Chowdhury, T., Chowdhury, M. A. H., Rahman, Md. A., Nahar, K., Chowdhury, Md. T. I. & Khan, Md. S. I. (2020). Response of Aloe vera to inorganic and organic fertilization in relation to leaf biomass yield and post harvest fertility of soil. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 26 (2), 346–354 The versatile properties of Aloe vera for various purposes have been well documented. Inorganic fertilizer along with organic manure is essential for proper plant growth maintaining soil health. The research was aimed to find out the integrated effects of inorganic fertilizer (IF) and poultry manure (PM) on the growth and leaf biomass yield of A. vera and post-harvest soil fertility along with the economics of A. vera cultivation. Different combinations of IF and PM exerted significant influence on the growth, yield attributes and leaf biomass yield of A. vera. The highest fresh leaf weight (4864 g plant-1), fresh gel weight (2956 g plant-1) and dry leaf weight (420.70 g plant-1) at harvest were obtained from the plant treated with 25% IF and 75% PM whereas the tallest plant (57.14 cm) and highest number of leaves plant-1 (18.33) were identified from the pot treated with IF100PM0. About 153% yield increase over control was noticed from IF25PM75 which was statistically identical with the yield increase of the treatment IF100PM0. Correlation studies revealed that fresh gel weight was significantly and positively correlated with plant height, number of leaves, leaf area and fresh leaf weight. The pH, organic matter, total N, available P, exchangeable K, Ca, Mg and available S, Zn, B contents of post-harvest soil were significantly increased with the increased levels of PM. Based on BCR (Benefit Cost Ratio) value (1.72), IF25PM75 was the best profitable treatment. Farmers belonging to the agro-climatic conditions of the study area may be advised to cultivate A. vera in acid soil applying 75% poultry manure along with 25% inorganic fertilizer for getting maximum leaf biomass yield and benefit maintaining soil fertility and productivity.


Herein, we report a simple and inexpensive way for the fabrication of an ultramicroelectrode and present its characterization by electrochemical techniques. The fabrication of polyaniline UME involves only two steps: modification of a gold (Au) electrode by self assembled monolayers (SAM) and then electrodeposition of polyaniline film on this thiol-coated Au electrode by using cyclic voltammetry and constant potential electrolysis methods. Two types of self-assembled monolayers (4-mercapto-1-butanol, MB, and 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid, MUA) were used, respectively, to see the effect of chain length on microelectrode formation. Microelectrode fabrication and utility of the surface was investigated by cyclic voltammetric measurements in a redox probe. The thus prepared polyaniline microelectrode was then used for DNA immobilization. Discrimination between double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) and single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) was obtained with enhanced electrochemical signals compared to a polyaniline-coated Au electrode. Different modifications on the electrode surfaces were examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM).


The anesthesic induction in children must be technically carefully performed, but also in the child's mind. Inhalation has the advantage to be painless and easy to perform. It seems more advisable to allow the child to choice his own kind of induction. The experience of our institution is reported.


In this paper, a new approach to calculating and restoring the effects of physical compaction in subsalt units is presented. The loading of subsalt units and associated physical compaction is controlled by a combination of suprasalt sedimentation and salt movements. Here it is proposed that the change in load affecting the subsalt units is equivalent to the thickness between paleosurfaces of the basin (regional levels) reconstructed for successive stratigraphic horizons. This is in contrast to suprasalt units, where the changes in load are equivalent to the thickness of the stratigraphic unit. The new approach is integrated into a complete workflow for sequential restoration in a salt basin, which involves (1) removing the effects of physical compaction in suprasalt units, (2) reconstructing the paleosurfaces of the basin (regional level), (3) restoring faults, (4) unfolding to the reconstructed regional level to restore the effects of salt movement in the suprasalt units, (5) reconstructing the change in load affecting subsalt units and restoring the associated physical compaction, and (6) restoring any isostasy and postrift thermal subsidence. Results obtained using this workflow are compared with other methodologies to assess the differences in subsalt sediment thickness and structural configurations. These results suggest that the workflow proposed in this paper will improve the accuracy of sequential restoration of subsalt hydrocarbon plays, allowing their structural configurations through time to be more accurately quantified, and will ultimately reduce the risks in developing subsalt resources.


Time transfer is the backbone of all technologies that require synchronization between stations. Wireless time transfer protocols generally employ simple and convenient one-way communication for synchronization of different nodes. However, it is argued that all one-way wireless time transfer protocols are fundamentally vulnerable to replay attacks that compromise timing information. Necessary conditions for security of a two-way time transfer protocol are proposed and proved by contradiction. Furthermore, an example compliant system is presented in detail. The uncertainty in estimation of tropospheric delay using common climatological models is studied and its effect on the accuracy of one-way time transfer and security of two-way time transfer is presented. Analysis of these models suggest they are adequate for nanosecond-level accurate time transfer over links that are shorter than 10 km, but more sophisticated weather estimation techniques are needed if this accuracy is to be achieved over long distances.


The aim of the present study was to isolate and characterize novel nitrate reductase (NR)-deficient mutants, which may be useful for the transgenic manipulation of Dunaliella salina. Three NR-deficient mutants of D. salina, J-1, J-2, and J-3, were successfully isolated by screening for chlorate resistance after chemical mutagenesis with ethylnitrosourea. NR activity was not detected in the mutants and the expression of NR mRNA was significantly decreased. Growth analysis of D. salina strains grown in media containing different nitrogen sources revealed that these mutants were capable of utilizing nitrite and urea, but not nitrate as a nitrogen source, indicating that these mutants are indeed NR-deficient. Mutation analysis of NR cDNA sequences revealed that there were 11 point mutations shared by the J-1, J-2, and J-3 mutants. Furthermore, the results of the functional complementation experiment showed that NR activity of transformant T-1 derived from J-1 was recovered to 48.1 % of that of the wild-type D. salina. The findings of the present study indicate that nitrate may be used as a selective agent rather than antibiotics or herbicides for the isolated NR-deficient mutants in future transgenic D. salina systems.


This paper investigates the secrecy performance of the multiple-input single-output visible light communication (VLC) wiretap channel. The considered system model comprises three nodes: a transmitter (Alice) equipped with multiple fixtures of LEDs, a legitimate receiver (Bob), and an eavesdropper (Eve), each equipped with one photo-diode. The VLC channel is modeled as a real-valued amplitude-constrained Gaussian channel. Eve is assumed to be randomly located in the same area as Bob. Due to this, artificial noise-based beamforming is adopted as a transmission strategy in order to degrade Eve's signal-to-noise ratio. Assuming discrete input signaling, we derive an achievable secrecy rate in a closed-form expression as a function of the beamforming vectors and the input distribution. We investigate the average secrecy performance of the system using stochastic geometry to account for the location randomness of Eve. We also adopt the truncated discrete generalized normal (TDGN) as a discrete input distribution. We present several examples through which we confirm the accuracy of the analytical results via Monte Carlo simulations. The results also demonstrate that the TDGN distribution, albeit being not optimal, yields performance close to the secrecy capacity.


1. Understanding avian diet preferences reveals a great deal about the birds' digestive physiology and relationships with food plants, and can make a valuable contribution towards directing physiological and ecological research. Importantly, diet preferences are likely to reflect physiological constraints and therefore mechanisms of digestion.

2. We assessed the interaction between diet concentration and sugar-type preferences of three Australian nectarivorous bird species. Each individual bird was offered paired energetically-equivalent diets: a sucrose solution and hexose (1:1 mixture of glucose:fructose) solution over a range of diet concentrations from 0.075 to 2 mol L-1 Sucrose Equivalents (SE).

3. Similar patterns were found for all three species. Intake on the most dilute diets was insufficient to maintain energy balance, suggesting that these birds faced physiological constraints on such diets.

4. All three species demonstrated a preference for hexose over sucrose when offered dilute diets, and sucrose (or none) preference on more concentrated diets. The three species differed in terms of when this switch from hexose to sucrose preference took place. Rainbow lorikeets (Psittacidae, c. 135 g body mass) demonstrated hexose preference for diets up to and including 0.75 mol L-1 SE; sucrose was preferred on 2 mol L-1 SE diets. Red wattlebirds (Meliphagidae, c. 105 g) showed hexose preference on only the most dilute (0.075 mol L-1 SE) diet, and sucrose preference on 1 and 2 mol L -1 SE diets. New Holland honeyeaters (Meliphagidae, c. 22 g) preferred hexose on 0.075 and 0.1 mol L-1 SE diets, and their selectivity for sucrose was not statistically significant. We suggest that the switch from hexose preference may be directly related to the digestive capacity of different taxa.

5. Accumulating evidence suggests similar patterns of sugar preferences in various nectarivorous bird lineages. A switch from hexose preference on dilute diets to sucrose preference on concentrated diets has now been shown for hummingbirds, flowerpiercers, sunbirds, honeyeaters and lorikeets. Hexose preference on dilute diets suggests that reduced digesta retention time and low sugar concentration influences sucrose hydrolysis efficiency, whilst absorption rate of monosaccharides is less limiting. Sucrose preference on concentrated diets is more puzzling, but may reflect preference for diets with lower osmolality. Varying preferences suggest that the co-evolutionary relationships between birds and nectar sugar composition are likely to be similarly dynamic and situation dependent.


BACKGROUND
Work disability such as sickness absence is common in people with depression.

OBJECTIVES
To evaluate the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing work disability in employees with depressive disorders.

SEARCH METHODS
We searched CENTRAL (The Cochrane Library), MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, and PsycINFO until April 4th 2020.

