NASA‐Johnson Space Center is designing and building a habitat (Bioregenerative Planetary Life Support Systems Test Complex, BIO‐Plex) intended for evaluating advanced life support systems developed for long‐duration missions to the Moon or Mars where all consumables will be recycled and reused. A food system based on raw products obtained from higher plants (such as soybeans, rice, and wheat) may be a central feature of a biologically based Advanced Life Support System. To convert raw crops to edible ingredients or food items, multipurpose processing equipment such as an extruder is ideal. Volatile compounds evolved during the manufacturing of these food products may accumulate and reach toxic levels. Additionally, off‐odors often dissipated in open‐air environments without consequence may cause significant discomfort in the BIO‐Plex. Rice and defatted soy flours were adjusted to 16% moisture, and triplicate samples were extruded using a tabletop single‐screw extruder. The extrudate was collected in specially designed Tedlar bags from which air samples could be extracted. The samples were analyzed by GC‐MS with special emphasis on compounds with Spacecraft Maximum Allowable Concentrations (SMACs). Results showed a combination of alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, and carbonyl compounds in the different flours. Each compound and its SMAC value, as well as its impact on the air revitalization system, was discussed.


The logistics service market is currently going through a fundamental transition. The development of closer relationships with customers and the continuous adaptation of products and services, represent potentially successful approaches to the development of improved competitive capability. To this end knowledge resources and learning processes increasingly represent key elements within the evolving framework of the 3PL business. This paper describes the case of NITL's Foundation Certificate Programme (FCP) learning programme with specific reference to its use in addressing some of current shortcomings related to supply chain knowledge and skills in the Irish third party logistics (3PL) industry. The FCP rationale is based on the need to move from traditional approaches of supply chain organisation where the various links in the chain were measured and managed in isolation from each other and thus tended to operate at cross purposes, towards more integrated approaches.


The characterization of the developmental phases of agricultural crops is important for management practices and for gladiolus in the field this characterization has not been made in Rio Grande do Sul State. The goal of this study was to determine the duration of vegetative and reproductive phases of the developmental cycle, and the relationships between them and with leaf appearance in gladiolus cultivars. Two field experiments were conducted in Santa Maria, RS, Brazil, one during the Spring/Summer 2010/11 with the cultivars 'Priscila', 'Peter Pears', 'Sunset', 'T704', 'Traderhorn', 'Rose Supreme' and 'Jester', and another during the Fall/Winter 2011 with the cultivars 'T704', 'Traderhorn' and 'Jester'. The experimental design was a completely randomized with two replications of five plants per cultivar. The date of heading and end of flowering was determined and the developmental cycle was divided into vegetative (from planting to heading) and reproductive (from planting to and of flowering). Results showed that the duration of the vegetative phase determines the duration of the developmental cycle and the duration of the vegetative phase is affected by leaf appearance rate and by final leaf number. Thus, early cultivars have greater leaf appearance rate and lower final leaf number than late cultivars.


– The wear on the acetabular liner surface of total hip prosthesis due to human activity cannot be avoided. Salat is an obligation religious activity for Muslims performed five times daily, without exception for patients who used the total hip prosthesis. Salat consists of standing, bowing, prostrating and sitting on the leg motions. Many researchers have investigated the wear on the liner surface for daily activity but not for salat activity. This study has aimed to calculate wear on the acetabular liner surface due to salat activity. A new linear wear model has been proposed in order to estimate the linear wear or the wear depth on the acetabular liner surface. In addition, a volumetric wear model or volume loss on the acetabular liner surface has also been developed based on the new linear wear model. These wear model are used to calculate wear on the acetabular liner surface due to walking and salat activities. Results show that the linear wear due to salat activity is lower than walking activity, because of the intensity of salat activity is lower than walking. However, the combinations of both wear due to walking activity and salat activity need to be considered.


Rifle bullets in the pulp of elephant tusks cause different excrescences, which are determined by the various materials of bullets, the point of entry and seriousness of inflammation. In two present cases so-called bridges are built by contre-coup effect after bullet penetration into the pulp of the tusk. The material of the bridges contains secondary ivory which differs completely from the characteristic criss-cross patterns of ivory. Language: de


Plasma protein and isozyme polymorphism were analyzed from 210 blood samples of existing beef cattle among smallholder cattle raisers in the upland and lowland rain fed areas in the Central Visayas through starch gel electrophoresis. Nine presumptive loci were identified, namely: albumin with 1 genotype (AA); transferrin with 5 genotypes (AD, AE, DD, DE and EE); Esti, Est2 and Est3 with 9 genotypes (AA, AB and BB), respectively; Acph1 with 5 genotypes (AB, AC, BB.BC and CC) and Acph2 with 3 genotypes (AA, AB and BB) and MDH1 and MDH2 with 3 genotypes (AA.AB and BB), respectively. Proportions of polymorphic loci were higher in cattle from Cebu, Negros Oriental, and Bohol compared to Siquijor in both upland and lowland rainfed areas. The highest estimates of heterozygosity (0.44) were from cattle in Bohol lowland rainfed area and thelowest, in Siquijor (0.24). The highest genetic identity (0.977) was exhibited by tbe cattle from upland and lowland rainfed areas of Bohol while the farthest genetic distance (0.435) was from Cebu and Siquijor lowland rainfed areas. Siquijor cattle were distantly related to Cebu, Negros Oriental and Bohol cattle.


Background:- Although acute stroke accompanied by hyperglycemia is often associated with worse prognosis, the relationship between hyperglycemia and stroke outcome has not been studied in Ethiopian patients. As better understanding of this potentially adverse in�uence on stroke outcome would provide guidance for stroke management and acute care. This study aimed to determine frequency of admission hyperglycemia and its impact on thirty day functional outcome and case fatality among acute stroke patients in an urban setting in Ethiopia. Methods:- From July to December 2016, we collected information on 103 consecutive �rst ever acute stroke patients admitted within 72 hours of symptom onset to Tertiary hospital in Ethiopia. We obtained demographic, clinical and neuro-imaging data including capillary blood glucose at admission. National Institute of Health Stroke Scale and modi�ed Rankin Scale were used to assess the baseline stroke severity and the degree of disability at thirty day. Results:- A total of 103 �rst ever acute stroke patients were enrolled with, mean age = 55.5+ 15.3 years, 64.1% male, 65% under the age of 65 years, and 31.1% were farmers by occupation . Fifty one (49.5%) patients had a documented hyperglycemia at admission with median National Institute of Health Stroke Scale score of 14 and 3(2.9%) of them were later diagnosed with diabetes mellitus. The mean modi�ed Rankin score at 30-day was 3.6 + 1.45 while 34 (79.1%) of hyperglycemic stroke survivors scored between 3 and 5. Older age >65 years (p = 0.037), admission hyperglycemia (p = 0.04) and stroke severity (p <0.001) were signi�cantly correlated with poor functional outcome. Conclusions:- High blood glucose on admission was signi�cantly associated with sever disability in acute stroke patients, independent of the presence of diabetes mellitus. By establishing the negative impact of admission hyperglycemia on the neurological outcome, this study suggests that achieving normal blood glucose in the early stages of stroke could have a favorable impact on improved neurological outcome and quality of life for stroke patients. The study provides a rationale for acute stroke management that addresses the potentially adverse consequences of hyperglycemia at the time of presentation in an urban Ethiopian setting.


Recent approaches to efficiently ensemble neural networks have shown that strong robustness and uncertainty performance can be achieved with a negligible gain in parameters over the original network. However, these methods still require multiple forward passes for prediction, leading to a significant computational cost. In this work, we show a surprising result: the benefits of using multiple predictions can be achieved `for free' under a single model's forward pass. In particular, we show that, using a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) configuration, one can utilize a single model's capacity to train multiple subnetworks that independently learn the task at hand. By ensembling the predictions made by the subnetworks, we improve model robustness without increasing compute. We observe a significant improvement in negative log-likelihood, accuracy, and calibration error on CIFAR10, CIFAR100, ImageNet, and their out-of-distribution variants compared to previous methods.


PURPOSE
In this study, the hypothesis that higher energy dose improves procedural success without increasing complications was prospectively evaluated by performing endovenous laser therapy (ELT) at energies greater than 80 J/cm.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
One hundred consecutive great saphenous (GSV), anterior accessory great saphenous (AAGSV), or posterior accessory great saphenous (PAGSV) veins were treated with the intent to deliver an energy dose of greater than 80 J/cm. Eighty-one patients (64 women, 17 men) were treated. Mean age was 49 years (range, 25-77 years; SD, 12 years). Ultrasound (US) and clinical follow-up was performed at 1 week, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months until all veins had at least 3 months of follow-up. Success was defined as absence of reflux throughout the entire treated segment on follow-up US and clinical resolution of symptoms. Incomplete vein ablation was defined as US evidence of flow in a segment of a treated vein at any point during the follow-up period.

