Australian Pupil Control Ideology (PCI) studies have generally utilized small samples in an endeavour to establish significant relationships between teacher/administrator control orientation, and a variety of person‐specific variables. The present study examines the tenability of a number of American biographically‐derived hypotheses in the Australian context. The explanatory power of the combined biographical variables of teacher age, experience, sex, organizational status and academic qualifications for variances in PCI is seriously questioned since as little as 6 percent of PCI variance may be explained by reference to these particular variables. Some potentially more fruitful avenues of enquiry for future PCI research are proffered.


The three-dimensional immages of free and intrasporangial spores produced by scanning electron microscopy show surface structures not visible by phase-contrast microscopy. Although fine surface detail is not elucidated by scanning electron microscopy, this technique does afford a definitive picture of the general shape of spores. Spores of Bacillus popilliae, B. lentimorbus, B. thuringiensis, B. alvei, B. cereus, and Sarcina ureae have varying patterns of surface ridge formation, whereas spores of B. larvae, B. subtilis, and B. licheniformis have relatively smooth surfaces.


In-depth coverage of Microsoft's new programming language-F# 2010 F# is a new programming language from Microsoft, a fusion of object-oriented and functional approaches, which offers a number of new features and approaches to making software easier to write. Supported for the first time with Visual Studio 2010, F# is particularly ideal for software that needs to take full advantage of multicore processors, and this comprehensive book covers all aspects of this functional language. Assuming familiarity with C#, VB, C++, or Java, the authors cover such topics as binding values and control flow, simple and complex types, pattern matching, complex functions, and imperative and object programming in F#. You'll see how F# interacts with the .NET CLR and C#, and you'll review F# and .NET data access through LINQ, ADO.NET, and the Entity Framework. F# is a new programming language from Microsoft, and offers an original approach to making software easier to write Addresses binding values and control flow, simple and complex types, pattern matching, and complex functions Examines imperative and object programming in F#, packaging, and functional design concepts and patterns Discusses F# and the .NET CLR, F# and C# interaction, and F# and .NET data access Reviews communication with System.xml and WCF Professional F# 2010 is essential reading if you are writing new code for complex or multi-processor applications.


Humans can understand stories, and the rich interactions between agents, locations, and events, seamlessly. However, state-of-the-art reasoning models struggle with understanding, completing, or explaining stories, often due to the complexity of the underlying common sense necessary for comprehension. One potential reason models perform poorly is the lack of large-scale training data that supplies annotations of the common sense necessary for story understanding. In this paper, we investigate the generation of stories at scale, by combining commonsense axioms with commonsense knowledge graphs to produce stories annotated with common sense. We first demonstrate that commonsense axioms and commonsense knowledge graphs are sufficient to capture the underlying narratives in a popular story corpus. Our method aligns story types with commonsense axioms, and queries to a commonsense knowledge graph, enabling the generation of hundreds of thousands of stories. We evaluate these stories for sensibility and interestingness through a crowdsourcing task. Using our story corpus, we also design a probing task with questions for three exemplar story types. Our results show that our method generates story endings of a higher quality compared to the current generative language models. This work points to key open challenges around generating better stories, providing more comprehensive explanations, and building models that can explain any story with axioms.


The journal is intended to provide students and teachers with:
(1) a vehicle to honor young investigators and their teachers by showcasing their work, motivating
them to continue their involvement in research science,
(2) a sourcebook for both students and teachers who are looking for ideas for research projects,
(3) a volume to disseminate student research discoveries, and
( 4) an exercise in analysis of good science versus science that could be improved. Many abstracts
included in the journal demonstrate good science, i.e., clear introductions describing hypothesis to
be tested, methods, results and conclusion statements, and most important, sufficient numbers of
appropriate control and experimental samples and repetitions of experiments. Other abstracts do not
display one or more of the principles of good science. Students and teachers, therefore, could use
these abstracts to learn about the right and wrong ways to approach scientific experiments. For this
reason, we do not eliminate abstracts that do not demonstrate perfect science. The editor, however,
reserves the right not to publish abstracts that are seriously flawed. Those abstracts were deleted
from this issue. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations are those of the
individual authors of the abstracts presented in the journal, and do not necessarily reflect the views
of the National Science Foundation, the other sponsoring agencies, the university or the journal
staff.


The present invention, 11-beta inhibitors hydroxyl steroid dehydrogenase type 1, antagonists of the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR), and pharmaceutical compositions thereof. The compounds of the present invention may be useful for the treatment of various diseases and / or hyperaldosteronism related diseases associated with 11-beta hydroxyl steroid dehydrogenase type 1 expression or activity.


Introduction: Recurrent shoulder dislocation account for a common problem in young patients. Bankart lesion is described as injury to anterior (inferior) glenoid labrum due to anterior shoulder dislocation leading to formation of a pocket in front of glenoid that allows humeral head to dislocate into it. It is often accompanied with hill sach lesion which is compression fracture of the posterolateral humeral head due to its co mpression against the anteroinferior part of the glenoid. Material and Methods: Around 20 cases of recurrent anterior shoulder dislocation treated isolated arthroscopic bankart repair or arthroscopic bankart andremplissage technique. 6 months follow up is done. Arthroscope was inserted via a routine posterior portal for evaluation of Bankart and Hill-Sachs lesions. Two standard anterior portals were also put. Through the anterior portal, Bankart repair was done after freshening and elevating the labrum, and then anchors of 2.8 mm were used to repair labrum to the glenoid. And for Hill Sachs lesion, posterior portal put 2.5 cm below the anterior portal. A bone shaver was used to debride the humeral defect, following which a double loaded 5 mm anchor was placed. Lastly, suture replacement was done to fix only the tendinous element of infraspinatous tendon to the defect. In post op physiotherapy is started after 3 weeks, as per pain tolerance by the patient. Discussion: Bankart and remplissage associated with better outcome and lesser complications compared to isolated bankart repair. Average time for full range of motion of soulder is 6 weeks. Conclusion: Arthroscopic bankart repair and remplissage technique is better than isolated arthroscopic bankart repair.


We give a global picture of the Ricci flow on the space of three-dimensional, unimodular, nonabelian metric Lie algebras considered up to isometry and scaling. The Ricci flow is viewed as a two-dimensional dynamical system for the evolution of structure constants of the metric Lie algebra with respect to an evolving orthonormal frame. This system is amenable to direct phase plane analysis, and we find that the fixed points and special trajectories in the phase plane correspond to special metric Lie algebras, including Ricci solitons and special Riemannian submersions. These results are one way to unify the study of Ricci flow on left invariant metrics on three-dimensional, simply-connected, unimodular Lie groups, which had previously been studied by a case-by-case analysis of the different Bianchi classes. In an appendix, we prove a characterization of the space of three-dimensional, unimodular, nonabelian metric Lie algebras modulo isometry and scaling.


Neural Machine Translation is a newly emerging approach to machine translation which attempts to build and train a large neural network that reads a sentence and outputs a notable translation. Nowadays the performance of such machines is in- creasingly in demand and Multilingual Neutral Machine Translation has emerged. There is an abundant bibliography on Multimodal Neutral Machine Translation as there is a consistent number of models which differ by the final aspects of trans- lation (adequacy, fidelity and fluency) and the multitude of inputs they can use (images, videos, text, speech or a combination of them). The GroundedTranslation was chosen in this work. As we know, by far, the state- of-the art provides some techniques such as using Long Short Term Memory and an encoder-decoder architecture for example to solve some training problems and they already have been implemented by Elliot Desmond for this retained solution. However, no investigation has been oriented toward the optimizer. This work aims to study multimodal neural machine translation architectures and its behavior un- der different optimization algorithms.


In a quantum money scheme, a bank can issue money that users cannot counterfeit. Similar to bills of paper money, most quantum money schemes assign a unique serial number to each money state, thus potentially compromising the privacy of the users of quantum money. However in a quantum coins scheme, just like the traditional currency coin scheme, all the money states are exact copies of each other, providing a better level of privacy for the users.
A quantum money scheme can be private, i.e., only the bank can verify the money states, or public, meaning anyone can verify. In this work, we propose a way to lift any private quantum coin scheme -- which is known to exist based on the existence of one-way functions, due to Ji, Liu, and Song (CRYPTO'18) -- to a scheme that closely resembles a public quantum coin scheme. Verification of a new coin is done by comparing it to the coins the user already possesses, by using a projector on to the symmetric subspace. No public coin scheme was known prior to this work. It is also the first construction that is very close to a public quantum money scheme and is provably secure based on standard assumptions. The lifting technique when instantiated with the private quantum coins scheme, due to Mosca and Stebila 2010, gives rise to the first construction that is very close to an inefficient unconditionally secure public quantum money scheme.


The stoichiometric MpXq hollow nanospheres are produced by reaction of metallic M nanospheres with the gaseous X phase. In the first stage a sufficiently thick MpXq nanoshell on the metallic core of phase M is formed. During this stage high supersaturation of vacancies in the M core or very high hydrostatic stress in the M core, due to the misfit between the core and the nanoshell, are developed and provide favourable conditions for the hollow nucleation. The misfit is caused by the Kirkendall effect. Based on the application of the thermodynamic extremal principle a kinetic model of MpXq nanoshell formation is derived. The kinetics is driven by the change of the chemical energy due to reaction of M and X components, of the interface and surface energies, and of the elastic strain energy due to misfit strain of the whole system. The model is used for simulation of the Cu2O shell growth kinetics due to oxidation of a Cu nanosphere, and the results of simulations are discussed.


