Multi-antenna two-way relaying, in which two multi-antenna users exchange information via a multiantenna relay, has attracted much research interest recently. How to approach the capacity of a multipleinput multiple-output (MIMO) two-way relay channel (TWRC) remains a challenging issue. In this work, we propose a novel space-division based network-coding scheme for MIMO two-way relaying. In the proposed scheme, the overall signal space at the relay is divided into two subspaces. In one subspace, the spatial streams of the two users have nearly orthogonal directions, and are completely decoded at the relay. In the other subspace, the signal directions of the two users are nearly parallel, and linear functions of the spatial streams are computed at the relay, following the principle of physical-layer network coding (PNC). Based on the recovered messages and message-functions, the relay generates and forwards network-coded messages to the two users. We show that, at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the proposed scheme achieves the asymptotic sum-rate capacity of MIMO TWRCs within 1/2log(5/4)0.161 bits per user-antenna for any antenna configuration and channel realization. We further perform large-system analysis to derive the average sum-rate of the proposed scheme over Rayleigh-fading MIMO TWRCs. We show that the average asymptotic sum-rate gap to the capacity upper bound is at most 0.053 bits per relay-antenna. It is demonstrated that the proposed scheme significantly outperforms the existing schemes. Biography Xiaojun Yuan received the B.S. degree in electronic and information systems from Shanghai Jiaotong University, the M.S. degree in circuit and systems from Fudan University, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from City University of Hong Kong. During 2009-2010, he was working as a visiting post-doc fellow at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is now a research assistant professor at the Institute of Network Coding, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interest falls into the general area of signal processing, communications, and information theory, including channel coding and coded modulation, wireless multi-antenna and multi-user communications, and physical-layer network coding (PNC), etc. He has published over 40 refereed journal and conference papers in the related areas. He is a member of IEEE, and has also served as the Technical Program Committee (TPC) members for many international conferences including WCNC, PIMRC, ICC, etc. ** All ARE WELCOME ** Host: Professor Raymond W.H. Yeung (Tel: 3943-8375, Email: email@example.com) Enquiries: Department of Information Engineering, CUHK (Tel.: 3943-8388)


In this research work the optimization of the electrochemical system of LDHs as catalytic precursors on FeCrAlY foams was carried out.
Preliminary sintheses were performed on flat surfaces in order to easily characterize the deposited material. From the study of pH evolution vs time at different cathodic potentials applied to a Pt electrode, the theoretical best working conditions for the synthesis of single hydroxides and LDH compounds was achieved.
In order to define the optimal potential for the synthesis of a particular LDH compound, the collected data were compared with the interval of precipitation determined by titration with NaOH. However, the characterization of the deposited material on Pt surfaces did not confirm the deposition of a pure and homogeneous LDH phase during the synthesis. Instead a sequential deposition linked to the pH of precipitation of the involved elements is observed. The same behavior was observed during the synthesis of the RhMgAl LDH on FeCrAlY foam as catalytic precursor. Several parameters were considered in order to optimize the synthesis.. The development of electrochemical cells with different feature, such as the counter electrode dimensions or the contact between the foam and the potentiostat, had been carried out in order to obtain a better coating of the foam. The influence of the initial pH of the electrolyte solution, of the applied potential, of the composition of the electrolytic solution were investigated in order to improve a better coating of the catalyst support. Catalytic tests were performed after the calcination of the deposited foam for the CPO and SR reactions, showing an improve of performances along with optimization of the precursors synthesis conditions.


The central issue of this study is to gauge the general level of tax literacy among salaried taxpayers in Sabah and Sarawak. This study is undertaken to shed light on our preparedness to face the challenge posed by the implementation of Self Assessment System (SAS) on salaried tax payers beginning from the year 2004 where taxpayers are expected to be functionally literate to compute their own tax liabilities accurately. For the purpose of this study, samples were randomly taken from salaried taxpayers working in the main cities in Sabah namely Sandakan, Tawau and Kota Kinabalu and Sarawak which were Kuching, Sibu, Bintulu and Miri. Statistical test using One-Way ANOVA was applied on the mean tax literacy scores by place of work. Relationships between tax literacy scores and place of work were also analyzed by using the Chi-square test of independence. Some of the findings, among others, indicated that salaried taxpayers in Sarawak were found to be more tax
literate compared to their counterparts in Sabah. It was also discovered that the sector of employment is not an important factor of tax literacy. Public and corporate sector employees were found to be equally literate as indicated by insignificant difference in the mean scores of these two sectors. Overall, it could be inferred that salaried taxpayers in both states are not prepared for
SAS in 2004 as reflected by a low percentage of 'very literate' category.


Increasingly social web technologies, such as blogging and micro-blogging, audio and video podcasting, photo/video, social bookmarking, social networking, wiki writing or virtual worlds are being used as forms of authoring or content creation to support students' learning in higher education. As Web 2.0 teaching practice is characterised by open access to information and collaborative networks there are both familiar and novel challenges for policy-makers in higher education institutions. The Government 2.0 Taskforce heralded legislative and practice changes necessary because of Web 2.0. We reflect on the qualitative feedback received from innovative higher education practitioners using Web 2.0 to assess student work. This indicates a need for information policy review to accommodate the cultural shift towards information exchange and communication across traditional institutional boundaries. Issues involved when implementing Web 2.0 assessments are identified to highlight requisite areas for policy improvement in higher education, in particular for academic integrity, copyright and privacy policies


Severe pulmonary stenosis in association with a large atrial septal defect is uncommon.When these 2 conditions are present, significant left-to-right shunt is often prevented bythe outflow obstruction, which protects the pulmonary bed until adulthood. This reportshows our initial experience of percutaneous treatment of both congenital malforma-tions, either staged or combined in the same procedure, in 2 adult patients whose treat-ments yielded effective atrial septal defect occlusion and right ventricular pressure reliefthat persisted at mid-term follow-up. Although these opposite procedures (opening andclosing) have been applied as isolated methods of treatment, this preliminary experi-ence appears to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of a combined percuta-neous treatment.


The objective of this work was to identify, through the use of multivariate analysis, the spontaneous accesses of castor bean that show promising characteristics for inclusion in genetic improvement programs of this culture in Brazil. The study was conducted at the Paulista State University, Jaboticabal Campus. The accesses of castor bean seeds obtained were identified as ACS-001-CRSP, ACS-001- JASP, ACS-001-MASP, ACS-001-SESP, ACS-002-JASP, ACS-002-SESP and ACS-003-JASP, from the municipalities of Jaboticabal, Monte Alto, Santa Ernestina and from the District of Corrego Rico. The seeds' biometric variables and germination potential were measured, in addition to the biomass accumulation of the seedling's vegetative parts. The experimental design was completely randomized, with seven treatments and four replications. The original data was standardized and submitted to multivariate analysis of principal components and grouping. Through the results obtained, it is possible to reduce the number of original variables into two latent variables with discriminant power between the castor bean accesses, being the multivariate analysis efficient in this process. The castor bean accesses ACS-001 CRSP and ACS-001-MASP are promising for introduction in genetic improvement programs of this culture. Keywords: Ricinus communis L., genotype, multivariate statistics, bioenergy


The influence of the production method, i.e. casting technology on the cleanliness and thus the quality of carbon steels is best determined through the presence and type of non-metallic inclusions. A large number of inclusions, especially oxide and complex ones, can significantly affect the mechanical properties of carbon steels and limit their application for the production of finished products. This paper presents the influence of the presence, type and amount of non - metallic inclusions in B500B
carbon steel according to ASTM / AISI produced by continuous casting technology without and with the application of stream protection.


Emission of chlorophyll fluorescence (ChlF) from photosystem II (PSII) is affected by both plant status and environmental conditions. In this work, a state space model structure for ChlF from PSII with temperature as a variable model parameter was developed to provide insights into the temperature effects on photosynthesis and greenhouse temperature control. Experiments were carried out at 20, 25, and 30°C to validate the capability and flexibility of the developed model structure. Simulations of ChlF emission were performed for different temperatures. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of the ChlF model structure and the findings are useful for the development of greenhouse temperature control strategies.


The motives stimulating foreign direct investment (FDI) is a topic of intense interest in the field of international business. Studies predominately focus on multinational enterprises (MNEs) from the Western developed countries. However, in the recent years outward FDI from developing countries, such as China and India, has been increasing. In addition, the fast changing global business environment and technology advances have increased the ease with which small
and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) can access customers and suppliers both domestically and internationally. Although attention has been paid to the outward FDI from developing countries firms, further in-depth investigation of this phenomenon is required, especially, in relation to SMEs.
Given the increased Chinese outward investment in the recent years, this paper sets out to advance knowledge of the internationalisation of Chinese SMEs(CSMEs). The main research objective is to explore the motives of outward FDI with specific focuses of why CSMEs managers decided to enter the North England? In what sense does the home country context of China influence such outward investment decisions? Addressing these questions will contribute to the existing understandings of the motives driving OFDI by CSME directed towards developed countries.
This study employs a social constructionist approach to interpret the CSME decision makers' unique experiences and perceived values in determining their international business decisions. We empirically examined the motivations behind CSMEs' decisions to investing in the North of England via semi-structured interviews. 15 CSME managers in the North of England participated. The qualitative interview data was analysed through template analysis.
Drawn largely from the primary interviews of CSMEs operating in the North of England, this paper concludes that the decision of CSMEs to initiate its internationalization (especially entering the Western developed countries) can be explained by combining different international theories. The results indicate three elements underpinning a CSMEs decision to enter the North of England: 1) the institutional environment in the home country (China) play an important
role in promoting CSMEs' international expansion, 2) government support and networks in the host country are crucial factors in attracting CSMEs to the North of England, and 3) CSME managers' personal traits, such as risk-taking, ambitions and experience, along with strategic intentions, have significant impact on the existence of new international ventures for CSMEs.
The findings of this qualitative study imply that new international ventures are fuelled increasingly by SMEs. Although those SMEs have limited resources, they
still attempt to discover business opportunities in different countries. It is believed that this study provides valuable insights for international researchers,practitioners, and policy makers. It offers alternative understanding of the international experience of SMEs and contributes to practice grounded in an Asian SME context. It is hoped that the findings and insights drawn from this research paper provide practical guidance for SMEs managers engaged in international expansion decisions.


