Exceptional events occur when air pollution in a specific location exceeds the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) due to an event that cannot be reasonably attributed to human activities, such as a wildland fire. Ground-level ozone (O3) and particulate matter (PM) are Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) criteria pollutants regulated under the NAAQS. Smoke from wildland fires can increase PM and O3 concentrations downwind of fire and impact air quality, visibility, and health. Our analysis shows that the frequency of exceptional event reporting for PM with aerodynamic diameters smaller than 2.5 μm or 10 μm (PM2.5 and PM10) had increased since 2007 when the air quality standards became more stringent. We also show that wildland fires and windblown dust drive many exceptional events in several EPA regions. We note the importance of growth in the number of exceptional event days due to wildfire smoke in the future due to climate change and point to possible changes to the NAAQS and implementations.


Introduction The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia recognizes the long-term need to develop its domestic talent pool. With the development of the long-term strategy for the Saudi economy, as well as the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission (SACM) that reports to the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Higher Education (SAMHE), there are levers in place to build high quality human capital. However, according to an informal analysis of recent Saudi Arabian business graduates educated in an American university, they did not perceive the strategy and programs as a shift in Saudi business philosophy. Instead, some perceived it as a way to build enhanced trust and credibility between the United States and Saudi Arabia, rather than as a talent management plan for Saudi Arabia. Additionally, while the students were very grateful for the educational opportunity, many were concerned about their potential inability to utilize their new-found American business skills in a traditional economy when they returned to Saudi Arabia. First and foremost, some were just worried about finding gainful employment. This article focuses on the Saudi Arabian government's economic strategy, and recent college graduates' perceptions and concerns regarding their career development and management opportunities. Furthermore, it offers implications and potential strategies for career development specialists. Saudi Arabia Government Policy The Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission (SACM) was established in 1951 to meet the needs of Saudi students studying in United States' colleges and universities (Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission [SACM], 2010). This organization reports to the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Higher Education and is responsible for supporting Saudi students while studying in the United States. In addition, SACM wants to provide qualified individuals back to Saudi Arabia with the goal of achieving progress and development in the home country (SACM, 2010). The government of Saudi Arabia is actively engaged in creating a sustainable economy, which includes viable career opportunities for local citizens. SACM is a conduit for job openings in Saudi Arabia, and it provides a well-known career fair for recent foreign national graduates. SACM is part of a long-term strategy for the Saudi economy that provides a framework for four successive fiveyear plans aimed at achieving a comprehensive socioeconomic vision (Ministry of Economy and Planning [MEP] , n.d.)· Part of the plan of the Kingdom is to develop industries outside of the natural resource area such as oil. This will decrease economic and employment variations and increase stability. In addition, there is a want from the government to decrease the dependence on foreign labor in white collar value-creating opportunities (MEP, n.d.). The Saudi Arabian government may well have been paying attention to Michael Porter when he developed Porter's Diamond, a model for National Competitive Advantage (Porter, 1990, March-April, p. 77). This model has been popularized in many business circles and focuses on the four broad attributes of: Factor Endowments - a nation's position in factors of production, labor, infrastructure, climate, geography, and natural resources. If a country has a shortage of factor endowments, it must invest in advanced factors such as education. Demand Conditions - the nature of home demand for an industry's product. The higher the level of economic development, the more a country can create sophisticated customers (customers defined here as hiring companies). Related/Supporting Industries - home country suppliers of related industries which facilitate creation of multiplier effects on the economy (for example, home countries' companies buying products/services from each other). Firm Strategy, Structure, and Rivalry - how conditions govern company creation and management. These four attributes are mutually reinforcing and can lead to national competitive advantage. …


In this study 250 raw milk and 254 herby cheese samples collected from Van city center and neighboring villages were investigated in terms of Listeria species. For Listeria isolation,the method recommended by the FDA was used.Of the raw milk samples,6 (2.40 %)were found to be positive with regard to Listeria; 3 (1.20 %)had L.monocytogenes, 1 (0.40 %)L.innocua and 1 (0.40 %)L.welshimeri. Of the herby cheese samples,13 (5.11 %)were found to be positive with regard to Listeria;10 (3.93 %)had L.monocytogenes, 1 (0.39 %)L.ivanovii,1 (0.39 %)L.innocua and 1 (0.39 %)L.welshimeri. For the serotype determination of 13 isolates defined as L.monocytogenes Difco Bacto O Antiserum Type 1, Type 4 and Type Poly were used. The results were as follows:6 isolates Type 1,2 isolates Type 4,3 isolates Type Poly. Two isolates was not typable.


