Fetal wellbeing during labor and delivery is commonly monitored through the cardiotocogram (CTG), the combined registration of uterus contractions and fetal heart rate (FHR). From the CTG, the fetal oxygen state is estimated as the main indicator of the fetal condition. However, this estimate is difficult to make, due to the complex relation between CTG and oxygen state. Mathematical models can be used to assist in interpretation of the CTG, since they enable quantitative modeling of the flow of events through which uterine contractions affect fetal oxygenation and FHR. This thesis describes the development of a model that can be used to reproduce FHR response to uterine contractions during several clinical scenarios. First, a model was developed that describes the relation between uterine contractions, maternal and fetal hemodynamics, oxygen distribution within the feto-maternal circulation and cardiovascular (reflex) regulation in the fetus in response to deviations in blood- and oxygen pressures. The model is partly based on previously presented models for cardiac function, chemoreceptor control in adults and oxygen distribution in the fetal circulation. These modules are coupled and scaled to meet requirements for the (pregnant) maternal and fetal condition. The model is completed with a module for uterine contractions and a module of the vascular system of both mother and fetus. A first clinical scenario was simulated with the model to test model response to changes in cerebral blood flow during the descent of the fetal head in the birth canal. A validation pilot was performed to investigate the quality of model outcome via expert opinion. Experts were unable to discriminate between real and simulated signals, suggesting that the model can be used for educational training. Second, the model was extended with the baroreceptor reflex. This allowed simulation of a second clinical scenario, where both chemo- and baroreflex pathways lead to a FHR deceleration in response to uterine flow reduction during contractions. Results for the uncompromised fetus show that partial oxygen pressures reduce in relation to the strength and duration of the contraction. Furthermore, decelerations during several scenarios of uteroplacental insufficiency were studied. Results for reduced uterine blood supply or reduced placental diffusion capacity, demonstrated lower baseline FHR and smaller decelarations during contraction. Reduced uteroplacental blood volume was found to lead to deeper decelerations only. The model response in several nerve blocking simulations is similar to experimental findings. Third, the model was used to simulate a third type of decelerations, i.e. variable heart rate decelerations, originating from umbilical cord compression. Different degrees of compression were investigated. An increase in contraction amplitude and duration leads to increased umbilical cord compression grade and thus affects the extent of blood pressure increase, flow redistribution and FHR response. There is a clear relation between fetal oxygenation, blood pressure and the resulting FHR. The extent of umbilical compression and thus FHR deceleration is positively related to increased contraction duration and amplitude, and increased sensitivity of the umbilical resistance to uterine pressure. Fourth, gynaecologists, midwives and residents were asked to rate a set of both model-generated CTGs and real CTGs for the three clinical scenarios. Although real tracings were more likely to be recognized correctly, the suitability for use in simulation training was found to be almost equal for real and computer-generated tracings. Due to limited numbers for early and variable deceleration evaluation, statistical analysis turned out to be valid only for the CTG's with late decelerations. Additional comments from the respondents revealed that variability and regularity of the simulated signals greatly influence the perception of a tracing. Clinicians agreed that a tracing is suitable for use in simulation training when it is clear and free of physiological incompatibilities, which is the case for all simulated tracings. Fifth, the model was used to test the clinical hypothesis that administration of oxygen to the mother may increase FHR during variable fetal heart rate decelerations. The model was used to test the response of fetal oxygenation and heart rate to maternal oxygen increase following 100% oxygen administration. Model outcome suggests that FHR benefits from oxygen administration as the duration and depth of FHR decelerations and fetal oxygenation improves. However, the beneficial effect of maternal hyperoxygenation on FHR and oxygenation reduces during more severe variable decelerations. In conclusion, a model was developed to simulate the physiologic cascade from uterine contraction to changes in fetal heart rate. Model outcome for various scenarios is in correspondence with findings from animal experiments. The model can be used in an educational setting for the simulation of short-term changes in fetal hemodynamics and oxygenation status in response to uterine contractions to increase insight into the complex physiology. In addition, it can be integrated in a full-body delivery simulator to enhance obstetric team training.


Background: Numerous studies have suggested a possible role for acute kidney injury (AKI) biomarkers in predicting renal recovery both before and after renal replacement therapy (RRT). However, definitions for recovery and whether to include patients dying but free of RRT may influence results. Objectives: To validate plasma neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (pNGAL) as a useful biomarker for predicting or improving the ability of clinical predictors alone to predict recovery following AKI, including in our model plasma B-type natriuretic peptide (pBNP) to account for cardiovascular events. Methods: We analyzed 69 patients enrolled in the Acute Renal Failure Trial Network study. pNGAL and pBNP were measured on days 2, 7, and 14. We analyzed their predictive ability for subsequent recovery, defined as alive and independent from dialysis in 60 days. In sensitivity analyses, we explored changes in results with alternative definitions of recovery. Results: Twenty-nine patients (42%) recovered from AKI. Neither pNGAL nor pBNP, alone or in combination, was accurate predictors of renal recovery-the best area under the receiver-operating characteristics curve (AUC) was for pNGAL using the largest relative change (AUC 0.59, 95% CI 0.45–0.74). The best clinical model achieved superior performance to biomarkers (AUC 0.69, 95% CI 0.56–0.81). The AUC was greatest (0.75, 95% CI 0.60–0.91) when pNGAL + pBNP on day 14 were added to the clinical model but this increase did not achieve statistical significance. However, integrated discrimination improvement analysis showed that the addition of pNGAL and pBNP on day 14 to the clinical model significantly improved the prediction of renal recovery (p = 0.008). Conclusions: pNGAL and pBNP can improve the accuracy of clinical parameters in predicting AKI recovery and a full model using biomarkers together with age achieved adequate discrimination.


ABSTRACT My qualitative research in South-Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo suggests that teachers link experienced violence to their role as state representatives. Three elements evoke the militia's distrust: literacy, cell phones, and mobility. Reportedly, militias assume that teachers use these elements to cooperate with the military. This article therefore understands these elements as symbols of stateness, and it demonstrates how a state with overall weak capacities can have significant meaning for teachers' everyday lives in the form of the state-image. Thereby, the article sheds a critical light on approaches that frame teacher (re)deployment in conflict-affected contexts around normalcy and resilience. As teachers cannot escape their affiliation to the state, they live in an unsettling proximity to people who turned against them and who might again do so. Since reasons of the conflict remain unaddressed, teachers become reluctant representatives of a state system in which they themselves are structurally neglected.


The silicon photonic platform is widely used for optical sensing and communications because its high index contrast allows for smaller devices, and is compatible with CMOS manufacturing techniques. In this thesis we examine theoretically and demonstrate experimentally silicon-on-insulator biochemical sensors based on micro-ring resonators (MRR) and ring assisted Mach-Zehnder interferometers (RAMZI). We determine that the sensitivity of the slot waveguide is enhanced compared to the wire waveguide and examine the effect of coupler design on sensing performance using directional couplers and multi mode interference (MMI) couplers. We find that RAMZI devices offer a similar sensitivity while offering a larger index of refraction measurement range than MRR designs. The slot waveguide is found to increase bulk index sensing sensitivity by up to 2.2 times that of the wire waveguide. Directional coupler based MRR and RAMZI devices are shown to have higher bulk index sensitivities than MMI coupled devices.


Diversified customer demands are raising importance of just-in-time and agile manufacturing much more than before. Accordingly, introduction of mixed-model assembly lines becomes popular to realize the small-lot-multi-kinds production. Since it produces various kinds on the same assembly line, a rational management is of special importance. With this point of view, this study focuses on a sequencing problem of mixed-model assembly line including a paint line as its preceding process. By taking into account the paint line together, reducing work-in-process (WIP) inventory between these heterogeneous lines becomes a major concern of the sequencing problem besides improving production efficiency. Finally, we have formulated the sequencing problem as a bi-objective optimization problem to prevent various line stoppages, and to reduce the volume of WIP inventory simultaneously. Then we have proposed a practical method for the multi-objective analysis. For this purpose, we applied the weighting method to derive the Pareto front. Actually, the resulting problem is solved by a meta-heuristic method like SA (Simulated Annealing). Through numerical experiments, we verified the validity of the proposed approach, and discussed the significance of trade-off analysis between the conflicting objectives.


The study of the role and evolution of the information technology function in organizations has prompted much interest among researchers in our field for some time now. Many researchers have tried to describe the IT function and to explain its transformation over time. However, we have observed that the existing typologies are often based on a single dimension, attached to historical periods, or built into a normative discourse that calls for an ideal archetype of the IT function. Rather than following these views, we propose that there exist many archetypes of IT functions, and that each one of them evolves in response to a limited number of parameters. First, based on a literature review, we propose a typology of the roles of the IT functions within archetypes that are defined according to four fundamental dimensions. Second, we apply this typology in an examination of the process by which IT functions are transformed over time, helped in this by the punctuated equilibrium theory. The ultimate objective of this paper is to provide a new conceptual and theoretical perspective on the role played by IT functions in organizations and on how such functions may evolve or transform over time.


Bessel-type polynomials are defined and shown to be useful in constructing a variety of transfer functions in filter theory. A generalized Bessel filter and a generalized Bessel rational filter are considered and shown to include a number of special cases of Bessel-type filters. The greater flexibility of the generalized filters is exploited to obtain a variety of filter responses.