SELECTION CRITERIA
We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and cluster-RCTs of work-directed and clinical interventions for depressed people that included days of sickness absence or being off work as an outcome. We also analysed the effects on depression and work functioning.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Two review authors independently extracted the data and rated the certainty of the evidence using GRADE. We used standardised mean differences (SMDs) or risk ratios (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) to pool study results in studies we judged to be sufficiently similar.  MAIN RESULTS: In this update, we added 23 new studies. In total, we included 45 studies with 88 study arms, involving 12,109 participants with either a major depressive disorder or a high level of depressive symptoms. Risk of bias The most common types of bias risk were detection bias (27 studies) and attrition bias (22 studies), both for the outcome of sickness absence. Work-directed interventions Work-directed interventions combined with clinical interventions A combination of a work-directed intervention and a clinical intervention probably reduces days of sickness absence within the first year of follow-up (SMD -0.25, 95% CI -0.38 to -0.12; 9 studies; moderate-certainty evidence). This translates back to 0.5 fewer (95% CI -0.7 to -0.2) sick leave days in the past two weeks or 25 fewer days during one year (95% CI -37.5 to -11.8). The intervention does not lead to fewer persons being off work beyond one year follow-up (RR 0.96, 95% CI 0.85 to 1.09; 2 studies, high-certainty evidence). The intervention may reduce depressive symptoms (SMD -0.25, 95% CI -0.49 to -0.01; 8 studies, low-certainty evidence) and probably has a small effect on work functioning (SMD -0.19, 95% CI -0.42 to 0.06; 5 studies, moderate-certainty evidence) within the first year of follow-up.  Stand alone work-directed interventions A specific work-directed intervention alone may increase the number of sickness absence days compared with work-directed care as usual (SMD 0.39, 95% CI 0.04 to 0.74; 2 studies, low-certainty evidence) but probably does not lead to more people being off work within the first year of follow-up (RR 0.93, 95% CI 0.77 to 1.11; 1 study, moderate-certainty evidence) or beyond (RR 1.00, 95% CI 0.82 to 1.22; 2 studies, moderate-certainty evidence). There is probably no effect on depressive symptoms (SMD -0.10, 95% -0.30 CI to 0.10; 4 studies, moderate-certainty evidence) within the first year of follow-up and there may be no effect on depressive symptoms beyond that time (SMD 0.18, 95% CI -0.13 to 0.49; 1 study, low-certainty evidence). The intervention may also not lead to better work functioning (SMD -0.32, 95% CI -0.90 to 0.26; 1 study, low-certainty evidence) within the first year of follow-up.   Psychological interventions A psychological intervention, either face-to-face, or an E-mental health intervention, with or without professional guidance, may reduce the number of sickness absence days, compared with care as usual (SMD -0.15, 95% CI -0.28 to -0.03; 9 studies, low-certainty evidence). It may also reduce depressive symptoms (SMD -0.30, 95% CI -0.45 to -0.15, 8 studies, low-certainty evidence). We are uncertain whether these psychological interventions improve work ability (SMD -0.15 95% CI -0.46 to 0.57; 1 study; very low-certainty evidence). Psychological intervention combined with antidepressant medication Two studies compared the effect of a psychological intervention combined with antidepressants to antidepressants alone. One study combined psychodynamic therapy with tricyclic antidepressant (TCA) medication and another combined telephone-administered cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). We are uncertain if this intervention reduces the number of sickness absence days (SMD -0.38, 95% CI -0.99 to 0.24; 2 studies, very low-certainty evidence) but found that there may be no effect on depressive symptoms (SMD -0.19, 95% CI -0.50 to 0.12; 2 studies, low-certainty evidence). Antidepressant medication only Three studies compared the effectiveness of SSRI to selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI) medication on reducing sickness absence and yielded highly inconsistent results. Improved care Overall, interventions to improve care did not lead to fewer days of sickness absence, compared to care as usual (SMD -0.05, 95% CI -0.16 to 0.06; 7 studies, moderate-certainty evidence). However, in studies with a low risk of bias, the intervention probably leads to fewer days of sickness absence in the first year of follow-up (SMD -0.20, 95% CI -0.35 to -0.05; 2 studies; moderate-certainty evidence). Improved care probably leads to fewer depressive symptoms (SMD -0.21, 95% CI -0.35 to -0.07; 7 studies, moderate-certainty evidence) but may possibly lead to a decrease in work-functioning (SMD 0.5, 95% CI 0.34 to 0.66; 1 study; moderate-certainty evidence). Exercise Supervised strength exercise may reduce sickness absence, compared to relaxation (SMD -1.11; 95% CI -1.68 to -0.54; one study, low-certainty evidence). However, aerobic exercise probably is not more effective than relaxation or stretching (SMD -0.06; 95% CI -0.36 to 0.24; 2 studies, moderate-certainty evidence). Both studies found no differences between the two conditions in depressive symptoms.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
A combination of a work-directed intervention and a clinical intervention probably reduces the number of sickness absence days, but at the end of one year or longer follow-up, this does not lead to more people in the intervention group being at work. The intervention may also reduce depressive symptoms and probably increases work functioning more than care as usual. Specific work-directed interventions may not be more effective than usual work-directed care alone. Psychological interventions may reduce the number of sickness absence days, compared with care as usual. Interventions to improve clinical care probably lead to lower sickness absence and lower levels of depression, compared with care as usual. There was no evidence of a difference in effect on sickness absence of one antidepressant medication compared to another. Further research is needed to assess which combination of work-directed and clinical interventions works best.


Many parasites with complex life cycles are known to modify their host phenotype to enhance transmission from the intermediate host to the definitive host. Several earlier studies explored these effects in acanthocephalan and trematode parasites, especially in aquatic ecosystems; however, much less is known about parasite-mediated alterations of host behavior in terrestrial systems involving nematodes. Here, we address this gap by investigating a trophically transmitted nematode (Pterygodermatites peromysci) that uses a camel cricket (Ceuthophilus pallidipes) as the intermediate host before transmission to the final host, the white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus). In a laboratory experiment, we quantified the anti-predatory responses of the cricket intermediate host using simulated predator cues. Results showed a decrease in jumping performance among infected crickets as compared with uninfected crickets, specifically in terms of frequency of jumps and jumping distance. Additionally, the relationship between parasite load and frequency of jumps is negatively correlated with the intensity of infection. These behavioral modifications are likely to increase vulnerability to predation by the definitive host. An analysis of the age-intensity pattern of infection in natural cricket populations appears to support this hypothesis: parasites accumulate with age, peak at an intermediate age class before the intensity of infection decreases in older age groups. We suggest that older, heavily infected crickets are preferentially removed from the population by predators because of increased vulnerability. These results show that cricket intermediate hosts infected with P. peromysci have diminished jumping performance, which is likely to impair their anti-predatory behavior and potentially facilitate parasite transmission.


In order to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy technologies such as wind power and solar photovoltaic power systems have recently become more widespread. However, Japan as a nation faces high reliance on imported fossil fuels for electricity generation despite having great potential for further renewable energy development. The focus of this study examines untapped geographical locations in Japan's northern most prefecture, Hokkaido, that possess large wind power potential. The possibility of exploiting this potential for the purpose of producing green hydrogen is explored. In particular, its integration with a year-round conversion of Kraft lignin into bio-oil from nearby paper pulp mills through a near critical water depolymerization process is examined. The proposed bio-oil and aromatic chemical production, as well as the process' economics are calculated based upon the total available Kraft lignin in Hokkaido, including the magnitude of wind power capacity that would be required for producing the necessary hydrogen for such a large-scale process. Green hydrogen integration with other processes in Japan and in other regions is also discussed. Finally, the potential benefits and challenges are outlined from an energy policy point-of-view.


Traditional sourcing arrangements for after-sales product support have centered around physical assets. Typically, a customer would pay the supplier of maintenance services in proportion to the resources used, such as spare parts, that are needed to maintain the product. In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of a new service contracting strategy called performance-based contracting (PBC). Under such a contractual relationship, the basis of supplier compensation is actual realized uptime of the product. In this study we build a game-theoretic model and compare the inefficiencies arising under the traditional resource-based contract (RBC) and PBC. In both cases, the customer sets the contract terms, and as a response, the supplier sets the base-stock inventory level of spares as well as invests in increasing product reliability. We find that PBC provides stronger incentives for the supplier to invest in reliability improvement, which in turn leads to savings in acquiring and holding spare product assets. Moreover, the efficiency of PBC improves if the supplier owns a larger portion of the spare assets. Our analysis advocates the view that the full benefit of a PBC strategy is achieved when suppliers are transformed into total service providers who take the ownership of physical assets.


OSTEITIS and periostitis of the pubis have been known to occur as complications after surgery of the urinary bladder and prostate. An excellent after tion and discussion of this complication is given by Dr. Maurice Muschat. 1 The case to be reported here is typical of the condition, except that the offending organism isolated from the involved area is a different one from those reported in the literature. Of the Gram-negative organisms infecting the genitourinary tract Pseudomonas is a common one, especially after instrumentation. This blue-green pigment-producing organism, once believed to be a harmless saprophyte living in water and soil, is now definitely found to be capable of producing deep-seated abscesses in various parts of the body, from which pure cultures have been isolated. This 60-year-old white man was admitted to Wesley Memorial Hospital for the first time on Dec. 17, 1952, complaining of difficulty of urination and recurrent right


Tourism industry is particularly listed in Ten Key Individual Plans. Customers often evaluate the maximal value of product experiences or services to form an expected value to rely on. Such knowledge sharing is considered important, as knowledge could merely be enhanced the value when being shared, and allows knowing the critical role of consumer attitudes towards knowledge sharing. Users of Mobile01 are sampled for the questionnaire survey. Total 1000 copies of questionnaires are distributed. Having deducted invalid and incomplete ones, 423 copies are valid, with the effective retrieval rate 42%. The results show significant positive correlations 1.between shared value and trust, 2.between trust and relationship commitment, and 3.between shared value and relationship commitment as well as mediation effects of trust on the correlation between shared
value and relationship commitment.