Keratoacanthoma is generally considered to be a benign cutaneous lesion with initial rapid growth and spontaneous involution over several months. It is not generally appreciated that the keratoacanthoma may have a malignant potential or be associated with carcinoma. When a lesion diagnosed as keratoacanthoma recurs after excision, underlying malignancy must be considered. Four examples of keratoacanthoma associated with underlying malignancy are presented from the Ochsner Medical Institutions to emphasize the above points.


In New Orleans, Hanukkah means decorating your door with a menorah made of hominy grits. Latkes in Texas are seasoned with cilantro and cayenne pepper. Children in Cincinnati sing Hanukkah songs and eat oranges and ice cream. While each tradition springs from its own unique set of cultural references, what ties them together is that they all celebrate a holiday that is different in America than it is any place else. For the past two hundred years, American Jews have been transforming the ancient holiday of Hanukkah from a simple occasion into something grand. Each year, as they retell its story and enact its customs, they bring their ever-changing perspectives and desires to its celebration. Providing an attractive alternative to the Christian dominated December, rabbis and lay people alike have addressed contemporary hopes by fashioning an authentically Jewish festival that blossomed in their American world.


I would like to thank Drs López, Grasa, Calvo and López-Hortelano for their informative letter (1) where they comment on my recent paper about five children with suggested long covid (2), but also draw our attention to their Spanish-language paper on Telemedicine follow-ups for COVID-19 (3). Of note their letter in Acta Paediatrica (1) confirms that long covid often occurs in pre-adolescent and adolescent children.


The call by transgender people for the police to take violence against them more seriously has some familiar attributes. In general it is a violence characterized as hate crime. Transgender activism has highlighted many problems, for example, under-reporting, lack of trust and confidence in policing, lack of police recognition, low detection rates, clear up rates and infrequent judicial determinations of guilt. This activism might be characterized as another instance of identity politics emerging within the field of policing and criminal justice. While we welcome its emergence some scholars have been critical of the impact of identity politics upon policing and criminal justice bodies, suggesting it promotes further social and community divisions. Although we share some of these concerns, in this article we argue that these problems are the effect of particular assumptions about the nature of identity. We offer an analysis of identity politics that seeks to challenge this position, as well as an analysis of empirical data of transgender experiences of violence and insecurity arising out of research undertaken in Sydney, Australia. Our analysis exposes the multiple and simultaneous operation of many different social and cultural divisions at work in the context of transgender identity. We explore the significance of this approach to identity for policing.


Information is limited on the effects of commercial plant growth regulators (PGRs) on dragon fruit. Most studies on rooting effects on dragon fruit cuttings employed very high doses of plant growth regulators (PGRs), which are not deemed practical for greenhouse and field applications. This study was initiated to evaluate the responses of four genotypes of dragon fruit ('Royal Red', 'Moroccan Red', 'Mexican White', and 'Hawaiian White') during greenhouse acclimatization to diluted concentrations of commercial PGRs that are readily available in the market. A single factorial experiment on genotype effects on root and shoot responses, without PGR, was conducted. A second experiment with a 4x3x2 completely randomized design, with four genotypes, three diluted commercial PGR formulations and two exposure times as factors was also done. Root length, number of roots, number of days to first shoot emergence and number of new shoots were measured after 50 days of acclimatization in the greenhouse. In the single factorial experiment, only 'genotype' had an effect on number of new shoots (P<0.05). In the multifactorial experiment, all factors tested did not have significant interaction effects. However, the main effect of 'genotype' on number of new shoots and number of days to first shoot emergence was also significant (P<0.05). The lack of significant effect of other factors and their interactions on most growth responses suggest that it is difficult to resolve differences among the four genotypes using highly diluted commercial PGR formulations after a 50-day observation period. However, our data still suggest that the 'Red' genotypes are more superior than the 'White' genotypes in terms of shoot growth.


This investigation explores the relationships between principal influence and four facets of organizational climate: institutional vulnerability, collegial leadership, achievement press, and professional teacher behavior. Data were collected from 2,033 teachers at 112 elementary schools in two states from the Southern and Midwestern United States. The results of multiple linear regression analyses show that the independent variables of principal influence, SES, and school size combinedto form a significant portion of the variance in organizational climate. The four facets of organizational climate explored in this study provide insight into specific mechanisms through which influential principals can positively affect schools.


Organic pollution occurs due to the presence of organic compound that will causing oxygen depletion and gives potential adverse impacts on human health and the environment. Wastewater from the fish cracker industry typically has high chemical oxygen demand (COD) and it is needed to be treated before release to water bodies in order to reduce the organic pollution. The treatment of COD was done using rice husk activated carbon (RHAC) that produced from agricultural wastes that contributed to waste minimization and reduce the environmental pollution. Therefore, this study emphasized on the feasibility of rice husk activated carbon for removing the COD from fish cracker wastewater. It was also to identify the optimization factors (pH, flow rate and initial concentration of COD) that affecting adsorption by rice husk activated carbon. RHAC was produced by chemical activation using phosphoric acid, H3PO4 and a real wastewater from fish cracker industry was collected, characterized, and treated by using continuous fixed bed column adsorption method. The result shows that the adsorption of COD by RHAC was optimum at pH 2, flow rate 5 ml/min and 5 % v/v initial COD concentration with the COD removal at 31.8% (150 mg/L) which comply with Standard B. Thus, RHAC could be used to develop an alternative method and suitable carbonaceous substances that was used to treat water and wastewater.


Certification of supplier generally means that the supplier provides acceptable quality, on-time delivery at the lowest cost. Companies have devised numerous methods, criteria, formats, and approaches to certifying suppliers. Many of these are too complicated, not understandable, administratively difficult, or fail to be objective. If you have struggled with how to fashion a supplier certification program and how to have suppliers effectively embrace your program, this article is for you. It describes how to reduce the requirements to simple one-page format; details; three basic measures of performance that deal with quality, delivery, and cost; and provides several measurement-driven improvement actions. Supplier certification provides a simple, objective, mutually beneficial method of achieving high-quality, on-time delivery at the lowest cost.


Summary Objective: In context of the study farmers using an automated activity monitoring (AAM) system called Heatime were surveyed on estrus detection practices. The aim of the study was to gain an overview of the usual estrus detection methods and especially to learn about the practical aspects of that system. Material and methods: Items addressing farm and animal environment, estrus detection before and after installation of Heatime, reproduction, Heatime management and the far mer's perception of efficiency were asked. Results: A total of 232 survey forms were returned (58.3% response rate) and 219 surveys could be used for final analysis. Visual observation was the most common practice to detect estrus. After installation of the Heatime system the farmers assessed that the application of hormones for reproduction management decreased. The majority of the responding dairy farmers (93.1%) strongly agreed or agreed that heat detection was higher after the installation of Heatime. Most of them (92.3%) strongly agreed or agreed with the statement that the reproduction management became easier with Heatime. Conclusion: Overall, 94.1% of the responding farm managers were satisfied with the Heatime system and almost all of them (94.5%) would install the system again. Clinical relevance: The results show that the Heatime system is a well accepted estrus detection aid and has the potential to reduce the time needed for estrus detection and might potentially reduce the use of hormones.


Biofilm (or attached growth) reactors can be effectively used to treat organic wastewater from various industries such as food processing industry. They have a number of advantages including high organic loading rates (OLRs) and improved operational stability. A flexible fibre biofim reactor (FFBR) has been developed for efficient and cost effective treatment of food processing wastewater. In the process, simple flexible fibre packing with a very high specific surface area is used as support for microorganisms. The COD removal efficiencies for a range of OLRs have been studied. The FFBR can support an increasingly high OLR, but with a corresponding decrease in the COD removal efficiency. Therefore, a twostage FFBR was developed to increase the treatment efficiency for systems with high OLRs. Experimental results indicated that a high overall COD removal efficiency could be achieved. At an influent COD of about 2700 mg/L and an OLR of 7.7 kgCOD/m3d, COD removal efficiencies of 76% and 82% were achieved in the first and the second stage of the reactor, respectively. The overall COD removal efficiency was 96%. Therefore, even for wastewater samples with high organic strength, high quality treated effluents could be readily achieved by the use of multiple stage FFBRs.