RESULTS
One hundred veins were treated with an average energy of 95 J/cm (range, 57-145 J/cm; SD, 16 J/cm). Follow-up and success at 1 week was 100%. Four veins could not be followed up beyond 1 week. Of the 96 remaining veins all had 3 months follow-up with an average follow-up of 9 months (range, 3-13 months; SD, 4 months). There were five failures and 91 successes for a success rate of 95%. Four of the treatment successes demonstrated segmental patency but no reflux on US for a complete vein ablation rate of 91%. No major complications occurred. The treatment failures occurred at an average energy dose of 98 J/cm. Two of the three failures were AAGSVs, one was a GSV ipsilateral to one of the failed AAGSVs, and two were bilateral GSVs treated during the same procedure. Average body mass index (BMI) was 30 for the successes and 46 for the failures. This difference was statistically significant (P = .0009). The mean length of the failed treatments from the saphenofemoral junction to their termination into a varicose tributary was 10.9 (range, 8-15 cm; SD, 3.7 cm). This was significantly less than the length of the successful treatments (P = .000003).

CONCLUSION
Higher energy GSV ELT is safe and highly successful.


Capacity building is a pervasive idea that has received little critical treatment from anthropology. In this introduction, we outline the growing use of the idea of 'capacity building' within and beyond development settings, and highlight mechanisms by which it gains footholds in both policy and practice. This special issue centres and questions its histories, assumptions, intentions and enactments in order to bring ethnographic attention to the promises it entails. By bringing together cases from different sectors and continents, the collection pursues capacity building's self-evident character, opening up what capacities themselves are thought to be. By not taking capacity building's promises for granted, the articles collected here have two aims: to interrogate the means of capacity building's ubiquity, and to develop critical purchase on its persuasive power.


Variation between Aberdeen general practitioners in referral rates for home and surgery nursing care is shown to be substantial and is related to the proportion of elderly patients in the practice, inversely to list size, to the doctor's experience, and to practice attachment of nurses. There is, however, a large unexplained variation which, it is suggested, reflects differing general practitioner perception of nursing need and nursing skill, a situation that could be improved by joint training.


Grammars for machine translation can be materialized on demand by finding source phrases in an indexed parallel corpus and extracting their translations. This approach is limited in practical applications by the computational expense of online lookup and extraction. For phrase-based models, recent work has shown that on-demand grammar extraction can be greatly accelerated by parallelization on general purpose graphics processing units (GPUs), but these algorithms do not work for hierarchical models, which require matching patterns that contain gaps. We address this limitation by presenting a novel GPU algorithm for on-demand hierarchical grammar extraction that is at least an order of magnitude faster than a comparable CPU algorithm when processing large batches of sentences. In terms of end-to-end translation, with decoding on the CPU, we increase throughput by roughly two thirds on a standard MT evaluation dataset. The GPU necessary to achieve these improvements increases the cost of a server by about a third. We believe that GPU-based extraction of hierarchical grammars is an attractive proposition, particularly for MT applications that demand high throughput.


Increasing complexity and costs of satellite missions
promote the idea of extending the operational lifetime or
improving functionalities/performance of a satellite in
orbit instead of simply replacing it by a new one.
Further, satellites in orbit can severely be affected by
aging or degradation of their components and systems as
well as by consumption of available resources. These
problems may be solved by satellite on-orbit servicing
missions. One of the critical issues of such a mission is
to ensure a safe and reliable Rendezvous and Docking
(RvD) operation performed autonomously in space. Due
to the high risk associated with an RvD operation, it must
be carefully analyzed, simulated and verified in detail
before the real space mission can be launched. This
paper describes a ground-based hardware-in-the-loop
RvD simulation facility. Designed and built on 2-decade
experience of RvD experiment and testing, this unique,
high-fidelity simulation facility is capable of physically
simulating the final approach within 25-meter range and
the docking/capture process of an on-orbital servicing
mission.


Material contribution to risk is a principle of tort causation; yet has never been applied. It may potentially violate all of the principles that underpin tort causation, whatever those principles may be. Alternately, it may simply be another conventional adaptation of tort causation to avoid manifest injustice. The supposition is that it will fall somewhere between. This work contributes to the literature converting this supposition into knowledge. This work has three parts. The first seeks to do what few in tort writing do: craft a methodology. The first part compares and contrasts the theory that underpins tort law, the law of negligence, and finally, the theory of causation. Any choice in the latter part of the article is obviously conditioned on which theory explains the actual benefits and harms of such a choice. The second part uses comparison to determine where the Canadian law of material contribution to risk currently rests. The Canadian jurisprudence is relatively sparse; while the UK jurisprudence is fulsome. By showing the fundamental dissimilarities between the intimations of the Canadian and UK jurisprudence, this part shows that the two jurisdictions are, and should continue to be, unique. The third part considers two areas of material contribution to risk that are fundamentally unclear. Firstly, circumstances in which material contribution to risk can apply in lieu of the de facto but-for test are, at best, transparent. This section is termed the 'trigger' section—and probes when material contribution to risk can be applied instead of the de facto but-for test. Secondly, who is liable for what under material contribution to risk is also unclear. This section is termed apportionment—and determines which liability rule should determine which defendant should be liable for what share of the damages.


Idiopathic external hydrocephalus is a frequent cause of macrocephaly in infants. The cranial CT scan shows an enlarged subarachnoid space, especially in the frontal area, with a prominent interhemispheric fissure and occasionally an enlargement of the ventricular system. Sixteen patients with this condition are reported; 7 of which had a family history of megalo-encephaly and 4 had delayed motor development, although it was transient in 3 of the cases. The cranial circumference was normal at about 18 months of age, but 4 patients had megalo-encephaly after 3 years of age. The radiological images were normal in all cases between 24 and 48 months of age without treatment.


Constant extension rate experiments have been performed on Type 304 stainless steel round tension-test specimens in 35 percent magnesium chloride at 120°C as a function of electrode potential and extension rate. When potentiostatic measurement was applied, an extension rate of 4.4 X 10 - 6 s - 1 was found to be acceptable as an accelerated test. These tests are compared with constant load measurements by variation of the electrode potential. Both methods indicate that stress-corrosion cracking decreases by lowering electrode potential and disappears below -380 mV (saturated calomel electrode). Current density-time plots made during constant straining and fractographic observations show different types of crack formation. The number of cracks increases with increasing potential, and the crack depth decreases with accelerated straining. Transgranular stress-corrosion cracking is observed accompanied by pitting. The selective corrosion in the early stage of cracking was revealed by scanning electron microscope (SEM) micrographs and SEM analysis. Iron and nickel are dissolved and a chromium-rich phase is formed along the crack walls. Although the first attack appears to be intercrystalline, the fracture shows only transgranular features.


This paper examines whether growing up in areas with high homicide rates affects financial risk preferences. Our key conjecture is that individuals who have grown up in violent areas possess more risk averse financial preferences. We find support for this hypothesis using a unique dataset of mutual fund investors from one of Colombia's largest stock brokers alongside Colombian official data on homicide rates.


In privacy-preserving machine learning, it is less obvious to verify correct behavior of participants because they are not supposed to reveal their inputs in cleartext to other participants. It is hence important to make federated machine learning robust against data poisoning and related attacks. While input data can be related to a distributed ledger (blockchain), a less studied input is formed by the random sampling parties perform. In this paper, we describe strategies based on zero knowledge proofs to allow parties to prove they perform sampling (and other computations) correctly. We sketch a number of alternative ways to implement our idea and provide some preliminary experimental results.


This paper presents the findings of a research collaboration between the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) and the UK Open University-based OER Research Hub (www.oerresearchhub.org) and suggests that when user communities' needs do not coincide with those of the majority, a model of open education resources (OER) development and sharing through open, transnational collaboration can offer a solution. The VUSSC is a mechanism for 32 tiny nations to collaboratively develop, adapt and share post-secondary level openly licensed courses and learning materials in subject areas that are especially relevant to the needs of people in the participating countries - for example, disaster management, entrepreneurship, the fishing industry, life skills and tourism. Since 2005, educators from island, coastal and landlocked nations in the Caribbean, Pacific, Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, as well as small states in Africa, have been gaining skills in the creation of learning materials and in online collaboration, and applying them to collaboratively develop a body of OER freely available to all via the VUSSC website (www.vussc.info) and published under a Creative Commons (CC) license.

Survey and interview-based research with students and educators in the VUSSC member states has allowed for an understanding of the means by which open education practices (OEP) provide some of the world's smallest countries with stronger economic opportunities and improved access to quality education, offering them the potential to become active contributors to global development. The collected data shows how the VUSSC participants are using and developing OER to meet the very specific needs of the member countries. Educators are at the heart of the VUSSC, taking a key role in resource creation and sharing, in policy discussions, in building subject-specific networks and in training peers. The survey data shows that use of the VUSSC OER has led to educators' pedagogical development and their increased connectedness with peers worldwide. In addition, the survey data shows that OER are having a positive impact on students' educational performance, their confidence and independence as learners, and their satisfaction with the learning experience. The benefits of the VUSSC for institutions are also explored in this paper through a case study of Botswana College of Distance and Open Learning, which has used VUSSC OER to extend its curriculum to cover higher education.

The VUSSC study also reveals that finding up-to-date, high quality, context-relevant resources remains a challenge for many, as do digital infrastructure problems in some areas. In addition, while there is evidence that openness is spreading throughout the member states the study also indicates that there is still much scope for expansion and a need for increased global awareness of the work of VUSSC. The research reported in this paper should be of value across the open education movement, adding to the growing picture of the power of OER and OEP in diverse contexts and presenting a compelling view of the potential of open collaboration in growing small states' educational capacity and in helping increase educational and social inclusion in remote and isolated areas of the world.