Hybrid laminates of glass fibre reinforced plastics (GFRP) are being increasingly used for marine structures under multidirectional loadings, due to their anisotropic behavior, corrosion resistance, high specific strength and stiffness. Therefore appropriate laminate configuration for marine environment applications is an important field of study. Five types of fibre epoxy laminates configurations, resulting from different combinations of three layers of chopped strand mats (CSM) and woven roving (WR) were fabricated using the vacuum resin transfer moulding (VRTM) technique. These were investigated for the effect of seawater on its impact properties. The results showed a significant reduction in the impact strength in all types of wet specimens. This behavior may be attributed to penetration of water molecules in the composites. The impact properties of hybrid laminates using a mixture of CSM and WR were found to be better than combination of laminates comprising only CSM and WR under both dry and wet conditions for marine structure.


Pseudomonas aeruginosa has emerged into the limelight mainly as a result of compromised host problems and the development of resistance leading to serious treatment difficulties. The organism possesses virulence factor that produce an effect in certain clinical situations. Changes in local anatomy, often with the presence of foreign bodies, are important (bladder and intravenous catheters, tracheostomy, burns, wounds, and injuries). Deficiencies in immune defense, particularly granulocytopenia, are almost a prerequisite for development of Pseudomonas septicemia and meningitis. The toxic factors of Pseudomonas organisms in combination with a disturbed defense mechanism produce characteristic necrotic skin lesions. A mucoid form of P aeruginosa is a characteristic feature of cystic fibrosis. Resistance of P aeruginosa to antibiotics is very definitely associated with overuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics in hospitals. New and more effective antibiotics may be needed.


"Natural language sentence matching is the task of comparing two sentences and identifying the relationship between them. It has a wide range of applications in natural language processing tasks such as reading comprehension, question and answer systems. The main approach is to compute the interaction between text representations and sentence pairs through an attention mechanism, which can extract the semantic information between sentence pairs well. However, this kind of methods fail to capture deep semantic information and effectively fuse the semantic information of the sentence. To solve this problem, we propose a sentence matching method based on deep interaction and fusion. We first use pre-trained word vectors Glove and characterlevel word vectors to obtain word embedding representations of the two sentences. In the encoding layer, we use bidirectional LSTM to encode the sentence pairs. In the interaction layer, we initially fuse the information of the sentence pairs to obtain low-level semantic information; at the same time, we use the bi-directional attention in the machine reading comprehension model and self-attention to obtain the high-level semantic information. We use a heuristic fusion function to fuse the low-level semantic information and the high-level semantic information to obtain the final semantic information, and finally we use the convolutional neural network to predict the answer. We evaluate our model on two tasks: text implication recognition and paraphrase recognition. We conducted experiments on the SNLI datasets for the recognizing textual entailment task, the Quora dataset for the paraphrase recognition task. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively fuse different semantic information that verify the effectiveness of the algorithm on sentence matching tasks."


Hypusine formation on the eukaryotic initiation factor 5A (eIF-5A) precursor represents a unique posttranslational modification that is ubiquitously present in eukaryotic cells and archaebacteria. Specific inhibition of deoxyhypusine synthase leads to growth arrest and cell death. The precise cellular function of eIF-5A and the physiological significance of hypusine modification are not clear. Although the methionyl-puromycin synthesis has been suggested to be the functional assay for eIF-5A activity in vitro, the role of eIF-5A in protein synthesis has not been established. Recent studies have suggested that eIF-5A may be the cellular target of the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 Rev and human T cell leukemia virus type 1 Rex proteins. Motif analysis suggested that eIF-5A resembles a bimodular RNA-binding protein in that it contains a stretch of basic amino acids clustered at the N-terminal region and a leucine-rich stretch at the C-terminal region. Using Rev target RNA, RRE, as a model, we tested the hypothesis that eIF-5A may be an RNA-binding protein. We found that both deoxyhypusine and hypusine-containing eIF-5A can bind to the 252-nt RRE RNA, as determined by a gel mobility shift assay. In contrast, the unmodified eIF-5A precursor cannot. Deoxyhypusine-containing eIF-5A, but not its precursor, could also cause supershift of the Rev stem-loop IIB RRE complex. Preliminary studies also indicated that eIF-5A can bind to RNA such as U6 snRNA and that deoxyhypusine modification appears to be required for the binding. The ability of eIF-5A to directly interact with RNA suggests that deoxyhypusine formation of eIF-5A may be related to its role in RNA processing and protein synthesis. Our study also suggests the possibility of using a gel mobility shift assay for eIF-5A-RNA binding as a functional assay for deoxyhypusine and hypusine formation.


This Conference is the consequence of the conjunction of the results and progress of the ongoing research on the water treatment ENMA group at the University and the particular social and political moment that water management is facing in Catalonia and, particularly in the city of Terrassa, that locates the INTEXTER (Institute for Textile Research and Industrial Cooperation of Terrassa), venue of the Conference. This congress aims to give space for a scientific debate and reflection on water and its importance with regard to the environment and wider society. We hope that this initiative will consolidate the entire educational, scientific and professional community to respond to the prospective challenges that the development and implementation of new technologies brings together with their impacts in relation to water. Please, enjoy the presentations, posters, sessions and the whole event activities.


The formation of the 'low-sulphur' group of proteins which constitutes more than half the cortical cell content of wool was investigated. Of the amino acids present in the low- and high-sulphur proteins isolated from wool, methionine is the only one which is exclusive to the low-S group. The incorporation of [ Me - 3 H]methionine, administered intradermally to a sheep, was examined using both biochemical and autoradiographic procedures. During the first hour after injection, most of the [ 3 H]methionine appeared in the blood, but some was incorporated into the wool follicle proteins at the injection sites. Most of the radioactivity incorporated by the fibre during this period was subsequently retained. Initially, more than 90% of the activity was present in the prekeratin (8 M urea-soluble) portion of the fibre; 50 h elapsed before half of the radioactive material appeared in the keratinized (8 M urea-insoluble) part of the fibre. Methionine and its oxidation products accounted for more than 80% of the radioactivity present in hydrolysates of wool removed from injection sites after 4 h or 22 days. Analysis of labelled wool showed that the specific radioactivities of those fractions low in sulphur (α- and β-keratose) were 7 and 14 times greater than that of the high-S (λ-keratose) fraction. Autoradiographic studies showed that the main site of formation of the low-S proteins was in the bulb region of the follicle. Here there was no specific intracellular site of low-S protein synthesis, the [ 3 H]methionine being incorporated into the nucleus, cytoplasm, the various cell organelles and intercellular membranes. The amount of radioactivity incorporated by the cortical cells diminished at progressively higher levels in the fibre. In the keratinization zone, the various cell components showed limited protein synthesis, but 1-8 h after injection there was a localization of tritium over the keratin fibrils. It is suggested that a large proportion of the low-S proteins formed within the developing cortical cell ultimately contribute to the keratin microfibrils. The results provide further evidence for the formation of the low-S and high-S proteins at different sites in the follicle.


Multivariate time series forecasting has seen widely ranging applications in various domains, including finance, traffic, energy, and healthcare. To capture the sophisticated temporal patterns, plenty of research studies designed complex neural network architectures based on many variants of RNNs, GNNs, and Transformers. However, complex models are often computationally expensive and thus face a severe challenge in training and inference efficiency when applied to large-scale real-world datasets. In this paper, we introduce LightTS, a light deep learning architecture merely based on simple MLP-based structures. The key idea of LightTS is to apply an MLP-based structure on top of two delicate down-sampling strategies, including interval sampling and continuous sampling, inspired by a crucial fact that down-sampling time series often preserves the majority of its information. We conduct extensive experiments on eight widely used benchmark datasets. Compared with the existing state-of-the-art methods, LightTS demonstrates better performance on five of them and comparable performance on the rest. Moreover, LightTS is highly efficient. It uses less than 5% FLOPS compared with previous SOTA methods on the largest benchmark dataset. In addition, LightTS is robust and has a much smaller variance in forecasting accuracy than previous SOTA methods in long sequence forecasting tasks.


Recurrent and persistent pleural exudates are common in clinical practice, and in a large number of patients, thoracocentesis and blind pleural biopsy procedures do not provide a definitive diagnosis. In the Western world, the majority of these exudates are malignant. Thoracoscopy today remains the gold standard technique in providing diagnosis and management in these cases. Other common indications include diagnosis and management of recurrent or refractory benign exudates or transudates, pleural based tumors and pleural thickening, selected cases of pleural empyema, and recurrent spontaneous primary and secondary pneumothorax. Major advantages of this technique are ease of application, high diagnostic accuracy and therapeutic efficacy, low cost, and excellent safety record comparable with flexible bronchoscopy. Thoracoscopy should be part of the routine training curriculum of respiratory physicians.