TO THE EDITOR: In the November 1999 issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine , Hasegawa et al. ( 1) reported a direct comparison among PET, SPECT, and dual-head gamma-camera coincidence detection imaging (DCD) to assess myocardial viability with FDG. We would like to address three issues about the design and methods of the study. 1. The choice of performing the DCD tomography in 32 steps over 360° penalizes this modality by a factor of 2 in the examination duration, compared with 32 steps over 180° with ultra-high-energy general purpose collimators for SPECT. Furthermore, the gamma camera used in the study (Vertex Plus MCD; ADAC Laboratories, Milpitas, CA) is equipped with a 5/8-in. (15.9mm) thick crystal, which means that the detection efficiency for the photopeak at 511 keV is approximately 21% for a single detector (2). Thus, the coincidence detection efficiency for DCD is only 21%3 21%5 4.41% (2), which would require more steps to obtain a similar count per image ratio and to allow for a more objective comparison between the 2 modalities. Finally, the 128 3 128-matrix reconstructed data obtained from DCD should have been reduced to a 643 64 matrix to obtain the same slice thickness as the SPECT images. 2. The DCD acquisition started 150 min after SPECT acquisition, occurring with 38.56% of the FDG activity that was initially available for SPECT imaging, because of FDG decay (half-life 5 109.7 min). 3. The delayed DCD acquisition (210 min after injection and 150 min after SPECT) may be reasonable because of the risk of detector saturation by high counting rate, but it assumes that myocardial trapping of FDG is irreversible. Recently, Herrero et al. (3) demonstrated, on a canine model of myocardial glucose usage during hyperinsulinemic–euglycemic clamp, that a reversible myocardial trapping of FDG occurs within the first hour after tracer injection. This delay may therefore alter the myocardial distribution of FDG and consequently the DCD detection in an unpredictable manner. All these factors acted to penalize DCD and could have influenced the final result of the study: a poor agreement of DCD imaging with PET and a better performance of SPECT. A randomized order for the first acquisition modality (DCD or SPECT) after PET imaging and an optimized DCD acquisition (duration and angle selection) would have been more adequate to sustain the published conclusion.


Burns, R. G., Whitworth, K. H., & Thompson, C. Y. (2004). Assessing law enforcement preparedness to address Internet fraud. Journal of Criminal Justice, 32, 477-493. With a growing number of people engaging in e-commerce and managing their finances online, it may be argued that there is an increased need for researchers and law enforcement personnel to focus their attention on computer crimes and, in particular, internet fraud. The term 'internet fraud' includes crimes such as identity theft, theft of debit or credit card information, and defaulting on payment for goods or failure to provide goods paid for through online retail sites (e.g., Amazon) or auction sites (e.g., eBay). However, many law enforcement agencies have expressed a lack of preparedness to deal with such electronic crimes, often due to issues revolving around funding, training, and/or equipment. In order to examine empirically the level of law enforcement preparedness for internet fraud investigation, Burns, Whitworth, and Thompson (2004) distributed surveys to the 700 largest U.S. police departments and sheriff's offices, all of which maintained a staff of at least one hundred officers. The survey assessed perceived preparedness to address internet fraud, perceptions of the types and extent of internet fraud that occur, co-operative policing efforts with other agencies, and dissemination of information. Surveys were addressed to the Police Chief or Agency Director, with instructions for the recipient to complete the survey personally or to forward it to the most appropriate person in the department. A response rate of 31 percent was obtained. After analyzing their data, the authors reported the following results: Preparedness Nearly half of the respondents (46.7%) indicated that their law enforcement agency did not have an electronic or computer crime division, while a similar number of respondents (46.3%) indicated having such a division for five years or less. Of the respondents who indicated that their agency employs an electronic or computer crime division, 93.3 percent indicated that this division was comprised of five people or less. Most respondents indicated that they were unprepared or under-prepared to deal with internet fraud, with few believing that their agency or department had the necessary resources (15.3%) or equipment (16.2%) to adequately investigate internet fraud; nor did they believe that they had adequate staffing (6.5%) or training (17.6%) to do so. The most common types of internet fraud complaints received by the agencies were identity theft (81.8%), credit/debit card fraud (79.0%), and fraudulent practices involving general merchandise sales (65.9%) and online auctions (39.5%). Perceptions and Attitudes Most respondents viewed internet fraud as a significant problem (76.5%), but were less likely to believe that their agencies in particular (40.7%), or law enforcement agencies in general (41.0%), treat it as such. Respondents were even less likely to regard prosecutors (20.6%), judges (11.7%), or society (27.8%) as recognizing the severity of internet fraud. The majority of respondents supported the idea of creating more laws to effectively punish offenders who commit internet fraud (74.5%), as well as the facilitation of interstate (77.0%) or international (72.9%) efforts to enforce legislation regarding internet fraud. Most respondents also felt that law enforcement efforts in the area of internet fraud would be facilitated by clearer definitions of what constitutes internet fraud (64.5%) and clear delineation of law enforcement boundaries in terms of internet fraud investigation (70.0%). There was less agreement, however, as to whose responsibility it should be to investigate and enforce laws pertaining to internet fraud, and whom respondents felt was taking an active role. The general consensus was that internet fraud should be handled at the federal level (93. …