Objective: The objective of this study is to assess the reproducibility of cephalometric measurements derived from an application designed for handheld (smartphone) devices and manual cephalometry. Materials and Methods: Thirty pretreatment lateral cephalograms obtained from the same digital cephalostat were analyzed. Tracings were done using CephNinja for iPhone (Cyncronus) and manually by the hand on acetate sheets. Cephalometric landmarks and angular and linear measurements were recorded. All tracings were performed by the same investigator. Statistical Analysis: To evaluate reproducibility, for each cephalometric measurement, the agreement between the value derived from CephNinja, and that measured manually was assessed with the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Agreement was rated as low for an ICC <0.75 and an ICC >0.75 was considered indicative of good agreement. Furthermore, differences in measurements between those derived from CephNinja application and manual tracing were statistically evaluated (P < 0.05). Results: All the measurements had ICC >0.75, indicating high agreement among both the tracing methods. Differences in measurements between CephNinja and hand tracing were not statistically significant for any of the cephalometric parameters. Conclusion(s): Handheld (smartphone)-assisted cephalometric analysis shows good agreement with manual tracing and can be employed for clinical decision-making.


For the studies on the innovation capability, there are many limitations in using traditional statistical techniques. The grey system theory proposed in this paper is to supplement the limitations of using traditional techniques and it is more suitable to figure out the relationship between industrial characteristics and innovation capability within Chinese high-tech industries. Based on the statistical data from Chinese high-tech industries, over the period 2006-2008, this paper used fifteen indicators affecting the innovation capability and seven indicators related to industrial characteristics. Firstly, this paper applied grey relational analysis to find the significant factors and other indicators affecting innovation capability within Chinese high-tech industries. Secondly, it applied grey decision-making method to arrange the innovation capability of Chinese high-tech industries in order. Finally, this paper used GM (0,N) model to analyze the relationship between the seven variables of industrial characteristics and innovation capability within Chinese high-tech industries as the results.


We introduce causal Markov Decision Processes (C-MDPs), a new formalism for sequential decision making which combines the standard MDP formulation with causal structures over state transition and reward functions. Many contemporary and emerging application areas such as digital healthcare and digital marketing can benefit from modeling with C-MDPs due to the causal mechanisms underlying the relationship between interventions and states/rewards. We propose the causal upper confidence bound value iteration (C-UCBVI) algorithm that exploits the causal structure in C-MDPs and improves the performance of standard reinforcement learning algorithms that do not take causal knowledge into account. We prove that C-UCBVI satisfies an Õ(HS p ZT ) regret bound, where T is the the total time steps, H is the episodic horizon, and S is the cardinality of the state space. Notably, our regret bound does not scale with the size of actions/interventions (A), but only scales with a causal graph dependent quantity Z which can be exponentially smaller than A. By extending C-UCBVI to the factored MDP setting, we propose the causal factored UCBVI (CF-UCBVI) algorithm, which further reduces the regret exponentially in terms of S. Furthermore, we show that RL algorithms for linear MDP problems can also be incorporated in C-MDPs. We empirically show the benefit of our causal approaches in various settings to validate our algorithms and theoretical results.


Theories of social-ecological resilience have developed over the past decades and rapidly become an important framework for governance of complex non-linear environmental problems. This book explores the resilience theories and their compatibility with law, it identifies corresponding legal features. The legal features identified, including legal measures, mechanisms, principles and approaches, form a legal design for social-ecological resilience. A legal design that can be applied to different governance situations. It can be a tool both for designing new laws, as well as for assessing the effectiveness of current laws and legal systems. In many ways environmental law has adjusted and developed new approaches to meet complex environmental problems, but law is still challenged by the complexity that characterize environmental problems and the environmental change connected with the Anthropocene. This book provides a comprehensive review of the most fundamental components of the governance framework for social-ecological resilience and the role of law.


The intersection of national security, foreign policy, and health has been explored in a number of arenas, but little attention has been devoted to the ethical issues surrounding the global health impact of current counterterrorism policy and practice. In this essay, we'll review a range of harms to population health traceable to counterterrorism operations, identify concerns involving moral agency and responsibility—specifically of humanitarian health workers, military medical personnel, and national security officials and operatives—and highlight two interrelated policy issues: the need for a conception of national security that incorporates a cosmopolitan concern for health, and the need for shared health governance, including governance of activities affecting health.


This study examined the effects of different parent residency arrangements resulting from permanent parental separation or divorce on the growth of competence and self-esteem in primary school-aged children. There were a total of 272 participants in the study comprised of 136 single parent children (72 girls and 64 boys) and 136 two parent children matched for age, gender, school year and educational cohort. Participants were drawn from a total of 45 schools, 35 state and 10 private schools. The study employed a matched sample or correlated groups design wherein a sample of non-clinical, single parent children of both genders resident with parents (for a minimum of one year) of both genders, were matched and compared with children from two parent families. The study adopted an ecological approach involving multiple informants (parents and teachers) to generate data about the children's competence and self-esteem in addition to seeking this information from the children themselves. Data measuring the children's competence and self-esteem were gathered on a range of dependent measures including the Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC) (Harter, 1985), the Social Support Scale for Children (Harter, 1985), the Wide Range Achievement Test (Revised) (Jastak, 1984) and the Everyday Household Responsibilities Life Skills Inventory (EHRLSI) (Amato, 1986). Data gathered from teachers about the children were obtained through the Teacher Rating Scale of the SPPC. Parents also completed the Teacher Rating Scale of the SPPC (renamed the Parent Rating Scale), the EHRLSI and the Child Behaviour Checklist /4- 18 (Achenbach, 1991). Comparisons were made between the single and two parent in children using a series of t tests, ANOVAS and correlations. Findings confirmed the contention that when considering competence and self-esteem, single parent children cannot be treated as an homogeneous group. Results showed that overall the single parent children's scores on the dependent measures were of average to above average levels and that there were very few statistically significant differences between single parent and two parent children on these measures. This study suggested that single parent children are not at risk in terms of their development of competence or their self-esteem as measured by these instruments. It also found that it is not necessarily advantageous for single parent children to raised by a parent of the same gender. Teacher ratings of single parent children's competence on the SPPC were lower than their ratings of children from two parent families on three of the five specific domains. It is suggested that a "children of divorce" stereotype, whereby knowledge of the child's family circumstances negatively influences the opinions of the teachers, may be operating. Implications for professionals working with single parent children either as researchers, teachers or mental health professionals, are presented and discussed. The study also has implications for public policy and legal decision making in terms of the application of the "tender years doctrine". It is concluded that single fathers are equally as capable as single mothers of providing an adequate home environment for raising their children post-separation and divorce and that the tradition of placing children with the mother, based on the concept "in the best interests of the child" needs to be re-assessed in contemporary Australian society.


Background: Patients with dental anxiety are a heterogeneous group with origins, onset age and manifestations which vary to a great extent between individuals. Among the management options for dental anxiety, non-pharmacological management methods were found to be superior to anxiolytic drug therapies. Medications provide only short term cost effective solutions and an increased patient risk exists due to drug interaction or overdose. Present trend is towards non aversive techniques. Aim and Objectives: To compare the effectiveness of music distraction and brief relaxation method in anxious pediatric patients. Materials and methods: Ninety children of age group of 6-12years were selected randomly by simple random sampling and were divided into three groups with thirty children in each group grouped as - Group A: Control group, Group B: Patients treated with brief relaxation, Group C: Patients treated with music distraction. The patient's subjective anxiety recorded using modified version of the self-report Faces Scale by LeBaron et al. Study investigated using two physiological parameters i.e. heart rate and oxygen saturation, measured with pulse oximetery at different intervals. Results: The study result showed the brief relaxation better efficacy than music distraction in reducing anxiety as indicated by both the subjective and objective parameters except oxygen saturation which were used. But music distraction also helps in lowering the anxiety in children when music distraction group was compared with the control group. Conclusion: Our study found out that even though both brief relaxation and music distraction have the ability to reduce dental anxiety in children, brief relaxation showed more potential in reducing anxiety.


Drawing on their extensive research, Nichols and Berliner document and categorize the ways that high-stakes testing threatens the purposes and ideals of the American education system. For more than a decade, the debate over high-stakes testing has dominated the field of education. This passionate and provocative book provides a fresh perspective on the issue and powerful ammunition for opponents of high-stakes tests. Their analysis is grounded in the application of Campbell's Law, which posits that the greater the social consequences associated with a quantitative indicator (such as test scores), the more likely it is that the indicator itself will become corrupted - and the more likely it is that the use of the indicator will corrupt the social processes it was intended to monitor. Nichols and Berliner illustrate both aspects of this "corruption", showing how the pressures of high-stakes testing erode the validity of test scores and distort the integrity of the education system. Their analysis provides a coherent and comprehensive intellectual framework for the wide-ranging arguments against high-stakes testing, while putting a compelling human face on the data marshalled in support of those arguments.


Productivity in radiology is a complex and elusive issue. The fact that radiology is the practice of medicine makes management of it very different from management in traditional "smokestack" industry. Management itself is very young, and more familiar with smokestacks and widgets than with radiology or any other service industry. Before management can hope to affect productivity in radiology, it must first come to understand what it (radiology) is, and how it works.