ABSTRACT. Understanding the role of green space in urban—suburban landscapes is becoming critical for bird conservation because of rampant habitat loss and conversion. Although not natural habitat, golf courses could play a role in bird conservation if they support breeding populations of some native species, yet scientists remain skeptical. In 2003–2009, we measured reproduction of Eastern Bluebirds (Siala sialis) in Virginia on golf courses and surrounding reference habitats, of the type that would have been present had golf courses not been developed on these sites (e.g., recreational parks, cemeteries, agriculture land, and college campus). We monitored >650 nest boxes and 2,255 nest attempts (n = 1,363 golf course, n = 892 reference site). We used an information-theoretic modeling approach to evaluate whether conditions on golf courses affected timing of breeding, investment, or nest productivity compared with nearby reference sites. We found that Eastern Bluebirds breeding on golf courses reproduced as well as those breeding in other disturbed habitats. Habitat type had no effect on initial reproductive investment, including date of clutch initiation or clutch size ( = 4 eggs). During incubation and hatching, eggs in nests on golf courses had higher hatching rates (80%) and brood sizes ( = 4.0 nestlings brood-1) than nests on reference sites (75% hatching rate; = 3.8 nestlings brood-1). Mortality of older nestlings was also lower on golf courses and, on average, golf course nests produced 0.3 more fledglings than nests on reference sites. Thus, within a matrix of human-dominated habitats, golf courses may support productive populations of some avian species that can tolerate moderate levels of disturbance, like Eastern Bluebirds.


Pro-TEXT is a corpus of keystroke logs written in French. Keystroke logs are recordings of the writing process executed through a keyboard, which keep track of all actions taken by the writer (character additions, deletions, substitutions). As such, the Pro-TEXT corpus offers new insights into text genesis and underlying cognitive processes from the production perspective. A subset of the corpus is linguistically annotated with parts of speech, lemmas and syntactic dependencies, making it suitable for the study of interactions between linguistic and behavioural aspects of the writing process. The full corpus contains 202K tokens, while the annotated portion is currently 30K tokens large. The annotated content is progressively being made available in a database-like CSV format and in CoNLL format, and the work on an HTML-based visualisation tool is currently under way. To the best of our knowledge, Pro-TEXT is the first corpus of its kind in French.


Financial well-being is a perception of an individual's financial situation. Mostly financial well-being is connected with personal resource management. However, hardly any investigation has been done under financial stress situation while managing resources. This reflects that, resource management and stress management have been investigated separately which bring a gap in both areas. In understanding financial well-being, there is a need to integrate resource management and stress theory. Therefore, a model that covers both resource management and stress theory will be used namely Dollahite's ABCD - XYZ Resource Management Model of Crisis or Stress. This paper studies some of the common predictor variables of financial well-being in resource management under stress circumstances through ABCD-XYZ Resources Management Model of Crisis or Stress. Hence, this may guide interested parties to integrate both areas in their field.


One of the most important chronic complications of diabetes mellitus is diabetic foot. Severe progression of diabetes can lead to lower limb amputations. However, since evolution of the disease is slow, it is possible to implement prevention and control measures. The scope of the Family Health Program (in terms of the possibility of early diagnosis of diabetes mellitus and diabetic foot) favors epidemiological studies to determine the problem's magnitude. This article aimed to identify the proportion of individuals with diabetic foot treated at family health units in the city of Recife, Pernambuco State, Brazil. An epidemiological survey was conducted with a probabilistic sample of medical charts of diabetic patients (N = 1,374) enrolled in six health districts in the city, analyzing relations between socioeconomic variables, health conditions, and the occurrence of amputation. Diabetic foot was observed in 9% of the sample. There was a positive and statistically significant association with the variables alcoholism and amputation (p < 0.001). The prevalence of lower limb amputations was 25.6% among individuals with complications and 2.3% of the total sample.


780 copies were deposited in the hospital in 1933, and vanished. (It has just been reprinted by H K Lewis.) Mr Law deals with the history by subjects rather than in strict datal order, which is an advantage. He gives brief biographies (at the time of his retirement) of each person mentioned, with, and this is most valuable, a photograph. The book is well and generously illustrated with 69 photographs. The author skilfully recounts the complex story of the building, rebuilding, modifications, removals, and amalgamations with other hospitals which make up the development of Moorfields. He describes unobtrusively the advance of the skills and knowledge of ophthalmology during the period, a most creditable amount of which actually originated in the hospital, and although he says "it is impossible to note each change, each advance, each indication of progress as it occurs" he makes a good show of doing just that, and very interesting it is. So are some historical details; relevant, such as those about the collection of money in the old "voluntary" days, about which the rising generation knows little; and some of more general interest historically, such as those about Lord Avebury. And some things which are well worth recording, such as the observation of The Times in about 1929 that "Such a hospital service as this [the voluntary hospitals] could not be reproduced by any conceivable effort of public authorities or expenditure of public money . . . it must be preserved intact if its virtue is to continue undiminished." If every hospital would produce a history on these lines, the basis of the medical history of this country would be greatly strengthened. CHARLES NEWMAN


Logistics has been an integral profit source of modern social economy due to the booming Logistics industry & service. Logistics Management Information System (LMIS) has been created as integrated information system in response to the calling for the requirement of advanced technology to organize and process the information accompanied during Logistics operation for efficiency and smoothness of Logistics management and business process. This thesis comes up with a LMIS plan suitable for Logistics industry development by carrying out detailed analysis of present situation of management and further research on LMIS.


This exploration is undertaken with the goal of accounting for dark energy and explaining why the universe expansion is accelerating. The fact that 96% of the mass in the universe is unknown is perplexing, as Adam Riess put it, "The Entire Universe is Being Pushed by an Unknown Force No One Can Locate" (1). I will explore this unknowingness and make suggestions which may be experimentally verifiable.


ROBIN (LEON) Les Rapports de l'Etre et de la Connaissance d'apres Platon. Ed. P. M. Schuhl. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957. Pp. 156. Portrait frontispiece. Fr. 720. This book reproduces a course of twenty-five lectures given at the Sorbonne in 1932-1933. Selected from a large body of unpublished MSS., it is issued as being typical of Robin's views on Plato's thought. After an introductory section, the course starts with a study of the allegory of the Cave in relation to the similes of the Sun and the Line. Here, as throughout the book, the analysis is detailed and subtle; and in this element lies perhaps the chief value of the work for students today. In the interpretation of the Line, the reading aviaa Tfi^/iara is strongly supported as symbolising degrees of clarity and truth. A long section on 'les realites de l'experience' considers further Plato's treatment of the world of opinion, leading via the Theaetetus to study of the concepts of space, time and material substance as developed in the Timaeus; R. follows tradition in placing this dialogue at the far end of the later period. Plato's attitude to material things is represented (p. 84) as developing from mistrust, as of mere illusions, to recognition of the status of 'essential materiality' in the scheme of the universe, as representing for human experience the design of the creative Ideas. In the next long section, 'la realite intelligible', the logical problems of the later dialogues are studied in similar detail as working out the interrelations of the Ideas (the author prefers this traditional translation). It is insisted that in this later phase Plato has not abandoned ontology for logic; and a final return is made to the topic of the relation of the Ideas to the material world, for which they are 'unmoved causes of movement'. Here, as elsewhere, the author stresses the probable importance of the lost oral teaching, and also the value of Aristotle's testimony on the Platonic system as well as his criticism of some of its phases. Finally touching on theology, R. maintains that the SrjfiiovpyoC of the Timaeus is not God, but an agent (mythical ?) of the Ideas as prime causes. The nearest approach to the God of theology, but not his equivalent, is the Good in the Republic—a supreme reality which is transcendent, for Plato is no pantheist. The book may be welcomed as giving further insight into the thoughts of a master mind upon his favourite theme. D. TARRANT.


Wireless designers constantly seek to improve the data rate, spectral efficiency, coverage of wireless networks and link reliability. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technique has been widely accepted for the transmission of high rate data. Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) techniques provide strong diversity gain and can increase the link throughput with the use of Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC). The idea behind AMC is to dynamically adapt the modulation and coding scheme to the channel conditions so as to achieve the highest spectral efficiency at all times. Further MIMO schemes can be combined with OFDM as STBC-OFDM or SFBC-OFDM. Combining the advantages of space-time coding and OFDM is attractive in wireless system designs. However, one of the main drawbacks is its high sensitivity to frequency offsets since the orthogonality between sub carriers is destroyed thus leading to considerable system performance degradation. The Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO) arises mainly due to the Doppler shift and/or oscillator mismatch. Hence, the effect, estimation and correction of frequency offsets have been subject of intensive research in the decade. Performance of various MIMO techniques is evaluated with combination of OFDM. The objective is optimum combination of MIMO-OFDM in presence of CFO. This system is also implemented as per WiMAX standard. The performance is also observed with different modulation techniques and multiple antenna system for multi-users.


This paper describes the effect of the tool tilting angle on the tool wear and the surface roughness in micro ball end milling. The cutting tests of hardened stainless steel were carried out by using of the micro ball end mill with radius of 100mm under the conditions of tilting angle from 0° to 45°. The spindle speed was fixed in a constant of 120,000 min-1. The feed per tooth, axial depth of cut and radial depth of cut were also fixed. The flank wear, the surface roughness and the cutting force were investigated. As a result, the maximum width of flank wear of the micro ball end mill tended to decrease with an increase in the tilting angle of spindle. The surface roughness became almost constant not depending on the tilting angle of the spindle.


Recent trend of information propagation on any real-time event in Twitter makes this platform more and more popular than any other online communication media. This trend creates a necessity to understand real-time events quickly and precisely by summarizing all the relevant tweets. In this paper, we propose a two-phase summarization approach to produce abstract summary of any Twitter event. The approach first extracts key sentences from the whole set of event relevant tweets and eliminates maximum redundant information by exploring Partial Textual Entailment (PTE) relation between sentences. Next, generates an abstract summary over the least redundant key sentences. We conduct experiments to evaluate the performance of our propose approach and report that the approach outperforms over the baseline approach as well as state-of-the-art event summarization approach.