: The purpose of this article was to identify and describe those deficiencies determined by nonfederal peer reviewers during the most recent 1989 NIDRR research competition to mitigate successful funding support from the lead federal agency concerned with medical rehabilitation research. In 1989, 232 field investigator-initiated research applications were received in response to the Federal Register announcement of September 8, 1988. Of these, 57 or 24.5% were assigned to the Medical Sciences Programs office. Six applications were ultimately approved and funded (10.7%). The remaining 51 (89.5%) were statistically analyzed to determine deficiencies significant in warranting disapproval. The 51 applications averaged 5.68 deficiencies each. Five types of research error accounted for 76.8% of all deficiencies noted by reviewers. These included methodologic errors (25) and inadequate control of subject variables (25), followed by inappropriate research design (24), poor conceptualization of problem/approach (21) and incorrect statistical analysis (14). The top ranked singular deficiency was poor conceptualization of problems or approach. Other flaws warranting lowering of potential scores by reviewers included excessive budget requests, duplication of effort with on-going supported research, inadequate background of investigator and weak dissemination and utilization plans. In conclusion, many applications are submitted for the NIDRR field investigator-initiated research program competitions that are significantly deficient. Those identified areas of deficiency cover most oF the conceptualization, research design and methodologic criteria essential for valid, creditable scientific investigation.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) is immune-mediated. It occurs more frequently with unfractionated heparin (UFH) than with low molecular weight heparins (LMWH). It is associated with thromboembolic rather than hemorrhagic events, as opposed to thrombocytopenia of other etiologies. The key in therapy is the cessation of heparin and the start of another anticoagulant. We report a 58 years old female with HIT secondary to the use of Enoxaparin who was successfully managed with Rivaroxaban. Our goal is to report a novel therapy and provide the evidence that supports its use.


This paper proposes a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) approach for solving knapsack problem. The proposed method consists of a state aggregation step based on tabular reinforcement learning to extract features and construct states. The state aggregation policy is applied to each problem instance of the knapsack problem, which is used with Advantage Actor Critic (A2C) algorithm to train a policy through which the items are sequentially selected at each time step. The method is a constructive solution approach and the process of selecting items is repeated until the final solution is obtained. The experiments show that our approach provides close to optimal solutions for all tested instances, outperforms the greedy algorithm, and is able to handle larger instances and more flexible than an existing DRL approach. In addition, the results demonstrate that the proposed model with the state aggregation strategy not only gives better solutions but also learns in less timesteps, than the one without state aggregation.


Arterial and venous thrombosis are caused by a number of thrombogenic risk factors, among them are: dehydration with haemoconcentration, use of pharmacological stimulators, frequent injuries of the musculoskeletal system, an immobilisation at long-distance travel, use of oestrogen contraceptives, and congenital abnormalities affecting the anatomy of the venis [1]. Cases of sharp coronary thrombosis in marathon runners and venous thromboembolism in triathletes have been described in the literature [2-4]. It has been shown that mutations in a factor the V Leiden (FVL) and FII 20210A prothrombin in a heterozygotic state significantly increase the risk for thrombosis in the general population. However, whether those mutations are associated with thrombophilia in endurance athletes is unknown. To examine the prevalence of prothrombotic mutations (FVL and FII 220210A) in Russian elite endurance athletes compared to the general population. 264 endurance athletes (mean age = 26.5, SD = 10.3) and 295 unrelated sedentary controls (mean age = 31.3, SD = 10.4) participated in the study. The endurance athletes group included cross-country skiers and biathlonists (n = 62), triathlonists (n = 18), walkers (n = 14), ice hockey players (n = 152), 5Km/10Km long distance skaters (n = 14), ≥5 Km runners (n = 3), and one bicycle racer. 88 athletes are winners and prize-winners of the international competitions ("elite group"). All participants were self-reported unrelated Caucasians for ≥3 generations. Written informed consent and information on diseases of cardiovascular system and pathology of haemostasis were received from all the participants. Buccal epithelium or peripheral blood was used to isolate genomic DNA with the GeneJET™ Genomic DNA Purification Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.). Genotyping of the FVL and FII 220210A mutations was performed using TaqMan® SNP genotyping assays with a StepOne™ Real-Time PCR System (Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.). For replication purpose, 30% of the samples were analysed twice. Positive control samples (heterozygotes on FVL and FII 20210A) were included in each experiment. Statistical analysis was performed with IBM SPSS Statistics 21. None of the participants had the burdened thrombotic anamnesis. None of the athletes and controls carried the FVL and FII 220210A pathological mutation. Interestingly, higher levels of heterozygotes of prothrombotic mutations were found in the endurance athletes, but it has not reached the statistical significance threshold (0.05). The genotype frequencies are presented in Table 1. Abstract P-74 Table 1 The prevalence of prothrombotic mutations (FVL and FII 220210A) in the Russian cohort Sample Heterozygotes FII 20210A FVL Frequencies 95% CI* Frequencies 95% CI Controls (N = 295) 2.4 0.70 – 4.1 1.7 0.2 – 3.2 All athletes (N = 264) 3.0 0.9 – 5.1 4.5 2.0 – 7.0 Elite group (N = 88) 6.9 1.6 – 12.2 4.6 0.2 – 9.0 * 95% CI = 95% Confidence Interval. In conclusion, the prevalence of the FVL and FII 20210A prothrombotic mutations in Russian elite endurance athletes is slightly higher (not significant) than in sedentary controls. Multi-centre approach to increase the sample size is required to detect the influence of a rare mutation on the athletic phenotype. References Adams M, Fell J, Williams A. Exercise causing thrombosis. Phys Sportsmed. 2009 Dec;37(4):124–30 Albano AJ, Thompson PD, Kapur NK. Acute coronary thrombosis in Boston marathon runners. N Engl J Med. 2012 Jan 12;366(2):184–5 Hull CM, Hopkins CL, Purdy NJ, Lloyd RC, Harris JA. A case of unprovoked venous thromboembolism in a marathon athlete presenting atypical sequelae: What are the chances? Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2015 Oct;25(5):699–705 Tao K, Davenport M. Deep venous thromboembolism in a triathlete. J Emerg Med. 2010 Apr;38(3):351–3


High velocity arc spraying (HVAS) process was used to deposit Al-Ni-Y-Co and Al-Ni-Mm-Fe amorphous/nanocrystalline composite coatings onto AZ91 Mg alloy substrate. Their microstructure was characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The coatings are both about 500 μm in thickness with fully dense and low porosity. The microstructure of the coatings is classified into two regions, namely, a full amorphous phase region and homogeneous dispersion of fcc-Al and some intermetallic nanoscale particles in a residual amorphous matrix region. Vickers micro hardness of the coatings was also measured. The average Vickers micro hardness of Al-Ni-Y-Co and Al-Ni-Mm-Fe coating is about 311 HV and 340 HV, respectively.


Abstract Human–carnivore conflict is one of the major challenges in the management of populations of large carnivores. Concerns include the increasing human population; habitat loss as a result of degradation and fragmentation of forest; and livestock predation as a result of a lack of natural prey, leading to retaliatory killings of wild carnivores. Conflicts may be further aggravated by occasional attacks that result in injury and loss of human life. The level of consumption of prey species by a predator is a benchmark to evaluate the scale of this conflict. We used a newly developed DNA-based diet analysis to study the prey profile of common leopards Panthera pardus in Ayubia National Park, Pakistan. The results suggest that the common leopard is a generalist predator, subsisting mainly on domestic animals. Based on the frequency of occurrence of prey items in 57 faecal samples, the diet of the leopard is dominated by domestic goat Capra hircus (64.9%), followed by domestic dog Canis lupus familiaris (17.5%) and cow Bos taurus (12.3%). Domestic animals (goat, dog, cow, water buffalo Bubalus bubalis, horse Equus caballus and sheep Ovis aries) occurred in 54 (95%) of the 57 samples. We recommend a two-step strategy to mitigate this conflict: (1) introducing incentives for increased acceptance of leopards among local communities in the vicinity of the protected area and (2) increasing the availability of wild prey. We hope that the results of this study will contribute to the survival of the leopard in Pakistan.


My dissertation traces the historical trajectory of science and psychedelics. I explain (1) why clinical research with psychedelic drugs was relegated to the status of forbidden knowledge, and (2) how contemporary scientists are working to restore the legitimacy of this scientific field. I draw on science studies literatures on credibility, boundary work, and nonknowledge as a starting point to answer these questions. My analysis is informed by semi-structured interviews, field observations, and historical and archival documents. The analysis that I present in this dissertation can be summarized as follows: The shifting boundaries of psychedelic science, from legitimate knowledge to forbidden knowledge and potentially back to legitimate knowledge again, have been shaped by struggles over the purity and pollution of science—struggles embedded in cultural, legal, and political systems of power. The main contribution of this dissertation is the concept of the impure scientist. While previous literature has considered how nonscientist "outsiders" threaten the purity of science, my research examines how scientist "insiders" contaminate these borders. I call this menacing figure the impure scientist—a historically and culturally contingent and institutionally embedded figure, a "performative image that can be inhabited," who continually threatens the symbolic boundaries of science. My research demonstrates how the impure scientist is symbolically deployed in credibility contests over the production of legitimate knowledge. By introducing the concept of the impure scientist, this dissertation offers new insights about what knowledge gets produced, embedded in what systems of power, and with what consequences.


The salmon shark, Lamna ditropis Hubbs and Follett, is a streamlined, pelagic predator capable of rapid swimming locomotion, very similar to its close relative, the Atlantic porbeagle, Lamna nasus (Bonnaterre). The porbeagle is warm-bodied, maintaining deep body temperatures 7–11 °C above those of the surface water from which they are captured (Carey & Teal, 1969a). Presumably, Lamna ditropis is also warm-bodied. Opportunities to measure temperatures of salmon sharks occurred on 2, 4 and 5 September 1979, when one of us (D.R.) hooked and landed three salmon sharks while hand-trolling for salmon. The sharks were all caught near Cape Edgecumbe, about 60 km from Sitka, Alaska (57° 6´N, 135° 55´ W) at a depth of 12–40 m.