ELIZABETH C. SHAMSELDIN: Asymptotic Multivariate Kriging Using Estimated Parameters with Bayesian Prediction Methods for Non-linear Predictands (Under the direction of Richard L. Smith) The motivation for this dissertation is the need that often arises in spatial settings to perform a data transformation to achieve a stationary process and/or variance stabilization. The transformation may be a non-linear transformation, and the desired predictand may be multivariate in that it is necessary to interpolate predictions at multiple sites. We assume the underlying spatial model is a Gaussian random field with a parametrically specified covariance structure, but that the predictions of interest are for multivariate nonlinear functions of the Gaussian field. This induces new complications in the spatial interpolation known as kriging. For instance, it is no longer possible to derive the predictive distribution function in closed form. The underlying process of a spatial model is a stochastic process, and spatial prediction techniques are founded on the assumption that the realizations come from a Gaussian process with a known covariance structure, and known, specified parameters. A difficulty that arises with traditional kriging methods is the fact that the standard formula for the mean squared prediction error does not take into account the estimation of the covariance parameters. This generally leads to underestimated prediction errors, even if the model is correct. Smith and Zhu (2004) establish a second-order expansion for predictive distributions in Gaussian processes with estimated covariances. Here, we establish a similar expansion for multivariate kriging with non-linear predictands. Bayesian methods provide a possible resolution to errors encountered through employing frequentist estimation techniques for obtaining spatial parameters. Bayesian analysis seeks to utilize prior and nonexperimental sources of information. Bayesian methods evaluiii ate procedures for a repeated sampling experiment of parameters drawn from the posterior distribution given a set of observed data. An important property of Bayesian methods is the ability to deal with the uncertainty in a particular model. A Bayesian paradigm enables a more realistic assessment of the variability inherent in estimating parameters of interest. Here we explore a Laplace approximation to Bayesian techniques that provides an alternative to common iterative Bayesian methods, such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo. The theoretical Bayesian coverage probability bias for prediction intervals is computed and compared with the plug-in method using the restricted maximum likelihood estimates of the covariance parameters. The form of the Bayesian predictive distribution can be expressed as partial derivatives of the restricted log-likelihood. This leads to possible analytical evaluation, and a bootstrap method is explored to obtain predictions for general, non-linear predictands. The main results are asymptotic formulae for a general, non-linear predictand for the expected length of a Bayesian prediction interval, which has possible applications in network design, and for the coverage probability bias, which can lead to the development of a matching prior. The matching prior may be difficult to compute in practice. As an alternative, an asymptotic estimator is developed.


This article describes the nature of animal abuse and the response of the criminal justice system to all cruelty cases prosecuted by the Massachusetts Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals between 1975 and 1996. Dogs were the most common target; when combined with cats, these domestic animals composed the vast majority of incidents. Almost all of these animals were owned, and females were the majority of complainants. Suspects were almost always young males, and most of the time they allegedly shot, beat, stabbed, or threw their victims. Reportedly, adults were more likely than minors to abuse dogs, shoot them, and commit such acts alone rather than in a group, while minors were more likely to abuse cats, beat them, and commit such acts with peers present. Less than half of the alleged abusers were found guilty in court, one-third were fined, less than one-quarter had to pay restitution, one-fifth were put on probation, one-tenth were sent to jail, and an even smaller percent were required to undergo counseling or perform community service.


Background: Recent research suggests that street-level research workers face ethical issues in the responsible conduct of research that are outside the scope of principal investigators' experiences and concerns. This is particularly true of community research workers (CRWs), who come to their research work with significant connections to the community being studied. CRWs face additional or different ethical issues compared with traditional research assistants (TRAs), who perform the same kinds of research tasks with similar marginalized populations as CRWs but do not share the same close community ties with research participants. This article presents data from interviews with street-level research workers in a major U.S. metropolitan area, exploring differences and similarities in how CRWs and TRAs conceive of and talk about ethics in research. Methods: In-depth interviews were conducted with street-level research workers, both CRWs and TRAs, who worked for studies on a variety of health issues, including sexually transmitted diseases, drug use, asthma, HIV, and prenatal care, all with underserved, low-income, primarily ethnic or racial minority target populations. Results: From the 46 interviews with participants, four themes emerged from the data: Ethics requires following the protocol, ethics requires tolerating differences among people, ethics requires ensuring informed consent, and ethics requires helping or protecting participants. Discussion of tolerance was much more prominent among CRWs than among TRAs. TRAs showed greater concern about informed consent and avoiding coercion than did CRWs. Although much street-level research is done to address health disparities, the idea that ethics requires treating different groups fairly (justice) was not a prominent theme in either group. The concepts of official ethics and bureaucratic ethics are employed to contextualize front-line research workers' understandings of ethics on the ground. Conclusion: This study found that TRAs and CRWs had some overlapping but also different ways of understanding what it means to do their research work ethically. TRAs put more emphasis on the values cited by the federal regulations and institutional review boards, such as following the protocol and obtaining proper informed consent. In contrast, CRWs emphasized tolerance and helping community members.


Simulating complex fluid flow have always been one the most challenging problem in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Most of these difficulties come from the deficiencies of Classical CFD method in computational time and boundary implementations. Recently the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) has been recognized as an alternative to the classical CFD methods for its advantages such as , easy boundary implementation, suitability for parallel simulation and no need for the Poisson pressure solver. The LBM is based on the Boltzmann equation, which governs the dynamics of molecular probability distribution functions, from a microscopic scale point of view. The primary variable of the Boltzmann equation is the particle distribution function f(x, t, ξ) which describes the probability to find a particle with microscopic velocity ξ at point x and time t. The macroscopic fluid properties (velocities, pressure) are computed as moments of these particle distribution functions. This dissertation investigates LBM for complex multiphase fluid simulation in three manuscripts . In the first manuscript a novel LBM scheme is developed for simulating multiphase flow simulation with high density ratio. In previous multiphase flow simulations the maximum fluids density ratio achievable in computations was limited by the occurrence of instabilities for high density ratio values (typically larger than 10-20). Overcoming this limitation is one of the most challenging current issues in the LBM modeling of multiphase flows and the subject of the first manuscripts, as we aim at modeling complex flows at an air-water interface, whose density ratio is about 1,000. It should be pointed out that although the numerical scheme in manuscript one is able to simulate large density ratio multiphase flow for moderate Reynolds numbers it is not stable for high Reynolds numbers. Eliminating this deficiency of the first manuscript for simulating of multiphase flows with high density ratios and high Reynolds numbers is the subject of second manuscript. In the second manuscript a novel LBM method is introduced which is able to simulate multiphase flow with arbitrary Reynolds and density ratios. The resulting algorithm is applied to several test cases, such as droplet splash, rising bubble and wave braking. The good agreement between numerical results and existing data demonstrate that the newly developed model is a useful tool for simulating complex multiphase flows. In the third manuscript we study the effects of point-wise particles on turbulent channel flow. Investigating particle-laden turbulent flows is an important fluid mechanics problem as it occurs frequently in nature. This work has been done in collaboration with Professor Tetsu Hara and Yackar Mauzole in Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island to study the sea spray generation effects of turbulent layer above see surface in high wind condition. In this work the Lattice Boltzmann method is coupled to a Lagrangian particle tracking approach for simulating a system of fluid-particle flow. In all three manuscripts the numerical schemes are developed in nVIDIA CUDA framework, which made it possible to efficiency implemented on General Purpose Graphical Processing Unit (GPGPU) to numerously increase the computational speed of the numerical code.


The aim of this research was to analyse students' creative thinking ability and the process involved in the development of students' creative thinking, as well as to examine the differences between male and female students, in order to provide a better understanding of both gender in creative thinking ability. Creative thinking is represented by four indicators; fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. In this research students' creative thinking was measured by using a Test of Creative Thinking Ability, which consisted of five open-ended questions, while the process of creative thinking development was obeserved throughout the classroom teaching-learning activities, as well as the strategies and approaches implied by the teacher. The result showed student's creative thinking ability was adequate (59%), in which the students scored the highest number in fluency (71,2%), followed by elaboration (59,5%), originality (58,5%), and flexibility (46,8%). Meanwhile, the process of creative thinking development was considered generally adequate in supporting students' creative thinking ability, the score of the whole process in each indicators were: fluency (85,7%), flexibility (85,7%), originality (78,5%), elaboration (94,5%). Quantitative data analysis showed a statistically different results of fluency and elaboration between male and female students, while the result in flexibility and originality showed no-significant difference between both gender. Positive response related to students' perception about their creative thinking ability were obtained using the students' questionnaire as the instrument. Most of the students had a great perception of ther creative ability, where male students tend to have higher perspective about their creative ability than female students.


Archived at the University of Nevada-Reno Special Collections department are the collected field materials of the late Sven Liljeblad, a Swedish folklorist who first arrived in the area of Fort Hall, Idaho in the 1940s. In work that spanned four decades, he recorded and made meticulous notes of a range of Northern Paiute and Shoshoni dialects, as well as Nez Perce. His slip files served as the primary source for the newly-published Northern Paiute-Bannock Dictionary (Liljeblad, Fowler, and Powell 2012). There remain many hours of audio recordings on various media—wire, gramophone, vinyl disc, and reel-to-reel—as well as notes, miscellany, and transcriptions in various states of completion. Most of the collection lacks basic metadata, leaving annotations and recordings in disparate areas of the archive without the benefit of cross-referencing.