The search for ideal semiconductors for photoelectrochemical solar fuel conversion has recently recognized the spinel ferrites as promising candidates due to their optoelectronic tunability together with superb chemical stability. However, a systematic understanding of the main material factors limiting their performance is currently lacking. Herein, nanostructured thin-film electrodes of three representative spinels, namely CuFe2O4 (CFO), MgFe2O4 (MFO) and ZnFe2O4 (ZFO), are prepared by a solution-based approach and their photoelectrochemical (PEC) properties are comprehensively characterized. Annealing post-treatments together with the deposition of NiFeOx overlayers are found to improve the native n-type response, although a dominant bulk recombination (especially in MFO) limits the saturation photocurrents (below 0.4 mA cm−2 at 1.23 V vs. RHE). Likewise, prominent Fermi level pinning due to surface states at around 0.9 V vs. RHE in all cases appears to limit the photovoltage (to ca. 300 mV). Rapid-scan voltammetry is used to gain insight into the surface states and the operation of the overlayer. Interestingly, the NiFeOx is ineffective at mitigating Fermi level pinning, but clearly participates as an electrocatalyst to improve the overall performance. Generally, these results evidence the potential and current intrinsic limitations of the spinel ferrites—establishing a roadmap for the optimization of these materials as photoanodes for solar water oxidation.


Previous studies have suggested that picture size reduction affects emotional reactions, possibly because scenes subtending a small visual angle are perceived as being more distant and less relevant compared to larger stimuli. However, pictures that subtend a small visual angle also contain few fine-grained details, which may determine less vivid representations and responses compared to larger and more detailed images. Critically, the present study compared two different types of manipulations, namely size reduction and low-pass spatial filtering, which determined similar detail loss but affected visual angles differently. Affective modulation was assessed using an evaluative task and a behavioral interference task. Results showed that the availability of fine-grained details, independently of visual angle, modulated emotional evaluation. Moreover, interference in an unrelated task was unaffected by either size reduction or low-pass spatial filtering. These findings suggest that high spatial frequencies affect subjective emotional response whereas attentional capture by affective stimuli seems to rely on information that is sufficient to allow a categorization of picture content.


Despite impressive performance and contribution to national economy, the flower industry in Kenya is still faced with decent work deficits. These could be manifested in the terms and conditions of employment leading to industrial unrest in organizations within the flower industry. Trade Union membership has been shown to be low, with membership in the main union at just 17% of the total number of workers in flower farms. The effect of weak employee and industrial relations system and practice is manifested in the increase in the spate of industrial strikes and attendant man-days lost. The number of man-days lost due to industrial strikes almost doubled from 14,806 man-days in 2008 to 25,504 man-days in 2010. This, however, increased tremendously by about sevenfold to 175,329 in 2011. Other effects are seen in declining labour productivity in all sectors of the country's economy, increasing unit labour cost and low levels of competitiveness. Kenya's labour productivity growth has, for example, declined from 4 per cent in 2007 to 1.4 per cent in 2012. This paper sought to analyze factors affecting employee relations in organizations in Kenya, the case study of Waridi Ltd. Study variables included working conditions, communication, collective bargaining issues, recruitment and remuneration. The study adopted descriptive research design and a target population of 420. Stratified random sampling was done. Questionnaires were used to collect primary data. Qualitative and quantitative techniques of data analysis were employed. Based on the study findings, it is concluded that free communication and information flow is important in promoting employee relations. Collective bargaining provides the structure for clear job description and work performance. Overall, employee relation concepts such as employee trust, the manner in which employee complaints are dealt with, commitment to the organization, genuine social dialogue and existence of team spirit are fundamental in promoting good employee relations.


In this paper, we propose two availability-aware connection provisioning algorithms, namely global differentiated availability-aware provisioning (G-DAP) and link-by-link differentiated availability-aware provisioning (LBL-DAP) for the connections of differentiated availability classes. G-DAP attempts to provide a global feasible sharing degree for each availability class on all of the wavelengths throughout the network. LBL-DAP provides a feasible sharing degree for each class on the wavelengths of each link separately. We evaluate the performance of the proposed schemes by simulation under NSFNET topology, and compare the results with a reliable connection provisioning scheme. The connections arrive with various availability requirements. We show that G- DAP and LBL-DAP provide an enhanced blocking ratio and resource overbuild globally and for the high priority classes.


The supervisory control initiated by Ramadge and Wonham is a framework for logical control of discrete event systems. In the original supervisory control, the costs for occurrence and disabling of events have not been considered. Then, the optimal supervisory control based on quatitative measures has also been studied. This paper proposes a synthesis method of the optimal supervisor based on the worst-case behavior of discrete event systems. We introduce the new value functions for the assigned control patterns. The new value functions are not based on the expected total rewards, but based on the most undesirable event occurrence in the assigned control pattern. In the proposed method, the supervisor learns how to assign the control pattern based on reinforcement learning so as to maximize the value functions. We show the efficiency of the proposed method by computer simulation.


Leucine-rich repeats and immunoglobulin-like domains (LRIG)-1 is an endogenous inhibitor of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signaling, that is down-regulated in several forms of human cancer. The LRIG gene family also includes LRIG2 and LRIG3. EGFR signaling is important in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors are today considered standard treatment in patients with advanced disease. Since smoking recently was reported to down-regulate LRIG1 gene expression in lung epithelium and squamous cell carcinoma of the lung, the LRIG family of proteins may be important in lung cancer. The objective of the present study was to investigate if LRIG is a prognostic factor in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Therefore, we conducted an in silico analysis of LRIG gene expression in publicly available datasets using the Oncomine database and compared LRIG expression to clinical outcome. We also analyzed the LRIG protein expression by immunohistochemistry in a tissue micro array (TMA, n = 190) representing long- and short time survivors from a surgically treated NSCLC patient cohort. In seven out of 11 datasets in the in silico analysis, high expression of LRIG1 correlated (p<0.05) with long patient survival. This correlation was apparent both in adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. In the TMA, LRIG1 expression was significantly higher in the long-term survival group than in the short time survival group (p<0.05). LRIG2 and LRIG3 protein expression did not significantly correlate to survival. In conclusion, both our in silico analysis of gene expression and TMA study of protein expression showed associations between high LRIG1 expression and longer NSCLC patient survival. This implicates that LRIG1 may be a prognostic factor in NSCLC and further studies on larger datasets have been initiated.


The paper is a contribution to the studies of factors that can affect electric (E) and magnetic (H) fields associated with lightning return strokes to tall structure. Herein, the influence of lightning channel inclination upon vertical E-field and azimuthal H-field is analyzed. Input parameters of the simulation (injected current, properties of the tower and of the channel, etc.) are derived from experimental observations. Current distribution is calculated adopting a one-section transmission line model (1TL). For a few characteristic cases of non-vertical channel orientation, E- and H-fields produced at 2 km distance by a lightning strike to the CN tower (546-m height) are computed, and compared to those of the vertical-channel case ("A"). For considered conditions, E-field first peak values differ from the basic case "A" by +9 to -22 %, while at late-time period (within 10 /spl mu/s) E-values can differ by +152 to -75 %. For H-field, corresponding deviations are smaller: +7 to -16 % and +87 to -61 %.


For the purpose of designing more reliable networks, we extend the traditional reliability analysis from wired networks to wireless networks with imperfect components. Wireless network systems, such as wireless CORBA, inherit the unique handoff characteristic which leads to different communication structures with various components & links. Therefore, the traditional definition of two-terminal reliability is not applicable any more. We propose a new term, end-to-end expected instantaneous reliability, to integrate those different communication structures into one metric, which includes not only failure parameters but also service parameters. Nevertheless, it is still a monotonously decreasing function of time. The end-to-end expected instantaneous reliability, and its corresponding MTTF, are evaluated quantitatively in different wireless communication schemes. To observe the gain in overall reliability improvement, the reliability importance of imperfect components are also evaluated. The results show that the failure parameters of different components take different effects on MTTF & reliability importance. With different expected working time of a system, the focus of reliability improvement should change from one component to another in order to receive the highest reliability gain. Furthermore, the number of engaged components during a communication state is more critical than the number of system states. For simplicity, we assume that the wired & wireless communication links are perfect, and omit them in the reliability analysis. If these two are engaged into the proposed end-to-end expected instantaneous reliability, it can give a more detailed & complete reliability assessment of a wireless network system. Our quantitative measurements are conducted as an example with the assumption that the failure & service rate are constant; however, in practice, failure & service processes may follow other distributions. After all, our investigation provides an initial yet overall approach to measure the reliability of wireless networks. Although our analysis is conducted on wireless CORBA platforms, it is easily extensible to generic wireless network systems.


Diagnosis and Recommendation Integrated System (DRIS) norms were derived for processing tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) from a 1993-94 survey of >100 fields in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys of California. Relative foliar N, P, K, Ca, Mg, and S concentrations were expressed in ratio form, with DRIS norms calculated as the means of fields with fruit yield ≥90 Mg.ha -1 . Norms were developed for three growth stages: first bloom, full bloom, and 10% of fruits ripe. Optimum foliar nutrient concentration ranges were calculated by regression analysis from DRIS nutrient indices of high-yield fields. These optimum ranges were in general agreement with existing empirically derived sufficiency ranges for N and P, higher for Ca, Mg, and S, and much lower for K. The relatively low foliar K levels observed were attributed primarily to the strongly determinate growth habit of currently used cultivars. In the fields sampled, yield-limiting nutrient deficiency appeared to be rare.