Detection of proteins that signal the presence or recurrence of cancer is a powerful therapeutic tool for effective early diagnosis and treatment. Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) has been extensively studied as a tumor marker in clinical diagnosis. We report on the development of an amperometric biosensor for the detection of CEA based on the immobilization of anti-CEA monoclonal antibody on a novel class of bipodal thiolated self-assembled monolayers containing reactive N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) ester end groups. The current variations showed a linear relationship with the concentration of CEA over the range of 0-200 ng/mL with a sensitivity of 3.8 nA x mL x ng(-1) and a detection limit of 0.2 ng/mL, which is well below the commonly accepted concentration threshold (5 ng/mL) used in clinical diagnosis. Real time and accelerated stability studies of the reporter antibody under various storage conditions demonstrated that the enzymatic activity and antibody affinity of the conjugate is retained for long periods of time in commercial stabilizing buffers such as StabilGuard Biomolecule Stabilizer, and a prediction of the stability trends was carried out using the kinetic and thermodynamic parameters obtained from the Arrhenius equation. The developed immunosensor as well as a commercially available enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit were successfully applied to the detection of CEA in serum samples obtained from colon cancer patients, and an excellent correlation of the levels of CEA measured was obtained. Ongoing work is looking at the incorporation of the developed biosensor into a platform for multiplexed simultaneous detection of several breast cancer related biomarkers.


ABSTRACT Kamara, M. and Kamruzzaman, M., 2021. Effects of thinning on aboveground net primary productivity in overcrowded mangrove Kandelia obovata stands. Journal of Coastal Research, 37(1), 75–81. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Litter plays a significant role in nutrient cycling in mangrove forest. Natural or artificial thinning processes can have various impacts on litter production, thereby varying nutrient fluxes. The effects of various thinning intensities on litterfall dynamics were evaluated over a 4-year study period in overcrowded Kandelia obovata stands. To quantify litterfall, two litter traps were placed in each plot (a total of six litter traps in each transect) composed of one naturally thinned control plot and two artificially thinned plots where 30% and 15% of stems were removed at the beginning of the experiment. Annual litterfall production showed a decreasing trend with increasing thinning intensity. Results showed that there was no significant difference in aboveground biomass production among the different plots at the last year of the study period. Thinning can be an important tool for silvicultural practices and forest productivity in terms of litterfall and aboveground biomass.


This paper presents a broadband multiple access protocol for wireless multimedia personal communications systems. The proposed protocol supports a wide range of user services by efficiently accommodating various traffic streams with different quality of service requirements. We describe the protocol in detail and evaluate its performance, using simple analytical models and extensive discrete event simulation, with respect to various quality of service parameters. It was shown that our wireless access protocol can be a good candidate for future generation broadband wireless communications systems.


This paper uses an untapped dataset on Swiss immigration and a novel instrumental variable to test three channels through which migrants promote trade. The main finding is that migrant networks are an effective substitute for formal institutions in facilitating trade. The effect takes place entirely on the extensive margin, suggesting migrant networks may be reducing fixed entry costs characterized by corruption.


Intelligent robots will give us the chance to use a computer in daily life. We implemented a humanoid robot, ASKA, at our university reception desk for computerized university guidance. This paper describes the hardware and software system of ASKA. ASKA can detect a user in front of the reception desk using a stereo camera system attached to the head and can recognize a user's question utterance. It can answer the question by its synthesized voice with hand gestures and head movements.


Abstract Background The emergence of callous unemotional (CU) traits, and associated externalizing behaviors, is believed to reflect underlying dysfunction in the amygdala. Studies of adults with CU traits or psychopathy have linked characteristic patterns of amygdala dysfunction to reduced amygdala volume, but studies in youths have not thus far found evidence of similar amygdala volume reductions. The current study examined the association between CU traits and amygdala volume by modeling CU traits and externalizing behavior as independent continuous variables, and explored the relative contributions of callous, uncaring, and unemotional traits. Methods CU traits and externalizing behavior problems were assessed in 148 youths using the Inventory of Callous Unemotional Traits (ICU) and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). For a subset of participants (n = 93), high-resolution T1-weighted images were collected and volume estimates for the amygdala were extracted. Results Analyses revealed that CU traits were associated with increased externalizing behaviors and decreased bilateral amygdala volume. These results were driven by the callous and uncaring sub-factors of CU traits, with unemotional traits unrelated to either externalizing behaviors or amygdala volume. Results persisted after accounting for covariation between CU traits and externalizing behaviors. Bootstrap mediation analyses indicated that CU traits mediated the relationship between reduced amygdala volume and externalizing severity. Conclusions These findings provide evidence that callous-uncaring traits account for reduced amygdala volume among youths with conduct problems. These findings provide a framework for further investigation of abnormal amygdala development as a key causal pathway for the development of callous-uncaring traits and conduct problems.


An estimated 2 million osteoporotic fractures occur annually in the US, resulting in a dramatic reduction in quality of life for affected patients and a high economic burden for society. Osteoporotic fractures are frequently located in metaphyseal bone regions. They are often associated with healing complications, because of the reduced healing capacity of the diseased bone tissue, the poor primary stability of the fracture fixation in the fragile bone, and the high frequency of comorbidities in these patients. Therefore, osteoporotic fractures require optimised treatment strategies to ensure proper bone healing. Preclinical animal models can help understanding of the underlying mechanisms and development of new therapies. However, whereas diaphyseal fracture models are widely available, appropriate animal models for metaphyseal fracture healing are scarce, although essential for translational research. This review covers large and small animal models for metaphyseal fracture healing. General requirements for suitable animal models are presented, as well as advantages and disadvantages of the current models. Furthermore, differences and similarities between metaphyseal and diaphyseal bone fracture healing are discussed. Both large- and small-animal models are available for studying metaphyseal fracture healing, which mainly differ in fracture location and geometry as well as stabilisation techniques. Most common used fracture sites are distal femur and proximal tibia. Each model found in the literature has certain advantages and disadvantages; however, many lack standardisation resulting in a high variability or poor mimicking of the clinical situation. Therefore, further refinement ofanimal models is needed especially to study osteoporotic metaphyseal fracture healing.


In this paper, monomer (+)-catechin; (-)-epicatechin and (-)-epicatechin-3-o-gallate, three oligomeric procyanidin fractions (OPCs) and one polymeric procyanidin fractions (PPCs) were successfully separated and isolated from grape seed extracts using semi-preparative TBE-300 B high-speed counter-current chromatography (HSCCC). For their separation in monomer (+)-catechin; (-)-epicatechin and (-)-epicatechin 3-O-gallate, hexane/ethyl acetate/water (1:10: 10, v/v/v) was selected as solvent system. For separation of OPCs and PPCs, solvent system ethyl acetate/water (1:1, v/v) was selected. Compositional data and mean polymerization degrees of OPCs were determined by phloroglucinolysis method. The purity of each fraction obtained; monomer (+)-catechin (C), (-)-epicatechin (EC) and (-)-epicatechin-3-o-gallate (ECG), verified by UPLC, was 98%, 82% and 71%, respectively. The mean polymerization degrees of the three OPCs fractions were respectively 2.842, 3.521, 4.475. As compared with traditional separation methods for catechins and OPCs, HSCCC has shown to be a powerful and efficient technique for large-scale isolation of these compounds.


Kaolinite is often a cause of deformation in soft-rock tunnel engineering, leading to safety problems. In order to gain a better predictive understanding of the governing principles associated with this phenomenon, the physical and chemical properties of kaolinite were investigated using an efficient, firstprinciples scheme for studying isomorphic substitution of Al ions in kaolinite by two kinds of other elements (namely, the dual defect). Elements that are relatively common in natural kaolinite were chosen from groups II (Be, Mg, Ca, and Sr) and III (Fe and Sc) of the Periodic Table as dual-defect ions to substitute for Al ions in kaolinite. By systematically calculating the impurity-formation energies (which characterize the difference in the total crystal energy before and after the defect arises) and transitionenergy levels, which characterize the energy cost for the transformation between two different charge states, the (Be + Sc)Al (i.e. the replacement of two specific Al ions in kaolinite by external Be and Sc ions), (Ca + Sc)Al, (Mg + Sc)Al, and (Sr + Sc)Al ion pairs were determined to have low formation energies, suggesting that these combinations of ions can easily substitute for Al ions in kaolinite. The (Be + Fe)Al, (Ca + Fe)Al, (Mg + Fe)Al, and (Sr + Fe)Al ion pairs have relatively high formation energies which make isomorphic substitution (or doping) in kaolinite difficult. Moreover, these combinations of elements from groups II and III were found to have relatively low transition-energy levels compared with other element pairs. Among them, (Sr + Sc)Al have the lowest transition-energy level at 0.06 eV above the valence band maximum. When compared with single external substitutional defects in kaolinite, remarkably, the dual defects have relatively low formation energies and transition-energy levels. The results are helpful in understanding the chemical and physical properties of natural kaolinite.


OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to compare video-assisted thoracoscopic lobectomy (VATS lobectomy) with standard thoracotomy in terms of morbidity and mortality.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Two-hundred and forty-nine consecutive patients with clinical (c) stage I non-small cell lung cancer who underwent surgery between 1999 and 2003 were retrospectively analyzed. All of the patients underwent surgical resection that was at least as extensive as lobectomy. VATS lobectomy was performed in 73 patients, and thoracotomy in 176 patients.