This paper reports on progress toward linking the audio recordings of just one body of materials—those of Northern Paiute storyteller, Pete Snapp (92 years old at the time of the ~1963 recordings)—to the available transcriptions and translations using EUDICO Linguistic Annotator (ELAN). In so doing, conceptually linked elements from different places in the archive are time-aligned in an XML format that can be archived alongside the digitized version of the audio files. One goal has been to preserve the integrity Liljeblad's work while making it accessible for in-depth study of the language by both linguists and community activists. Part of this process has involved developing tiers (annotations) for the original transcriptions, translations, and footnotes associated with the Pete Snapp Tales, while adding tiers for native listener responses, intonation units, and other previously unannotated elements of the recordings.

The content of the Tales includes both traditional and historical narratives of great value to the community. An overarching goal of the project is to facilitate access to that content for members of the community. Only 13 of the more than 30 tales recorded from Pete Snapp have been found to carry any annotation whatsoever. This material has been incorporated into our ELAN database and will become a permanent part of the Liljeblad collection. The next obvious step in the digital re-documentation process will be to provide more complete annotations for all the Tales, with the help of native speakers and local technical assistants, and to migrate the materials into a searchable database from which lexical and grammatical information can be found and used.

Liljeblad, Sven S., Catherine S. Fowler, and Glenda Powell. 2012. Northern Paiute-Bannock Dictionary. University of Utah Press.


High-latitude coral reefs may be a refuge and area of reef expansion under climate change. As these locations are expected to become dryer and as livestock and agricultural yields decline, coastal populations may become increasingly dependent on marine resources. To evaluate this social-ecological conundrum, we examined the Grand Recif of Toliara (GRT), southwest Madagascar, which was intensively studied in the 1960s and has been highly degraded since the 1980s. We analyzed the social and ecological published and unpublished literature on this region and provide new data to assess the magnitude of the changes and evaluate the causes of reef degradation. Top-down controls were identified as the major drivers: human population growth and migrations, overfishing, and climate change, specifically decreased rainfall and rising temperature. Water quality has not changed since originally studied, and bottom-up control was ruled out. The identified network of social-ecological processes acting at different scales implies that decision makers will face complex problems that are linked to broader social, economic, and policy issues. This characterizes wicked problems, which are often dealt with by partial solutions that are exploratory and include inputs from various stakeholders along with information sharing, knowledge synthesis, and trust building. A hybrid approach based on classical fishery management options and preferences, along with monitoring, feedback and forums for searching solutions, could move the process of adaptation forward once an adaptive and appropriately scaled governance system is functioning. This approach has broad implications for resources management given the emerging climate change and multiple social and environmental stresses.


Patients with frontal-lobe epilepsy comprise the second largest group undergoing epilepsy surgery. It has been reported that the difficulty in localizing the epileptogenic zone in these patients is due to the rapid spread of the epileptiform activity within the frontal lobe and to adjoining regions of the brain. We formulated the question of whether the functional localization of dynamic sources of interictal activity in patients with well-defined frontal lesions would yield clear evidence regarding both the topology of the primary sources in relation to the epileptogenic lesion and the pattern of spread of the epileptiform activity throughout the brain. In order to achieve this, we used high-resolution EEG recordings combined with MRI, and advanced source-reconstruction algorithms. In this article, the source-imaging procedures used will be discussed extensively, based on one exemplary patient with complex partial FLE.


Hardware implementations of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Rijndael algorithm have recently been the object of an intensive evaluation. Several papers describe effcient architectures for ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) and FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Array). In this context, the highest effort was devoted to high throughput (up to 20 Gbps) encryption-only designs, fewer works studied low area encryption-only architectures and only a few papers have investigated low area encryption/decryption structures. However, in practice, only a few applications need throughput up to 20 Gbps while exible and low cost encryption/ decryption solutions are needed to protect sensible data, especially for embedded hardware applications. This contribution proposes an effcient solution to combine Rijndael encryption and decryption in one FPGA design, with a strong focus on low area constraints. The proposed design into the smallest Xilinx FPGAs, deals with data streams of 208 Mbps, uses 163 slices and 3 RAM blocks and improves by 68% the best-known similar designs in terms of ratio Throughput=Area. We also propose implementations in other FPGA Families (Xilinx Virtex-II) and comparisons with similar DES, triple-DES and AES implementations.


The youth represent a significant source of hope for a developing country such as the Philippines. Adolescents show a lack of interest in pursuing education leading to high dropout rates. Many researchers have conducted several studies to determine why students stop schooling. This study aimed to investigate the dropout determinants that influence out-of-school youth in Iligan City and Lanao Del Norte. Purposive sampling was used. Two hundred (200) out-of-school youth from Iligan City and Lanao Del Norte were the participants of this study. The researchers used a Likert scale survey questionnaire to collect the data. In addition, the researcher used descriptive analysis to calculate the median and frequency. The results found that   academic experience   especially boredom in the classroom was the leading dropout determinant influencing out-of-school youth. The other factor was family financial support. The study recommends that the government, non-government organizations and all stakeholders not only focus on providing financial assistance to students but also consider the students' learning experience inside the classroom. Academic boredom is a serious issue that requires immediate solutions.


In this paper the authors present a general subgridding scheme for enhancing the finite difference time domain (FDTD) algorithm. It is different from the conventional approaches in that it does not employ weighted averages of the electric or magnetic fields in the transition zone from the coarse to the fine grid regions, but employs a novel procedure instead for transferring the information between these two regions. We illustrate the application of the subgridding algorithm by considering refinement factor of 5, and provide validation of the results obtained for this case.


Parana Basin is a huge oval-shaped basin covering the southern portion of Brazil and parts of Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, with an area of more than 1,700,000 km2 (Figure 1). Hydrocarbon exploration in Parana Basin has been a challenge due to the world's second-most-extensive inshore flood basalt complex overlying the Paleozoic sedimentary rocks (Figure 1), which in turn are extensively intruded by swarms of diabase dikes and sills, making seismic imaging a difficult task. The basin itself represents approximately one-half of the sedimentary rock volume of onshore Brazilian basins and is still underexplored. No major discovery for oil or gas has been made to date.


In this paper we present the worldIs first social housing property index. The index is designed to be consistent with the IPD indices, but includes extra analysis tailor-made to the needs of social housing corporations. The index not only reports the receivable direct property return, but also provides an estimate of the effect on that return which may be traced to the social aims of housing corporations. The Isocial dividendI or Ipolicy effectI reflects both the impact of lower rents and extra required expenditures on general living conditions. The index measures returns on direct investment in residential property. All participants in the index have agreed to adopt a common approach to valuation, and using specially developed software for the valuation of residential properties. In this paper we describe the methodology used to construct the index. In addition, we will show how this index can be used by social housing corporations to improve their performance, taking into account both social and financial return and risk.


Due to both deepening economic crises and pressure from external lenders, Costa Rica and El Salvador implemented trade and market liberalization reforms in the 1980s. This study explores whether these policy changes shifted production toward each country's presumed comparative advantage in agriculture. For Costa Rica, trade and market liberalization strengthened the country's ability to generate agricultural trade surpluses while liberalization caused a decline in El Salvador's agricultural sector. Liberalization also affected how prices and exchange rates influence agriculture in both countries. The findings demonstrate that agriculture's response to liberalization can vary widely among countries. Overall market conditions in the rural sector, including El Salvador's postconflict challenges, during liberalization's introduction partly explain the different responses. Other potential factors include the pace that governments implement policy reforms and that liberalization will only stimulate agriculture if the country has a clear comparative advantage in that sector.


Our understanding of the e-society should incorporate the case of at-home teleworking because of its implications for the use of ubiquitous ICTs in the home environment, work relations and gender issues. Rhetoric surrounding the benefits of telework impinge on promises of increased freedom, reduced burden, and 'flexibility' from an employees perspective. In order to establish the validity of such claims it is important to examine how at-home telework entails a reconfiguration of the home-work boundary. The substantial impacts on women's role in the family such a renegotiation produces has implications for gender issues if we identify the oppression of women as located in the function they perform within the privatized family unit. By presenting a Marxist-inspired analysis of the family, explaining what constitutes women's oppression, how this relates to work outside the home, and what a vision of emancipation entails, we develop a critique of proposed advantages for women home workers. Not only do we question tele-working's ability to deliver on the promises made on its behalf; we show how this sociotechnical innovation may in fact represent a regressive step. In conclusion, we underline the contribution of this paper to research on the societal concerns as an intersection of the working sphere and family life that are brought together by ICTs..


Electromagnetic tracking systems have found increasing use in medical applications during the last few years. As with most non-trivial spatial measurement systems, the complex determination of positions and orientations from their underlying raw sensor measurements results in complicated, non-uniform error distributions over the specified measurement volume. This makes it difficult to unambiguously determine accuracy and performance assessments that allow users to judge the suitability of these systems for their particular needs. Various assessment protocols generally emphasize different measurement aspects that typically arise in clinical use. This can easily lead to inconclusive or even contradictory conclusions. We examine some of the major issues involved and discuss three useful calibration protocols. The measurement accuracy of a system can be described in terms of its 'trueness' and its 'precision'. Often, the two are strongly coupled and cannot be easily determined independently. We present a method that allows the two to be disentangled, so that the resultant trueness properly represents the systematic, non-reducible part of the measurement error, and the resultant precision (or repeatability) represents only the statistical, reducible part. Although the discussion is given largely within the context of electromagnetic tracking systems, many of the results are applicable to measurement systems in general.