Good icons are legible, and legible icons are scale-dependent. Experienced icon designers use a set of common strategies to create legible scale variations of icons, but executing those strategies with current tools can be challenging. In part, this is because many apparent objects, like hairlines formed by negative space, are not explicitly represented as objects in vector drawings. We present transient widgets as a mechanism for selecting and manipulating apparent objects that is independent of the underlying drawing representation. We implement transient widgets using a constraint-based editing framework; demonstrate their utility for performing the kinds of edits most common when producing scale variations of icons; and report qualitative feedback on the system from professional icon designers.


Turkey accounts for 75% of the global hazelnut production and 70-75% of the exportation. Taking into account the socioeconomic importance of hazelnut, the stakeholders of hazelnut domain still have problems such as availability, meaningful, accuracy of the hazelnut related data. Providing data to stakeholders is crucial for sustainable agricultural activities. This data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish. With the aforementioned reasons "Open Data" is an efficient way in Turkish Agriculture.In this paper, we shall investigate the open data term and semantics in the context of hazelnut data management. In addition, a data processing model with regard to agricultural open data is proposed.


Recordings from the soma of the cockroach (Periplaneta americana) fast coxal depressor motoneuron (Df) were made while acetylcholine (ACh) was regularly pressure‐applied locally from a micropipette. The modulatory effects upon these nicotinic ACh responses of bath‐applied 5‐hydroxytryptamine (5‐HT, serotonin), dopamine and octopamine were investigated under either current‐clamp or voltage‐clamp conditions. The biogenic amines reversibly suppressed, but never totally abolished, ACh responses, 5‐HT being the most potent, with a threshold near 10−6 m (EC50 = 5 × 10−5 m). Occlusion experiments indicate that the amines share a common mechanism at the level of either receptors or second messenger pathways. The amines also modulated responses to nicotine or carbachol (each of which resists hydrolysis by acetylcholinesterases), indicating that the amines did not act by accelerating ACh degradation. Pharmacological antagonists were used in an attempt to characterize the receptor responsible for amine‐mediated modulation. Although a number of antagonists mimicked the action of amines rather than producing blockade, the antagonistic actions of LSD and RS23597 pointed strongly to a receptor‐mediated mechanism, but did not allow receptor identification. The magnitude of the modulatory effect of 5‐HT was significantly reduced by intracellular guanosine‐5′‐O‐(2‐thiodiphosphate) (GDP‐β‐S), indicating involvement of a G‐protein. Intracellular injection of the calcium chelator BAPTA did not block the modulatory effect of 5‐HT, showing that the amines do not operate through the calcium‐dependent pathway by which muscarinic receptors act on nicotinic currents. The adenylate cyclase inhibitor dideoxyadenosine (DDA), on the other hand, did attenuate the action of 5‐HT, suggesting involvement of cyclic AMP.


Cornelia de Lange syndrome (CdLS) is a rare disease characterized by cognitive impairment, multisystemic alterations and premature aging. Furthermore, CdLS cells display gene expression dysregulation and genomic instability. Here, we demonstrated that treatment with antioxidant drugs, such as ascorbic acid and riboceine, reduced the level of genomic instability and extended the in vitro lifespan of CdLS cell lines. We also found that antioxidant treatment partially rescued the phenotype of a zebrafish model of CdLS. Gene expression profiling showed that antioxidant drugs caused dysregulation of gene transcription; notably, a number of genes coding for the zinc finger (ZNF)-containing Krueppel-associated box (KRAB) protein domain (KRAB-ZNF) were found to be downregulated. Taken together, these data suggest that antioxidant drugs have the potential to ameliorate the developmental phenotype of CdLS.


This paper aims at finding the optimal combination of written instruction and on-line practice for learning a new computer application. Experimental subjects learned commands for an electronic spreadsheet by reading brief user-manual descriptions and working training problems on-line. The form of the training problems was varied within subjects in order to control how much independent problem solving subjects engaged in while learning any given command. There were three forms of practice: (1) Pure Guided Practice, in which subjects were told exactly what keystrokes to type to solve the problems; (2) Pure Problem Solving Practice, in which subjects solved problems without guidance; and (3) Mixed Practice, in which the first problem for a command was presented in Guided Practice form and two others in Problem Solving form. The spacing of the training problems was also manipulated; the problems pertaining to a given command were either Massed (i.e., presented consecutively), or Distributed (i.e., separated by other instructional material). After a 2-day delay, subjects solved new problems on the computer without referring to the instructional materials. The results indicate that problem solving was a more difficult form of training than guided practice, but it produced the best performance at test. Distributing the spacing of training problems during training also improved performance at test. The results have clear pragmatic implications for the design of interactive tutorial manuals as well as implications for cognitive models of skill acquisition.


As part of the CETL ALiC initiative (Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning: Active Learning in Computing), undergraduate computing science students at Newcastle and Durham universities participate in a year long, inter-institutional group programming assignment. Teams of students act as "virtual companies" and collaborate cross-site to develop software products for real-world industrial clients. This paper investigates the emergence and autonomous adoption of social networking technologies in our students' communication strategies during the project, and explores the role that "status awareness" (knowledge of the current activities of one's team mates) had on the outcome of that collaboration. We also present and discuss the findings of a recent trial of CommonGround, an application created to harness our students' pre-existing engagement with social networking technologies such as Facebook.


The integration and evolution of existing systems represents one of the most urgent problems facing those responsible for healthcare information systems so that the needs of the whole organisation are addressed. The management of the healthcare record represents one of the major requirements in the overall process, however it is also necessary to ensure that the healthcare record and other healthcare information is integrated within the context of an overall healthcare information system. The CEN ENV 12967-1 'Healthcare Information Systems Architecture' standard defines a holistic architectural approach where the various, organisational, clinical, administrative and managerial requirements co-exist and cooperate, relying on a common heritage of information and services. This paper reviews the middleware-based approach adopted by CEN ENV 12967-1 and the specialisation necessary for the healthcare record based on CEN ENV 12265 'Electronic Healthcare Record Architecture'.


The burden of maternal ill-health includes not only the levels of maternal mortality and complications during pregnancy and around the time of delivery but also extends to the standard postpartum period of 42 days with consequences of obstetric complications and poor management at delivery. There is a dearth of reliable data on these postpartum maternal morbidities and disabilities in developing countries, and more research is warranted to investigate these and further strengthen the existing safe motherhood programmes to respond to these conditions. This study aims at identifying the consequences of pregnancy and delivery in the postpartum period, their association with acute obstetric complications, the sociodemographic characteristics of women, mode and place of delivery, nutritional status of the mother, and outcomes of birth. From among women who delivered between 2007 and 2008 in the icddr,b service area in Matlab, we prospectively recruited all women identified with complicated births (n=295); a perinatal mortality (n=182); and caesarean-section delivery without any maternal indication (n=147). A random sample of 538 women with uncomplicated births, who delivered at home or in a facility, was taken as the control. All subjects were clinically examined at 6-9 weeks for postpartum morbidities and disabilities. Postpartum women who had suffered obstetric complications during birth and delivered in a hospital were more likely to suffer from hypertension [adjusted odds ratio (AOR)=3.44; 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.14-10.36], haemorrhoids (AOR=1.73; 95% CI=1.11-3.09), and moderate to severe anaemia (AOR=7.11; 95% CI=2.03-4.88) than women with uncomplicated normal deliveries. Yet, women who had complicated births were less likely to have perineal tears (AOR=0.05; 95% CI=0.02-0.14) and genital prolapse (AOR=0.22; 95% CI=0.06-0.76) than those with uncomplicated normal deliveries. Genital infections were more common amongst women experiencing a perinatal death than those with uncomplicated normal births (AOR=1.92; 95% CI=1.18-3.14). Perineal tears were significantly higher (AOR=3.53; 95% CI=2.32-5.37) among those who had delivery at home than those giving birth in a hospital. Any woman may suffer a postpartum morbidity or disability. The increased likelihood of having hypertension, haemorrhoids, or anaemia among women with obstetric complications at birth needs specific intervention. A higher quality of maternal healthcare services generally might alleviate the suffering from perineal tears and prolapse amongst those with a normal uncomplicated delivery.


The life settlement asset class is a recognized part of the alternative investment market. Our article offers insight into the behavior of portfolios of life settlement contracts. We focus on the value profiles of pools of life settlement contracts in the value/cost of capital space. A pool of life settlement contracts has a death rate distribution that will determine the amount of premiums that must be paid each period and the amount of death benefits that will be collected each period. Because value is determined by the timing, magnitude, and certainty of the cash flows generated by an asset, it is inexorably linked to the timing of the life settlers' deaths. We show that when certain conditions are met, pools with fundamentally different underlying mortality rates and risk profiles, but with the same cost of capital, can have the same value (pivot point in the value/cost of capital space). This pivot point can be useful for fund managers seeking to modify a portfolio of life settlements under a specific cost-of-capital constraint.


This research examines consumers' willingness to pay in an online environment. Specifically, I compare two price-elicitation strategies: price generation (i.e., "name your price") and price selection i.e., "select your price"). Contrary to the common assumption that naming a price will be preferred by consumers because it offers the most flexibility in articulating one's willingness to pay, this research demonstrates that consumers often prefer to select rather than to generate a price. In a series of three experiments, I show that the potential unfavorable effects of the price generation task are associated with the absence of a readily available reference price range. I further demonstrate that the reference price range also has to be externally provided and that internally generated reference prices can as well eliminate the potential negative effect of the price generationtask and strengthen consumer preferences. These findings support the proposition advanced in this research that a pre-choice articulation of reference prices can simplify consumer choice by imposing a structure consistent with the nature of the decision task.