We show how some classical static analyses for imperative programs, and the optimizing transformations which they enable, may be expressed and proved correct using elementary logical and denotationaltechniques. The key ingredients are an interpretation of program properties as relations, rather than predicates, and a realization that although many program analyses are traditionally formulated in very intensional terms, the associated transformations are actually enabled by more liberal extensional properties.We illustrate our approach with formal systems for analysing and transforming while-programs. The first is a simple type system which tracks constancy and dependency information and can be used to perform dead-code elimination, constant propagation and program slicing as well as capturing a form of secure information flow. The second is a relational version of Hoare logic, which significantly generalizes our first type system and can also justify optimizations including hoisting loop invariants. Finally we show how a simple available expression analysis and redundancy elimination transformation may be justified by translation into relational Hoare logic.


This article examines the role of colonial nation-state, both as a concept, and as an actor in marginalizing indigenous peoples of the enclave territories, and in empowering colonized peoples in the third world. Part 1 examines the role of the nation-state concept in imposing narrow colonial biases and poor understanding of indigenous peoples. The paper highlights historical context in which the United Nations created a dichotomy in international law's treatment of indigenous peoples of the enclave territories (where the settler did not withdraw) and colonised peoples in the third world (where the settler withdrew), resulting in diverging priorities and lost solidarity among colonized peoples. Part 2 contextualizes the United Nations' policy of accommodating non-state actors in its deliberative processes, and argues that it has enabled indigenous activism and political participation in domestic and international processes thus assisting to forge solidarity among the colonized peoples beyond the nation-state. The final section examines relevant legal developments in the protection of indigenous knowledge, exploring the ongoing negotiation for a knowledge protection system that accommodates indigenous epistemology. The author argues that the focus of the decolonization campaign has shifted from an emphasis on rights to self-determination as an end-state concept toward a negotiated and relational approach to self-determination devoid of an end-state outcome. Knowledge protection is now at the core of indigenous peoples relational approach to self-determination and it provides opportunities for indigenous peoples of both the enclave and non-enclave territories to unite to challenge the organizing framework and colonial relations of power through which the nation-state has served as a site for the suppression of colonized peoples.


Microtubules provide structural support for a cell and play key roles in cell motility, mitosis, and meiosis. They are also the targets of several anticancer agents, indicating their importance in maintaining cell viability. We have investigated the possibility that alterations in microtubule structure and tubulin polymerization may be part of the cellular response to DNA damage. In this report, we find that gamma-radiation stimulates the production and polymerization of alpha-, beta-, and gamma- tubulin in hematopoeitic cell lines (Ramos, DP16), leading to visible changes in microtubule structures. We have found that this microtubule reorganization can be prevented by caffeine, a drug that concomitantly inhibits DNA damage-induced cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. Our results support the idea that microtubule polymerization is an important facet of the mammalian response to DNA damage.


The incidence of malaria has decreased recently in parts of Africa, coinciding with the widespread use of long-lasting insecticide-treated nets (LLINs) and artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT). This reduction was also observed in Dielmo, our study area, and it was associated with the use of ACT as the first-line treatment against malaria beginning in 2006 and the implementation of LLINs in 2008. However, an unexplained slight increase in malaria incidence was observed in October and November of 2013. The aim of this study was to identify individual and environmental risk factors for malaria using a case-control study approach. Thirty cases and sixty controls were investigated. The use of LLINs was protective against malaria (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 0.10; 95% confidence interval [95% CI] = 0.02-0.45; P = 0.003). The risk of malaria transmission was high among villagers who watched television outside the house or the bedroom during the night (AOR = 8.83; 95% CI = 1.39-56.22; P = 0.021). The use of LLINs should be reinforced by the use of individual protection measures to avoid malaria transmission outside of the home.


Despite the documented benefits of providing health information to stroke patients, there is evidence indicating that people who have aphasia are poorly informed about both their stroke and aphasia. People with aphasia have been found to experience informational barriers in that information, if provided, is often presented in a way that cannot be understood by recipients with acquired language and reading difficulties. For health information to be optimally effective it needs to be provided in a format that the recipient welcomes and can understand. As printed education materials (PEMs) are a commonly used media for imparting health information, health professionals require evidence based guidance to design these documents in acceptable formats for people with aphasia. One component of obtaining this evidence is to explore the formatting characteristics that people with aphasia consider to be barriers and facilitators to reading PEMs. Therefore, the overarching aim of this research was to explore the preferences of people with aphasia for formatting stroke and aphasia PEMs. A series of five studies was conducted. Forty adults with aphasia post stroke participated in Studies 1 to 4. Participants were purposefully selected using maximum variation sampling for a variety of variables including aphasia severity, reading ability, time post stroke, age, gender, and years of formal education. Study 1 surveyed participants to establish if they recalled receiving written information about stroke and aphasia, and to obtain insight into where people with aphasia sourced this information, and which health professionals provided it. Only 14 participants (35.9%) reported receiving written information about both stroke and aphasia. The rehabilitation setting was the main location for written stroke and aphasia information provision, with speech-language pathologists most frequently being identified as the health professionals who provided this information. Given the reading difficulties associated with aphasia, Study 2 aimed to determine if people with aphasia considered it important to receive written stroke and aphasia information, when people with aphasia preferred to receive this information, and to establish their preferences for health information media. Despite having reading difficulties, participants reported written information to be important, and considered it helpful at several stages post stroke, particularly from 1 month onwards. The largest proportion of participants (97.1%) identified 6 months post stroke as a helpful time to receive this information. Study 3 aimed to obtain the preferences of people with aphasia for PEM formatting. This qualitative study used semi structured in depth interviews to explore characteristics considered to be barriers and facilitators to reading stroke and aphasia PEMs. Forty five facilitator and 46 barrier codes were identified using qualitative content analysis and grouped into two categories; 1) content characteristics, and 2) design characteristics. Study 4 expanded upon the findings of Study 3 by further exploring the design preferences of people with aphasia for stroke and aphasia PEMs. The primary objective of this study was to obtain the preferences of people with aphasia for: 1) the representation of numbers; 2) font size and type; 3) line spacing; 4) document length; and 5) graphic type in stroke and aphasia PEMs. Findings from Studies 3 and 4 have led to the compilation of evidence based formatting recommendations for people with aphasia. Several participants in Study 4 identified a preference for including photographic illustrations in stroke and aphasia PEMs, compared to other graphic types such as line drawings and pictographic symbols. Therefore, a fifth study evolved to investigate preferences for graphics and if graphic type influenced reading comprehension. A subsample (n = 22) of the larger participant group with aphasia, and 15 of their significant others participated in this study. All participants completed a purposefully developed cloze reading comprehension task, with multiple choice response options. Response options contained either: 1) no illustrations; 2) black and white line drawings; or 3) colour photographs. In addition, all participants completed a face-to-face graphic preference survey. There were no significant differences on the reading comprehension task, for both participants with aphasia and those without, between the number of paragraphs correctly completed in the set with no graphics, line drawings, and photographs. However, significantly more participants with aphasia reported that they needed pictures to understand writing, and all participants with aphasia preferred PEMs to contain graphics. In summary, current practice in written health information provision is not meeting the needs of people with aphasia. Information about stroke and aphasia should be provided at several stages post stroke, and in a range of formats. The research findings have implications for when and how health professionals provide information, and provides consumer driven guidance for the design of written information for people with aphasia.


The breeding bird population of a deciduous broadleaved forest in western Madagascar was censused by means of territory mapping. Despite the foliage structure being simpler, neither species richness nor density was less than those in mature temperate forests. Species diversity was higher in the western Madagascan forest owing to the higher species evenness. Tree-cavity nesters and bark foragers were few because woodpeckers, nuthatches, and tits have not colonized Madagascar. The scarcity of birds nesting on or near the forest floor may be attributable to abundance of nest-predators such as large lizards and snakes in these areas. The bird community was dominated in abundance by the members of mixed-species flocks, almost all of which forage in the canopy. Mixed-flocking can be beneficial for these birds to avoid predation by raptors, which were frequently observed in the canopy. Since most of the flock members had relatively similar territory sizes resulting in similar densities, the high species evenness in this community may have resulted from mixedflocking by canopy-foraging species.


The information technology field's accelerating rate of change makes feedback control essential for organizations to sense, evaluate, and adapt to changing value propositions in their competitive marketplace. Although traditional project feedback control mechanisms can manage the development efficiency of stable projects in well-established value situations, they do little to address the project's actual value, and can lead to wasteful misuse of an organization's scarce resources. The value-based approach to software development integrates value considerations into current and emerging software engineering principles and practices, while developing an overall framework in which these techniques compatibly reinforce each other.


The use of social media as a source of news is entering a new phase as computer algorithms are developed and deployed to detect, rank, and verify news. The efficacy and ethics of such technology are the subject of this article, which examines the SocialSensor application, a tool developed by a multidisciplinary EU research project. The results suggest that computer software can be used successfully to identify trending news stories, allow journalists to search within a social media corpus, and help verify social media contributors and content. However, such software also raises questions about accountability as social media is algorithmically filtered for use by journalists and others. Our analysis of the inputs SocialSensor relies on shows biases towards those who are vocal and have an audience, many of whom are men in the media. We also reveal some of the technology's temporal and topic preferences. The conclusion discusses whether such biases are necessary for systems like SocialSensor to be effective. The article also suggests that academic research has failed to fully recognise the changes to journalists' sourcing practices brought about by social media, particularly Twitter, and provides some countervailing evidence and an explanation for this failure.