Computational agents often need to learn policies that involve many control variables, e.g., a robot needs to control several joints simultaneously. Learning a policy with a high number of parameters, however, usually requires a large number of training samples. We introduce a reinforcement learning method for sample-efficient policy search that exploits correlations between control variables. Such correlations are particularly frequent in motor skill learning tasks. The introduced method uses Variational Inference to estimate policy parameters, while at the same time uncovering a low-dimensional latent space of controls. Prior knowledge about the task and the structure of the learning agent can be provided by specifying groups of potentially correlated parameters. This information is then used to impose sparsity constraints on the mapping between the high-dimensional space of controls and a lower-dimensional latent space. In experiments with a simulated bi-manual manipulator, the new approach effectively identifies synergies between joints, performs efficient low-dimensional policy search, and outperforms state-of-the-art policy search methods.


To evaluate the safety and efficacy of didanosine (ddl) monotherapy and three different combinations of zidovudine (ZDV) and ddl in asymptomatic human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) infection, we conducted an open-label, phase I/II study in 126 asymptomatic HIV-1-infected hemophilic and nonhemophilic subjects with a CD4 count of 200 to 500/mm3 stratified for prior zidovudine treatment and baseline CD4 count. Study arms included arm A, low-dose combination (ZDV 150 mg and ddl 134 mg, daily); arm B, moderate-dose combination (ZDV 300 mg and ddI 334 mg, daily); arm C, high-dose combination (ZDV 600 mg and ddl 500 mg, daily), and arm D, ddl monotherapy (ddl 500 mg, daily). Earlier, more frequent hepatotoxicity was experienced by hemophilic subjects (P = .008), but there were no differences in toxicity between treatment arms (P = .51), nor were there any differences in the rate of development of clinical endpoints by treatment (P = .41). Smaller median CD4 increases occurred over the first 12 weeks for arms A and D, 44/mm3 and 42/mm3, than arms B and C, 105/mm3 and 114/mm3, respectively, (P = .015). Hemophilia status (P = .0004) and prior ZDV experience (P = .044) independently predicted weaker CD4 responses during the first 12 weeks of treatment. Using a regression model and adjusting for hemophilia status, prior ZDV treatment, and baseline CD4, there was a significant reduction in quantitative viral load from baseline by week 12 for all treatment arms combined (P = .0001), with significantly lower median percent reduction for arm A (56.3%) than arms B, C, and D (94.6%, 98.5%, and 91.9%, respectively, P = .015). Although greater hepatoxicity and weaker CD4 responses occur in hemophilic subjects, didanosine monotherapy and combination therapy with zidovudine are safe and effective in asymptomatic HIV-1-infected patients.


This study analyses the social impact of immigration, focusing on elements that allow to determine the effects of their presence in Italy. The analysis has therefore focused on three areas (the labour market, the economy and social life).and through a composed index (immigrants' situation), show how these contribute to define immigrants' situation. The analyses: i) confirms the increase of the phenomenon of immigration in Italy; ii) identifies the main areas related to social impact of immigration; iii) highlights the construction of a composed index which summarizes the three areas. These findings confirm the role covered by immigrants in labour factor is more than complementarity rather than substitutability. In addition, most of the immigrants are in age for working, and in good health, work, at least in part, regularly and pay taxes, both direct and indirect, increasing the resources in the coffers of the state.


Two models have been proposed for the molecular mechanism by which the Tal1 oncogene causes T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL). The activation model suggests that Tal1 as heterodimers with the E2A transcription factor activates the expression of oncogenes. The inhibition model postulates that Tal1 interferes with the tumor-suppressing function of E2A. In the Jurkat T cell line, originally derived from a patient with T-ALL, Tal1 is complexed with E2A proteins and the transcriptional activity of E2A is very low. When E2A activity was restored by expressing an E2A–Tal1 fusion protein, E-T/2, the Jurkat cells underwent growth arrest and subsequently apoptosis, thus supporting the inhibition model and suggesting that E2A loss may contribute to leukemic progression.


The industry and construction sector face an increasing problem of how to dispose of its voluminous residues. Much of these residues are constituted of large amounts of liquid phase and fine-grained solids in suspension, for example mine tailings and dredged materials. Therefore, there is a need to develop technologies that aim at reducing the volume of these residues for economical disposal or treatment. Depending on the type of solid and liquid phase, a number of additives are currently used to speed up the sedimentation and reduce the volume of these suspensions. In order to investigate the impact of different additives, a laboratory setup was designed to monitor the sedimentation process. This setup consists of a transparent plastic tube provided with electrodes. This paper focuses on the evaluation and performance of electrical resistance measurement as a means to monitor the sedimentation of a fine-grained soil. Experimental work was carried out on suspensions of kaolin clay in deionized water and electrolyte solutions. The results showed that electrical resistance measurements can provide valuable information related to densification and fabric of the soft sediment.


The fields of cavity optomechanics and Brillouin scattering, linked by common underlying physical mechanisms, involve the interaction of light waves with mechanical vibrations at the micro- and nanoscale. Exciting fundamental research in both classical and quantum regimes as well as opportunities for applications in microwave photonics, frequency conversion, narrow-linewidth lasers, optomechanical sensors, electro-optic transducers, coherent light storage, and Brillouin spectroscopy have stimulated significant interest in the last decade. This special issue brings contributions to fundamental aspects regarding the Brillouin interaction such as novel waveguide structures, novel guiding mechanisms, the interplay between Brillouin and other nonlinear phenomena, and applications in sensing and light storage, as well as an introductory tutorial to the research field. Here, we provide a brief introduction to the topics covered in the issue.


The White Spaces of Kenyan Settler Writing lists and places in their historical contexts over 900 texts written by Whites in and about colonial Kenya.


Connected health platform delivers continuous monitoring, reporting and storing of patient data in ER, hospital care, long-term care and remote settings thus providing a way of managing health and chronic diseases. In this paper, we present a mobile connected health platform infrastructure that provides anytime, anywhere connectivity solution where the user's health data is recorded, transmitted, extracted and deposited on a central repository. This capability assists in monitoring progression of chronic diseases and also provides decision assistance to the caregiver.


We examine the effect of firm-specific business disruptions on the performance of small firms in emerging markets. We study the impact of both managerial disruptions (which result in the absence of the entrepreneur-owner or more broadly a key manager) and operational disruptions (e.g., supply glitches). We examine the effectiveness of resilience strategies in buffering against disruptions. We propose the use of relational resilience--i.e., the availability of suitable cover for the absent entrepreneur / key manager--as a measure of buffering against managerial disruptions. We also examine whether resource resilience (e.g., maintaining safety stock) helps recover from operational disruptions. In the absence of publicly available data, we hand-build a panel dataset by interviewing 646 randomly selected small firms over four time periods in Kampala, Uganda between June 2015 and November 2016. We find that disruptions are highly prevalent and have a statistically and economically significant effect on firm performance. When a firm faces multiple exogenous and severe disruptions in a six month period, its monthly sales go down by 13.7% (p = 0.013) and sales growth reduces by 17.1% on average over the six months (p = 0.070). Importantly, we find that both relational and resource resilience significantly buffer against the negative impact of disruptions; in some cases firms with high resilience are able to completely overcome the negative effect of disruptions on sales and sales growth. We discuss implications for policy makers and for large multi-nationals that buy from or sell to small emerging market firms.


Music Library and Research Skills. By Jane Gottlieb. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009. [xiii, 370 p. ISBN 0-13-158434-0; 978-0-13-158434-1. $57] Another new example of a guide to music research, Jane Gottlieb's Music Library and Research Skills is a wealth of information that incorporates her vast experience in the matter of conducting and teaching music research. This book is intended for the graduate music bibliography classroom and includes both discussions of types of tools as well as lists of sources. The author lays out several "rules for successful music library users," including "Rule No. 1: Pester the Librarian," and "Rule No. 3: Under stand the Difference between Answering Factual Questions and Exploring Those Questions Requiring More In-Depth Original Research" (p.2ff) While the rules serve as helpful reminders to the reader on how to get the most the library has to offer, they might be a bit off-putting to graduate-level students. There will be a companion website which will be maintained by the author and updated quarterly (p.xiii). Unfortunately, the address is not included in the book, and, at the time of this review (September 2009), the reviewer could not locate the site via the publisher's website or with a Google search. The book is arranged in twelve chapters, and "each chapter is designed to be self-contained, so an instructor may utilize its resources as best fits into his/her own approach" (p.xii). While the author states that the book progresses according to recommended research process, there is no actual discussion of what the research process is and what steps are involved. Presumably this would be discussed in the classroom setting, since graduate students are often approaching true research for the first time. Chapters are organized by major type of tool: bibliographies, dictionaries/ encyclopedias, sources about composers and performers, histories, periodicals and indexes, discographies, editions, thematic catalogs, text translations, and resources for careers in music. Additionally, there are two glossaries--over 150 German music terms and over two dozen bibliographic terms. The first chapter, "Libraries and the Universe of Information on Music," contains the aforementioned library rules, as well as several other topics that address the larger context for the sources discussed in the rest of the book. The description of library catalogs includes searching tips as well as a clear explanation of authority files and uniform titles and why they matter. The chapter also contains information about classification schemes, online sources, and rules for using the internet for research, in addition to a brief introduction to style manuals and writing guides. Finally, the chapter includes descriptions of types of libraries and collections, and a helpful listing of several individual major libraries and collections, with citations for further readings about each. This level of detail is appropriate for a graduate-level class. Gottlieb is clearly someone who knows the tools of the trade, as evidenced in the informative narrative sections in each chapter describing the category of resource. There is often a bit of history of the development of the resources or even of specific titles that is useful for the librarian as well as the student. Gottlieb shares knowledge that can only be gained from using the tools extensively. For example, there is an extensive discussion of Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and its history and development (p.68ff). One strength of this book emerges in its range: where appropriate, the sources listed and examples are drawn not only from Western art music, but from jazz, popular, and world music as well. For example, in the chapter on composers and performers, Gottlieb includes Bob Dylan, Grateful Dead, and Elvis Presley as well as others beyond the scope of Western art music. Another useful feature of the book are its real-life examples and discussion boxes ("Who was Francois-Joseph Fetis? …