Ni-metal-induced crystallization (MIC) of amorphous Si (α-Si) has been employed to fabricate low-temperature polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin-film transistors (TFTs). Although the high leakage current is a major issue in the performance of conventional MIC-TFTs since Ni contamination induces deep-level state traps, it can be greatly improved by using well-known technologies to reduce Ni contamination. However, for active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) display applications, the bias reliability and thermal stability are major concerns especially when devices are operated under a hot carrier condition and in a high-temperature environment. It will be interesting to determine how the bias reliability and thermal stability are affected by the reduction of Ni concentration. In the study, the effect of Ni concentration on bias reliability and thermal stability was investigated. We found that a device exhibited high immunity against hot-carrier stress and elevated temperatures. These findings demonstrated that reducing the Ni concentration in MIC films was also beneficial for bias reliability and thermal stability.


We have studied the effects of captopril, nitrates and dobutamine on hemodynamics and regional blood flow in the conscious rabbit with adriamycin cardiomyopathy. Rabbits were injected twice weekly with adriamycin (1 mg.kg-1 bw.) for 8 weeks and subsequently maintained for 2 weeks without adriamycin in order to allow recovery from any noncardiac effects. Doses of drug for investigation (captopril, 300 micrograms.kg-1.min-1; isosorbide dinitrate, 10 micrograms.kg-1.min-1; and dobutamine, 10.9 micrograms.kg-1.min-1) were chosen in anticipation of a 20% increase of cardiac output in animals with heart failure. In animals with heart failure myocardial blood flow was increased by dobutamine and to a lesser extent by captopril. Renal blood flow was increased only by captopril and nitrates. Cerebral blood flow was reduced by captopril in control animals but unaltered in animals with heart failure. The observed alterations of blood flow were similar to those known to occur in humans and indicate that this is a useful model of heart failure for the evaluation of new drugs.


Objective: To assess the variations in  the  course  of  optic  nerve  (ON)  in  relation  to  sphenoid  sinus with the help of CT scan.
Methodology: A cross-sectional study was carried out using  computed  tomographic  (CT)  paranasal  sinus scans of two hundred and seventy study participants between January 2017 and May 2017. Non-probability consecutive sampling technique was used and data was entered on SPSS version 23. Inclusion criteria comprised of adults coming for CT head and  brain  who  did  not  have  bony  abnor- mality of sphenoid and ethmoid sinuses or adjacent structures. However, individuals  with  sinonasal  tumors, chronic rhinosinusitis, prior sinus surgery, facial fracture, nasal polyposis and  congenital  craniofacial anomaly were excluded from this study. Analysis of optic nerve was carried out according to DeLano's classification.
Results: Type 1 ON was found to be the most frequent type; 55.93%, followed by type 2 with a frequency of 26.85%. However, type 3 and type 4 appeared less frequently, that is 11.1% and 6.11%, re- spectively. When comparing right and left sides it was noted that the frequency of type 1 optic nerve was found to be higher on both right and left sides with a value of 56.30% and 55.5%, respectively. Type 2 showed a frequency of 26.67% on right side and 27% on left side. Type 3 was identified to be   11.4% and 10.7% on right and left sides, respectively. Type 4 optic nerve was found to be the least  common type in our study on both sides, i.e. 5.56% on the right side and 6.67% on the left side.
Conclusion: The combined percentage of type II and type III ON that is 37.96% in our sample brings us to this conclusion that  fairly  high  percentage  of  our  population  is  exposed  to  increased  potential risk of iatrogenic optic nerve injury thus emphasising the need for careful evaluation of ON in relation to sphenoid sinus anatomy on CT scan prior to endoscopic sinus surgery.


There are two sources of mode mixity--on a macro level (combined loading situation), and on the micro level--that affect the propagation of small crystallographic cracks. This work explores mode mixity on the micro level by utilizing a computational model to simulate microstructural influences on driving forces for the formation and growth of small cracks. Two-dimensional computational cyclic crystal plasticity calculations are conducted to study the distribution of cyclic slip and critical plane-type fatigue parameters in a material with nominal stress-strain characteristics of 4340 steel. Cases of applied cyclic tension-compression and cyclic shear are analyzed at strain amplitudes below macroscopic yielding. Emphasis is placed on stress state and amplitude dependence of the distribution of these parameters among grains. The role of anisotropic plasticity is isolated by assuming the elastic behavior of grains to obey homogeneous, isotropic linear elasticity. All grains are of equal dimension and are assigned a random orientation distribution. It is found that the distribution of the Fatemi-Socie critical plane fatigue parameter among grains is Weibull-distributed, and it is argued that it forms an improved linkage to cyclic crack tip displacement for microstructurally small cracks. The authors also present computed crack tip opening and sliding displacements as a functionmore » of maximum applied tensile strain (from well below to just above nominal yielding) for small cracks within surface grains surrounded by a nearly random orientation distribution of grains. Multiple realizations of the local microstructure are examined for each crack length for sub-grain size cracks, with results normalized to the ratio of crack length to grain size. Key results include a very strong role of the free surface on crack tip displacement, with opening displacement being much greater than the sliding for suitably small crystallographic cracks in the surface grains. There is also a strong effect of the orientation of the next grain ahead of the crack on local mode mixity of the crack tip displacements, which plays an increasingly influential role as the crack tip approaches the first grain boundary.« less


Abstract Background: Type 1 diabetes (T1D) management requires year-round adherence to treatment regimen. Holidays may present a challenge towards achieving good metabolic control. Objectives: Our aim was to investigate the effect of holidays on diabetes management of schoolchildren with T1D. Methods: Observational, case-crossover study of 45 schoolchildren, age range 7–19 years, mean 13.2±3.4 years, followed in a pediatric diabetes clinic. Subjects were stratified by age [<12 years (n=21), >12 years (n=24)] and treatment modality [insulin pump (n=29) or multiple daily injections (n=16)]. Data were downloaded from glucometers and insulin pumps during five non-weekend holidays and five subsequent school days. Results: The mean number of blood glucose (BG) readings was significantly lower (4.4±1.9 vs. 4.8±1.9, p<0.01) and mean BG marginally higher (11.4±2.7 vs. 10.7±3.1 mmol/L, p=0.1) during holidays than during school days in the entire cohort. Children were significantly more adherent to diabetes management than adolescents as expressed by lower mean glycated hemoglobin level (7.7±0.8% vs. 8.6±1.4%, p<0.05), more BG readings per day (p<0.001) and lower mean BG on holidays (p<0.05) and on schooldays (p<0.01). In pump users, no difference in the mean number of boluses per day and mean insulin units per kilogram per day was observed between holidays and school days. Conclusions: The management of school-aged children with T1D during holidays was worse than during school days; these finding were more pronounced in adolescents. The diabetes team should be aware of suboptimal therapy during holidays and should consider intervention programs in attempts to educate patients accordingly.


During pregnancy, a woman undergoes a multitude of normal physiochemical changes that are specific to pregnancy and with increasing frequency, challenged with pregnancy-related conditions. Additionally, there are a number of problems affecting the unborn fetus that, in turn, affect normal maternal biochemistry, endocrinology and physiology. Furthermore, normal biochemical, hormonal and clinically relevant measurements for the nonpregnant state often no longer apply to the pregnant woman. This makes clinical laboratory measurement difficult and normal clinical diagnosis using nonpregnant values potentially dangerous, with inappropriate treatment (when it is not required) and no treatment (when it is required) being offered. Problems within early pregnancy, for example, spontaneous and recurrent miscarriage, thus become very complicated to predict or treat. Therefore, reexamining what clinical chemical tests are available and what is just emerging from the experimental laboratory (and thus becoming available in the standard clinical laboratory), should inform the unwary clinician.

Key Concepts:

'Normal' pregnancy biochemical marker (Biomarker) concentrations fluctuate throughout pregnancy.

No single maternal biomarker can be used to predict gestational disease.

Both the concentrations of urinary, serum, plasma, salivary and amniotic fluid biomarkers and the timing of clinical sampling are critical in disease diagnosis.

Many new biomarkers are emerging, which may help aid the prediction/diagnosis of pregnancy-related conditions.

Keywords:

pregnancy;
clinical chemistry;
human chorionic gonadotrophin;
human placental lactogen;
oestrogen;
progesterone;
anandamide;
endocannabinoid;
PAPP-A;
alpha fetoprotein


Fruit rot of chili caused by Alternaria alternata is the most commonly occurring fungi affecting the crop. Present study was carried out on survey, intensity and management of causal fungus of chili fruit rot. The chili fruit rot incidence during the survey of fields/commercial markets carried out in the surroundings of Hyderabad, Mirpur Khas, Tando Allahyar and Umer Kote districts was ranged from 14.33-36.66 %. On overall basis Umer Kote district revealed significantly highest (31.44%) fruit rot incidence compared to Tando Allahyar (26.89%) and Hyderabad (26.56%). However, it was lowest in Mirpur Khas (19.00%). Among the 12 different locations (villages and markets) from four major chili growing districts, maximum incidence of chilli fruit rot was recorded at Sultanabad (36.66%) followed by Village Mustafa Arain (35.33%), whereas, the minimum fruit rot incidence (14.33%) was observed at Khawaja Village followed by Dah hoti (18.66%). All the 22 tested botanical treatments gave inhibitory effects; however, significantly lowest radial mycelial colony growth and greatest reduction of A. alternata was induced by extract from Amomum subulatum (22.94mm and 74.51%) followed by Azadirachta indica seed (24.15mm and 73.16%).The maximum radial mycelial colony growth and lowest reduction of A. alternata was recorded in control (90.00mm and 00.0%) followed by the extract from Syzygium aromaticum (66.17mm and 26.48%).The efficacy of other tested botanicals remained moderate. Hence several botanical extracts which are more effective in suppressing chilli fruit diseases caused by A. alternata may be commercially prepared and used for integrated chilli fruit rot management, with a hope that it will be helpful for the end users.