This document describes the physics potential of a Fixed Target program based on a 1 TeV proton source. Two sources may be: the existing Tevatron at Fermilab and a posssible upgrade to the SPS at CERN, called SPS+. The possible Fixed Target beams which can be provided are described. The goals and tentative layout of some experiments which could run in such a program are considered. The physics which is highlighted are examples which are either unique to the program, or difficult to accomplish at other venues. From this one can see that these experiments represent opportunities complementary to the ongoing program


BACKGROUND
Pseudophakic cystoid macular edema (PCME) remains one of the most common visionthreatening complication of phacoemulsification cataract surgery (PCS). Pharmacological therapy is the current mainstay of both prophylaxis, and treatment of PCME in patients undergoing PCS. We aimed to review pharmacological treatment options for PCME, which primarily include topical steroids, topical nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDS), periocular and intravitreal steroids, as well as anti-vascular endothelial growth factor therapy.

METHODS
The PubMed and Web Of Science web platforms were used to find relevant studies using the following keywords: cataract surgery, phacoemulsification, cystoid macular edema, and pseudophakic cystoid macular edema. Of articles retrieved by this method, all publications in English and abstracts of non-English publications were reviewed. Other studies were also considered as a potential source of information when referenced in relevant articles. The search revealed 193 publications. Finally 82 articles dated from 1974 to 2018 were assessed as significant and analyzed.

RESULTS
Based on the current literature, we found that corticosteroids remain the mainstay of PCME prophylaxis in uncomplicated cataract surgery, while it is still unclear if NSAID can offer additional benefits. In patients at risk for PCME development, periocular subconjunctival injection of triamcinolone acetonide may prevent PCME development. For PCME treatment the authors recommend a stepwise therapy: initial topical steroids and adjuvant NSAIDs, followed by additional posterior sub-Tenon or retrobulbar corticosteroids in moderate PCME, and intravitreal corticosteroids in recalcitrant PCME. Intravitreal anti-vascular endothelial growth factor agents may be considered in patients unresponsive to steroid therapy at risk of elevated intraocular pressure, and with comorbid macular disease.

CONCLUSION
Therapy with topical corticosteroids and NSAIDs is the mainstay of PCME prophylaxis and treatment, however, periocular and intravitreal steroids should be considered in refractory cases.


The outbreak of dengue disease continues to occur despite extensive measures of vector control. Meanwhile, progress in the vaccine development is often affected by various challenges thus delaying in the production of an effective vaccine across all four dengue serotypes. Thus, efforts in combating dengue are being channelled to other alternatives such as dengue antivirals. The search for this therapeutics has given rise to various screening methods to test for potential inhibitory activities of purified as well as synthetic compounds. Therefore, one of the aims of this study is to produce a fiirin recombinant protein. This current study also aims to determine the inhibitory effect of the synthetic chalcones- and azepines-derivatives toward dengue virus infection in vitro. To achieve the first objective, the furin gene isolated from HepG2 cells inoculated with dengue virus type-2 (DENV2) was cloned and overexpressed in the E.coli. The protein lysates of the overexpressed protein were purified using Ni²⁺ (resin) affinity chromatography and its concentration was measured by Bradford assay. The purified furin was confirmed by SDS-PAGE and Western blot analysis. The result showed that the furin is expressed at 60 kDa and was positive toward Rabbit Monoclonal Anti-Furin antibody. Subsequently, two groups of synthetic chalcones (2446DA and 20H46DA) and azepines (MA13, MA15 and MA16) derivatives were measured for their inhibitory activities toward dengue infection by cytotoxicity assay, plaque assay, indirect immunostaining, in vitro inhibition assay and fluorescence scanning microscopy. The cytotoxicity assay results showed that the concentration below maximum non-toxic dose (MNTD) for both 2446DA and 20H46DA in HepG2 cells was 15 μg/mL. The same value was obtained for MA15 and MA16. However, MA13 was observed to be less toxic compared to all test compounds with MNTD of 30 μg/mL. The plaque forming unit per ml (pfu/m1) was reduced prominently by 10 to 1000 fold when the infected BHK21 cells were treated with the highest non-toxic concentration compared to lowest non-toxic concentration. The indirect immunostaining results showed a similar trend of virus particles reduction on infected HepG2 cells in both the chalcones- and azepines-derivatives when treated at simultaneous- and post- conditions. However, the azepines MA13 exhibited the most potent activity towards DENV2 whereby total inhibition of virus particles was observed during simultaneous-treatment condition. The in vitro inhibition assay results showed that at concentration below MNTD, all compounds exhibited inhibitory activity against DENV2 in a dose dependent manner, indicated by the absence of cytopathic effects. The inhibitory potency strength exhibited was between 73% to 100% against both 1000 TCID₅₀ (p>0.05) and 100 TCID₅₀ (p<0.05). Results of the fluorescence scanning microscopy showed that all cytoskeletal changes induced by DENV2 infection were managed by the inhibitory activity of chalconesand azepines-derivatives in BHK21 cells. In conclusion, we proposed that the purified furin host protease to have high substrate specificity and highly potential to be developed as screening tool for anti-furin compounds. More importantly, the synthetic chalcones- and azepines-derivatives are suitable candidates for the development of therapeutics against dengue infection.


With drilling and exploration occurring in ever deeper waters and harsh environmental conditions, the ability to properly plan critical operations such as deployment and retrieval of the drilling riser becomes increasingly important. Particularly in deepwater high current environments, deployment and retrieval operations can be limited by the length of time it takes to deploy or retrieve the riser and the danger of the riser joints binding in the diverter housing. These limitations can have significant impact on both operations and riser integrity. Drilling contractors have devised a number of means of conducting operations in high current environments in order to increase operational up-time and mitigate the risks involved. One approach is drift-running, where the drilling rig is positioned upstream of the well at the start of the deployment operation and the rig is allowed to drift in a controlled manner to the well as the riser is deployed. This procedure effectively reduces the current loading on the riser, thereby allowing the riser to be deployed without risk of binding in the diverter housing. This paper describes an on-board simulation tool designed for use on dynamically-positioned (DP) drilling rigs that can be used to plan deployment/retrieval and drift-running operations. The tool is a development of an on-board drift-off simulator that has been in operation on-board the latest generation of DP drillships for some time. The simulator uses a fully-coupled 3D finite element (FE) model of the riser system, thereby allowing accurate determination of the riser response to current loading. The simulator computes the angle of the riser in the diverter housing throughout the deployment/retrieval process. Additionally, the simulator can compute the optimum drift speed of the vessel to minimise the riser angle. Based on the results of these simulations, the on-board tool can determine the feasibility of deploying or retrieving the riser and can compute the required vessel track for carrying out drift-running operations. The tool allows on-board personnel to plan these operations using either prevailing or forecast metocean conditions. The key features of the on-board simulator are discussed, with particular emphasis on the procedure used to compute the drift-running track for the drilling rig during riser deployment. The benefits of the system in planning deployment/retrieval operations are illustrated by means of a number of case-studies.Copyright © 2007 by ASME


Recent experiments have shown that naive speakers find borderline contradictions involving vague predicates acceptable. In Cobreros et al. ( Journal of Philosophical Logic, 41, 347–385, 2012a) we proposed a pragmatic explanation of the acceptability of borderline contradictions, building on a three-valued semantics. In a reply, Alxatib et al. ( Journal of Philosophical Logic, 42, 619–634, 2013) show, however, that the pragmatic account predicts the wrong interpretations for some examples involving disjunction, and propose as a remedy a semantic analysis instead, based on fuzzy logic. In this paper we provide an explicit global pragmatic interpretation rule, based on a somewhat richer semantics, and show that with its help the problem can be overcome in pragmatics after all. Furthermore, we use this pragmatic interpretation rule to define a new (nonmonotonic) consequence-relation and discuss some of its properties.


Lack of waste management facilities from mountain region often lead to uncontrolled disposal of waste on river banks polluting the local environment and damaging the tourism potential. Geographical conditions influences the distribution of human settlements which are located along the rivers and its tributaries. This paper aims to estimate the amounts of household waste generated and uncollected disposed into mountain rivers, taking into account several factors such as:proximity of rivers to the human settlements, the morphology of villages, length of river that crosses the locality(built up areas), local population, the access to waste collection services and waste management infrastructure. Vulnerability of rivers to illegal dumping is performed using GIS techniques, highlighting the localities pressure on rivers in close proximity. For this purpose, it developed a calculation model for estimation the amounts of waste (kg) that are dumped on a river section (m) that crosses a locality (village) or it is in close proximity. This estimation is based on the "principle of proximity and minimum effort" it can be applied in any mountainous region that are lacking or partially access to waste collection services. It is an assessment tool of mountain rivers vulnerability to waste dumping,taking into account the geographical and demographic conditions of the study area. Also the current dysfunctions are analyzed based on field observations.


One of the arguments in favour of local governments is their ability to deliver public services better because of their proximity to demand. This is typically achieved through decentralisation – the transfer of some level of formal responsibility, authority and/or resources to smaller, lower tiers of government. This paper examines service delivery in the health sector in Kenya within the context of the country's newly introduced devolved system of government, which created 47 county governments under the 2010 Constitution. It examines three key responsibilities: i) resource mobilisation, distribution and administration, ii) decision-making, and iii) political accountability, and their bearing on outcomes for delivery of health services. The paper argues that devolution of the health function in Kenya has been only partial, leading to challenges of coordination between the national and county governments and ambiguity over responsibility for service delivery; both factors which risk undermining the opportunities that devolution creates or promises.