Whilst amounts of waste recycled in civic amenity or household waste recycling sites (HWRSs) are increasing, many recyclable and recoverable materials entering sites are being overlooked. This paper analyses the residual waste from two well-managed urban civic amenity sites in Brighton and Hove with combined recycling rates of 24.9 per cent in 2001/02. Detailed residual waste composition data from such facilities is seldom made widely available. Levels of wood waste were found to be 24.6 per cent by sample weight, higher than had previously been estimated, whilst fines were also high at 16.6.per cent.
This new data indicates options for wood should be strongly considered from the perspective of the statutory recycling targets and the Landfill Directive. For compliance with both, untreated wood could be recycled into compost filler or recovered for its energetic value, whilst treated wood could be collected for manufacture into chipboards or amenity uses. However, since the largest single category of wood recorded at sites was chipboard at 7.7 per cent by weight, closed loop systems need to be developed so that this and other board products can be recycled. Options for other recycled materials alongside textiles and plastics as well as bulky items and inert material are also discussed.


Bacterial Ribonuclease HI, which ensures that initiation of DNA replication occurs at the unique orit; locus, is encoded by rnhA. The rnhA gene from Mycobacterium smegmatis encodes a protein that is closely related to other bacterial RNases HI (Dawes et al., 1995). Activity gel analysis rletected RNase HI activity associated with proteins in whole-cell extracts of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in the 14-25 kDa size range. A putative rnhA homologue was identified in M. tuberculosis and sequence analysis revealed that the rnhA open reading frame contains an apparent fusion of two genes (Cole et al., 1998). The 5' -region of the ORF corresponds to an rnhA homologue, whereas the 3'-region contains a gene, annotated herein as pgm, which encodes a protein belonging to the phosphoglycerate mutase (POM) family of proteins. The full-length ORF, as well as the individual mhA and pgm segments, were cloned into the pMAL-c2 expression vector and recombinant proteins were overexpresssed in E. coli as maliose binding fusion proteins. Recombinant proteins were purified and rabbit polyclonal antisera raised against each one were used to probe whole cell extracts of M. tuberculosis. Cross-reaction with polypeptides of unknown identity was observed. Limited proteolysis of the recombinant proteins suggest an instability of folding in E. coli. Functional investigation of the M. tuberculosis RNase HI included complementation of an E. coli RNase HI-defective mutant, and an M. smegmatis strain carrying a defective rnhA allele integrated at its rnhA locus, with M. tuberculosis rhns-pgm supplied in trans. No complementation in either hosts was observed. Upon completion of the genome sequence of H37Rv (Cole et al., 1998), it became apparent that the rnh/i-pgm ORF is the fourth gene in an operon which includes a gene known to be involved in cobalamin biosynthesis. Significant homlogy of the PGM to CobC phosphatase of Salmonella typhimurium implicates a role for rnh/: pgm in the cobalamin biosynthetic pathway of M. tuberculosis.


This book sets out to investigate the process of agrarian change from new angles and with new results. It starts on firm ground rather than from abstract economic theory. Upon its initial appearance, it was heralded as "a small masterpiece, which economic historians should read--and not simply quote"--Giovanni Frederico, Economic History Services. The Conditions of Agricultural Growth remains a breakthrough in the theory of agricultural development. In linking ethnography with economy, developmental studies reached new heights. Whereas "development" had been seen previously as the transformation of traditional communities by the introduction (or imposition) of new technologies, Ester Boserup argues that changes and improvements occur from within agricultural communities, and that improvements are governed not simply by external interference, but by those communities themselves Using extensive analyses of the costs and productivity of the main systems of traditional agriculture, Ester Boserup concludes that technical, economic, and social changes are unlikely to take place unless the community concerned is exposed to the pressure of population growth.


Over the past few decades considerable progress has been made in terms of our ability to reconstruct postinfective soft tissue and bone defects. Soft tissue reconstruction is not always required and it is frequently possible to achieve a tension-free closure of well-perfused tissue following debridement. It is now generally accepted that primary closure of the wound, be it by direct suturing or tissue transfer, may be performed at the same sitting as the debridement. In cases were debridement has resulted in tissue loss, muscle or musculocutaneous flaps appear to be superior to random-pattern flaps in achieving resolution of infection. The management of bone defects is dependent on several factors including the host's physiological status, the size of the defect, duration of the defect, quality of the surrounding soft tissue, the presence of deformity, joint contracture/instability or limb length discrepancy, as well as the experience of the surgeon. Surgery remains the mainstay of treatment when a curative treatment strategy is selected. As is the case with chemotherapy for bone tumours, antibiotic therapy fulfils an adjuvant role in curative management strategies. The choice of antibiotic, in this setting, remains a very difficult one and there are many problems with the interpretation of 'cure rate' data. The controversy surrounding the optimal duration and route of antibiotic therapy has not been resolved. The second role of antibiotics in the management of chronic osteomyelitis is disease suppression as part of a palliative treatment strategy. Further studies are required to clarify which patients may successfully be treated with antibiotics alone.


MicroRNAs mainly inhibit coding genes and long non-coding RNA expression. Here, we report that hsa-miR-125b and oncogene SIRT7/oncogenic long non-coding RNA MALAT1 were inversely expressed in bladder cancer. Hsa-miR-125b mimic down-regulated, whereas hsa-miR-125b inhibitor up-regulated the expression of SIRT7 and MALAT1. Binding sites were confirmed between hsamiR-125b and SIRT7/MALAT1. Up-regulation of hsa-miR-125b or down-regulation of SIRT7 inhibited proliferation, motility and increased apoptosis. The effects of up-regulation of hsa-miR-125b were similar to that of silencing MALAT1 in bladder cancer as we had previously described. These data suggest that hsa-miR-125b suppresses bladder cancer development via inhibiting SIRT7 and MALAT1. 2013 Federation of European Biochemical Societies. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


Background: Migraine headache is a widespread neurovascular disorder that is often suboptimally or incompletely treated. This article confirms the efficacy of botulinum toxin treatment with surgical decompression as a deactivator of migraine headache trigger sites through the retrospective analysis of a single surgeon's experience. Methods: A retrospective chart review was performed on 24 patients presenting with the diagnosis of migraine headache. Botulinum toxin type A injections were used to identify frontal, temporal, and/or occipital trigger points. The nasal trigger point was diagnosed with a decongestant trial, intranasal examination, and computed tomographic scan. Those patients with more than one trigger point underwent multiple surgical procedures, which were performed concomitantly during the same operation. All botulinum toxin injections, surgical procedures, and patient meetings were conducted by the principal investigator (J.E.J.), minimizing intrapatient treatment variability and multiprovider bias. Results: Patient progress was tracked by consolidating migraine frequency, severity, and duration as a Migraine Headache Index. Nineteen patients (79.2 percent) benefited from surgery. Two patients (8.3 percent) reported migraine elimination and 17 patients (70.8 percent) reported significant improvement of their migraine symptoms. Among those patients who responded to surgery, average improvement from baseline levels was 96.9 percent. Among the entire patient population, average improvement was 78.2 percent from baseline. The mean postsurgical follow-up was 661 days. Conclusion: This study found botulinum toxin treatment with surgical decompression to be a potent deactivator of migraine headache trigger sites, corroborating the findings of the current literature in the field and underlining the reproducibility of the treatment. CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Therapeutic, IV. Figure. No caption available.


The $\jpsi$ $\pt$ spectrum and nuclear modification factor ($\raa$) are reported for $\pt < 5 \ \gevc$ and $|y|<1$ from 0\% to 60\% central Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at $\snn = 200 \ \gev$ at STAR. A significant suppression of $\pt$-integrated $\jpsi$ production is observed in central Au+Au events. The Cu+Cu data are consistent with no suppression, although the precision is limited by the available statistics. $\raa$ in Au+Au collisions exhibits a strong suppression at low transverse momentum and gradually increases with $\pt$. The data are compared to high-$\pt$ STAR results and previously published BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider results. Comparing with model calculations, it is found that the invariant yields at low $\pt$ are significantly above hydrodynamic flow predictions but are consistent with models that include color screening and regeneration.


Nepali teachers' professional qualities are discussed from non-socio-cultural perspectives, which seem insufficient for the continuous professional development of Nepali university teachers. Teachers' professional attributes that influence their professional and pedagogical practices are rarely researched, particularly in Nepal. The purpose of this self-study was to investigate how I, a university teacher, could improve my pedagogical practices to facilitate a Research Methodology course for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) graduates. Adapting a socio-cultural perspective, I purposefully asked myself and my 27 graduate students whom I taught in 2021 from August to October. I collected and analyzed information adapting dialogue as a research method. Making dialogues with myself and my students, I unveiled five ways of improving my pedagogical practices. They were: by (1) creating a supportive learning environment, (2) enhancing curiosity, (3) enhancing inquiry skills, (4) enhancing evaluation skills, and (5) developing continuous learning habits. My reflective journal, classroom discussions, activities, and assignments hold evidence of my improved pedagogical practices. Finally, I learnt that my enhanced diligence contributed to my learning and my student's learning as my professional development.