Introduction: The advent of laparoscopic surgery has dramatically changed the field of surgery. With improvements in the equipment and increasing clinical experience it is now possible to perform almost any kind of procedure under laparoscopic visualization. The idea of minimal surgical trauma, resulting in significantly shorter hospital stay, less postoperative pain, faster return to daily activities, and better cosmetic outcome have made laparoscopic surgery for acute appendicitis very attractive. Objective: The aim of the present study was to compare the laparoscopic approach and the conventional technique in the treatment of acute appendicitis. Method: This prospective randomized clinical trial was conducted at CMH, Savar Cantonment and Navy Hospital, BNS Patenga, Chittagong. A total of 86 patients who underwent appendicectomy during December 2009 to March 2011 were included in this study. A total of 40 patients had laparoscopic appendicectomy and 46 underwent open procedure. Clinical outcome measures were compared between the two groups with respect to several variables. Results: Among the study population, the operating time was shorter for the OA patients than for the LA patients (LA, 35 min vs. OA, 30 min; p value 0.33), which is not statistically significant. The differences in hospital stay of 4 days for the LA group and 8 days for the OA group and p value 0.01 which is statistically significant. Return to oral diet was same in both groups with no statistical difference LA, 20 h vs. OA, 22 h; return to work LA was 14 days vs. OA 18 days. Although the rate for overall complications was lower in the LA group 5% vs. 18% in OA; p value 0.001 which is statistically significant. Conclusion: The laparoscopic approach to appendicectomy in patients with acute appendicitis does offer a significant advantage over the open approach in terms of length of hospital stay, postoperative complications, or quality of life, which are considered as the major advantages of minimally invasive surgery. Journal of Armed Forces Medical College Bangladesh Vol.10(2) 2014


The debate on firm internationalisation has predominantly focused on different aspects connected to growth. However, the notion of de-internationalisation is not as popular, although it could also contribute significantly to our understanding of internationalisation. This paper focuses on de-internationalisation, its different modes and patterns followed by companies in the Hungarian context. Three hypotheses are tested: that de-internationalisation is a mass phenomenon, after de-internationalisation most companies are terminated, and de-internationalisation does not mean the end of international exposure. To test these hypotheses the Hungarian Corporate Tax Database was used with which the whole population of Hungarian companies in the years from 2009 to 2014 was analysed. The database consists 385,723 companies in 2009 and 422,500 companies in 2014, which is the whole Hungarian private sector. Among these companies 73,442 companies were registering export revenues, but this seems to be stable only for a smaller amount of companies. De-internationalisation is uncovered in this paper with different patterns followed by companies in the Hungarian context.


Molecular structure and conformational preferences of yatakemycin, a novel and exceptionally potent antitumor agent, have been investigated using the density functional theory (DFT) formalism. From the relative stability of various possible conformations, it is found that two conformers are nearly isoenergetic and markedly more stable than the others in the gas phase. To test the effect of polar mediums, the relative energies have been recalculated using the self-consistent reaction field method. Thus, the most stable conformer of the isolated molecule in the gas phase is expected to be still more preferred in solution. The molecular structure of yatakemycin has also been studied by means of its spectroscopic properties. The DFT results satisfactorily reproduce the experimental data and corroborate the reliability of the structural characterization advanced for yatakemycin. The lowest-energy electronic transitions have been interpreted with time-dependent DFT calculations. Notably, the strong IR band observed at 2852 cm(-1) is unambiguously assigned to the O-H stretching of the (C7)O-H...O(C12) fragment, linked by a strong intramolecular H-bond, and may be viewed as a distinctive fingerprint of yatakemycin. Furthermore, the calculated set of NMR chemical shifts of carbonyl carbon atoms and indole protons, the most sensitive to stereoelectronic factors, is consistent with experiment. The effects of both protonation and oxidation on the geometry of the most stable conformer have also been studied. With reference to yatakemycin's DNA alkylation properties, the structure of the yatakemycin-adenine adduct has been theoretically modeled and found to be consistent with experimental spectroscopic evidence.


An increasing specificity of the cancer treatment requires an accurate detection of cancer-associated molecular targets to avoid over- and undertreatment. Radionuclide molecular imaging is a pronitising way for visualisation of such targets. Affibody molecules (Affibody (R) molecules), small (7 kDa) robust scaffold proteins constitute a new promising class of high-affinity molecular probes for in vivo molecular imaging. Pre-clinical studies demonstrated a great potential of derivatives of Z(HER2:342) Affibody molecule to visualise expression of HER2 in tumour xenografts. Robustness of the Affibody scaffold enabled labelling in harsh conditions without loosing specificity of the HER2-binding. This paper provides an overview of the recent development of Affibody molecules. During the recent year, an important achievement was the development of site-specific labelling of Affibody molecules providing well-characterised uniform conjugates with defined biodistribution and targeting properties. The site-specific labelling was obtained either by an incorporation of chelators during peptides synthesis of Affibody molecules or by an introduction of a single cysteine in the originally cysteine-free Affibody scaffold and the use of a thiol-directed coupling. A feasibility of modification of the biodistribution of Affibody molecules by different chelators was another interesting fmding. This was demonstrated during development of mercaptoacetyl-containing peptide based chelators for Tc-99m-labelling of Affibody molecules. Several positron-emitting labels enabled the use of advantages of PET for Affibody-mediated radionuclide imaging. it was demonstrated that the rapid targeting of Affibody molecules is compatible with the use of such labels as Ga-68 and F-18.


Speech perception is the process by which the sounds of language are heard, recognized, interpreted, and understood. Because understanding spoken language is an integral part of our social interactions, communications, and learning, speech perception has been an active research topic in the fields of psychology, cognitive science, and linguistics. Research in speech perception seeks to understand how humans recognize speech sounds and use this information to understand spoken language. In this review paper, we first overview some of the brain areas underlying speech perception. We then discuss previous findings that have found significant sex differences in speech perception and those that rather suggested similarities in speech perception between women and men. Reviewing the discrepancy between the research findings will allow us to determine the degree to which sex differences impact the way individuals perceive and understand speech sounds. Although speech perception is mainly based on auditory processing, vision often plays an important role as well. In this review paper, we also include previous studies on such multimodal processing in speech perception, because, in everyday conversations in which we are routinely engaged, we often benefit from using different sensory information from different modalities (e.g., audition and vision). We conclude that while there are interesting findings on sex differences in speech perception, particularly in females, more systematic and quantitative evaluation should also be made, before making any clear conclusions about sex differences in speech perception in general.


Highly c-axis-oriented ZnO nanostructured thin films were deposited by laser-enhanced electrospray chemical vapor deposition (laser ES-CVD) using alcohol-based solutions under atmospheric pressure. ZnO thin films are composed of c-axis-oriented single-crystalline ZnO columnar structures that grow perpendicular to the substrate on an upper ZnO polycrystalline layer. The morphologies drastically changed from sparse dendritic to dense columnar as a result of the addition of glacial acetic acid to the source solutions. The ZnO thin films had a good optical transmittance of more than 80% and an optical band gap of approximately 3.2 eV. ZnO columnar dense films had the highest Hall mobility, for which the carrier concentration was estimated to be 3.3 × 1017 cm−3 while the resistivity was approximately 9 Ω cm. This result suggests that the ZnO deposition process could be applied to practical material deposition.


In this work, we introduce a novel framework that employs cluster annotation to boost active learning by reducing the number of human interactions required to train deep neural networks. Instead of annotating single samples individually, humans can also label clusters, producing a higher number of annotated samples with the cost of a small label error. Our experiments show that the proposed framework requires 82% and 87% less human interactions for CIFAR-10 and EuroSAT datasets respectively when compared with the fully-supervised training while maintaining similar performance on the test set.


This study investigated the effectiveness of psycho-education methods on college students' attitudes toward post traumatic stress disorder. Analysis of results indicated that lecturing was the most effective psycho-educational method to obtain attitudinal changes. The effects of psycho-education methods of a shortduration intervention for college students' positive attitudes toward PTSD. Findings from the study led to the results that a short-duration of psychoeducation intervention on PTSD effectively increases college students' attitudes toward post traumatic stress disorder, reduces negative attitudes towards PTSD.