Knowledge exchange involves sharing ideas, expertise and approaches among individuals, communities or organisations within an open design space, such as workshop-like events. These spaces enable people to engage collaboratively in the design and decision-making of projects, programmes and policies that affect their lives, where tools are often used to support creative engagement activities that aim at achieving a desired outcome. However, many generic tools or prescribed tools do not fit to skills or expectations of those participating in knowledge exchange processes. One approach to design better creative engagement is to improve tools for specific contexts as well as the flexibility in tool use to fit different design practices. Within this scenario, this thesis proposes a framework to improve tools as a response to the research question: How can knowledge exchange tools be improved? The framework called Improvement Matrix was built through a literature review on the knowledge exchange approaches of co-design and participatory design, and tested in practice through a series of workshops as part of an action research. Drawing on the theories and practices of designing tools, the framework was tested through three case studies, where engagement practitioners genuinely interested in improving tools to develop their practice, co-designed improvements of tools using three dimensions within the overlapping practices of planning, facilitating and doing activities, providing evidence to develop a deep understanding of the proposed framework. In conclusion, the review of the case study findings with experts in participatory design approaches and tools, suggested that the developed framework was useful and applicable to a variety of knowledge exchange practices, promoting new ways of thinking about the design of tools and workshops. Further research involves exploring the framework with designers, practitioners or other design research areas to see how it would work in practice, tracking changes in the framework over time.


In the spring of 1998, numerous fires from seasonal biomass burning in Central America, mainly in Mexico and Guatemala, produced aerosol particles that were advected into the central plains of the United States. The effects of the fires continued from approximately April 9 through June 11. The most intense smoke concentration was on May 8 as seen from a NASA Shuttle mission. Characteristics of cloud‐to‐ground (CG) lightning flashes recorded by the National Lightning Detection Network were examined for May 1998 by subtracting the lightning characteristics for May 1995–1997, and 1999. This produces "difference value" maps with approximately 100 km resolution for polarity, peak currents, and multiplicity. Several significant differences are revealed. The percentage of positive flashes increased by a factor of two. Median first stroke peak currents have been calculated for both positive and negative flashes. For negative flashes, the median peak current decreased during the fire period. For positive flashes, the median peak current increased by over 20 kA in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and Nebraska. Mean multiplicity values, or the number of strokes per flash, were calculated. Positive flash multiplicity did not change. Mean multiplicity values for negative flashes, however, changed dramatically. For a region including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Louisiana multiplicity values for negative flashes decreased from 2.8 to 1.0–1.4 strokes per flash. The data analyzed were a corrected set from which we had deleted positive flashes with peak currents less than 10 kA, thus removing most of the intracloud contamination. Further studies may reveal the relation between the effect of pollution and aerosol size on the characteristics of CG flashes.


Phytoplankton community structure and the physicochemical characteristics of three reactor cooling reservoirs in close proximity and of similar age and bottom type were studied during 1978. The three reservoirs differed in thermal alteration resulting from reactor cooling water as follows: (1) considerable heating with lake-wide temperatures >30/sup 0/C, even in winter; (2) a maximal 5/sup 0/C increase occurring in only one of three major arms of the reservoir; and (3) no thermal effluent received during the study period. Considerable spatial and temporal differences in water quality and phytoplankton community structure were observed; however, water temperature independent of other environmental factors (e.g., light and nutrients) was found to be a relatively unimportant variable for explaining phytoplankton periodicity.


: IT security presently lacks the benefits of physics where certain unifying grand principles can be applied. The aim of the method is to provide a technology independent method of identifying components of a system in general, and of information systems in particular. The need for the proposed method is derived from ad hoc character of theories used in the present formal security textbooks. None of these can give the user any guarantee of completeness. The new method is scientifically derived as a method, presented, explained and applied to several interesting topics in the field of health care information systems. Some simple mathematical formulae can be introduced.


Abstract Over the last decade, sustainable energy consumption has attracted the attention of scientists and researchers. The current paper presents sustainability indicators of a small scale turbojet engine, operated on micro-aerial vehicles, for discussion of the sustainable development of the aviation industry from a different perspective. Experimental data was obtained from an engine at full power load and utilized to conduct an exergy-based sustainability analysis. Exergy efficiency, waste exergy ratio, recoverable exergy ratio, environmental effect factor, exergy destruction factor and exergetic sustainability index are evaluated as exergetic sustainability indicators of the turbojet engine under investigation in the current study. The exergy efficiency of the small scale turbojet engine is calculated as 27.25 % whereas the waste exergy ratio, the exergy destruction factor and the sustainability index of the engine are found to be 0.9756, 0.5466 and 0.2793, respectively.


Macroautophagy often abbreviated by "autophagy" is an intracellular degradation mechanism linked to lysosomal activity. Autophagy is conserved from yeast to mammals and plays a role in the response to energetic stress and in organelle homeostasis. Autophagy is also involved in the regulation of immunity, in particular in the adaptive immune response, which involves B and T lymphocytes. It was indeed shown that autophagy impacts the development of B and T cells as well as the education of T cells in the thymus. Autophagy also modulates activation, survival and polarization of T cells. It plays a role in antigen presentation by B cells, and in their TLR-mediated activation, and thus likely in their initial activation. Finally, autophagy is required for the survival of memory lymphocytes and effector cells like antibody-producing plasma cells. Interestingly, autophagy is deregulated in several autoimmune pathologies. The modulation of this phenomenon could possibly lead to new treatments aiming at limiting lymphocyte activation driving these pathologies.


The aim of this study as to analyze published evidence regarding the effectiveness of aromatase inhibitor therapy on improving spermatogenesis in infertile men. We carried out a systematic review of randomized controlled trials. The date of the most recent search was October 4, 2015. Two authors independently selected relevant clinical trials, assessing their methodological quality and extracting data. Three studies were included in this review with a total of 100 participants; however, we were able to include data from only 54 participants in the analysis. In the representation of meta-analysis with a single study comparing testolactone versus placebo, related to the hormone concentrations, there was a statistically significance difference favoring the use of testolactone for Luteinizing Hormone (LH); Estrogen (E2); free Testosterone (free T); free Estrogen (free E2); 17-Hydroxyprogesterone (17OHP); prolactin (PRL). In another analysis from a single study comparing letrozole versus anastrozole, there was also a statistically significance difference favoring the use of letrozole for the increase in both the sperm count and LH. There is only low quality evidence regarding the effectiveness of aromatase inhibitor therapy in infertile men. Further trials are needed with standardized interventions and outcomes.


Hanseniasis patients and contacts of Virchowian patients, totaling 467 persons have been submitted to Mitsuda's reaction. These individuals have been divided into five groups: group 1 compounded of 59 persons, relatives of Virchowian patients; group 2 - 171 persons, employees of the Hospital Lauro de Souza Lima working there for more than one year; group 3 - 127 hanseniasis patients in activity, Mitsuda negative; group 4 - 63 hanseniasis patients in activity, Mitsuda positive; group 5 - 47 Virchowian patients, inactive, Mitsuda negative. The analysis of the data showed that: a) hanseniasis patients, both Mitsuda positive and negative, do not present positivity to Fernandez's reaction; b) early reaction can be observed more frequently in individuals of group 1 than in those of group 2. Mitsuda's antigen causes the reversal of Fernandez's reaction in about 30% of indirect contacts; c) the percentage of negative Mitsuda's reactions (without induration) does not differ between groups 1 and 2, though indurations smaller than 5 mm have been as many as 10 times more frequent in individuals of group 1. A second application of the antigen in Mitsuda negative persons showed the reversal of the test in 100% of the tested subjects.


The HLA-DR-associated peptides from peripheral blood mononuclear cells of 2 patients with plasmacytoma and 1 with chronic myeloid leukemia were isolated, identified, and compared. Several were identified as derivatives of the defensin family. Defensins (or human neutrophil peptides [HNP]) are antimicrobial, cationic peptides of 29 to 35 amino acids in length and are the major constituents of the azurophilic granules of human neutrophils. Using peripheral blood cells from leukapheresis, containing about 90% of polymorphonuclear cells, we could identify HNP-1, -2, and -4 and propeptides of up to 49 amino acids in length, eluted from HLA class II molecules. Binding of isolated and synthetic defensin peptides to various HLA-DR alleles using an in vitro binding/competition assay based on size exclusion chromatography revealed that defensin may bind into the peptide-binding groove. In a T-cell competition assay, defensins were able to reduce the proliferation of an HLA-DR-restricted T-cell line after preincubation of stimulating cells (CHO-DRB1*0401 transfectants) with defensin. Therefore, binding of defensins might prevent T-cell recognition of HLA class II molecules expressed on different blood precursor cells (all of which are "nonprofessional" antigen-presenting cells) by blocking the HLA peptide-binding groove or, alternatively, might protect defensin-expressing cells from self-destruction. (Blood. 2000;95:2890-2896)


Objective: The efficacy of anti-tumour necrosis factor-α (anti-TNF-α) treatment with infliximab (IFX) may be reduced by the development of anti-drug antibodies (ADAs). This study evaluated drug concentration and the presence of ADAs, relative to response, in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients treated with IFX. Method: Ninety-four RA patients were consecutively included and assessed for disease activity at baseline, and after 14, and 30 or 52 weeks. Serum IFX concentration and ADAs were analysed using in-house enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. ADA analysis was based on binding to TNF-α-coated plates, with the lower detection limit set at mean + 2 sd of controls. Results: At 14 and 52 weeks, 74.5% of the patients had moderate to good response. Good responders had significantly higher IFX concentrations than moderate and poor responders at 52 weeks (6.6 ± 1.4 µg/mL vs 3.6 ± 1.3 µg/mL and 2.6 ± 1.6 µg/mL, respectively). An IFX concentration ≥4.66 µg/mL at 14 weeks yielded a moderate to good response at 30/52 weeks, with 91.3% specificity and 39.3% sensitivity. Eleven patients dropped out owing to lack of efficacy and eight owing to side effects; three with IFX concentration ≤ 0.5 µg/mL were ADA positive. At an IFX concentration ≤ 0.5 µg/mL, 43.8% and 30.1% at 14 and 52 weeks, respectively, were ADA positive. None of the good responders had ADAs. Conclusion: One-quarter of patients had an IFX concentration ≤ 0.5 µg/mL but only 11.7% had ADAs. High IFX concentration was related to a good response, suggesting that the lack of response could be due to a lack of IFX, rather than to the presence of ADAs.