Annotation. The article examines the forecast aspects of the world labor market in the context of the prospects of labor supply of the global economy. The demographic situation in the world as an initial component of the labor market analysis is analyzed. The problem of employment in the context of global economic transformations is considered. The hypothesis of significant strengthening in the perspective of heterogeneity and uneven development of labor markets of regions and countries is expressed and confirmed. The forecast employment trends in the global and regional context are estimated. It is concluded that despite the growing projected employment trends, the most important problem in the world labor market remains unemployment. It is substantiated that it is expedient to combine forecasts of unemployment dynamics with forecasts of employment dynamics in order to determine the future number of vacancies in the labor market. It is concluded that there are labor deformations on a global scale in qualitative and territorial terms, which in the future will lead to intensification of international migration. It has been established that both current and projected unemployment has a clear qualitative nature, which raises the issue of developing forecasts of promising supply of skilled labor at the country level. It is proved that international labor migration will play an important role in providing employment in the world economy, first of all, in the highly skilled segment of workers. It is stated that the process of substitution migration is widespread in all groups of countries when the jobs of workers who left for developed countries are replaced by workers from countries with incomes below the average and developed countries. It is emphasized that due to the differences in existing approaches to the analysis and forecasting of the need for workers in the world economy, the development of multi-scenario forecasts based on systematic monitoring of current and future volumes of labor supply and demand becomes especially important. The development of multi-scenario forecasts will use employment forecasting models to determine the total and additional labor needs in the context of changing sectoral structure of the economy, as well as model trends of increasing or decreasing demand for educational and vocational skills as a basis for making optimal decisions.


Two articles, published in 2005 and 2012 respectively, have analyzed the narratives of converts to Christianity, and delineated the differences in storytelling style that have emerged between male and female study participants. Both articles borrow heavily from the work of gender theorist Deborah Tannen in how they structure this analysis. However, given that both of these projects were undertaken in the United States of America, and with largely Caucasian participants, there is significant scope for further research into the relationship between gender and conversion narrative. Thirty-two semi-structured interviews with recent converts to Christianity from secular backgrounds in Canterbury, New Zealand, are the basis for the original data presented in this paper. Referral sampling was used as a means of finding participants who were willing and available to share their story of coming to faith with the researcher. The data were analyzed in the same fashion as the North American projects, yet in some places yielded different results, particularly in the areas of relational connection with the interviewer, storytelling style, and central character. The inclusion of New Zealand Māori participants in the present study is one reason for this, and indicates the significance of ethnicity in determining individual storytelling style, an observation that is somewhat overlooked in the earlier projects. A seventh category, the need for experiential proof, is also offered as one further way in which male and female storytellers differ in how they narrate their conversion experiences.


An improved understanding of changes in carbon storage of terrestrial ecosystems is very important for assessing the impacts of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration and climate change on the terrestrial biosphere. Accurately predicting terrestrial carbon (C) storage requires understanding the carbon stock, because it helps us understand how ecosystems would respond to natural and anthropogenic disturbances under different management strategies. We investigated organic C storage in aboveground biomass, litter, roots, and soil organic matter (SOM) in five land-use types (i.e. artificial pasture, AP; natural meadow, NM; corn plantation, CP; temperate savanna, TS; and bush wood, BW) in meadow steppe of Northeast China. The primary objective of this study was to ascertain the impact of different land-use types on the carbon stock. The total C storage (including C stored in aboveground biomass, litter, roots, and 0–100-cm soil layers) did not significantly differ between one and another type among the five pairs (P>0.05), with the exception of AP2-BW pair. The total C storage changes in value varying from 5958.09 g C m-2 for plot NM2 to 11922.87 g C m-2 for plot CP1. The C stored in the aboveground biomass was less than 1177.96 g C m-2, accounting for negligible amounts (<1% of the total) of total C storage in the ecosystem except corn plantation. The amount of C stored in SOM accounted for less than 85% of the total C storage in TS, AP2, and NM3, and the C stored in litter was very low (<1.5%), compared to other pools in the ecosystem. The amount of C stored in the roots varied from 0 g C m-2 for plot BW, CP1, and CP2 to 2032.32 g C m-2 for plot NM3, and it accounted for less than 20% of C storage in the grassland.


Studies have suggested that traditional gender identity constructions of farmers tend to accompany conventional methods of farming and so are implicated in stalling the transition to sustainable agriculture. This article attempts to build on this work by exploring how young male farmers construct their masculine identities and how those identity constructions shape and are shaped by their farming practices and the social conditions in which those farming practices are carried out. Reflexivity is a significant part of this process. This exploratory study is based on focus group discussions conducted in one locality in Northern Victoria, among young male dairy farmers. Analysis of the findings supports the existence of a traditional-modern dualism in rural masculine identities. What is also evident is that more open and flexible masculine identities are emerging among young farmers, suggesting that existing tensions in agriculture situated at the nexus of alternative farming practices and traditional agrarian ideology might be a catalyst for change toward more equitable gender relations and sustainable ways of farming.


OBJECTIVE
The 6-minute walking test (6WT) is used to determine restrictions in a subject's 6-minute walking distance (6WD) due to lumbar degenerative disc disease. To facilitate simple and convenient patient self-measurement, a free and reliable smartphone app using Global Positioning System coordinates was previously designed. The authors aimed to determine normative values for app-based 6WD measurements.

METHODS
The maximum 6WD was determined three times using app-based measurement in a sample of 330 volunteers without previous spine surgery or current spine-related disability, recruited at 8 centers in 5 countries (mean subject age 44.2 years, range 16-91 years; 48.5% male; mean BMI 24.6 kg/m2, range 16.3-40.2 kg/m2; 67.9% working; 14.2% smokers). Subjects provided basic demographic information, including comorbidities and patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs): visual analog scale (VAS) for both low-back and lower-extremity pain, Core Outcome Measures Index (COMI), Zurich Claudication Questionnaire (ZCQ), and subjective walking distance and duration. The authors determined the test-retest reliability across three measurements (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC], standard error of measurement [SEM], and mean 6WD [95% CI]) stratified for age and sex, and content validity (linear regression coefficients) between 6WD and PROMs.

RESULTS
The ICC for repeated app-based 6WD measurements was 0.89 (95% CI 0.87-0.91, p < 0.001) and the SEM was 34 meters. The overall mean 6WD was 585.9 meters (95% CI 574.7-597.0 meters), with significant differences across age categories (p < 0.001). The 6WD was on average about 32 meters less in females (570.5 vs 602.2 meters, p = 0.005). There were linear correlations between average 6WD and VAS back pain, VAS leg pain, COMI Back and COMI subscores of pain intensity and disability, ZCQ symptom severity, ZCQ physical function, and ZCQ pain and neuroischemic symptoms subscores, as well as with subjective walking distance and duration, indicating that subjects with higher pain, higher disability, and lower subjective walking capacity had significantly lower 6WD (all p < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS
This study provides normative data for app-based 6WD measurements in a multicenter sample from 8 institutions and 5 countries. These values can now be used as reference to compare 6WT results and quantify objective functional impairment in patients with degenerative diseases of the spine using z-scores. The authors found a good to excellent test-retest reliability of the 6WT app, a low area of uncertainty, and high content validity of the average 6WD with commonly used PROMs.


Introduction: Pemetrexed has established efficacy, and is the backbone for chemotherapy in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM). An International Expanded Access Program provided >3000 mesothelioma patients with access to single-agent pemetrexed or pemetrexed plus platinum analogs (cisplatin or carboplatin) in 13 countries. In this article, we report the safety and efficacy data of MPM patients who were treated with single-agent pemetrexed (n = 812). Methods: Patients with histologically confirmed MPM, not amenable to curative surgery, received pemetrexed (500 mg/m2) once (day 1) every 21 days with standard premedication and vitamin supplementation. Investigator-determined response and survival data were recorded at the end of study participation. Myelosuppression data were also collected. Results: All 812 MPM patients (319 chemonaïve; 493 pretreated) received single-agent pemetrexed (≥1 dose) and were evaluated for safety. A total of 643 patients (247 chemonaïve, 396 pretreated) were evaluated for efficacy. Of the chemonaïve patients evaluated for efficacy (n = 247), the overall response rate was 10.5%, median time to progressive disease (TTPD) was 6.0 months, and median survival was 14.1 month. Of the pretreated patients evaluated for efficacy (n = 396), the overall response rate was 12.1%, median TTPD was 4.9 months, and the median survival was not estimable due to high censoring. Common terminology criteria grade 3/4 hematologic toxicity was mild in both groups, with neutropenia (<18%) as the main toxicity. Conclusions: In the present expanded access program, single-agent pemetrexed demonstrated promising activity in MPM in both chemonaïve and pretreated patients, with TTPD of 6.0 and 4.9 months, respectively, 1-year survival ≥54.7%, and mild hematologic toxicity.