RESULTS
The clinical stages were stage IA in 151 (60.6 %), and stage IB in 98 (39.4 %), and the pathological stages were I in 206 (82.7 %), II in 16 (6.4 %), and III in 27 (10.9 %). The mean operation time was 291 minutes for VATS and 215 minutes for thoracotomy ( P = 0.0 042). The mean blood loss was 160 ml and 191 ml ( P = 0.2 738), respectively. Mortality was 1.4 % (1/73) in the VATS group, and 2.3 % (4/176) in the thoracotomy group ( P = 0.6 438). Morbidity was 19.2 % (14/73), and 24.4 % (44/176), respectively ( P = 0.1 315). Air leakage was the most frequent complication. Anastomotic leakage was found in four patients who underwent thoracotomy. The incidence of pulmonary vessel injury was 8.2 % in the VATS group and 1.7 % in the thoracotomy group ( P = 0.0 361). While pulmonary vessel injury was observed frequently in the intermediate part of the study period, the incidence decreased in the late period.

CONCLUSIONS
Pulmonary vessel injury, longer operation times, and greater blood loss have been frequently observed with VATS lobectomy. Proficiency is required to perform VATS lobectomy, and the procedure should be performed by a well-trained surgeon as indicated by the results of this study.


Modern wireless devices, which implement the 802.11b standard, utilizes multiple transmission rates in order to accommodate a varied range of channel conditions. Many rate adaptation algorithms proposed, utilizes the multi data rate, primarily according to the current channel quality. Most algorithms do not consider congestion around the network and proper determinant to identify it. In multi rate Ad hoc network, due to mismatched link rate, the node interface queues get overloaded. Thus causing congestion, which consequently result in packet loss, further reducing effective throughput. In this paper, we propose a novel Cross layer QoS aware Multi Rate routing protocol (CQMR) based on nodes queuing load and link state. CQMR focuses on cross-layer interactions between PHY, MAC and Network layer to utilize these multi-rate supports from 802.11b. CQMR algorithm chooses the optimal path with effective data rate and through a less congested network, which is compatible with existing 802.11 implementations. We have implemented CQMR in the NS-2 simulator and conducted extensive simulation studies over network diversity. Our analysis shows that CQMR protocol significantly increases the network performance in the packet delivery ratio and throughput.


Abstract Background and Aims Previous studies have found that in some countries 'drinking pace' (number of drinks consumed per hour) increases during the course of an evening. We aimed to provide evidence of this acceleration from a culture in which binge drinking is prevalent and to test whether this is consistent across gender, day of week and in high‐risk drinkers. Design Event‐level data collected on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings over 5 consecutive weeks. Setting The Netherlands. Participants A total of 197 young adult frequent drinkers (48.7% women, mean age = 20.8). Measurements High‐risk drinking (assessed by the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test) and gender were measured at baseline, and questionnaires were sent to participants' smartphones every hour between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m. A total of 7185 questionnaires during 1589 evenings were used for the analyses. Findings Multi‐level latent growth curve models revealed an acceleration in drinking on days of the week tested [throughout all evenings; b = 0.430, standard error (SE) = 0.045, P < 0.001], which stabilized as the evening progressed (b = −0.072, SE = 0.008, P < 0.001). The temporal pattern did not differ between the days or gender, but men started with a higher number of drinks at the beginning of the evening (b = 0.465, SE = 0.099, P < 0.001). High‐risk drinking was related to more alcoholic drinks at the beginning of an evening (b = 0.032, SE = 0.011, P = 0.003) and a steeper acceleration during the subsequent hours (b = 0.021, SE = 0.009, P = 0.024). Conclusions Young adults in the Netherlands appear to show an increase in drinking pace during the course of an evening's drinking, with high‐risk drinkers showing a greater increase.


In many applications, it is important to be able to sample paths of SDEs conditional on observations of various kinds. This paper studies SPDEs which solve such sampling problems. The SPDE may be viewed as an infinite-dimensional analogue of the Langevin equation used in finite-dimensional sampling. In this paper, conditioned nonlinear SDEs, leading to nonlinear SPDEs for the sampling, are studied. In addition, a class of preconditioned SPDEs is studied, found by applying a Green's operator to the SPDE in such a way that the invariant measure remains unchanged; such infinite dimensional evolution equations are important for the development of practical algorithms for sampling infinite dimensional problems.

The resulting SPDEs provide several significant challenges in the theory of SPDEs. The two primary ones are the presence of nonlinear boundary conditions, involving first order derivatives, and a loss of the smoothing property in the case of the pre-conditioned SPDEs. These challenges are overcome and a theory of existence, uniqueness and ergodicity is developed in sufficient generality to subsume the sampling problems of interest to us. The Gaussian theory developed in Part I of this paper considers Gaussian SDEs, leading to linear Gaussian SPDEs for sampling. This Gaussian theory is used as the basis for deriving nonlinear SPDEs which affect the desired sampling in the nonlinear case, via a change of measure.


Research by this working group's takes as a principal aim the study and manufacture of bulk metal glass based copper (Cu-Ni-Zr) by mechanical alloying. First, the characterization of the milled pure copper, Cu-Ni and Cu-Zr binary alloys and Cu-Ni-Zr ternary alloys in the same conditions of high energy millings. In this work, the microstructural change of Nickel to be subjected to high energy milling is presented. For this purpose a SPEX 8000D mill with the following conditions of milling: argon, stearic acid, BPR = 10:1, with milling time from 1 to 60 hours, 1 h of effective milling followed by a rest period of 0,5 h. Subsequent to the milling samples were analyzed by ray-X diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and atomic absorption spectroscopy, obtaining the crystallite size, lattice parameters and Fe contamination. The results show that nickel when subjected to mechanical milling reaches a crystallite size of about 10 nm which is asymptotic from 5 h; the lattice parameter increases with increasing milling time, possibly due to increased interfacial component together with the incorporation of Fe, due to the high percentage contamination at 60 h.


Over the past two decades, before the global financial crisis, there was a rapid rise in the size of gross external portfolio positions as well as a decrease in the net negative foreign currency exposure in external balance sheets. In this paper, we present a theoretical model in which these portfolio facts can be explained by changes in monetary policy rules and the composition of shocks that underlie economic fluctuations. We find that policies with a strong emphasis on price stability would imply shorter positions in foreign currency when the dominant sources of fluctuations are supply shocks. The model suggests that longer and larger foreign currency positions, as observed in the data, would be consistent with a world in which central banks are more committed to price stability, and that changes in economic conditions come mainly from demand shocks. Moreover, in this case, a move toward flexible exchange rate regimes would also imply larger equilibrium portfolios and these would be tilted toward foreign assets.


An Italian speaker-independent continuous-speech digit recognizer is described. The CSLU Toolkit was used to develop and implement the system. In the first set of experiments, the SPK-IRST corpus, a collection of digit sentences recorded in a clean environment, was used both for training and testing the system. In the second set, a band-filtered version (between 300 Hz and 3400 Hz) of the SPK-IRST corpus was considered for training, while the telephone PANDA-CSELT corpus was used for testing the system. A hybrid HMM/NN architecture was applied; in this architecture, a three-layer neural network is used as a state emission probability estimator and the conventional forward-backward algorithm is applied for estimating continuous targets for the NN training patterns. The final network, trained to estimate the probability of 116 context-dependent phonetic categories at every 10-msec frame, was not trained on binary target values, but on the probabilities of each phonetic category belonging to each frame. Training and testing will be described in detail and recognition results will be illustrated.


Increasing traffic puts higher demands on construction and maintenance of pavements. To minimize hindrance for the road-user, a high quality durable pavement must be realized in short available time. The Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management is working on smart and efficient use of infrastructure. Their pilot project Modular Road Surface aimed at a prefabricated road with a high noise reduction that could be constructed and replaced quickly. To address this topic a prefabricated asphalt wearing course was developed by a consortium of Dura Vermeer and Intron. This Rollpave concept consists of a prefabricated thin asphalt layer that can be unrolled like a carpet. This layer can be bonded very quickly by an innovative bonding system based on electromagnetic waves. Rollpave has been realized on three test sections on motorways A35 and A37 with an average length of 450 metres and width of 12 metres. Typical dimension of one asphaltmat is 50 metres by 3.75 metres. An extensive testing program has been carried out on all three test sections. It has been shown that it is possible to create a safe prefab road for motorways. The speed of construction needs to be improved. The concept is rather independent of the weather conditions; one test section has even been constructed while freezing. The noise reduction of Rollpave is better than single-layer porous asphalt and approaches the performance of two-layer porous asphalt. The paper will focus on the Rollpave concept and the results of the three test sections.


Abstract Whether China's rise means Chinese becomes a global language like English is a much discussed topic. Most academics and media commentators argue its character based writing system will prevent this because it is difficult and time consuming to learn. In this article I present four counter arguments informed by an analysis of the language practices, language ideologies and language planning surrounding the Chinese writing system and the characteristics of contemporary global English. Firstly, I argue this view is based on the flawed assumption that all learners of Chinese must learn to read and write, and must do so to a native-like level. This does not reflect the global use of English, as not everyone can read and write, and certainly not to a native-like level. People learn as much English as is required for their purposes, and the same would apply if Chinese was a global language. Next, I argue this view ignores the use of devices like computers and mobile phones which convert Pinyin Romanisation into characters, meaning learners need only learn Pinyin and character recognition, saving considerable time and effort. Thirdly, I show there is a historical precedent for the adoption of characters outside of China in the form of the long-standing use of written Chinese for scholarly and official purposes in Korea, Japan and Vietnam. This occurred due to China's status as the most powerful country in the region, if not the world, and demonstrates people will learn and use characters if there is sufficient reason to do so. Finally, I argue this view focuses excessively on linguistic properties. The inconsistencies and irregularities of English's writing system show linguistic properties do not determine whether a language becomes global. I conclude a character based writing system will not, in and of itself, prevent Chinese attaining global language status.