We propose an approach for adversarial attacks on dense prediction models (such as object detectors and segmentation). It is well known that the attacks generated by a single surrogate model do not transfer to arbitrary (blackbox) victim models. Furthermore, targeted attacks are often more challenging than the untargeted attacks. In this paper, we show that a carefully designed ensemble can create effective attacks for a number of victim models. In particular, we show that normalization of the weights for individual models plays a critical role in the success of the attacks. We then demonstrate that by adjusting the weights of the ensemble according to the victim model can further improve the performance of the attacks. We performed a number of experiments for object detectors and segmentation to highlight the significance of the our proposed methods. Our proposed ensemble-based method outperforms existing blackbox attack methods for object detection and segmentation. Finally we show that our proposed method can also generate a single perturbation that can fool multiple blackbox detection and segmentation models simultaneously. Code is available at https://github.com/CSIPlab/EBAD


Background Junior doctors are often at the forefront of prescribing for acute inpatients. It is imperative that they are equipped with the knowledge and confidence to prescribe appropriately for patients at the end of their life. We felt that there was reduced awareness of the need for individualised prescribing for patients with relatively common chronic diseases such as Parkinson's disease and epilepsy. Recognising that prescribing end of life medications for patients with such diseases can differ, we looked to improve symptom management by focussing on improving end of life prescribing. Methods A pre-intervention questionnaire was used to assess subjective confidence levels in prescribing anticipatory medications, syringe drivers, and individualised prescribing for patients with Parkinson's disease, end-stage renal disease, epilepsy, end-stage heart failure, and diabetes mellitus. Based on these findings a prescribing handbook was produced, incorporating consultant advice from relevant specialities. Teaching sessions were carried out using case-based discussions alongside the handbook content. A local press release facilitated dissemination of the handbook. A post-intervention questionnaire was then distributed to reassess prescribers' confidence levels. Results Twenty-five allied health professionals (mainly foundation doctors) completed the questionnaires. The pre-intervention questionnaire found that the majority were confident in prescribing anticipatory medication but were significantly less confident in prescribing syringe drivers and in individualised prescribing. Following formal education and release of the prescribing handbook, higher confidence levels were reported throughout all themes of the questionnaire. Conclusions This quality improvement project has significantly increased prescribers' confidence levels in end of life prescribing. It has also increased awareness of the need for alternative approaches to prescribing for certain individuals and diseases at the end of life. It was stressed that the handbook is to be used as a guide and should not replace the need to escalate concerns to the relevant specialities and the in-house palliative care team.


Good agricultural practices are an effective means of minimizing pre-harvest aflatoxin contamination in peanuts. A field experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of gypsum on pod yield and aflatoxin contamination in three peanut cultivars (Kadononga, MGV 4 and MGV 5) in Zambia. The experiment was conducted in Chongwe and Lusaka districts. Gypsum (15.6 % calcium) was applied at rates of 0 and 400 kg/ha at flowering stage. Although gypsum had no significant effect on aflatoxin contamination, there were significant differences (p = 0.009) in cultivar susceptibility to aflatoxin contamination. The cultivar with the smallest kernels had 18.8% lower aflatoxin content than the large-kernelled cultivar. Additionally, gypsum did not have a clear effect on pod yield. For instance, gypsum was associated with 44.8% more grain-filled pods in Kadononga (p = 0.005) at the site in Lusaka, but this result did not apply to the other two cultivars. At the site in Chongwe, gypsum was associated with 34.6% higher pod yield of MGV 5 only (p = 0.006). These results further suggest that plant factors such as kernel size may have an influence on natural resistance to aflatoxin contamination in peanuts.