Focusing on the Korean auxiliary verb pair -e twu- and -e noh-, this study attempts to introduce a corpus analysis to detect the distinctiveness of two synonymous constructions. As the Korean verb twu- 'to put' and noh- 'to put' are considered synonymous, the corresponding auxiliary verb pair -e twu- and -e noh-also have been commonly assumed to be synonyms. In this study, the syntactic and semantic features of the Korean auxiliary verb pair -e twu- and -e noh are examined based on the actual usage in Korean corpus data. Using methods of distinctive collexeme analysis, two main questions are investigated: whether both auxiliary verbs can be used interchangeably as synonyms and what their distinctive features are. The results of the analysis provide three semantic groups of main verbs that attract to each auxiliary verb: verbs of preservation, cognitive activities and releasing for -e twu-; verbs of motion, dispersion and creation for -e noh-. Based on the semantic analysis of the co-occurred main verbs, this study argues that each auxiliary verb in question has its own distinctive semantic features; and that distinctive semantic features of main verbs are influential factors in choosing one particular auxiliary verb from two synonymous auxiliary verb constructions. This study also explored how the distinctive collexeme analysis could benefit to teaching two synonymous constructions and the potential of cognitive linguistic approaches on Korean language instructions. Based on the result of the case study, I suggested that the list of distinctive collexemes could provide a practical application in language instruction for the Korean auxiliary verb pair, which has similar semantic features.


Agricultural systems are no longer evaluated solely on the basis of the food they provide, but also on their capacity to limit impacts on the environment, such as soil conservation, water quality and biodiversity conservation, as well as their contribution to mitigating and adapting to climate change. In order to cope with these multiple service functions, they must internalize the costs and benefits of their environmental impact. Payments for ecosystem services are hoped to encourage and promote sustainable practices via financial incentives. The authors show that while the principle is straightforward, the practice is much more complicated. Whereas scenic beauty and protection of water sources provide benefits to the local population, carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation can be considered international public goods, rendering potential payment schemes more complex. Few examples exist where national or international bodies have been able to set up viable mechanisms that compensate agricultural systems for the environmental services they provide. However this book provides several examples of successful programs, and aims to transfer them to other regions of the world. The authors show that a product can be sold if it is clearly quantified, there exists a means to determine the service's values, and there is a willing buyer. The first two sections of the book present methodological issues related to the quantification and marketing of ecosystem services from agriculture, including agroforestry. The third and final section presents case studies of practical payments for ecosystem services and experiences in Central and South America, and draws some lessons learnt for effective and sustainable development of ecosystem services compensation mechanisms. Contents: Contributors. Foreword. Introduction. Part I. Measuring ecosystem services. 1. Principles and methods for assessing climate change mitigation as an ecosystem service in agroecosystems. 2. Quantifying services and identifying watershed priority areas for soil and water conservation programs. 3. Measuring biodiversity. 4. Ecological mechanisms for pest and disease control in coffee and cacao agroecosystems of the neotropics. 5. Services from plant-pollinator interactions in the neotropics. 6. Ecological indexing as a tool for the payment of ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes: the experience of the GEF-silvopastoral project in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Colombia. Part II. Marketing ecosystem services. 7. Estimating the cost and benefits of supplying hydrological ecosystem services: an application for small-scale rural drinking water organizations. 8. Developing a business plan for forestry and other land-use based carbon projects. 9. A functional anatomy of the project-based carbon markets. 10. The value of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. 11: PES and ecolabel: a comparative analysis of their limits and opportunities to foster environmental services provision. Part III. From theory to practice: tales of success and lessons learned. 12. Leveraging and sustainability of PES: lessons learnt in Costa Rica. 13. The Mexican PES programme: targeting for higher efficiency in environmental protection and poverty alleviation. 14. Assessing the impact of institutional design of payments for environmental services: the Costa Rican experience. 15. Certification process in the coffee value chain: achievements and limits to foster provision of environmental services. 16. Securing the continuous supply of drinking water in a territory requires concerted actions and integrating intervention strategies: a case study in Copan Ruinas, Honduras. 17. Payment for environmental services: perfecting an imperfect market, building up environmental solutions. 18. Measurement and payment of ecosystem services from agriculture and agroforestry: new insights from the neotropics


Despite their promising performance, deep neural networks have shown sensitivities to perturbations of their inputs (e.g., adversarial examples) and their learned feature representations are often difficult to interpret, raising concerns about their true capability and trustworthiness. Recent work in adversarial training, a form of robust optimization in which the model is optimized against adversarial examples, demonstrates the ability to improve performance sensitivities to perturbations and yield feature representations that are more interpretable. Adversarial training, however, comes with an increased computational cost over that of standard (i.e., nonrobust) training, rendering it impractical for use in large-scale problems. Recent work suggests that a fast approximation to adversarial training shows promise for reducing training time and maintaining robustness in the presence of perturbations bounded by the infinity norm. In this work, we demonstrate that this approach extends to the Euclidean norm and preserves the human-aligned feature representations that are common for robust models. Additionally, we show that using a distributed training scheme can further reduce the time to train robust deep networks. Fast adversarial training is a promising approach that will provide increased security and explainability in machine learning applications for which robust optimization was previously thought to be impractical.


Solid state reactions between amorphous Si and crystalline Co have been investigated by 4W electrical resistance and TEM. Multilayered (with 10 periods of 5nm a-Si/5nm Co and 10 nma- Si/10nm Co layers) as well as tri-layered samples (20nm a-Si/3nmCoSi/6nm Co) were produced by magnetron sputtering and isothermally heat treated at different temperatures between 473 and 523K. From the time evolution of the normalized resistance the kinetics of the process were determined by fitting a power law, tk, and k was between 0.8 and 1. Possibility of the interface reaction control and/or the effect of the diffusion asymmetry (which was recently published for the non-parabolic interface shifts on the nanoscale) will be discussed.


Registries from North America, Australia and Europe are rich sources of clinical data on pregnancy after kidney transplantation. Single-center reports of pregnancy outcomes are limited by small sample sizes but not by the potential reporting bias that can impact registry data. Despite the differences in data pools, the obstetric and graft outcomes reported by single centers and registries have been similar. The majority of pregnancies are successful in renal transplant patients, but the risk of complications like pre-eclampsia, low birth weight and premature birth is high. Pregnancy has no significant impact on graft function or survival when baseline function is normal.


For mobile robots to be able to work with and for people and thus operatein our everyday environments, they need to be able to acquire knowledge through perception. In other words they need to collect sensor measure- ments from which they extract meaningful information. This thesis covers some of the essential components of a robot perception system combining omnidirectional vision, odometry, and 3D laser range finders, from modeling to extrinsic calibration, from feature extraction to ego-motion estimation. We covers all these topics from the "point of view" of an omnidirectional camera. The contributions of this work are several and are listed here. The thesis starts with an overview of the geometry of central omnidirectional cameras and gives also an overview of previous calibration methods. The contributions of this section are three. The first two are a new generalized model for describing both dioptric and catadioptric cameras and a calibration method which takes advantage of planar grids shown around the cameras, like the method in use for standard perspective cameras. The third contribution is the implementation of a toolbox for Matlab (called OCamCalib and freely available on-line), which implements the proposed calibration procedure. The second part of the thesis is dedicated to the extraction and matching of vertical features from omnidirectional images. Vertical features are usually very predominant in indoor and outdoor structured environments and can then be very useful for robot navigation. The contribution of this part is a new method for matching vertical lines. The proposed method takes ad-vantage of a descriptor that is very distinctive for each feature. Furthermore, this descriptor is invariant to rotation and slight changes of illumination. The third part of the thesis is devoted to the extrinsic calibration of an omnidirectional camera with the odometry (i.e. wheel encoders) of a mobile robot. The contribution of this part is a new method of automatic self-iii calibration while the robot is moving. The method is based on an extended Kalman filter that combines the encoder readings with the bearing angle observations of one ore more vertical features in the environment. Furthermore, an example of robot motion estimation is shown using the so calibrated camera-odometry system. The fourth part of the thesis is dedicated to the extrinsic calibration of an omnidirectional camera with a 3D laser range finder. The contribution of this method is that it uses no calibration object. Conversely, calibration is performed using laser-camera correspondences of natural points that are manually selected by the user. The novelty of the method resides in a new technique to visualize the usually ambiguous 3D information of range finders. We show that is possible to transform the range information into a new image where natural features of the environment are highlighted. Therefore, finding laser-camera correspondences becomes as easy as image pairing. The last part of the thesis is devoted to visual odometry for outdoor ground vehicles. We show a new method to recover the trajectory of a calibrated omnidirectional camera over several hundred of meters by combining a feature based with an appearance based approach. All the contributions of this thesis are validated through experimental results using both simulated and real data.