Nanoscale computational engineering can be achieved by combining atomic and molecular scale methods of computational chemistry with coarser-grained continuum theories used in computational electronics. Each computational discipline is quite different; yet both must give the same results if they are done correctly. Here we apply both classes of simulation technique to the specific problem of computing ion current in protein channels. In the biological tradition, ion channels are transport enzymes, catalyzing the movement of ions from one side of a membrane to the other. In the tradition of nanodevices, ion channels can be viewed as transistors with unusual properties_exquisite sensitivity to specific environment factors and ability to self-assemble.


Initiated by the need of industry for gas carburizing process control and optimization, this paper focuses on understanding the effect of the time, temperature and carbon potential on the mass transfer coefficient and carbon diffusivity in Austenite. A method for direct flux integration has previously been proposed to calculate these kinetic parameters from the experimental carbon concentration profiles. AISI 8620 steel discs were gas carburized at different levels of atmosphere carburizing potential for selected austenizing temperatures. Analyses of the carburized parts included experimental measurement of weight gain, surface carbon concentration and carbon concentration profiles. The time-dependent weight gain and surface carbon content measurements allowed calculation of the time average mass transfer coefficient, while carbon concentration profiles were used to calculate the concentration dependent carbon diffusivity for selected process parameters. Excellent agreement was found between the calculated mass transfer coefficient and carbon diffusivity values and those reported in the literature. The calculated values served as input in the previously developed carburizing model validating the predicted results by comparison with the experimental concentration profiles.


Since the early 1990s several "serious" southern California writers have begun writing science fiction, detective stories, mysteries, comic satires, even magical realism, finding freshly relevant ways to
 represent western life at century9s end. Through novels by Sandra Tsing Loh and Cynthia Kadohata, I locate this turn to the popular within a larger political and cultural context we might call "post-Civil
 Rights." In such novels, texts do not take racial alterity as a starting, radically disruptive fact, although they do not claim that America has outgrown racism. Rather, a new racial subject and/or series
 of racial formations is under construction, invested in updating and reformulating the status of the nonwhite racial other, to account for the enormity of change in recent years, especially the place of
 youth within globalization discourse.


Metabolomics has a special place among other 'omics' disciplines (genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics) as it describes the most dynamic level of biological regulation and, as such, provides the most direct reflection of a physiological status of an organism. Quick development of the analytical technologies in the first place –MS and NMR– has enabled the metabolomics analysis of such complex biological phenomena as host-pathogen interactions in the development of infection. In this review, an overview of the metabolomics studies of the infectious diseases carried out on human material is provided. The relevant papers on the metabolomics of human infectious diseases are comprehensively summarized in a table, including, for example, information on the study design, number of subjects, employed technology and metabolic discriminator. Future considerations, such as importance of the time-resolved study designs and the embedment of metabolomics in the large-scale epidemiological studies are discussed.


Hard turning of machine parts is a production process that holds considerable promise for the future since it is an effective means of increasing productivity. Instead of machining a product in the soft state, hardening the part by heat treatment, and then providing the required finish and dimensional accuracy by grinding the expensive grinding operation is eliminated. This is possible because of the availability of improved hard tool materials (polycrystalline cubic boron nitride and ceramics), and more rigid machine tools. The nature of chip formation in hard turning is quite different than in more conventional machining. As might be expected, fracture plays a much more important role in the machining of very hard materials. As in all facets of production engineering it is important to identify the key element involved in the operation and to give far less attention to secondary effects that tend to cloud an issue. The objective of this paper is to establish the key action involved in hard turning chip formation and then to develop the mechanics involved as far as possible at the moment.


It takes more than one inhibitor to keep a Rab down, Brett et al. report. The team determined that yeast cells use two switches to turn off this vesicle management protein.

Figure 1

When yeast cells overproduce the Rab blocker Gyp7, their vacuoles fragment (right).

The Rab proteins regulate the transport and fusion of vesicles. Researchers have teased out the Rab control pathways in vitro, discovering that GTPase-activating proteins (GAPs) turn off Rabs. But scientists know little about what happens in living cells.

So Brett et al. followed the dynamics of yeast vacuoles, which split or fuse depending on the cell's situation. To nail down what inactivates a fusion-promoting Rab called Ypt7, the scientists cranked up the levels of different Gyp proteins—the yeast versions of GAPs. Confirming results of in vitro studies, the researchers showed that Gyp7 inhibits Ypt7.

But Gyp7 can't do the job alone, the team found. It needs help from another protein called Yck3, which phosphorylates two targets of Ypt7: a protein complex that tethers vacuoles to each other and a second complex that promotes vacuole fusion. Ypt7 doesn't take this interference lying down, however. The researchers determined that active Ypt7 blocks phosphate addition.

The study helps fill in the complex control circuit for Ypt7. The team proposes that the network includes a "feed forward" loop, in which Ypt7 maintains its own activation by pre-empting Yck3. The end result might be a signaling circuit that is particularly sensitive to changes in Ypt7 activity.

Brett, C.L., et al. 2008. J. Cell Biol. doi:.10.1083/jcb.200801001 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]


Importance
Recent studies suggest that the diabetes drug metformin has a protective effect on open-angle glaucoma (OAG) and age-related macular degeneration (AMD). However, studies have not addressed the critical issue of confounding by indication, and associations have not been evaluated in a large prospective cohort.

Objective
To determine the association between diabetes medication and the common eye diseases OAG, AMD, and cataract and to evaluate their cumulative lifetime risks in a large cohort study.

Design, Setting, and Participants
This cohort study included participants from 3 independent cohorts from the prospective, population-based Rotterdam Study between April 23, 1990, and June 25, 2014. Participants were monitored for incident eye diseases (OAG, AMD, cataract) and had baseline measurements of serum glucose. Data on diabetes medication use and data from ophthalmologic examinations were gathered.

Exposures
Type 2 diabetes (T2D) and the diabetes medications metformin, insulin, and sulfonylurea derivatives.

Main Outcomes and Measures
Diagnosis and cumulative lifetime risk of OAG, AMD, and cataract.

Results
This study included 11 260 participants (mean [SD] age, 65.1 [9.8]; 6610 women [58.7%]). T2D was diagnosed in 2406 participants (28.4%), OAG was diagnosed in 324 of 7394 participants (4.4%), AMD was diagnosed in 1935 of 10 993 participants (17.6%), and cataract was diagnosed in 4203 of 11 260 participants (37.3%). Untreated T2D was associated with a higher risk of OAG (odds ratio [OR], 1.50; 95% CI, 1.06-2.13; P = .02), AMD (OR, 1.35; 95% CI, 1.11-1.64; P = .003), and cataract (OR, 1.63; 95% CI, 1.39-1.92; P < .001). T2D treated with metformin was associated with a lower risk of OAG (OR, 0.18; 95% CI, 0.08-0.41; P < .001). Other diabetes medication (ie, insulin, sulfonylurea derivates) was associated with a lower risk of AMD (combined OR, 0.32; 95% CI, 0.18 to 0.55; P < .001). The cumulative lifetime risk of OAG was lower for individuals taking metformin (1.5%; 95% CI, 0.01%-3.1%) than for individuals without T2D (7.2%; 95% CI, 5.7%-8.7%); the lifetime risk of AMD was lower for individuals taking other diabetes medication (17.0%; 95% CI, 5.8%-26.8% vs 33.1%; 95% CI, 30.6%-35.6%).

Conclusions and Relevance
Results of this cohort study suggest that, although diabetes was clearly associated with cataract, diabetes medication was not. Treatment with metformin was associated with a lower risk of OAG, and other diabetes medication was associated with a lower risk of AMD. Proof of benefit would require interventional clinical trials.


For some industrial applications, an accurate estimation of a light source position is needed. That is the case for a heliostat, a device that projects sunlight onto a focus hundreds of meters away from its aiming point. In this paper, we present a novel sensor design for generating an alignment error signal. Included is a detailed study of its response, which shows that certain geometrical design parameters are necessary to achieve desired accuracy. This sensor has been implemented using microelectromechanical system techniques to achieve a robust structure at low cost and it has been successfully applied to sun-tracking systems. Experimental results obtained in field tests are included


Current soil water models do not take into account the internal organization of the soil medium and consequently ignore the physical interaction between the water film at the surface of solids that form the soil structure and the structure itself. In this sense, current models deal empirically with the physical soil properties, which are all generated from this soil water and soil structure interaction. As a result, the thermodynamic state of the soil water medium, which constitutes the local physical conditions of development for all biological and geochemical processes within the soil medium, is still not well defined and characterized. This situation limits modeling and coupling the different processes in the soil medium since they all thermodynamically linked to the soil water cycle. The objective of this article is to present a complete framework for characterizing and modeling the internal soil organization and its hydrostructural properties resulting from interaction of its structure with the soil water dynamics. The paper builds on the pedostructure concept, which allowed the integration of the soil structure into equations of water equilibrium and movement in soils. The paper completes the earlier framework by introducing notions of soil-water thermodynamics that were developed in application to the concept of the Structural Representative Elementary Volume (SREV). Simulation of drainage after infiltration in the Yolo loam soil profile, as compared to measured moisture profile using the measured soil characteristic parameters, showed a high degree of agreement. This new modeling framework opens up new prospects in coupling agro-environmental models with the soil medium, recognizing that the soil organization, hydro-structural, and thermodynamic properties are the foundation for such coupling.