Light serves as an important environmental cue in regulating plant architecture. Previous work had demonstrated that both photoreceptor-mediated signaling and photosynthesis play a role in determining the orientation of plant organs. TILLER ANGLE CONTROL 1 (TAC1) was recently shown to function in setting the orientation of lateral branches in diverse plant species, but the degree to which it plays a role in light-mediated phenotypes is unknown. Here, we demonstrated that TAC1 expression was light dependent, as expression was lost under dark or far-red growth conditions, but did not display any clear diurnal rhythm. Loss of TAC1 in the dark was gradual, and experiments with photoreceptor mutants indicated this was not dependent upon Red/Far-Red or Blue light signaling, but partially required the signaling integrator CONSTITUTIVE PHOTOMORPHGENESIS 1 (COP1). Over-expression of TAC1 partially prevented the narrowing of branch angles in the dark or under Far-Red light. Treatment with the carotenoid biosynthesis inhibitor Norflurazon or the PSII inhibitor DCMU led to loss of TAC1 expression similar to dark or far-red conditions, but surprisingly expression increased in response to the PSI inhibitor Paraquat. Our results indicate that TAC1 plays an important role in modulating plant architecture in response to photosynthetic signals. HIGHLIGHT Branch angles narrow in darkness or under far-red light. This response is partially mediated by TAC1 which responds to photosynthetic signals, providing a key link between photosynthesis and plant architecture.


In the world renewable energy sector, including large hydropower, employed 10.3 million people, directly and indirectly, in 2017. This represents an increase of 5.3% over the number reported the previous year. The aim of the executed research is to determine the influence of harvesting renewable energy on the labour market in EU. Eurostat databases provided a source of empirical data concerning the amount of produced energy. The following sectors were considered: solid biofuels, biogas, liquid biofuels, geothermal, hydropower, municipal waste, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, wind power and heat pumps. The research concerned 28 Member States of the EU between 2009 and 2016. Panel estimation was used as means of empirical indication of relations between the variables. The obtained models are adjusted to the empirical data, the rectified coefficient of determination equalled, depending on the sector, 0.828 (liquid biofuels) to 0.981 (solid biofuels). The analysed models show that throughout the examined period, the solar and wind power sectors were the ones that consumed the larger amount of work. As it was indicated above, these sectors are considered the most innovative and technologically advanced ones and thus, the employment rates seem to decreased in the shorter time.


In Reply.— Dr Dorus agreed with many of the conclusions of the Panel, but there seem to be two points of disagreement: (1) She conceptualized interaction strictly in terms of analysis of variance. (2) She maintained that since "gene-environment interactions play a more substantial role in psychiatric disorders, traditional genetic strategies... are not suitable." We would be most reluctant to limit the concept of interaction to the analysis of variance. It is curious that Dr Dorus cited Lewontin 1 because his excellent article showed that a strict statistical interpretation of geneenvironment interaction is inadequate for an understanding of biological processes and etiology of disease. The interest of the Panel was not as much in the estimation of the components of variance as in the explication of the etiologic roles and biological interaction of specific genes and environmental factors. Thus, in the example given by Dr Dorus, it would be important to determine whether


Upland cotton is naturally white, with its yellowness (+b) rating highly influencing its economic value. Field conditions, microorganisms, and growth problems can cause cotton to become discolored at harvest, which has historically been thought to indicate a decrease in product quality. Previous research has suggested that some reactions between amino acids and carbohydrates on the surface of cotton fibers may lead to color development after harvest during certain storage and shipping conditions. There has been a lack of research evidence to understand how initial amounts of those surface constituents present at harvest may indicate the propensity for potential future changes in +b ratings. Due to the monetary implications, it is important for those in the cotton industry to better understand exactly how detrimental the +b value is on the functionality of the cotton. This study aimed to identify potential relationships between the post-harvest surface amino acids and carbohydrates content with color rating values to gain insight using High Volume Instrument (HVI), a portable spectrophotometer, ion chromatography, and a ninhydrin test to compare amino acid and carbohydrate content of 45 upland cotton samples with their color measurements: +b, Rd, and L*a*b*. A correlational statistical analysis found a quadratic relationship between amino acid content and +b; and highly positive correlations between amino acids and +b ratings: 0.8607; and b* values: 0.820 (p<0.05).


Purpose: Existing questionnaires assessing sexual function after prostate cancer (PCa) were developed in predominantly heterosexual male cohorts and may measure function incompletely in gay men. We sought to determine if there are sexual function domains relevant to gay men that are not captured by the Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite (EPIC) sexual function assessment. Methods: Fifty-three gay men with PCa responded to an online survey regarding the applicability of the sexual function domain in the validated EPIC questionnaire. They were then queried about whether the prostate is a source of sexual pleasure and the importance of measuring sexual satisfaction as it relates to receptive anal intercourse. Results: A majority of gay men with PCa found the EPIC sexual function tool to be applicable when measuring erectile function (76.5%). Of the men queried, 64.2% felt that the prostate is a source of sexual pleasure and 52.8% felt it important to measure sexual satisfaction associated with receptive anal intercourse. A larger proportion of gay men who engaged in receptive anal intercourse, compared with those who did not engage in receptive anal intercourse, felt that the prostate is a source of sexual pleasure (100% vs. 57.1%), and thought it important to measure sexual satisfaction as it relates to receptive anal intercourse after PCa treatment (90.0% vs. 45.2%). Conclusions: Our findings highlight the need to create a validated questionnaire to measure sexual satisfaction from receptive anal intercourse to help care for men engaging in receptive anal intercourse after PCa treatment.


Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of urbanization on per capita energy consumption and emissions in India.

Design/methodology/approach
The present study analyses the effects of urbanization on energy consumption patterns by using the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology in India. Time series data from the period of 1960 to 2015 has been considered for the analysis. Variables including Population, GDP per capita, Energy intensity, share of industry in GDP, share of Services in GDP, total energy use and urbanization from World Bank data sources have been used for investigating the relationship between urbanization, affluence and energy use.

Findings
Energy demand is positively related to affluence (economic growth). Further the results of the analysis also suggest that, as urbanization, GDP and population are bound to increase in the future, consequently resulting in increased carbon dioxide emissions caused by increased energy demand and consumption. Thus, reducing the energy intensity is key to energy security and lower carbon dioxide emissions for India.

Research limitations/implications
The study will have important policy implications for India's energy sector transition toward non- conventional, clean energy sources in the wake of growing share of its population residing in urban spaces.

Originality/value
There are limited number of studies considering the impacts of population density on per capita energy use. So this study also contributes methodologically by establishing per capita energy use as a function of population density and technology (i.e. growth rates of industrial and service sector).


Improvement of the domestic chicken has dominated the effort of indigenous breeders in Nigeria in recent times. Three hundred and fifty-seven (357) Fulani ecotype chickens were surveyed and assessed for their phenotypic and productive characteristics in Osun State, Nigeria. Mature weight (kg), comb size, wattle size, breast length, breast width, leg length (all in cm); egg weight (gm), clutch size were examined and classified. A higher level of variability was revealed in comb size, wattle size, egg weight, and clutch size within the hen population of each local government; and in leg length within Orolu cocks and hens as shown by their coefficient of variation (CV), respectively. Strong and significant association was observed between mature weight and wattle size, mature weight and comb size, and between wattle size and comb size in the cocks; and between egg weight and egg clutch size in hens. Breast length and breast width were best predictors of each other while mature weight was best predicted by wattle size in cocks. Breast length was predicted by mature weight and leg length, breast width was predicted by mature weight and, mature weight was predicted by the combination of leg length, breast length and breast width in hens. All parameters were more accurately predicted in cocks than in hens. Statistical modelling revealed sexual dimorphism on all equations.


Metal halide perovskite single crystals are being explored as functional materials for a variety of optoelectronic applications. Among others, solar cells, field‐effect transistors, and X‐ and γ‐ray detectors have shown improved performance and stability. However, a general uncertainty exists about the relevant mechanisms governing the electronic operation. This is caused by the presence of mobile ions and how these defect species alter the internal electrical field, interact with the contact materials, or modulate electronic properties. Here, a set of high‐quality thick methylammonium lead tribromide single crystals contacted with low‐reactivity chromium electrodes are analyzed by impedance spectroscopy. Through examination of the sample resistance evolution with bias and releasing time, it is revealed that an interplay exists between the perovskite electronic conductivity and the defect distribution within the crystal bulk. Ion diffusion after bias removing changes the local doping density then governing the electronic transport. These findings indicate that the coupling between ionic and electronic properties relies upon a dynamic doping effect caused by moving ions that act as mobile dopants. In addition to electronic features, the analysis extracts values for the ion diffusivity in the range of 10−8 cm2 s−1 in good agreement with other independent measurements.