G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs) recruit β-arrestins to coordinate diverse cellular processes, but the structural dynamics driving this process are poorly understood. Atypical chemokine receptors (ACKRs) are intrinsically biased GPCRs that engage β-arrestins but not G proteins, making them a model system for investigating the structural basis of β-arrestin recruitment. Here, we performed nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments on 13CH3-ε–methionine–labeled ACKR3, revealing that β-arrestin recruitment is associated with conformational exchange at key regions of the extracellular ligand-binding pocket and intracellular β-arrestin–coupling region. NMR studies of ACKR3 mutants defective in β-arrestin recruitment identified an allosteric hub in the receptor core that coordinates transitions among heterogeneously populated and selected conformational states. Our data suggest that conformational selection guides β-arrestin recruitment by tuning receptor dynamics at intracellular and extracellular regions. Description Dynamic control of GPCRs Arrestins are a group of proteins that regulate signaling through G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs). They are best known as an off switch in signaling through G proteins, but they also coordinate G protein–independent signaling. Kleist et al. took advantage of an intrinsically β-arrestin–biased GPCR, atypical chemokine receptor 3 (ACKR3), to study β-arrestin recruitment. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy experiments support a role for conformational selection. The inactive state shows conformational heterogeneity at the ligand-binding pocket. Ligand binding can cause stabilization of an active state that in turn tunes the dynamics at the intracellular region to allow β-arrestin recruitment. —VV Dynamic changes to conformational ensembles at intra- and extracellular sites guide β-arrestin recruitment at a biased G protein–coupled receptor.


Thirteen master pigeons were exposed to multiple schedules in which reinforcement frequency (Experiment I) or duration (Experiment II) was varied. In Phases 1 and 3 of Experiment I, the values of the first and second components' random-interval schedules were 33 and 99 seconds, respectively. In Phase 2, these values were 99 seconds for both components. In Experiment II, a random-interval 33-second schedule was associated with each component. During Phases 1 and 3, the first and second components had hopper durations of 7.5 and 2.5 seconds respectively. During Phase 2, both components' hopper durations were 2.5 seconds. In each experiment, positive contrast obtained for about half the master subjects. The rest showed a rate increase in both components (positive induction). Each master subject's key colors and reinforcers were synchronously presented on a response-independent basis to a yoked control. Richer component key-pecking occurred during each experiment's Phases 1 and 3 among half these subjects. However, none responded during the contrast condition (unchanged component of each experiment's Phase 2). From this it is inferred that autoshaping did not contribute to the contrast and induction findings among master birds. Little evidence of local contrast (highest rate at beginning of richer component) was found in any subject. These data show that (a) contrast can occur independently from autoshaping, (b) contrast assays during equal-valued components may produce induction, (c) local contrast in multiple schedules often does not occur, and (d) differential hopper durations can produce autoshaping and contrast.


Armenian milk marketing cooperatives provide several benefits, of which the increased opportunity for milk marketing is valued most by member farmers. During the cooperative action milk production has also increased due to seminars on cattle feeding, artificial insemination, sanitation programs, and support by cooperatives in feed procurement. Another benefit is that through pooling products of specified grade or quality, marketing cooperatives are better able to market milk to large-scale buyers than individual owners. Putting their efforts together cooperatives can move to distant markets and thus expand their sales opportunities. This is of paramount importance for those cooperatives that have a sole buyer. In addition to milk marketing, almost all of the cooperatives expressed desire to integrate themselves vertically in milk processing with the aim of capturing greater share of the consumers' food expenditures. It's worth mentioning that all managers stated the importance of seminars and educational tools to the success of their organizations. However, in their self-assessment lower ratings were noted in the areas of financial management, financial statement analysis, strategic planning, and higher scores were stated for business decision-making and cooperative principles. Our findings indicate that an opportunity exists to reinforce managers' knowledge in the areas of cooperative principles, division of responsibility between managers and the Board, and financial management. The results of the research come to advocate for continuing cooperative business and extending their activities over other aspects of the agricultural sphere (technical service, agricultural production, etc.), thus enabling farmers to further integrate themselves in food marketing system and improve their incomes.


In this article, we present a Bayesian inference framework for cultural consensus theory (CCT) models for dichotomous (True/False) response data and provide an associated, user-friendly software package along with a detailed user's guide to carry out the inference. We believe that the time is ripe for Bayesian statistical inference to become the default choice in the field of CCT. Unfortunately, a lack of publications presenting a practical description of the Bayesian framework in the context of CCT models as well as a dearth of accessible software to apply Bayesian inference to CCT data has so far prevented this from happening. We introduce the Bayesian treatment of several CCT models, focusing on the various merits of Bayesian parameter estimation and interpretation of results, and also introduce the Bayesian Cultural Consensus Toolbox software package.


There has been much advancement in the field of data and information quality (DIQ) since two decades ago. However, despite a large number of the theoretical and empirical studies in this field, there is a lack of understanding about the mechanisms and dynamics of forming, adjusting and changing organisational users' (information consumers) assumptions and expectations based on which they perceive the quality of information required for making decision in order to perform a task within an organisational environment. Although it is already known that information consumers perceive the quality of information according to the requirements of the organisational task and the context of use, how the task requirements affect information consumers' expectations of information quality has been a black-box in the body of literature. The main objective of this research is to contribute to the literature of DIQ by exploring the role of the setting of a task within an organisational context in the formation, development and change of information consumers' underlying expectations of information quality. Information consumers' assumptions and expectations are called information quality (IQ) frames by this research. Moreover, this research examines the role of IT artefacts, which are used to support performing the task, in these dynamics. As an organisational task is usually performed by a group, the role of the task group of which information consumers are members is investigated by this research.
Having adopted a multi-case study design, this thesis has targeted seven different task groups in seven different organisations from multiple industries. This in-depth qualitative research also employs interviews as the main source of data and documents as the secondary source of data. The collected data and empirical evidence is analysed using the thematic analysis and pattern coding.
This study's theoretical contributions to the body of literature are as follows. Firstly, the findings indicate that information consumers should not be simply categorised into domain-specific experts or novices for understanding the mechanisms that affect their IQ frames. Regarding the domain of the task, an information consumer might have domain-related experience that differentiates him from both an expert and a novice. Moreover, this study found that the organisational-specific experience plays a significant role in these dynamics. Secondly, four different settings of a task within an organisational context have been recognised and the insights have been provided into the likely impact of each setting on IQ frames. The findings show that the setting of a task that affects IQ frames is enforced by the interplay between the degree of situatedness of the task and the degree of its explicitness. Thirdly, this research contends that the role of other members of a task group contributes directly to the setting of a task rather than directly influencing their colleague's IQ frames.
Fourthly, this thesis confirms that the organisational resource limitations and the time pressure, which were already mentioned in the literature, affect how information consumers perceive the quality of information but the empirical evidence reveals that other types of pressure such as the pressure of a competitive market has a similar role, therefore, it is argued that in general the organisational pressure impacts the way information consumers perceive information quality. However, this thesis argues that this influence is mediated by the setting of a task. In other words, the organisational pressure can increase the degree of situatedness of a task within an organisational context. Finally, the findings of this study indicate that information consumers' interpretation of how an IT artefact enables a task within an organisational context is the key mechanism through which the IT artefact can participate in forming, adjusting or changing their IQ frames. The interpreted type of an IT artefact, its interpreted capabilities, the organisational intervention and the IT support by IT technicians of an organisations are the main four factors that govern the influence of the IT artefact on information consumers' IQ frames. In addition, the computing environment in which the IT artefact operates in, information consumers' level of IT knowledge and prior experience of using the IT artefact can be involved indirectly in these dynamics.
The theoretical contributions of this research have led to the development of a framework for IQ frames and the underlying dynamics have been explained in detail. In addition to the theoretical contributions, this study has a number of practical implications for organisations and management regarding the importance of the organisational settings in how information quality is judged by organisational users (information consumers).


ABSTRACT This paper analyses the prolonged nature of two related cartels in life and non-life insurance, in Norway. Insurance cartels and the role of the state are rarely studied in cartel research, although such cartels are common. Cartels played an important role in creating trust and stability in the formative years of the Norwegian insurance industry. In life insurance, premiums are paid sometimes decades in advance. Reducing high transaction costs can also explain the state's prolonged support of the fire and non-life insurance cartels. State policy towards the fire insurance cartel changed after World War I, when the state became a competitor, although its regulations did not directly weaken the non-life insurance cartel, this finally collapsed due to mergers in 1982. State support for the life insurance cartel was strong from the 1920s to the 1980s. By then it was difficult to differentiate between state-sector regulations and cartel interests. The life insurance cartel was dismantled by new state regulations in the mid-1980s.


We develop a fluctuation theory of connectivities for subcritical random cluster models. The theory is based on a comprehensive nonperturbative probabilistic description of long connected clusters in terms of essentially one-dimensional chains of irreducible objects. Statistics of local observables, for example, displacement, over such chains obey classical limit laws, and our construction leads to an effective random walk representation of percolation clusters. The results include a derivation of a sharp Ornstein–Zernike type asymptotic formula for two point functions, a proof of analyticity and strict convexity of inverse correlation length and a proof of an invariance principle for connected clusters under diffusive scaling. In two dimensions duality considerations enable a reformulation of these results for supercritical nearest-neighbor random cluster measures, in particular, for nearest-neighbor Potts models in the phase transition regime. Accordingly, we prove that in two dimensions Potts equilibrium crystal shapes are always analytic and strictly convex and that the interfaces between different phases are always diffusive. Thus, no roughening transition is possible in the whole regime where our results apply. Our results hold under an assumption of exponential decay of finite volume wired connectivities [assumption (1.2) below] in rectangular domains that is conjectured to hold in the whole subcritical regime; the latter is known to be true, in any dimensions, when q=1, q=2, and when q is sufficiently large. In two dimensions assumption (1.2) holds whenever there is an exponential decay of connectivities in the infinite volume measure. By duality, this includes all supercritical nearest-neighbor Potts models with positive surface tension between ordered phases.