Background/Context Many children of immigrants are not enrolled in high schools that sufficiently meet their needs, and subsequently, many are not making a successful transition to, and/or successfully completing, higher education. As immigration grows in the United States, educators and policy makers must understand how the educational processes for children of immigrants differ from nonimmigrants. Because expectations for higher education are a necessary, though insufficient, step toward college attendance and degree attainment, and because students have these attitudes influenced by the schools they attend, I examine high school composition for its effects on educational expectations and how compositional effects differ between children of immigrants and nonimmigrants. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study intends to be another step on the path toward understanding the educational processes of children of immigrants specifically, and of all students more broadly, as the immigrant population grows in U.S. schools. Toward those ends, this study is based on two overarching research questions: (1) How do the immigrant compositions of U.S. secondary schools affect the educational expectations of all students? (2) How do the compositions of U.S. secondary schools affect the educational expectations of children of immigrants differently than nonimmigrant students? Research Design The research questions are addressed via secondary data analysis using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS:2002/2004), which were collected by the National Center for Education Statistics. I explore school composition effects on a binary dependent variable indicating whether a 12th-grade student expects to complete a graduate or professional degree. This study emphasizes a critical-quantitative approach by demonstrating that common theories and assumptions about educational expectations may be inaccurate for children of immigrants in today's schools. Conclusions/Recommendations Results show that children of immigrants are affected differently by school composition than are nonimmigrants, and in ways that contradict commonly accepted theoretical views. Specifically, this analysis demonstrates that comparative and normative theories of school effects are not accurate for children of immigrants, at least not to the same degree as they are for nonimmigrants. This is a reminder to researchers and practitioners alike that subgroups of students, in this case the children of immigrants, may not be affected by schools in similar ways.


WC-Co based cemented carbides are widely used in technical applications, in which they are exposed to complex thermo-mechanical loadings. Previous research work has demonstrated that these materials exhibit a lifetime-limiting fatigue sensitivity at room temperature. This investigation is focused on the influence of heating as a result of friction of pin-on-plate tribocouples. WC-Co samples have been manufactured and surface finished by wire-EDM and grinding. Reciprocative dry friction experiments are performed under various loading conditions and sliding velocities. Correlations are established between the bulk temperature rise of the test samples and the imposed test conditions, material properties, surface conditions and coefficient of friction. Topographies and cross-section views of the tested samples were examined by SEM, revealing temperature dependent wear mechanisms, including binder phase modification.


I analyze the efficiency of jury awards for noneconomic compensatory damages awarded to automobile accident victims suffering nonfatal injuries bringing motor vehicle negligence tort claims. Data from 1002 Jury Verdict Research (JVR) case abstracts was narrowed down to 218 observations of plaintiffs receiving noneconomic damages awards at trials involving motor vehicle negligence from 1988-2019 across the United States. Using age-specific value of life estimations, functional capacity losses associated with plaintiffs' injuries, and productivity losses, I estimate an 'expected' noneconomic damages award that serves as a benchmark against which I compare observed awards. I regress the natural log of the ratio of observed to 'expected' awards on injuryseverity-level indicator variables and other controls, thus attempting to find whether juries award disproportionately high or low noneconomic damages awards in accordance with plaintiff, defendant, or case-specific factors. I conclude that juries award disproportionate noneconomic damages at the opposite ends of the injury severity spectrum, with plaintiffs suffering severe injuries receiving disproportionately high awards. I also find that juries punish business and government entity plaintiffs. These results serve as evidence that jury decision-making is indeed significantly impacted by hindsight bias in large-value cases and attempts to punish supposedly wealthier defendants, creating inconsistency (variability) in compensatory damages award determinations. JEL Codes: K1, K13, Q51


A Gold nanoparticles-L-alanine modified glass electrode has been successfully fabricated by using layer-by-layer self-assembly technology and used for determination of ascorbic acid. First, the clean electrode was immersed into L-Alanine solution to acquire a L-Alanine film on the surface of GCE and dried at room temperature, then the gold colloid was dipped onto the L-Alanine film. The electrochemical behaviors of ascorbic acid at the modified electrode were investigated by cyclic voltammetry and current-time techniques. The results showed that the sensor produced high sensitivity and good stability to ascorbic acid and the current was linear with the concentration of ascorbic acid in the range of 1.20×10-5 to 1.60×10-4 mol/L with a detection limit of 1.00×10-5 mol/L.


Background: Meal ingestion is often associated with exacerbation of gastrointestinal symptoms in subjects with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Furthermore, recent preliminary data suggest that 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) concentration in platelet poor plasma is elevated following meal ingestion in some subjects with diarrhoea predominant IBS (d-IBS) compared with healthy subjects, although it is not known whether this is related to postprandial symptomatology. Aim: To expand on previous data by evaluating a larger number of subjects but also to assess plasma 5-hydroxyindole acetic acid (5-HIAA) concentrations, 5-HT turnover, platelet 5-HT stores, and any relationship to symptomatology. Methods: We assessed platelet depleted plasma 5-HT and 5-HIAA concentrations for two hours (60 minute intervals) under fasting conditions, and then for a further four hours (30 minute intervals) after a standard carbohydrate meal (457 kcal), together with fasting platelet 5-HT concentrations in 39 female subjects with d-IBS (aged 19–52 years; mean age 33) and 20 healthy female volunteers (aged 20–46 years, mean age 28). IBS symptomatology, in particular abdominal pain and bloating, and urgency to defecate were assessed throughout the study Results: When related to fasting levels, there was no statistically significant difference in postprandial plasma 5-HT concentrations between d-IBS and healthy subjects. However, when fasting levels were not taken into consideration, d-IBS subjects exhibited higher postprandial plasma 5-HT concentrations compared with healthy subjects (p=0.040). Furthermore, d-IBS subjects who exhibited postprandial symptomatology had higher levels of postprandial plasma 5-HT, whether assessed with respect to fasting baseline levels (p=0.069) or not (p=0.047), compared with d-IBS subjects who did not report postprandial symptomatology. This appeared to be associated with a concomitant increase in plasma 5-HIAA (p=0.161) but reduction in turnover (p=0.058). Lastly, d-IBS subjects had higher platelet concentrations of 5-HT than healthy subjects (p=0.009). Conclusions: These data suggest that postprandial symptomatology may be associated with increased platelet depleted plasma 5-HT concentrations in female subjects with d-IBS. In addition, the presence of increased platelet stores of 5-HT may act as a useful marker for the diagnosis and management of d-IBS.


Georgian traditional music is the focus of foreign musicologists' and amateur musicians' clear interest. Which of its peculiarities attract such interest? Developed musical language or exotic character? This issue will lead us to the discussion what priorities we choose and what our mood is when listening to ethnic music. It is interesting to know what patterns of "ethnic sound ideal" developed by musical expressions indicate distinctive phenomenon in musical relativism. In this regard "Georgian polyphony", as the stylistic phenomenon of Georgian traditional music is distinguished as a clear three-part structure, diverse composition principles and highly organized forms of vocal polyphony, as well as ambivalent stylistic look of the song-chant musical language. In relation to Georgian song-chant we often hear the notion "folk genius', but it is necessary to clarify the share of personalprofessional and collective-folk skills in this stylistically diverse phenomenon. In the formation of Georgian musical style more attention should be paid to the norms of ethnic and religious musical stylistic influences. From this standpoint the role of religious chant is a significant factor in the increase the size of folk song melody. In the paper significant place is given to the discussion of the basic concepts of Georgian traditional music in semiotic sense – from the angle of meaning, content and function; and to the assessment of the evaluations of this phenomenon by Georgian and Western figures. Finally discussed is the possibility to search the place of


We develop a hierarchical generative adversarial network (HGAN) for generating future typhoon cloud remote sensing images, which enables a visual means to typhoon cloud prediction. The HGAN consists of a global generator and a local discriminator. The global generator aims at producing the future typhoon cloud images as realistic as possible and accordingly reveals the structure and future location of the typhoon clouds. It is constructed in terms of a hierarchical architecture with multiple subnetworks, which capture the overall typhoon variations and favor generating clear future typhoon cloud images. The local discriminator tries its best to distinguish generated typhoon cloud images from ground-truth ones, based on the local patches. The local procedure encourages the discriminator to focus on characterizing the moving typhoon clouds rather than the still background. The global generator and the local discriminator are trained in an adversarial fashion with respect to historical typhoon cloud image sequences. The trained HGAN is capable of producing reliable visual predictions that are not only enabled by the global generator and but also examined by the local discriminator. Experiments validate the effectiveness of the HGAN for typhoon cloud prediction.


A 70-year-old woman with back pain was diagnosed with adult anomalous origin of the left coronary artery from the pulmonary artery [Bland-White-Garland (BWG) syndrome]. Preoperative transthoracic echocardiography showed diffuse hypokinesia of the left ventricle and mild mitral valve regurgitation. Coronary angiography revealed dilatation of both coronary arteries, but no aneurysms. The left coronary ostium was removed as buttons of the pulmonary arterial wall, and a prosthetic graft (8 mm ePTFE graft) was interposed between the ascending aorta and coronary button. The pulmonary arterial wall was repaired with a bovine pericardium. Postoperative angiography showed good flow of the graft. The antegrade flow provided by this simple technique will allow feasible percutaneous coronary intervention in the future.


