be relatively well defined, further research into the management of physical flows is required. This paper proposes some guidelines for managing physical flows in construction sites based on case studies carried out in small sized building companies in the South of Brazil. In this research work, physical flows refer to both material and production unit flows. The authors propose that decision making concerned with such flows should be part of the production planning and control process. This means that the flows of people, equipment, and materials must be explicitly and systematically planned and controlled, considering distinct hierarchical decision making levels. It is expected that these changes in production planning and control will increase process transparency and, at the same time, will create conditions for reducing variability in site conditions and thereby reduce waste.


We report the influence of fertilization on the susceptibility of sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua L.) seedlings to naturally occurring insect herbivores. Thirteen-week-old potted sweetgum were placed in a pasture near the margin of a hardwood forest containing scattered sweetgum trees. Groups of 14 seedlings were treated weekly with either no (0), low (1.5 g/L), medium (3.0 g/L), or high (6.0 g/L) concentrations of 20-20-20 soluble fertilizer. Seedling performance was assessed by measuring height and leaf number and rating seedling condition throughout the 11-week experiment. Types and numbers of insect herbivores were recorded at 2to 3-week intervals for each seedling throughout the experiment and cumulative damage was estimated for each seedling at the end of the experiment. Herbivore damage was generally light, except for weeks 2 through 5, when seven seedlings were defoliated and killed. Six of these seedlings were in the medium and high fertilizer treatments. Defoliations were due to late instar larvae of the yellowstriped armyworm (Spodoptera ornithogalli Gn.). Other insect herbivore species were detected, but their impacts were minor. Eleven seedlings received no detectable herbivore damage during the experiment; 10 of these received zero and low fertilizer treatments. Results suggest that the susceptibility of potted sweetgum seedlings to insect herbivore damage was associated with fertilizer concentration. This effect was not related to differences in seedling size because major defoliation events occurred before significant differences in seedling size among fertilizer treatments were detected. Yellowstriped armyworm has potential as a pest of sweetgum seedlings in intensively managed plantings.


This paper chronologically presents the main reforms and agrarian policies in Romania, over the last hundred years, starting with the 1918 agrarian reform and up to today's Community policies. The 1921 agrarian reform was based on King Ferdinand's solemn promise in 1917 to give land to the peasants who were the main participants in the First World War. This reform, which lasted for 10 years, expropriated 6,127 thousand ha; 1,479 persons became the owners of 3,404 thousand ha in total. Commons and village hearts were built. In its turn, the 1945 agrarian reform had a much smaller scale, i.e.1,444 thousand ha were expropriated and 1,058 thousand ha were distributed. In fact, the reform was only a bait, in order to attract the peasants to the side of the new communist power, for the 1946 elections. In 1949, it was decided to collectivize the agriculture, process that would end in 1962. The next reform was represented by Law 18/1991, enforced after the fall of communism. Initially, a maximum of 10 ha in arable equivalent land was returned. In parallel, the former state-owned enterprises turned into commercial companies and were privatized. After 1989, with the transition to the market economy, and after 1997, with the accession to the European Union, Romania's land policy has been subject to Community policies.


Movement related EEG segments of one second duration were analyzed by Fast Fourier Transformation in the Bereitschaftspotential paradigm in 31 neuroleptic treated schizophrenics compared to 21 matched controls. Schizophrenics demonstrated a higher theta mean power density and center frequency together with a lower radius of gyration, skewness and kurtosis in the theta band than controls. The higher theta power in the faster frequency range of the theta band is probably due to neuroleptic medication, but the higher theta power in the lower frequency range may be related to the disease. In the alpha band the schizophrenic group differed from controls by a lower center frequency, higher radius of gyration and skewness. Both groups did not differ in the alpha mean power density. The lower center frequency reflects the fact that alpha activity is distributed towards the lower frequency range which seems to be a consequence of the neuroleptic treatment. The more widespread alpha activity (higher radius of gyration) in schizophrenics indicates less frequency stability, i.e., more desynchronized alpha rhythm which corresponds to a highly activated functional state. By means of the applied spectral parameters more detailed quantitative descriptions of the power distributions in each frequency band are available, allowing to test hypothesis in relation to underlying physiological processes.