In pelagic ecosystems, phytoplankton extracellular release can extensively subsidize the heterotrophic prokaryotic carbon demand. Time‐course experiments were carried out to quantify primary production, phytoplankton excretion, and the microbial uptake of freshly released dissolved organic carbon (DOC) derived from phytoplankton extracellular release (DOCp) in four large tropical lakes distributed along a productivity gradient: Kivu, Edward, Albert, and Victoria. The contributions of the major heterotrophic bacterial groups to the uptake of DOCp was also analyzed in Lake Kivu, using microautoradiography coupled to catalyzed reporter deposition fluorescent in situ hybridization. The percentage of extracellular release (PER) varied across the productivity gradient, with higher values at low productivity. Furthermore, PER was significantly related to high light and low phosphate concentrations in the mixed layer and was comparatively higher in oligotrophic tropical lakes than in their temperate counterparts. Both observations suggest that environmental factors play a key role in the control of phytoplankton excretion. Standing stocks of DOCp were small and generally contributed less than 1% to the total DOC because it was rapidly assimilated by prokaryotes. In other words, there was a tight coupling between the production and the heterotrophic consumption of DOCp. None of the major phylogenetic bacterial groups that were investigated differed in their ability to take up DOCp, in contrast with earlier results reported for standard labeled single‐molecule substrates (leucine, glucose, adenosine triphosphate). It supports the idea that the metabolic ability to use DOCp is widespread among heterotrophic prokaryotes. Overall, these results highlight the importance of carbon transfer between phytoplankton and bacterioplankton in large African lakes.


The relationship between ramp length and traffic flow speed (TFS) was studied based on analyzing the design elements of geometry alignment for interchange. After analyzing the process of vehicle running in the ramp, the speed change process was divided into four forms, namely, one deceleration and acceleration process, one deceleration process, one acceleration process and more than one deceleration and acceleration process, and then the relationship between the ramp length and TFS was established respectively. Through an example of the HeDa Interchange of Heilongjiang Province, it showed that although the differences of alignment units of ramps can result in various speeds and specific expressions of relationship between ramp length and TFS. However, all of these relations can be expressed by homologous nonlinear function.


Accurate marketing research depends on accurate user judgments regarding their needs. However, for very novel products or in product categories characterized by rapid change - such as "high technology" products - most potential users will not have the real-world experience needed to problem solve and provide accurate data to inquiring market researchers. In this paper I explore the problem and propose a solution: Marketing research analyses which focus on what I term the "lead users" of a product or process. Lead users are users whose present strong needs will become general in a marketplace months or years in the future. Since lead users are familiar with conditions which lie in the future for most others, they can serve as a need-forecasting laboratory for marketing research. Moreover, since lead users often attempt to fill the need they experience, they can provide new product concept and design data as well. In this paper I explore how lead users can be systematically identified, and how lead user perceptions and preferences can be incorporated into industrial and consumer marketing research analyses of emerging needs for new products, processes and services.


The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari during its 1991 term to review three decisions that riveted the attention of the land use bar. Practitioners hoped that decisions in these cases would yield reliable definitions as to when a public regulation constitutes a taking of private property compensable under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The stakes were high as evidenced by more than fifty amicus curiae briefs filed in the most closely watched of the three cases: Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council. Groups as diverse as the National Cattlemen's Association, the Property Rights Preservation Association, and the Pacific Legal Foundation urged the Court to decide for the property owner. Entities ranging from the Municipal Art Society of New York, the Sierra Club, and the American Planning Association argued in favor of the State of South Carolina.


Johns' and Davis' paper "The Properties and Application of Argentium Sterling Silver, was presented at the 31st IPMI Conference. The paper highlighted:

- Chemical and physical properties of Argentium Silver
- The positive global impact of Argentium Silver
- Applications for Argentium Silver outside of the jewellery industry

470 delegates attended the conference with representation from 23 countries. The International Precious Metals Institute (IPMI) is perhaps the most well known association focused on precious metals. IPMI is an international association of producers, refiners, fabricators, scientists, users, financial institutions, merchants, private and public sector groups, and the general precious metals community formed to provide a forum for the exchange of information and technology. IPMI conducts educational meetings and courses and serves as a primary resource for information for the public, industry, and government agencies worldwide.

Johns has a long history of publishing his research findings, demonstrating the unique properties of his silver/germanium alloys. For example, he presented a paper at the 1997 Santa Fe Symposium on Jewellery Manufacturing Technology, where he spoke about ""Fire Stain Resistant Silver Alloys"" This was the first published research of this alloy system. Since then, papers about the work have been presented regularly at a variety of recognised venues, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2007) and the UK Institute of Materials (2001).

The co-author, Sam Davis, is a senior process engineer at Stern Leach USA.


We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life‐process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life‐process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises… men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. Marx and Engels 1


Temperature field and stress field of a concrete slab in a ship lock chamber are calculated, considering the influence of layered casting. And the influence of water pipe cooling at the early period of constructing, and at the period after constructing, sunshade, pre-cooled concrete etc are taken into account. The expression of finite difference method considering the effect of water pipe cooling is deducted for temperature analysis. Thermal stress calculation results show that the water pipe cooling at the mid-late period is a comparatively effective measure to reduce tensile stress of chamber mass concrete. And an effective temperature control measure is recommended in summer casting, which is that: sunshade + pre-cooled concrete + water pipe cooling (both at early period and at mid-late period). Mid-late period water pipe cooling must last for three months. Combined with other temperature control measures such as summer cover maintenance, winter cover preservation etc, the concrete cracks can be reduced, and the occurrence of large area run through cracks can be avoided.


Introduction: Little research has been conducted into
the attitudes and knowledge of dietitians-nutritionists
(DN) or of experts in human nutrition and dietetics
(EHND) regarding functional foods (FFs).
Objectives: To evaluate the knowledge of, interest in
and predisposition towards FFs in Spanish DN and
EHND, and how these professionals rate the potential
benefits and risks associated with consuming FFs.
Methods: 2100 DN and 122 EHND were asked to
participate in a self-administered questionnaire. The
results were expressed using percentages and the DN
responses were compared with those of the EHND by
means of chi-squared test. A significant difference was
regarded as having been obtained if P < 0.05.
Results: 204 DN and 112 EHND responded. After eliminating
45 surveys due to anomalies, 268 surveys were
analyzed (170 from the DN, 8.1% participation; 98 from the
EHND, 80.3% participation). No statistically significant
differences were observed between the responses of the DN
and the EHND except in: 1) the view that it was "dangerous"
to consume certain FFs ≥ 4 times a day; and 2) the knowledge
of the population regarding in which situations certain
FFs should be consumed. Most of the professionals demonstrated
good knowledge of FFs, consumed FFs, showed a
positive attitude towards FFs and thought that the information
provided to the consumer is insufficient.
Discussion and conclusions: FFs are generally accepted
by nutritional professionals. However, further study is
required into the discrepancies between DN and EHND
regarding the view that it is "dangerous" to consume certain
FFs and regarding their evaluation of whether the public
know in which situations certain FFs should be consumed.


Cloud computing becomes increasingly prevalent for outsourcing IT functions. The basic feature of offering virtual data center slices to customers has been in use for some time now. So far, customers only get the raw resources, with only little insight and control of their resources. But to let customers build reliable services on top of the rented infrastructure, they need adequate monitoring and control capabilities. In the future, we expect operators to offer such functions to their customers. In this paper, we introduce our approach towards offering a holistic monitoring system to data center customers. It offers generic monitoring information propagation and storage covering various types of resources (network, servers, and applications), all kinds of monitoring information, and all tenants. As virtualized data centers are usually large and multi-tenant, our solution is built with these properties in mind.


This Note will use a critical race theory lens to argue that most trainings on equal employment opportunity ("EEO"), diversity, or implicit bias operate as a restrictive remedy to Title VII race discrimination violations, and that incorporating an ethnic studies framework into these trainings can further an expansive view of antidiscrimination law. A restrictive view of antidiscrimination law treats discrimination as an individual instead of structural or societal wrong and looks to addressing future acts of discrimination instead of redressing past and present injustices. An expansive view of antidiscrimination law sees its objective as eradicating conditions of racial subordination. Ethnic studies originated fifty years ago from the Third World Liberation Front strikes of 1968 led by coalitions of students of color protesting the lack of diversity in higher education. The discipline continues to challenge dominant Eurocentric academic paradigms, centers experiences and histories of marginalized groups in the United States, and fosters critical consciousness for social action. The incorporation of ethnic studies scholarship into the mandated workplace antidiscrimination remedies of diversity or EEO trainings presents an opportunity to further an expansive view of antidiscrimination law not only through addressing discrimination in the workplace, a traditional site of racialized economic subordination, but through the discipline itself which recognizes the historical, structural origins of discrimination. * JD/MSW Candidate, Washington University School of Law and the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Class of 2020. Washington University Open Scholarship 166 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY JURISPRUDENCE REVIEW [VOL. 11:1


A multi-input multi-output (MIMO) radar system, unlike a standard phased-array radar, can transmit multiple linearly independent probing signals via its antennas. We show herein that this waveform diversity enables the MIMO radar to significantly improve its parameter identifiability. Specifically, we show that the maximum number of targets that can be uniquely identified by the MIMO radar is up to Mt times that of its phased-array counterpart, where Mt is the number of transmit antennas.