The Latin American and Caribbean region has made significant progress in some basic indicators of gender equality (access to education and health services and female labor force participation) and lags behind in others. However, a second generation of emerging issues suggests that, although women continue to be disadvantaged in a number of indicators, boys' underachievement in education and their participation as perpetrators and victims of violent crime require a new gender paradigm that includes male issues. Despite the traditional focus on female-related indicators, there is a clear gender dimension to the problems of at-risk youth, since young boys and girls engage in different kinds of risky behaviors and in different ways. Boys and girls also tend to engage differently with schools, communities, and the labor market. This implies that programs and policies need to be designed and implemented with different approaches and tools to benefit and to reach effectively both girls and boys.


Taking into account the previous experimental results obtained by NMR, new procedures for identifying diffusion coefficients for codiffusing benzene and hexane in intra- and intercrystallite spaces of ZSM 5 zeolite were implemented, using high-speed gradient methods and mathematical diffusion models, as well as the NMR spectra of the adsorbed mass distribution of each component in the zeolite bed. These diffusion coefficients were obtained as a function of time for different positions along the bed. Benzene and hexane concentrations in the inter- and intracrystallite spaces were calculated for every position in the bed and for different adsorption times.


Abstract The nature of two explosions that were witnessed within 3 s at the Chernobyl-4 reactor less than a minute after 21:23:00 UTC on April 25, 1986, have since then been the subject of sprawling interpretations. This paper renders the following hypothesis. The first explosion consisted of thermal neutron mediated nuclear explosions in one or rather a few fuel channels, which caused a jet of debris that reached an altitude of some 2500 to 3000 m. The second explosion would then have been the steam explosion most experts believe was the first one. The solid support for this new scenario rests on two pillars and three pieces of corroborating evidence. The first pillar is that a group at the V. G. Khlopin Radium Institute in then Leningrad on April 29, 1986, detected newly produced, or fresh, xenon fission products at Cherepovets, 370 km north of Moscow and far away from the major track of Chernobyl debris ejected by the steam explosion and subsequent fires. The second pillar is built on state-of-the-art meteorological dispersion calculations, which show that the fresh xenon signature observed at Cherepovets was only possible if the injection altitude of the fresh debris was considerably higher than that of the bulk reactor core releases that turned toward Scandinavia and central Europe. These two strong pieces of evidence are corroborated by what were manifest physical effects of a downward jet in the southeastern part of the reactor, by seismic measurements some 100 km west of the reactor, and by observations of a blue flash above the reactor a few seconds after the first explosion.


Latina butch/femme literatures and cultural productions are essential components of the lesbian, gender, queer, and ethnic literary canons of the late 20th century. While butch/femme—a term that references particular lesbian sexual cultures and queer female gender practices—emerged within working-class and lesbian-of-color communities roughly in the 1940s, Latina lesbians in the 1980s and 1990s began to use the anthology form to pronounce boldly how their lesbian sexualities, erotic desires, and alternative gender expressions mutually informed their racial, ethnic, and class-based identities. While anthologies created the space to engage butch/femme and its racialized class meanings of butch/femme, the growth in women of color feminist theories further catalyzed writers to contextualize their earlier provisional embrace of Latina butch/femme, which feminist, lesbian, and ethnic nationalist ideologues variously derided. Still, while Latina lesbian cultural production and literary output increased, engagements with butch/femme were veiled, with some accounts paralleling the larger social unease with what many believed enforced the reproduction of oppressive heterosexual dynamics. While photographic images indelibly document the ubiquity of butch/femme lived practice, the literary archive of explicitly imagined and referenced Latina butch/femme is limited, and its overall force lies in its suggestive discursive qualities and a late 20th century iconic set of authors with which it is associated. Key writers of the period tended to meditate extensively on Latina butch gender and sexuality concerns, while it was not until the turn of the 21st century that the Latina femme garnered the same in-depth critical treatment. The decoupling of butch/femme also enables an expansion of discrete critical and creative femme and butch offerings, while writers settle into unequivocally evoking the erotic grammars of butch/femme gender and sexuality in forms of poetry, novel, and film.


Low phytic acid (LPA) wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one approach to improving nutritional quality of wheat by reducing the major storage form of phosphorus and increasing the level of inorganic phosphorus, which is more readily absorbed by humans and other monogastric animals. Milling and baking quality evaluations were conducted on hard red, hard white, and soft white spring wheat grain from field trials to evaluate the effects of the LPA genotype on the end-use quality of wheat. In hard wheat backgrounds, the LPA genotypes were not associated with detrimental effects on flour protein concentration, dough mixing properties, or bread loaf volume. LPA wheats had consistent, substantial increases (up to 0.93 g kg 21 ) in flour ash concentration relative to wild-type (WT) wheats. Higher flour ash in WT wheats is often a sign of higher aluerone and bran fragments which are visually evident in dulling of Asian noodles color. However, initial alkaline noodle brightness (L* 5 86.8–87.5) from hard white LPA flours was at least as high as from hard white wild-type flours (L* 5 86.1–87.9). LPA genotypes have demonstrated a significant redistribution of minerals from the bran to the endosperm; this redistribution of minerals most likely caused the increase in flour ash rather than greater partitioning of bran into the flour. In the soft wheat background, LPA genotypes had greater sodium carbonate and sucrose SRC (31 and 43 g kg 21 greater than wild type, respectively), suggesting that LPA wheats milled with greater apparent starch damage and/or pentosan content than WT sib lines.


textabstractBasic assumptions • There is wide interest in connecting issues of (i) occupational culture, (ii) compliance/ misconduct, (iii) remuneration and (iv) clawback (the bonus/malus debate). • Individual-focussed measures (supervision, remuneration and measures in civil or criminal law) must be supplemented by a wider, whole-firm regulatory strategy. • Whilst attention has been drawn to 'the tone at the top', 'the tone in the middle' and 'the tone at the bottom' are as important. Collectively, mid- and lower-level staff see and know more than chief executives or boards. To reform culture, all levels need to be properly incentivised. • In cases of rule-breaking, recklessness or malfeasance, clawing back a proportion of past and/or present remuneration is a matter of economic justice. • However, questions about who to hold (co-)responsible and to target for recoveries need to be more imaginatively addressed than hitherto. Up to now, some of those working in the financial services industry have passively gained from the recklessness and misdemeanours of their peers – for example, through group bonuses – whilst not being at any risk of clawbacks unless they are also are flagrantly involved. All rewards for passive connivance should be withdrawn, indeed reversed. Recommendations • The Commission should recommend collective responsibility, financial accountability and clawbacks – applying laterally to co-workers of miscreants, as well as vertically to management. This would animate the occupational culture, incentivising all levels of banking staff, in a proactive and precautionary manner, to bring informal pressure to bear against reckless or improper practices and, where that fails, to trigger formal investigation, via reporting and whistleblowing. • A forthright approach would be to go for such linked cultural and remuneration reforms across the whole sector. A more tentative and exploratory step would be to use the (partly) publicly-owned banks as a testing ground. An alternative would be to require such reforms selectively, as conditions of settlement with regulators. If monitoring over time finds that the changes seem positive, then that could provide ammunition for wider change across the industry. Future work • Further thought needs to be given to the relationship between occupational culture within banking, and broader shifts of sentiment associated with the business cycle. • The relationship between (a) risk-taking and (b) the implicit public guarantees enjoyed by banks and liquidity support by central banks remains problematic.


We evaluated the effect of Fe/Alumina Catalyst contained different Cadmium contents and two synthesis temperatures on producing carbon nanotubes by chemical vapor deposition of methane as a feedstock.  X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), N2 adsorption-desorption, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Raman spectroscopy and Thermogravimetry analysis (TGA) were used for characterizing of synthesized catalysts and carbon nanotubes.  Raman spectrum confirmed the presence of carbon nanotubes. TGA showed larger deposited carbon nanotubes in certain cadmium contents and higher synthesis temperature of 950 °C. Based on morphological assessment in SEM images, the increase in cadmium content leads to the decrease in diameter of resulted carbon nanotubes


Sustainable development is a shared responsibility. Accelerating sustainability of water–energy–people nexus and building a common awareness of issues pertaining to sustainable development are essential for any sort of success in this direction. Hydropower has been a useful sustainable energy for development, yet highly controversial. This paper reviews the overall situation of hydropower development and China's energy reforms and policies, accompanied with a case study of hydropower development the Lancang River by the HydroLancang, aiming to illustrate the two opposite sides of hydropower development—economy and environment. The paper concludes with a neutral view of hydropower as the necessary facilitator for development. Water is a shared responsibility. Hydropower might not be the optimum solution to eliminate the tension between human demand of energy and finite natural resource and the rising pressure of climate change worldwide, but it serves well as an "Electricity Bridge" before better alternatives become available. This is a more balanced view of hydropower rather than two extreme viewpoints that present themselves: on the one hand, exaggerated claims of the human power to tame the wild river, and, on the other hand, the idealistic fantasy of preserving nature by abandoning all human activity.