Introduction : The eHealth Strategy for Ireland (DOH, 2013) stresses the benefits of patient access to healthcare records as an enabler to support enhanced population wellbeing. For those with long term conditions, access to their healthcare records can: facilitate better informed clinical encounters; enable capture of patient reported outcome measures; provide an ability to influence and contribute to personalised health care plans; enhance awareness of treatment options and increase chances of medication compliance. Web-based electronic patient records (EPR) create an opportunity to provide patients with access to their own healthcare record to promote active self-management and improved patient-provider partnerships in care.   Aim : The aim of this project is to design, develop, implement and evaluate a patient portal to the National Epilepsy Electronic Patient Record (EPR) in Ireland. Methods : A socio-technical process based on ethnographic analysis, interviews, focus groups, and joint design workshops was conducted to establish stakeholder's (those who receive and those who provide) needs and inform the design of the patient portal.  This iterative co-design process created an understanding of human beings and the nature of their transactions with each other and their surroundings and led system design specifications.  Using evolutionary prototyping, the system was fine-tuned by software engineers based on user feedback. The portal was formatively evaluated to assess its utility to different types of users. Results : Based on the co-design approach, the Epilepsy Patient Portal provides:  a view of the EPR Summary Record including seizure demographic information, semiology, medications and clinical investigations; a facility to capture patient reported outcomes measures (PROMS) including seizure severity; quality of life, and patient knowledge of epilepsy. Portal users indicated that a function for patients or their carers to validate aspects of their record would be beneficial. Clinicians identified an opportunity for the portal to support patient preparation for clinical encounters. Patient portal users are based on three personas:  clinician, person with epilepsy and parent/guardian/carer of a person with epilepsy, and residential carers. Depending on the type of user the patient portal responds with appropriate information. Conclusion : The Epilepsy Patient Portal provides value for users in terms of integrated care with online access to health information, that is accessible when and where needed to facilitate enhanced self-management of a long term condition.      Limitations : Clinicians are already overburdened; the portal will not be a helpline or emergency service. The project team are working closely with clinicians and patients to manage expectations about what the patient portal will provide. Lessons learned : The technical aspects of building and co-designing a patient portal linked to the Epilepsy EPR are not complex. However, the information governance and data protection issues that this research project is dealing with provide important insights for the Irish Electronic Healthcare Record context. Suggestions for future research : Future iterations of Epilepsy specific patient portals could focus on facilitating remote clinical appointments, offline access to Health Records, and the process of access to the patient portal for Healthcare Practitioners in different sites in Ireland and abroad.


In past decades, the continuum approach was the only practical technique to simulate large-scale fluidized bed reactors because discrete approaches suffer from the cost of tracking huge numbers of particles and their collisions. This study significantly improved the computation speed of discrete particle methods in two steps: First, the time-driven hard-sphere (TDHS) algorithm with a larger time-step is proposed allowing a speedup of 20–60 times; second, the number of tracked particles is reduced by adopting the coarse-graining technique gaining an additional 2–3 orders of magnitude speedup of the simulations. A new velocity correction term was introduced and validated in TDHS to solve the over-packing issue in dense granular flow. The TDHS was then coupled with the coarse-graining technique to simulate a pilot-scale riser. The simulation results compared well with experiment data and proved that this new approach can be used for efficient and reliable simulations of large-scale fluidized bed systems. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 63: 5320–5334, 2017


Abstract Modification of landscapes due to energy development may alter both habitat use and vital rates of sensitive wildlife species. Greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in the Powder River Basin (PRB) of Wyoming and Montana, USA, have experienced rapid, widespread changes to their habitat due to recent coal-bed natural gas (CBNG) development. We analyzed lek-count, habitat, and infrastructure data to assess how CBNG development and other landscape features influenced trends in the numbers of male sage-grouse observed and persistence of leks in the PRB. From 2001 to 2005, the number of males observed on leks in CBNG fields declined more rapidly than leks outside of CBNG. Of leks active in 1997 or later, only 38% of 26 leks in CBNG fields remained active by 2004–2005, compared to 84% of 250 leks outside CBNG fields. By 2005, leks in CBNG fields had 46% fewer males per active lek than leks outside of CBNG. Persistence of 110 leks was positively influenced by the proportion of sagebrush habitat within 6.4 km of the lek. After controlling for habitat, we found support for negative effects of CBNG development within 0.8 km and 3.2 km of the lek and for a time lag between CBNG development and lek disappearance. Current lease stipulations that prohibit development within 0.4 km of sage-grouse leks on federal lands are inadequate to ensure lek persistence and may result in impacts to breeding populations over larger areas. Seasonal restrictions on drilling and construction do not address impacts caused by loss of sagebrush and incursion of infrastructure that can affect populations over long periods of time. Regulatory agencies may need to increase spatial restrictions on development, industry may need to rapidly implement more effective mitigation measures, or both, to reduce impacts of CBNG development on sage-grouse populations in the PRB.


Summary
T-mycoplasmas were isolated from the semen of 23 of 28 bulls at an A.I. Centre, and from the semen of each of 4 bulls on separate farms. Washings from the preputial cavities of 10 bulls each contained at least 105 organisms per ml. In all, T-mycoplasmas were isolated from either semen or the preputial cavities of 28 of 34 bulls examined. Although the organisms were isolated from semen, they were not isolated from testicular tissue, the vas deferens or the mucosal scrapings of the urethra of 2 slaughtered bulls. It seems that the mycoplasmas are confined to the preputial cavity and gain access to semen during ejaculation. It is suggested that the failure of the organisms to become established in other areas of the genital tract is due to the presence of a potent mycoplasma inhibitor that was detected in bull semen in this study. A similar inhibitor was found in bull serum. It is thermostable at 56°C and nondialysable. The ecology and pathological role of the T-mycoplasmas in cattle are discussed in relation to the findings in man.


Correspondence: Rooholah Valipour, Legal Medicine Research Center, Legal Medicine Organization, Tehran, Iran. Email: rvalipour1387 @ gmail.com. ABSTRACT Determination of poisoning and its type in drug poisoning is one of the important challenges of the forensic laboratory, given that drugs have therapeutic, toxic and pathogenic doses. In this study, we tried to measure the blood level of methadone with enzyme immunoassay and compare it with Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry method. Samples were developed in the methadone treatment center for addiction treatment. The ELISA kit was purchased from RANDOX Company and performed according to the protocol set forth on the respective test kit, and then the results were obtained. Methadone's analytical standard was provided by Sigma-Aldrich. Serum samples were extracted by alkaline extraction with ethyl acetate. The results were analyzed statistically. The result of the relative error in the accuracy of one day ELISA method was 3. 3% and the GC / MS method was 4/4% and the result of the relative error in the accuracy in the ELISA method was 4.1% and in the GC/MS method was 2.3%. The GC/MS method was linear from 30 ng to 10 μg, but the ELISA method was linear from 1.2 to 100 ng. And both methods did not interfere with the materials contained in the matrix and with drugs similar to methadone. The proposed GC/MS method is preferable to RANDOX's ELISA kit, given its high ability in methadone analysis at different concentrations. But given the time consuming, the great effort, high cost, hazards of chemical solvents and complexity of the device, it is not possible to use it everywhere and in large measure with many samples. But ELISA, with a high sensitivity and high speed, and relatively simple to use, compared to GC/MS, can analyze the number of samples in a very short time. If the methadone is positive by Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, the ELISA method can be used to determine the blood level for a precise decision.


Over the last years, endovascular intervention have become an important part of treatment in patients with congenital heart disease particularly for residual defects after surgery done in infancy. These transcatheter procedures can be described as dilatation of stenotic sites (angioplasty, endovascular stenting and valvuloplasty) or as a closure of anomalous openings (device closure defects and vascular embolisation). Balloon valvuloplasty, without or with stent, is the procedure of choice in adults with pulmonary valve stenosis, pulmonary arteries stenosis, bicuspid aortic valve stenosis without calcification, aortic re-coarctation. Treatment of native aortic coarctation is still under debate. Devices for closing atrial and ventricular septal defects or patent ductus arteriosus have been developed and are now widely used. Transcatheter, plug or coil occlusion is nowadays the goal treatment in a wide range of arterial and venous vascular connections. This review describes the current role of each major catheter-directed therapy in the treatment of congenital heart disease in adults.


Coconut-based intercropping (CBI) in Sri Lanka was introduced some 20 years ago to overcome the two main limitations of traditional coconut monocropping, inefficient land use and low incomes to farmers, but it has not been widely adopted. This study analyses the effect of farm-level resource constraints, and government policies on the intensity of adoption of CBI. A multiperiod linear programming (MLP) model was applied for three farmer groups - resource poor, medium endowed, well endowed - categorised using cluster analysis. Data was collected from a survey of randomly selected 113 intercroppers. Empirical results reveal that expansion of CBI is mainly constrained by seasonal labour shortages for all farmer groups, particularly the well endowed, and by the scarcity of cash in the case of resource-poor farmers. CBI policies aimed at subsidising inputs or intercrop prices are not likely to be efficient in raising adoption, but alternative policies aimed at alleviating resource constraints would be more effective. The study concluded that the low adoption of CBI is mainly attributable to the scarcity of different farm-level resources (other than land), at varying degrees among different farmer groups. Hence a targeted approach to alleviate them is suggested.


Personal Digital Assistants most commonly known as PDAs are becoming more and more fashionable and affordable in the working environment. With the advent and rapidly increasing technology these handled devices are now targeted by a lot of person with criminal intentions. But unfortunately crime does not choose its technology and nowadays those ultra light handhelds are getting more and more involved in crimes. This therefore become an onerous task for the forensics examiners who needs the proper forensics tools to investigate the information held on these devices. The purpose of this report will browse the current forensics toolkits available and analyze some targeted PDAs.


A compact fusion reactor design with magnetic confinement based on a field-reversed configuration is described. The reactor is linear and operates in a pulsed mode where the plasma moves as a translating ''plasmoid'' through the burn chamber. The plasma physics model incorporates recent theoretical and experimental results on confinement. The design is compact and its power output is limited by first-wall and blanket technology. A helium-cooled solid breeder blanket is used for tritium breeding and thermal energy removal. A graphite thermal shield is included to reduce the energy generation and resulting first-wall stresses during pulsed operation. These studies indicate that attractive designs in the range of 300 to 1000 MW(electric) are possible, provided that currently understood scaling laws extrapolate favorably into the reactor regime. Multidimensional neutronics analysis indicates tritium breeding ratios >1.0.