Economic and domestic activities have been causing a profound deterioration of air quality in developed and developing countries. The health problems arising from air pollution have become apparent which result in welfare losses in society such as increased workdays lost and high health cost. This study shows the mitigating cost and workdays lost as a result air pollution related illness and the factors influencing these economic parameters (mitigating cost and workdays lost). Our results demonstrate the economic impact of air pollution which will provide information that could be used to know the significance of air quality, to value the benefits of air pollution control programs, social benefits (in terms of government subsidising clean energy source), policies or strategies to ensure a safe and acceptable air standard to minimise health effects. Key words: Air pollution, air quality, workdays lost, mitigating cost.


This paper presents a new method, referred to as Increasing Translation Invariant Morphological (ITIM), to overcome the random walk dilemma for financial time series forecasting. It consists of a hybrid intelligent model composed of a Modular Morphological Neural Network (MMNN) and a Modified Genetic Algorithm (MGA), which searches for the minimum number of time lags for a fine tuned time series representation, as well as by the initial weights, architecture and number of modules of the MMNN. Each element of the MGA population is trained via Back Propagation (BP) algorithm to further improve the parameters supplied by the MGA. The proposed method, after forecasting model adjustment, performs a behavioral statistical test and a phase fix procedure to adjust time phase distortions that appear in financial time series. An experimental analysis is conducted with the proposed method using two real world time series and five well-known performance measurements, demonstrating consistent better performance of this kind of morphological system.


This study presents and investigates a six-DOF (degrees of freedom) piezoelectric based stage for positioning error compensation. The relationship between the displacement of the piezoelectric actuators and the stage can be computed according to the geometric relationships of the actuators installed. In this study, a feedforward compensator based on the hysteresis model has been designed for compensation and a PI controller was used for positioning. The combination of a feedforward compensator and PI controller gives the stage good positioning and tracking performance. Stage position information is feedback from a six-DOF optical measurement system comprised of three modular two-dimensional measurement devices. Each module employs a quadrant photodiode (QPD), a laser diode, and a lens. The measurement signal is acquired and processed using an FPGA based processor for real time control. The linear and angular positioning resolution is 0.02 μm and 0.1 arcsec, respectively. When the stage is controlled in a closed loop, the positioning errors are in the range of μm and arcsec. The stage is controlled to track a sinusoidal wave with an amplitude of 2.5 μm and a frequency of 5 Hz; tracking errors were within μm and arcsec.


The physical mechanism for the all-dielectric reflection gratings to achieve high efficiency in the -1st-order Littrow mounting is studied. The all-dielectric gratings consist of two parts, a surface-relief grating and a highly reflecting dielectric stack. The surface-relief grating sits on top of the reflecting stack. A simple analytical expression for diffraction efficiency is obtained in terms of the S-matrix elements of the two parts. By analyzing the expression we show that the diffraction can be interpreted as the interference of a symmetric wave and an antisymmetric wave. The conditions for achieving high diffraction efficiency are also identified. The analytical results are illustrated by numerical computations.


Human trafficking in general, and the trafficking of women and children in particular, is a major concern worldwide, including in the countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). Many nongovernment organizations (NGOs) in the GMS play an active role in supporting anti-trafficking programs. These include the Save the Children Cross-Border Project Against Trafficking and Exploitation of Migrant and Vulnerable Children, and the Combating Human Trafficking in Vietnam program of the Asia Foundation. Despite many successes, NGOs are still confronted with numerous difficulties in effectively implementing anti-trafficking programs. This study investigates the roles of NGOs in combating the trafficking of women and children in Cambodia and Viet Nam. It assesses the coordination mechanism between the government and NGOs, as well as among NGOs. It also evaluates the NGOs' effectiveness in combating trafficking in women and children in the two GMS countries. The study uses both primary and secondary data. Primary data were gathered through structured interviews with NGO staff in charge of women and children anti-trafficking programs and projects in Cambodia and Viet Nam. Secondary data include published books, reports, and materials from the government and NGOs. The data are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively to draw out results and make recommendations.


This research paper investigates: (1) the educational values in local wisdom tradition (2), the internalization strategy of local wisdom values in educational interaction  and (3) the implication of the internalization of Acehnese local wisdom in educational interaction in Dayah on students' behaviour. This qualitative study chose three dayah in Aceh as the sample, they were: Dayah Bustanul Huda (East Aceh), Dayah Mudi Mesra Samalanga (Bireun), and Dayah Darusslam Labuhan Haji (South Aceh). Accordingly, the findings revealed firstly there are three major of educational values in Acehnese local wisdom in Dayah interaction, namely ta'abbudi (worship) value, akhlaqi (moral) value, and the last one is tabarruqi (seek for Allah's blessing by doing benevolence) value. Secondly, the strategies used in the internalization of local wisdom values are (1) traditional strategy, (2) free strategy, (3) reflective strategy and (4) trans internal strategy. And the last is the implication of those values on the students' behaviour, those are; sincerity attitude, ta'zim (honor) to teacher, togetherness, modesty, creativity, tolerance, self-reliance, discipline and mutual respect.


OBJECTIVE
From a perspective of comprehensive care, the purpose of the study was to evaluate factors associated to dental care provided to Down syndrome children and adolescents.

METHODS
A cross-sectional study was carried out including 112 pairs of mothers/Down syndrome children aged between 3 and 18 years who attended a public hospital genetics clinic in Rio de Janeiro, Southeastern Brazil, in 2006. Dental care was not provided at the clinic. Data were collected through a questionnaire administered to the mothers and oral examinations of their children. Multiple logistic regression was used for data analysis. The dependent variable was "dental care of the Down syndrome child or adolescent" and the independent variables included demographic, socioeconomic and behavioral characteristics.

RESULTS
Most children (79.5%) had had at least one dental visit (90% CI: 72.3; 87.8). Dental experience of the children was associated to the following variables: mothers who reported being advised by their children's health provider to take them to the dentist's (OR=6.1 [2.5; 15.1]); children with prior history of surgery (OR=2.5 [0.9; 7.1]); and age between 12 and 18 years (OR=13.1 [2.0; 86.9]).

CONCLUSIONS
Dental care provided to Down syndrome children and adolescents was associated to advice given by their health providers, a part of comprehensive care.


We have developed a new cost-effective method for processing large-potential-field data sets via the equivalent-layer technique. In this approach, the equivalent layer is divided into a regular grid of equivalent-source windows. Inside each window, the physical-property distribution is described by a bivariate polynomial. Hence, the physical-property distribution within the equivalent layer is assumed to be a piecewise polynomial function defined on a set of equivalent-source windows. We perform any linear transformation of a large set of data as follows. First, we estimate the polynomial coefficients of all equivalentsource windows by using a linear regularized inversion. Second, we transform the estimated polynomial coefficients of all windows into the physical-property distribution within the whole equivalent layer. Finally, we premultiply this distribution by the matrix of Green's functions associated with the desired transformation to obtain the transformed data. The regularized inversion deals with a linear system of equations with dimensions based on the total number of polynomial coefficients within all equivalent-source windows. This contrasts with the classical approach of directly estimating the physical-property distribution within the equivalent layer, which leads to a system based on the number of data. Because the number of data is much larger than the number of polynomial coefficients, the proposed polynomial representation of the physical-property distribution within an equivalent layer drastically reduces the number of parameters to be estimated. By comparing the total number of floating-point operations required to estimate an equivalent layer via our method with the classical approach, both formulated with Cholesky's decomposition, we can verify that the computation time required for building the linear system and for solving the linear inverse problem can be reduced by as many as three and four orders of magnitude, respectively. Applications to synthetic and real data show that our method performs the standard linear transformations of potential-field data accurately.


Recent studies have demonstrated that high-carbohydrate—high-fiber diets may improve the metabolic control in diabetes. To evaluate the influence of dietary carbohydrates separate from dietary fiber on blood glucose control, six insulin-dependent diabetic patients (IDD) were assigned in random order to two weight-maintaining diets for consecutive periods of 10 days. The diets differed in carbohydrate (41% in diet A and 60% in diet B) and fat content (41% and 20%, respectively) but were identical in calories, proteins, simple sugars, and fiber. After each dietary period blood glucose was continuously monitored for 24 h (Biostator GCIIS, Life Science Instruments, Miles Laboratories, Elkhart, Indiana). The M value was 48 ± 20 after diet A and 96 ± 27 after diet B (t = 3.83, P < 0.025); the mean daily blood glucose was 152 ± 5 mg/dl after diet A and 206 ± 11 mg/dl after diet B (t = 7.50, P < 0.001). Similarly, the blood glucose level for the 3-h period after each of the three main meals was lower after diet A than after diet B (analysis of variance: F = 5.2, P < 0.05). No significant difference in fasting serum cholesterol, triglycerides, or serum lipoprotein composition was observed between the two diets. In order to separate the influence of dietary carbohydrate and fat on postprandial blood glucose concentration, an additional test meal experiment was performed in eight insulin-dependent diabetic patients. In random order on consecutive days they were given two standard meals that were identical in carbohydrate and protein content and differed only in the amount of olive oil added to the meals (12 g versus 36 g) The average blood glucose increments calculated for the 3h after the meal were almost identical after the high-fat and the low-fat test meal. It is concluded that increasing the amount of dietary carbohydrate leads to the deteriorationof blood glucose control in ID


Signal Amplification by Reversible Exchange (SABRE) is a fast and convenient NMR hyperpolarization method that uses cheap and readily available para-hydrogen as a hyperpolarization source. SABRE can hyperpolarize protons and heteronuclei. Here we focus on the heteronuclear variant introduced as SABRE-SHEATH (SABRE in SHield Enables Alignment Transfer to Heteronuclei) and nitrogen-15 targets in particular. We show that 15N-SABRE works more efficiently and on a wider range of substrates than 1H-SABRE, greatly generalizing the SABRE approach. In addition, we show that nitrogen-15 offers significantly extended T1 times of up to 12 minutes. Long T1 times enable higher hyperpolarization levels but also hold the promise of hyperpolarized molecular imaging for several tens of minutes. Detailed characterization and optimization are presented, leading to nitrogen-15 polarization levels in excess of 10% on several compounds.