We employ quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical umbrella sampling simulations to probe the free energy surfaces of a series of increasingly complex reaction models of RNA 2'-O-transesterification in aqueous solution under alkaline conditions. Such models are valuable for understanding the uncatalyzed processes underlying catalytic cleavage of the phosphodiester backbone of RNA, a reaction of fundamental importance in biology. The chemically reactive atoms are modeled by the AM1/d-PhoT quantum model for phosphoryl transfer, whereas the aqueous solvation environment is modeled with a molecular mechanics force field. Several simulation protocols were compared that used different ionic conditions and force field models. The results provide insight into how variation of the structural environment of the nucleophile and leaving group affects the free energy profile for the transesterification reaction. Results for a simple RNA backbone model are compared with recent experiments by Harris et al. on the specific base-catalyzed cleavage of a UpG dinucleotide. The calculated and measured free energies of activation match extremely well (ΔF(‡) = 19.9-20.8 vs 19.9 kcal/mol). Solvation is seen to play a crucial role and is characterized by a network of hydrogen bonds that envelopes the pentacoordinate dianionic phosphorane transition state and provides preferential stabilization relative to the reactant state.


This study proposed a new approach of copyright protection for vector map using robust watermarking on FFT algorithm. A copyright marker inserted in vector map as the watermark. In addition to data origin authentication capabilities watermark, RSA cryptographic algorithm is used when generating the watermark. Quality measurement of the results was based on the three characteristics of digital watermarking: (1) invisibility using RMSE calculations, (2) fidelity with the farthest distance and (3) NC calculation and gemotrical level of robustness against attacks. Result of experiments showed that the approach used in this study succeeded in inserting copyright as watermark on vector maps. Invisibility test showed good results, demonstrated by RMSE close to zero. Fidelity of the watermarked map was also maintained. Level of watermark robustness against geometric attacks on vector map results has been maintained within the limits that these attacks do not affect the watermark bit value directly.


BACKGROUND
The profile of HIV infection is constantly changing. Although once viewed as an illness progressing to death, among those with access to antiretroviral therapy, HIV can now present as a disease with an uncertain natural history, perhaps a chronic manageable disease for some. This increased chronicity of HIV infection has been mirrored by increased prevalence of disablement in the HIV-infected population (Rusch 2004). Thus, the needs of these individuals have increasingly included the management of impairments (problems with body function or structure as a significant deviation or loss, such as pain or weakness), activity limitations (difficulties an individual may have in executing activities, such as inability to walk) and participation restrictions (problems an individual may experiences in involvement in life situations, such as inability to work) (WHO 2001). Exercise is a key strategy employed by people living with HIV/AIDS and by rehabilitation professionals to address these issues. Exercise has been shown to improve strength, cardiovascular function and psychological status in seronegative populations (Bouchard 1993), but what are the effects of exercise for adults living with HIV? If the risks and benefits of exercise for people living with HIV are better understood, appropriate exercise may be undertaken by those living with HIV/AIDS and appropriate exercise prescription may be practiced by healthcare providers. If effective and safe, exercise may enhance the effectiveness of HIV management, thus improving the overall outcome for adults living with HIV.

OBJECTIVES
To examine the safety and effectiveness of aerobic exercise interventions on immunological/virological, cardiopulmonary and psychological parameters in adults living with HIV/AIDS.

SEARCH STRATEGY
To identify the appropriate studies, we conducted a search using MEDLINE, EMBASE, SCIENCE CITATION INDEX, AIDSLINE, CINAHL, HEALTHSTAR, PSYCHLIT, SOCIOFILE, SCI, SSCI, ERIC and DAI. We also reviewed both published and unpublished abstracts and proceedings from major international and national HIV/AIDS conferences such as the Intersciences Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC), the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), the Infectious Diseases Society of America Conference (IDSA) and the International AIDS Conference (IAC). Reference lists from pertinent articles and books were reviewed and personal contacts with authors were used, as well as Collaborative Review Group databases. Targeted journals were handsearched for relevant articles. There were no language restrictions. Searches for the original review covered the period from 1980 to July 1999. The first update of this review included an additional search of the literature, followed by identification of included studies that met the inclusion criteria from August 1999 to January 2001. For the second update, we conducted a search to identify additional studies published from February 2001 to August 2003.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Studies were included if they were randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing aerobic exercise interventions with no aerobic exercise interventions or another exercise or treatment modality, performed at least three times per week for at least four weeks among adults (18 years of age or older) living with HIV/AIDS.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Data on study design, participants, interventions, outcomes and methodological quality were abstracted from studies that met the inclusion criteria onto specifically designed data collection forms by at least two reviewers. Meta-analysis was conducted using RevMan 4.2 computer software on outcomes whenever possible.

MAIN RESULTS
A total of 10 studies (six from the original search, two from the first updated search and two from this second updated search) met the inclusion criteria for this review. Main results indicated that performing constant or interval aerobic exercise, or a combination of constant aerobic exercise and progressive resistive exercise for at least 20 minutes, at least three times per week for four weeks appears to be safe and may lead to significant reductions in depressive symptoms and potentially clinically important improvements in cardiopulmonary fitness. These findings are limited to those participants who continued to exercise and for whom there was adequate follow-up data.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
Aerobic exercise appears to be safe and may be beneficial for adults living with HIV/AIDS. These findings are limited by the small sample sizes and large withdrawal rates of the included studies. Future research would benefit from an increased attention to participant follow-up and intention-to-treat analysis. Further research is required to determine the optimal parameters of aerobic exercise and stage of disease in which aerobic exercise may be most beneficial for adults living with HIV.


Cuff leak tests provide clinicians with information about upper airway narrowing and may help predict weaning success. However, most clinical trials reporting this measurement are small, and the utility of this test remains uncertain. We identified all clinical studies using cuff leak tests in the PubMed, Google Scholar, EMBASE, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials databases using multiple search terms, including cuff leak test, laryngeal edema, extubation, and stridor, and abstracted quantitative information on cuff leaks and outcomes (stridor and reintubation). We reviewed six studies which included 958 patients with acute respiratory failure in intensive care units. Eighty-two patients (8.5%) had postextubation stridor. The weighted mean cuff leak was 119 (±51) mls in the patients with stridor and 313 (±24) mls in patients without stridor (P<0.01). Sixty-six patients required reintubation. The presence of stridor had a sensitivity of 0.60 (95% CI 0.48-0.72), a specificity of 0.96 (95% CI 0.94-0.97), and a positive likelihood ratio of 13.4 (95% CI 6.9-25.7) for predicting reintubation. No single clinical parameter consistently predicted stridor. Patients with postextubation stridor have smaller cuff leak volumes than patients who do not have stridor and are more likely to require reintubation. Cuff leak measurements can improve decision making with extubation protocols.


The results of treatment of 13,246 patients with acute surgical disease of the abdominal organs have been analysed. In 48 patients, bleeding from a stress ulcer occurred. The symptoms of bleeding were studied. The variants of the clinical course of postoperative acute erosion and ulcer, such as the lightning-like, double-phase, single-phase ones, have been distinguished. Their predictive value is shown. In 89.6% of the patients, a postoperative stress ulcer developed in diseases of the hepatopancreatobiliary zone organs.


Following u.v.-irradiation and plating on a selective chlorate medium, about 200 chlorate-resistant isolates of Chlamydomonas reinhardii were obtained. These were divided into three groups all of which grew well with ammonium as nitrogen source. One group grew well with nitrate under all conditions tested. The second, and largest group, grew well with nitrate only in the absence of acetate. The third group could not grow with nitrate as sole nitrogen source. Isolates in this group were further subdivided according to their ability to grow with hypoxanthine or nitrite as sole nitrogen source. Three mutants (14/15, 17/4 and 0/8) were examined genetically in some detail. Each differed from wild-type (strain 2192) by a mutation in a single gene. Isolates 14/15 and 17/4 could grow with hypoxanthine as a nitrogen source. The mutant genes in these two isolates were shown to be located in different linkage groups and have been designated nitA (in 17/4) and nitB (in 14/15). There is evidence that nitA may be in linkage group VI. Mutant 0/8 resembles the cnx mutants of Aspergillus in that it would not grow on hypoxanthine. The mutation in 0/8 is designated nitC; it, too, may be in linkage group VI. Strain 137c was also analysed. It appears to be unable to grow on nitrate because of mutations in two loci.


It is well known that assumptions of monotonicity in size-bias couplings may be used to prove simple, yet powerful, Poisson approximation results. Here we show how these assumptions may be relaxed, establishing explicit Poisson approximation bounds (depending on the first two moments only) for random variables which satisfy an approximate version of these monotonicity conditions. These are shown to be effective for models where an underlying random variable of interest is contaminated with noise. We also state explicit Poisson approximation bounds for sums of associated or negatively associated random variables. Applications are given to epidemic models, extremes, and random sampling. Finally, we also show how similar techniques may be used to relax the assumptions needed in a Poincaré inequality and in a normal approximation result.


This paper aims at comparing the performance of numerous space-time trellis coded modulations (STTCM) over slow and fast Rayleigh fading channels in order to identify the most efficient ones. After a brief presentation of the STTCM concept, we propose to recall the criteria used to construct the codes studied herein, depending on the channel properties and the number of transmit and receive antennas. Then, we introduce our new representation of the STTCM as an extension of the one currently used to describe regular trellis codes, namely the polynomial representation. Simulation results and especially new performance relative to BER scale are then given in order to compare the behavior of Tarokh's, Baro's, Blum's, Chen's and Firmanto's codes over slow and fast Rayleigh fading channels. From these comparisons, it follows that the codes constructed with the trace criterion, namely Chen's codes, outperform all the other tested codes over both channels.