Circling the Waters: The Keichō Embassy and Japanese-Spanish Relations in the Early Seventeenth Century Joshua Batts This project examines the fraught diplomatic and commercial relations between Tokugawa Japan (1600–1868) and the Habsburg Spanish empire in the early seventeenth century. Vessels from Japan called at the port of Acapulco in New Spain three times within a decade, the first attempt in world history at a bilateral commercial relationship across the Pacific. In doing so, the ships also challenged the Spanish monopoly over the waterways between Latin America and Asia. Japanese commercial and diplomatic outreach peaked with the Keichō Embassy to Southern Europe (1613–1620), an effort that dispatched Japanese representatives to the court of Philip III in Madrid, but failed in its mission to secure regular contact between New Spain and northeastern Japan. In analyzing these events, I contrast Japan's pursuit of commercial and diplomatic expansion with Spanish ambivalence and insularity, inverting essentializing narratives defined by Japanese isolation and European engagement. The project also compares the diplomatic models employed by each polity. I argue that Spain's established imperial vision and the shogunate's emerging hierarchical model of foreign relations placed both polities at the pinnacle of their respective diplomatic frameworks, handicapping efforts to communicate, build trust, and integrate each into the worldview of the other. Ultimately, a Spanish policy of containment closed off the Americas to Japan; soon after, the Tokugawa divested from its relationship with the Spanish Philippines in the face of alternative commercial partners and ongoing religious tension. The project thus integrates Japanese history into world history and the history of the Pacific, while questioning the notion of a straightforward commitment to expansion among Europe's early-modern empires.


The latest vehicle yields a superior safety and reduction of driving burden by monitoring the driving state of vehicle and its environment with various sensors. To detect other vehicles and objects of the rear left and right-side blind spot area of driver, provide the information about a existence of objects inside the blind spot, and give a signal to avoid collision, this study proposes the intelligent outside rear-view mirror system. This task has substantially complicated several factors. For example, the size, geometry and features of the various vehicles which might enter the monitored zone is varied widely and therefore present various reflective characteristics. This study proposes the optimal specification and configuration of optical system and IR array sensor of blind spot detection system, and shows the results of the performance evaluation of developed system.


In keeping with the 2008 RHD conference's theme of 'journeying' the argument presented in this chapter will encapsulate the changing nature and shifting pathways that an RHD student encountered as he travelled to completion of his PhD in order to become an early career academic. The candidate's contemplations describe the distance travelled and the possible road ahead. Attention is directed towards highlighting the differing forms of memberships and their influences which impacted on the journey and ultimately resulted in a change in the theoretical and methodological stance. By exploring these memberships, attention will be directed to the influences and subsequent relationships the candidate experienced in his journey. The vignettes that follow are collectively shaped and reshaped through such relationships and are viewed as pivotal points in the candidate's development as an early career academic. By recording these, specific meanings can be drawn forth and the RHD experience can be represented. More precisely, the candidate's experiences were fashioned through a process of enculturation, which collectively gave rise to a sense of being within a research community. This written account will further provide illustrations as to the effects of such a process as enculturation, and the ensuing professional and personal metamorphosis that took place along the way. The candidate's RHD travels are portrayed as being a journey along a continuum where memberships, relationships and cultural immersion moved him from being a passive listener to becoming an active participant in the research community. The chapter concludes by moving beyond the past and presents possible insights into future research pathways that are yet to be journeyed.


Baldessarini et al 1 note several case reports of rapid relapse after abrupt withdrawal of clozapine therapy and mention 5 cases of their own. They suggest that the mechanism could include 1 or more of the following: (1) rapid elimination of clozapine from the brain, (2) enhanced release of dopamine in the brain, and (3) stimulation by dopamine of D 4 dopamine receptors that may have become supersensitive and up-regulated because of prolonged blockade by clozapine therapy. They suggest, on this basis, that thioridazine therapy might be more effective than risperidone or haloperidol to treat clozapine withdrawalinduced relapse because thioridazine has some ability to block D 4 receptors and is administered in doses similar to those of clozapine. We have carried out a randomized 2-year trial comparing clozapine and a typical neuroleptic drug (usually haloperidol) in recent onset schizophrenic patients who had minimal positive symptoms during prior treatment with neuroleptic


—Most IoT systems involve IoT devices, communication protocols, remote cloud, IoT applications, mobile apps, and the physical environment. However, existing IoT security analyses only focus on a subset of all the essential components, such as device firmware or communication protocols, and ignore IoT systems' interactive nature, resulting in limited attack detection capabilities. In this work, we propose I OTA , a logic programming-based framework to perform system-level security analysis for IoT systems. I OTA generates attack graphs for IoT systems, showing all of the system resources that can be compromised and enumerating potential attack traces. In building I OTA , we design novel techniques to scan IoT systems for individual vulnerabilities and further create generic exploit models for IoT vulnerabilities. We also identify and model physical dependencies between different devices as they are unique to IoT systems and are employed by adversaries to launch complicated attacks. In addition, we utilize NLP techniques to extract IoT app semantics based on app descriptions. I OTA automatically translates vulnerabilities, exploits, and device dependencies to Prolog clauses and invokes MulVAL to construct attack graphs. To evaluate vulnerabilities' system-wide impact, we propose three metrics based on the attack graph, which provide guidance on fortifying IoT systems. Evaluation on 127 IoT CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) shows that I OTA 's exploit modeling module achieves over 80% accuracy in predicting vulnerabilities' preconditions and effects. We apply I OTA to 37 synthetic smart home IoT systems based on real-world IoT apps and devices. Experimental results show that our framework is effective and highly efficient. Among 27 shortest attack traces revealed by the attack graphs, 62.8% are not anticipated by the system administrator. It only takes 1.2 seconds to generate and analyze the attack graph for an IoT system consisting of 50 devices.


There was no monitoring specifically on fauna in the reclamation area of PT Adaro Indonesia. The objective of the research was to record fauna species in this area which had been revegetated less than two years ago. Diurnal birds as a main object were recorded through observation point and survey in four reclamation locations, but mammals, reptiles, and amphibians as supporting objects were recorded merely through survey. Data on birds was analyzed based on a five minute unit to obtain both relative frequency of presence and that of location utilization, but those of others were analyzed merely to list their presence. Thirty bird species, 1 mammal, 3 reptiles, and 4 amphibians were identified in the reclamation area, but each 1 species of mammal, reptile, and amphibian was not identified yet. Five bird species were always present in every location, although their relative frequencies of presence varied. They could be categorized as pioneer birds in the reclamation area. Nine bird species were found only in a certain location


Monoclonal antibodies have been produced against three neutrophil-associated membrane proteins (p 90, p 170, and p 70) expressed at different maturation stages of the cells. The reactivity of the antibodies against p 90 (B13.9) and p 170 (CLB-gran 10), as measured by quantitative flow cytofluorometry, increased after stimulation of the neutrophils by the calcium ionophore A23187, by phorbol myristate acetate, or by the chemoattractant formylmethionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine in combination with cytochalasin B. This increase is regulated independently of the simultaneously increased expression of the C3bi receptor, because neutrophils of a patient deficient for the C3bi receptor showed a normal increase in membrane expression of p 90 and p 170. Neutrophil cytoplasts were not inducible to increased membrane expression, suggesting that the cytoplasts lack the internal pool of these proteins. The reactivity of the antibody against p 70 (CLB-gram 5) was not affected by activation. The antibodies B13.9 and CLB-gran 10 may be useful to detect neutrophil activation.


The Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) region is one of the most rapidly warming on earth since the last 50 yr.
The WAP glaciers currently contribute one third of the melt water to global sea level rise. Climate warming is
supposed to induce important changes in polar ecosystems, from microbial communities to apex predators' levels. Macroalgae are the main biomass producers in Potter Cove located at King George Island, the biggest island of the South Shetland Arc. They are sensitive to climate change factors such as suspended particulate matter (SPM). Macroalgae presence and absence data were used to test SDMs suitability and, simultaneously, to assess the environmental response of macroalgae as well as to model four scenarios of distribution shifts by varying SPM conditions due to climate change. Species distribution models (SDM) predict species occurrence based on statistical relationships with environmental conditions. The R-package 'biomod2' which includes 10 different SDM techniques and 10 different evaluation methods was used in this study. According to the averaged evaluation scores of Relative Operating Characteristics (ROC) and True scale statistics (TSS) by models, those methods based on a multitude of decision trees such as Random Forest and Classification Tree Analysis, reached the highest predictive power followed by generalized boosted models (GBM) and maximum-entropy approaches (Maxent). The final ensemble model (EM) used 135 of 200 calculated models (TSS > 0.7) and identified hard substrate and SPM as the most influencing parameters followed by distance to glacier, total organic carbon (TOC), bathymetry and slope. The modeled current status of macroalgae distribution results in only 18.25% of earlier estimated areas populated by macroalgae in Potter Cove. The climate change scenarios show an invasive reaction of the macroalgae in case of less SPM and a retreat of the macroalgae in case of higher assumed SPM values.