Mixed reality (MR) technology has attracted increasing interest in the architecture and construction industry since the commercial availability of head-mounted MR devices in 2016. With its ability of overlaying digital building models in real construction sites, building owners, architects, engineers, and contractors have quickly recognized the value of MR technology in on-site architectural visualization, construction planning, and as-built verification. Although a few industry practitioners have piloted some initial tests, no thorough reviews on such uses have been reported in the existing literature. To bridge this gap in the body of knowledge, this study aims to evaluate the use of MR technology in architectural design and construction layout through a comparative review of commercially available MR applications. The study employed two HoloLens devices that were attached to a hard hat to meet construction safety regulations and identified nine MR applications developed for architectural and construction purposes. The capabilities of MR technology within these applications were evaluated and compared under different on-site conditions for architectural design and construction layout. It was found that among the various MR capabilities, while some are common features that offer basic information and navigation, several are unique but essential to provide an effective and successful on-site experience for architectural and construction uses. In addition, the limitations of MR technology and the head-mounted MR device for on-site uses were discussed. This paper provides timely and empirical information to help practitioners and researchers better understand MR technology for the architecture and construction industry.

 Key words: Mixed reality, technology, application, architecture, construction.


This Article examines situations in which government regulation makes mandatory the use of certain devices and institutions that have been generated by markets and private ordering in the financial sector. I refer to the process of taking devices and institutions created by market processes and making their use mandatory "regulation by assimilation" because the process involves the adoption and incorporation by the government of devices and institutions developed by participants in the financial markets for different (though often somewhat related) purposes. Devices and institutions that have been developed internally by market participants and then assimilated into regulation include the credit ratings generated by credit rating agencies (which were designated by regulators as Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations or NRSROs), the Value at Risk (VaR) models that measure the risk of financial institutions' portfolios, the advisory and fairness opinions issued by investment banks in the context of significant corporate transactions, and the audits of corporations' financial results by independent outside auditors. This Article makes two contributions to our understanding of the regulation of financial market participants. First, I show that the phenomenon of regulation by assimilation is common, if not ubiquitous, in the financial world. Second, I show that the process of regulation by assimilation has negative consequences that have not previously been anticipated or even identified. These negative consequences manifest themselves by ossifying, as well as weakening, and even corrupting the efficacy of the private sector institutions and techniques that have been assimilated. The analysis in this Article indicates that the previously unidentified phenomenon of regulation by assimilation was a major cause of the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 because it distorted the ability of firms and markets to measure and assess the riskiness of their activities.


The aim of this research is to investigate the preparation method of valve membrane in transcatheter bio- prosthetic valve, and to study the effect of chemical modification and cutting technology to tensile property and suture force property of valve membrane. We carried out a series of processes to perform the tests, such as firstly to test the crosslinking degree of valve membrane using ninhydrin method, then to test the tensile property and suture force property by using Instron's biomechanicAl testing equipment, and then to observe the collagen fiber orientation in valve membrane using Instron's biomechanical testing equipment and using field emission scanning electron microscopy. The study indicated that after the chemical modification, the crosslinking degree, tensile strength and suture force strength increasing rate of valve membrane were 93.78% ± 3. 2%, (8.24 ± 0.79) MPa, 102%, respectively. The valve membrane had a better biomechanical property and would be expected to become valve membrane in transcatheter bioprosthesis valve.


This paper describes a prototype application of an information extraction (IE) based document classification system in the international law domain. IE is used to determine if a set of concepts for a class are present in a document. The syntactic and semantic constraints that must be satisfied to make this determination are derived automatically from a training corpus. A collection of IE systems are arranged in a classification hierarchy and novel documents are guided down the hierarchy based on the results from the previous level. Experimental results for a research prototype are given on a subset of the Global Legal Information Network domain.


Abstract. Automation of camera calibration is facilitated by recording coded 2D patterns. Our toolbox for automatic camera calibration using images of simple chess-board patterns is freely available on the Internet. But it is unsuitable for stereo-cameras whose calibration implies recovering camera geometry and their true-to-scale relative orientation. In contrast to all reported methods requiring additional specific coding to establish an object space coordinate system, a toolbox for automatic stereo-camera calibration relying on ordinary chess-board patterns is presented here. First, the camera calibration algorithm is applied to all image pairs of the pattern to extract nodes of known spacing, order them in rows and columns, and estimate two independent camera parameter sets. The actual node correspondences on stereo-pairs remain unknown. Image pairs of a textured 3D scene are exploited for finding the fundamental matrix of the stereo-camera by applying RANSAC to point matches established with the SIFT algorithm. A node is then selected near the centre of the left image; its match on the right image is assumed as the node closest to the corresponding epipolar line. This yields matches for all nodes (since these have already been ordered), which should also satisfy the 2D epipolar geometry. Measures for avoiding mismatching are taken. With automatically estimated initial orientation values, a bundle adjustment is performed constraining all pairs on a common (scaled) relative orientation. Ambiguities regarding the actual exterior orientations of the stereo-camera with respect to the pattern are irrelevant. Results from this automatic method show typical precisions not above 1/4 pixels for 640×480 web cameras.


In the early months of 1994, it became clear that the government of Rwanda had not acted in good faith in signing peace accords with its adversary, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Acts of government-sponsored violence grew more frequent. The author of this book, who at that point was conducting fieldwork in Rwanda, on several occasions found either himself or the Rwandans accompanying him threatened with, or sustaining, bodily harm. Finally, active hostilities between the antagonists escalated on April 7, 1994, just hours after the Rwandan President's plane was shot down. During the author's evacuation from Rwanda in the months following, he interviewed many survivors. This book, the outcome of the author's experiences during the conflict, is an attempt to understand the atrocities committed during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which nearly one million people, mostly of Tutsi ethnicity, were slaughtered in less than four months. Beyond this, the author shows that political and historical analyses, while necessary in understanding the violence, fail to explain the forms that the violence took and the degree of passion that motivated it. Instead, Rwandan ritual and practices related to the body are revelatory in this regard, as the body is the ultimate tablet upon which the dictates of the nation-state are inscribed. One rather bizarre example of this is that Hutu extremists often married or had sexual relations with Tutsi women who, according to the Hamitic hypothesis, were said to be sexually alluring. Their mixed-race offspring were not exempt from the genocide. Finally, and perhaps most importantly in light of the recent resurgence of violence, the author advances hypotheses about how the violence in Rwanda and Burundi might be transcended.


Context. Transition disks are considered sites of ongoing planet formation, and their dust and gas distributions could be signposts of embedded planets. The transition disk around the T Tauri star RY Lup has an inner dust cavity and displays a strong silicate emission feature. Aims. Using high-resolution imaging we study the disk geometry, including non-axisymmetric features, and its surface dust grain, to gain a better understanding of the disk evolutionary process. Moreover, we search for companion candidates, possibly connected to the disk. Methods. We obtained high-contrast and high angular resolution data in the near-infrared with the VLT/SPHERE extreme adaptive optics instrument whose goal is to study the planet formation by detecting and characterizing these planets and their formation environ-ments through direct imaging. We performed polarimetric imaging of the RY Lup disk with IRDIS (at 1.6 µ m), and obtained intensity images with the IRDIS dual-band imaging camera simultaneously with the IFS spectro-imager (0.9–1.3 µ m). Results. We resolved for the first time the scattered light from the nearly edge-on circumstellar disk around RY Lup, at projected sepa- rations in the 100 au range. The shape of the disk and its sharp features are clearly detectable at wavelengths ranging from 0.9 to 1.6 µ m. We show that the observed morphology can be interpreted as spiral arms in the disk. This interpretation is supported by in-depth numer- ical simulations. We also demonstrate that these features can be produced by one planet interacting with the disk. We also detect several point sources which are classified as probable background objects.


We consider the agency problem of a staff member managing microfinancing programs, who can abuse his discretion to embezzle borrowers' repayments. The fact that most borrowers of microfinancing programs are illiterate and live in rural areas where transportation costs are very high make staff's embezzlement particularly relevant as is documented by Mknelly and Kevane (2002). We study the trade-off between the optimal rigid lending contract and the optimal discretionary one and find that a rigid contract is optimal when the audit cost is larger than gains from insurance. Our analysis explains rigid repayment schedules used by the Grameen bank as an optimal response to the bank staff's agency problem. Joint liability reduces borrowers' burden of respecting the rigid repayment schedules by providing them with partial insurance. However, the same insurance can be provided by borrowers themselves under individual liability through a side-contract.


This paper provides an overview of perioperative treatment for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), including the current widespread use of cytotoxic anticancer agents, promising molecular targeted agents, and immuno-checkpoint inhibitors. Multiple clinical trials have confirmed that postoperative chemotherapy with cytotoxic anticancer agents should be given for stage IIB to III (according to the 8th edition of the TNM classification for NSCLC) if possible, and preoperative treatment also is recommended for patients with N2 or higher stage. However, advances in concurrent chemoradiotherapy are expected to change the significance of neoadjuvant therapy. Perioperative treatment with molecular targeted agents appears to extend disease-free survival, but there is currently no evidence that it can extend overall survival. Perioperative treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors requires further evidence but is likely to be effective. Although perioperative treatment of NSCLC could be costly it continues to evolve in hopes of a cure.