Conceptual information retrieval systems use structured document indices, domain knowledge and a set of heuristic retrieval strategies to match user queries with a set of indices describing the document's content. Such retrieval strategies increase the set of relevant documents retrieved (increase recall), but at the expense of returning additional irrelevant documents (decrease precision). Usually in conceptual information retrieval systems this tradeoff is managed by hand and with difficulty. This paper discusses ways of managing this tradeoff by the application of standard induction algorithms to refine the retrieval strategies in an engineering design domain. We gathered examples of query/retrieval pairs during the system's operation using feedback from a user on the retrieved information. We then fed these examples to the induction algorithm and generated decision trees that refine the existing set of retrieval strategies. We found that (1) induction improved the precision on a set of queries generated by another user, without a significant loss in recall, and (2) in an interactive mode, the decision trees pointed out flaws in the retrieval and indexing knowledge and suggested ways to refine the retrieval strategies.


Intensive care units (ICUs) are high-intensity patient care locations, and consequently contribute both to medical costs and errors. Computerization of order and documentation systems is one way to reduce both. One such solution is telemedicine based intensive care (eICUreg) whereby remote consultation is combined with intelligent data analysis. There are a number of technical and human factor elements that must be considered in deploying an eICUreg. Technical challenges include system interfaces, equipment choice, and integration of the electronic medical record with the pre-existing record. Human factor challenges consist of competing internal interests, haphazard approaches with no common workflow, and selective adoption of the technology. At a minimum, there is a triad of barriers that prevent fluid interoperability between systems. Those barriers comprise of the complexities in the clinical paradigm, technical innovation, and human factor best practices which industry developers need to be innately aware of.


Objective: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in Oman after breast and thyroid. Awareness regarding the availability of CRC screening services could play a major role in promoting early detection and reducing mortality rates. The aim of this study was to identify public knowledge and attitudes toward CRC screening. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 410 members of the public attending the Sultan Qaboos University Hospital in Muscat, Oman. A questionnaire was developed to assess the participants' general knowledge, barriers and factors affecting attitudes, beliefs and behaviors regarding CRC screening. Results: A total of 410 members of the public participated from 500 invited (response rate: 82.0%). Most of the participants had not heard of CRC screening (76.3%) and were unaware of different screening methods (92.9%). The majority (93.9%) had not undergone CRC screening in Oman; however, 70.6% reported that they would be willing to do so in the future, particularly if recommended by doctors (52.7%). Barriers to screening included feeling embarrassed by the idea of a colonoscopy (73.9%), not having any symptoms of CRC (65.1%) and a fear of being diagnosed with CRC (55.6%). A bivariate analysis indicated that males demonstrated significantly more awareness of CRC screening compared to females (64.9% versus 35.1%; p = 0.004) and younger participants (<40 years of age) were significantly more aware of CRC screening compared to their older counterparts (75.3% versus 24.7%; p = 0.025). Conclusions: The majority of public in Oman showed low knowledge and awareness of CRC screening and identified several emotional barriers that might result in poor participation should screening be considered. Public education and the involvement of healthcare professionals is paramount to the implementation of a large-scale CRC screening program in Oman. In addition, addressing the sources of emotional barriers to screening is necessary.


Resource sharing is an inherent characteristic of cloud data centers. Virtual Machines (VMs) and/or Con- tainers that are co-located in the same physical server often compete for resources leading to interference. The noisy neighbor's effect refers to an anomaly caused by a VM/container limiting resources ac- cessed by another one. Our main contribution is an online, lightweight and application-agnostic solution for anomaly detection, that follows an unsupervised approach. It is based on comparing models for dif- ferent lags: Dirichlet Process Gaussian Mixture Models to characterize the resource usage profile of the application, and distance measures to score the similarity among models. An alarm is raised when there is an abrupt change in short-term lag (i.e. high distance score for short-term models), while the long-term state remains constant. We test the algorithm for different cloud workloads: websites, periodic batch ap- plications, Spark-based applications, and Memcached server. We are able to detect anomalies in the CPU and memory resource usage with up to 82–96% accuracy (recall) depending on the scenario. Compared to other baseline methods, our approach is able to detect anomalies successfully, while raising low number of false positives, even in the case of applications with unusual normal behavior (e.g. periodic). Experi- ments show that our proposed algorithm is a lightweight and effective solution to detect noisy neighbor effect without any historical info about the application, that could also be potentially applied to other kind of anomalies.


As information advances, it is obvious that clinical entities are established on the basis of a specific etiology, rather than on abstract classification. For this reason, as additional facts are disclosed, the time honored controversy concerning the inflammatory or neoplastic nature of giant cell tumors and bone cysts is giving place to a discussion of the actual causative processes of these lesions. The evidence presented in a previous paper 1 favored the view that these growths constitute a single entity, and that the giant cell tumor arises as an abnormal phase in the resorption of temporary bone in response to trauma, while the bone cyst presents the healing phase of the same lesion. Nevertheless, in view of the amount of attention recently directed to so-called metastatic giant cell tumors in the literature, it is necessary to present further evidence concerning a certain group of these lesions to delineate them more


Urban air pollution monitoring is of significant scientific, social and economic interest to countries across the globe. As a collaborative research to combine the knowledge in technology and environmental science, our aim is to examine the fine structure of pollutant distribution within defined urban environments, with focus on tall and narrow urban street canyons, characterized by long stretches of continuous buildings on both sides with little or no gaps in between. In our work we explore pervasive wireless sensor network (WSN) technology with Bracelet Carbon Monoxide monitors (Figure 1) as an alternative to the traditional approach for air pollution measurement. WSNs are largely used in environmental monitoring applications, which compose of a significantly large number of low cost sensor nodes with radio capability. The sensor nodes are normally battery powered, and hence power consumption or prolongation of network lifetime is a major research challenge. In-network processing is encouraged to reduce the amount of data sensed or transmitted back to the base station[1], or to enhance the networking capability and for power conservation purposes. With the goal of obtaining fine-grain data for scientific analysis and evaluation of our technological design, several experiments have been carried out both in a residential street in London, UK and a residential/ commercial street in Nicosia, Cyprus, two streets with very different characteristics. In this paper, our goal is not to discuss the scientific significance of the data, but to evaluate the system in the WSN perspectives particular to traffic air pollution monitoring application, which results in the definitions of design requirements for improvement and future research topics. 1. Technology Fit WSN are best suited in applications where dense sensors are required in localized areas. In this application, the ventilation patterns of street canyon are explored through pollution dispersion modelling, the availability of high resolution temporal and spatial pollution data is a definite advantage for the evaluation of models. The wireless networking capability, which is absent in most traditional approaches, allows for ease of deployment when large number of sensors are to be deployed, as well as near real time availability of data. Moreover, new user policies and updates can be disseminated in the system during deployments. The second advantage of system is the portability of the sensors. They can be carried by people to reflect true human exposure to traffic pollution, or attached to vehicles or bicycles to get comprehensive and dynamic views of a larger area. Again, the wireless capability means that the data can be collected, stored in the nodes and downloaded to a base station once in range without the user's intervention. 2. Choice of Sensors and Calibration Exercise Electrochemical carbon monoxide (CO) sensors are used in the system. CO is a good indicator of traffic pollution and is inertia to sunlight and hence, was chosen in the first instance. In fact, in the experiments we observed a high correlation of CO concentration and the presence and flows of traffic, especially from motorbikes and high emission vehicles. However, CO disperses very quickly into the atmosphere and has less health implication than pollutants such as particular matters (PM). It is necessary to include other pollutants, i.e. NOx, SOx, Ozone and PM for a complete profile of pollution dispersion patterns. With respect to sensor type, although electrochemical sensors are not as costly as some other gas sensors such as infra-red analyser, they still amount to >3 times of the other component costs and have a relatively short lifetime of typically 2 years. The reactive material depreciates and hence the sensitivity reduces over time. Recalibration is required to maintenance the accuracy of the measurements. The deployed sensors were calibrated with CO concentration, temperature and humidity prior to the experiments. We have observed a discrepancy of the establishment of baselines in the calibration environment, where tested gases were maintained at controlled concentrations, temperature and gas flows, and the real world experiments. It was apparently that additional calibration is required to calibrate individual sensors against other possible environmental factors, which are time-consuming and costly, however, essential to ensure the accuracy of the measurements. 3. Data Handling Techniques Currently, the sensors are sampled at 1Hz frequency and the data (Figure 2) are used in data analysis to extract representative features that are indicative to traffic pollution level. Such high frequency sampling is power exhaustive and may not be essential in the final system design. Part of the research objective is to find representations of the data that are less reliant on calibration accuracy whilst providing the requirement information, and to develop sampling techniques to preserve the essential features of the data whilst minimizing power consumption of the system (Figure 3). Time synchronisation between sensor nodes is required for spatial correlation analysis. The results of spatial analysis can potentially give us information on the change of traffic conditions including volume and flows. Nodes that are measuring similar pollution levels can be grouped into clusters to reduce sampling, data processing and transmission requirements. 4. Network Strategy As the application requires a combination of fixed and mobile sensors attached to people and vehicles, memory storage in sensor nodes are necessary to cope with conditions when the nodes do not have network coverage. The network is required to be self-organised and adaptive to these changing conditions. Currently, we can achieve >90% of data throughput with the implementation of Collect transport mechanism in the Contiki Operation System. It can be further improved with end-to-end reliability mechanism, control on transmission power to reduce inter-node interference and improvement on transport strategy.