In this paper, the emphasis is placed on the evaluation of the impact of various packet sampling techniques that have been proposed in the PSAMP IETF draft, on two widely used anomaly detection approaches. More specifically, we evaluate the behavior of a sequential nonparametric change-point detection method and an algorithm based on principal component analysis (PCA) with the use of different metrics, under different traffic and measurement sampling methodologies. One of the key objectives of our study is to gain some insight about the feasibility and scalability of the anomaly detection process, by analyzing and understanding the tradeoff of reducing the volume of collected data while still maintaining the accuracy and effectiveness in the anomaly detection


Camphor is prescribed in traditional medicine for the treatment of inflammation-related diseases and skin care products. The present study aims at finding out the effects of Camphor on the endometrium structures of Sprague-Dawley female Rats. 40 animals (3 months old) were divided into 4 subgroups (n = 10), 3 experimental groups were given daily intraperitoneal injection of 5, 10 and 20 mg/kg of Camphor watery solution and the control group was given distilled water. All groups were kept in the same environmental conditions. At the end of 6 weeks, all rats were killed and their uteri were removed for histological analysis. Comparing with the control group, an increase in the body and reproductive system weight, less uterine glands, degeneration of luminal epithelium and enlargement of uterus lumen were recorded. All the treated groups showed an increase in estrogen concentration. Furthermore, the highest dose caused an increase in progesterone concentration. The present study showed that Camphor could alter both hormonal and structural aspect of uterus that ultimately reflected on fertility of exposed animals. (Fatma Al-Qudsi and Sabah Linjawi. Histological and Hormonal Changes in Rat Endometrium under the Effect of Camphor. Life Science Journal 2012; 9(2):348-355). (ISSN: 1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com. 55


Submarine canyons are the main conduits for sediment transfer from continental shelves to deep abyssal plains. A large number of bathymetric and seismic surveys provide detailed information on their morphology and structure, shedding light on the mechanisms involved in their formation. However, because of the difficulty in deploying instruments in deep marine environments, little is known about the processes by which turbidity currents erode and incise the canyon floors. In this study, we use a micro-scale tank experiment to investigate the incision of a mobile sediment bed by a gravity current. We inject a brine at the top of a ramp covered with low-density plastic sediments. Conditions for channel formation are investigated through systematic exploration of the slope vs. discharge phase space. Measurements of the sediment bed topography and the gravity-current velocity profile allow us to characterize the channel incision dynamics. A channel forms when the bed shear stress exceeds the sediment critical shear stress. In this case, a channel starts forming near the upstream end of the incline and propagates down-slope while slowly deepening. After a transient state of about 1-2 hours, the channel reaches steady state. Experimental results suggest that the slope controls the rate of erosion and the speed of channel incision, while the brine discharge controls the channel geometry. The erosional morphologies created by our experimental gravity currents show strong analogies with the axial incision of canyons, the primary mechanism by which canyons connected to continental shelves or large rivers evolve.


The current New Zealand Curriculum suggests a new way of thinking about student development in schools. A shift to a more future-focussed curriculum has brought a greater emphasis on supporting students to develop the key competencies outlined in the 2007 document. Consequently, teachers must learn to balance the new competency-based curriculum, with existing demands to develop student academic success. This can be challenging when ways of integrating the key competencies into teaching practices vary depending of the learning context. The reviewed literature suggests principles embraced by early-adopters of the New Zealand Curriculum can be used to direct teachers in leading their teaching focus to assist in developing students' key competencies.


The sea defences of the inner Severn Estuary may be dated partly by reference to historical sources and partly by the detection through field-walking of early settlements on the reclaimed wetlands. Largely as the result of an intensive programme of levelling from reclaimed to active tidal marshes across dated defences, it is shown that relative sea-level (c. mean high-water spring tides) has risen in the area by at least 1.3 m since the later Roman Period. The rise since c. 1945 is given by a geochemical method which exploits the presence of metal pollutants in the deposits of the active marshes. A marked acceleration in the upward movement of the relative level is suggested by the assembled data. The minimum average rate of rise is apparently 0.40 mm a−1 between the later Roman Period and the Medieval Period, 0.79 mm a−1 from then to the start of the Modern Period, 1.49 mm a−1 through the Modern Period to c. 1945, and 4.65 mm a−1 since c. 1945. Depending on the extent to which the Severn Estuary has experienced marine transgression over the period covered by the measurements, the relative rise of mean high-water spring tide level to the present could amount to about 1.75 m.


Purpose
The aim of this study was to determine if there are factors that can predict whether a child with hearing loss will also have vestibular loss.

Method
A retrospective chart review was completed on 186 children with hearing loss seen at Boys Town National Research Hospital for vestibular testing from 1999 to 2015 through neurosensory genetics clinic or cochlear implant candidacy. Each child's medical chart was reviewed to obtain the following data: vestibular loss severity (classified as normal, bilateral, or mild to moderate), degree of hearing loss (bilateral pure-tone average [PTA]), imaging abnormalities (classified as "normal" or "abnormal"), parental concerns for gross motor delay (classified as "yes, there is concern" or "no, there is not a concern"), parent report of age when their child sat (months) and walked independently (months), comorbidities (classified as "yes" if there were 1 or more comorbidities or "no" if there were no comorbidities), and score on the Developmental Profile-3.

Results
Children were grouped according to vestibular loss severity; 115 children had normal vestibular function, 31 had bilateral vestibular loss, and 40 had mild-to-moderate vestibular loss. As severity of vestibular loss increased, children (a) sat and walked later, (b) scored more poorly on the Developmental Profile-3 physical subscale, (c) had more severe hearing loss, (d) had parents who more frequently reported concern for gross motor delay, and (e) were more likely to have other comorbidities. Of these factors, age-to-sit, age-to-walk, PTA, and parental concerns for gross motor developmental delay had the greatest ability to differentiate children with vestibular loss from children with normal vestibular function. For age-to-sit, using a cutoff value of 7.25 months yielded a sensitivity of 62% and a specificity of 81%. For age-to-walk, a cutoff value of 14.5 months yielded a sensitivity of 78% and a specificity of 77%. For PTA for the neurosensory genetics group, a cutoff value of 40 dB yielded a sensitivity of 80% and a specificity of 55%; however, a cutoff value of 66 dB yielded a sensitivity of 33% and an improved specificity of 91%.

Conclusions
A referral for vestibular evaluation should be considered for children whose hearing loss is greater than 66 dB and particularly those who sit later than 7.25 months or walk later than 14.5 months or whose parents report concerns for gross motor development. Collectively, these factors appear to be more sensitive for identifying children with bilateral vestibular loss compared with children with mild-to-moderate vestibular loss. Because of the benefit of physical therapy, children identified with vestibular loss should then be referred to physical therapy for further evaluation and treatment.


Scholars have recently extended the traditional calculus of participation model by adding a term for benefits to others. We advance this work by distinguishing theoretically a concern for others in general (altruism) from a concern for others in certain groups (social identification). We posit that both concerns generate increased benefits from participation. To test these theories, we use allocations in dictator games towards an unidentified anonymous recipient and two recipients identified only as a registered Democrat or a registered Republican. These allocations permit a distinction between altruism and social identification. The results show that both altruism and social identification significantly increase political participation. The results also demonstrate the usefulness of incorporating benefits that stem from sources beyond material self-interest into rational choice models of participation.


A facile and rapid technique for the selective removal of metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes (M-SWCNTs) was developed by microwave-assisted treatment of SWCNTs with nitronium ions. Upon exposure to microwaves, M-SWCNTs homogeneously dispersed in organic solution were prone to react with an electron acceptor reagent, i.e., positively charged nitronium ions as compared to their counterpart, namely, semiconducting (S)-SWCNTs. The well-functionalized M-SWCNTs were separated and removed from residual S-SWCNTs by ultracentrifugation and filtration. The resulting material contained highly enriched S-SWCNTs, the proportion of which increased from approximately 62 mol% in as-received SWCNTs to nearly 90 mol%. The effectiveness in removing M-SWCNTs was confirmed by the resonant Raman spectra and UV-vis-NIR absorption spectra. The microwave-enhanced separation mechanism was discussed as well.


Why is government corruption more pervasive in some societies than in others? In this article we examine public choice explanations that attribute corruption to a lack of competition in either political or economic arenas or both. The principal part of our analysis draws on recently-published data about levels of corruption for a broad cross-section of countries reported for the early 1980s. We supplement this with an additional analysis of a second dataset on corruption measured during the late 1980s. Our analyses confirm that political competition affects level of corruption, but this effect is nonlinear. Corruption is typically lower in dictatorships than in countries that have partially democratized. But once past a threshold, democratic practices inhibit corruption. However, we obtained mixed results with respect to the relationship of economic competition and corruption: government size does not systematically affect corruption, but membership of the Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC) does. Finally, corruption is more pervasive in low-income countries which tend to underpay public sector employees.


In recent decades, private players have emerged as major providers of education in urban India. The popularity of private schools among the lower income groups is extensively reported and has received a mixed response in academic writing. In much of the literature, details about the social context of people identified as the urban poor and as belonging to lower income groups are seldom provided. It is also important to unravel the processes through which they navigate the private educational market in the urban space. This paper attempts to examine the class and status dynamics of families associated with a private school in the city of Banaras. The paper begins with a history of the demarcation of urban space for the poor in the city of Banaras along lines of class, caste and occupation in terms of a 'weavers' settlement'. It also seeks to explore how families living in these areas seek to reconstitute their relation to schools through increased monetary and cultural investments with the hope of securing valued cultural resources for their children. A closer examination of school choice, however, suggests how the realisation of such ends remains difficult.