 Key words: Aflatoxin, gypsum, peanut cultivar, pod-yield, Zambia.


Almost there is nowhere that we don't use permeated smart technology. Increasingly developing mobile and wireless innovations forced us to integrate them to all fields in our lives. The latest trend in education is now blended learning and applications of mobile learning in educational environments. Pervasive and augmented usage of social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Bloggers etc. forced educators consider integrating social educational platforms into their academic curriculum. Furthermore the advancement in mobile device technologies with internet connectivity made mobile blended learning inevitable. Thus, for a long time educators are determent to adapt mobile learning for their lessons. So teaching evolves 7/24 through social mobile platforms. In my study I will clarify how to use social mobile media and devices in EFL teaching. Especially, there will be significant strategies how to enhance students' reading skills using Edmodo in my lessons practically. Advantages and disadvantages of mobile learning will be discussed in my paper. We will have an overview of learners' attitudes about social media and mobile learning platforms. What kind of reading tasks could be given through on Edmodo? How will be the assessment in this process? Are there any collaborative learning methods in Edmodo? All these and more questions are going to be enlightened in this study. Keywords: Blended learning, mobile devices, social mobile media, reading comprehension skills, student centered approach


This dissertation investigates capital market frictions across three themes. The first theme is sovereign debt. Recent experience in the EU shows that it can be complex to enforce the repayment promises of states. Furthermore, governments are better informed about their repayment capacity than creditors are. This dissertation argues that enforcement and information problems explain why states issue simple debt contracts that frequently lead to debt crises. Such contracts are optimal because they save on costly audits by creditors. The second theme concerns collective pension funds. It is often argued that pension funds can enhance the welfare of their participants. This dissertation highlights one rationale for pension funds based on credit constraints. Pension funds' actual ability to increase welfare may be limited due to an agency problem. The third theme concerns political intervention in capital markets. Financial liberalization and expanded access to capital are historically seen as signs of greater freedom. Yet many democratic states choose to restrain the resource allocation called for by free capital markets. This dissertation argues that democracies may choose to introduce restraints on free capital markets—thereby favouring income stability over economic growth—depending on demographical context, the distribution of wealth


Since the commencement of the Electricity Market (NZEM) in October 1996, generation expansion in New Zealand is made based on profit anticipation from the wholesale electricity spot price rather than through coordinated planning. This has caused boom and bust cycles in the generation capacity. Energy shortages occurred in 2001, 2003 and 2008. A new model based on System Dynamics (SD) is developed to study these cycles. Its results are compared to the results of the Generation Expansion Model (GEM), developed by the New Zealand Electricity Commission and published in the Statement of Opportunity 2008 (SOO2008). The model is able to identify some capacity cycles that are likely to happen in the future. The analysis is then extended to evaluate whether the cycles will result in energy shortages. The SD model shows that under some future scenarios, New Zealand is susceptible to electricity shortages due to the bust periods in the capacity cycles.


In a recent approach to the internal structure of nominals, all nouns across languages are proposed to be mass, and thus need to be portioned out (i.e., divided) in order to interact with the count system (Borer 2005): in syntax, division is performed via a Div(ided) head that takes mass noun as a complement, and Div is proposed to be instantiated by an English-type plural -s or a Chinese-type classifier. Once division is performed on a mass, the divided noun can be counted via a numeral that appears in a quantifying phrase (#P) projected above DivP. Assuming Borer (2005), this paper examines the morpheme xie 'some' in Chinese, and proposes that it is a non-counting quantifier instantiating a # head that takes DivP as its complement. The proposed account has consequences for the typology of quantifiers and the ongoing debate on the mass/count distinction: division does not necessarily force a counting function, and the mass/count distinction, if it exists at all, is a structural one, not a lexical one.


The bacterial community, in whole or in part, resident in the bowel of humans is considered to fuel the chronic immune inflammatory conditions characteristic of Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Chronic or recurrent pouchitis in ulcerative colitis patients is responsive to antibiotic therapy, indicating that bacteria are the etiological agents. Microbiological investigations of the bacterial communities in stool or of biopsy‐associated bacteria have so far failed to reveal conclusively the existence of pathogens or bacterial communities of consistently altered composition in IBD patients relative to control subjects. Confounding factors need to be eliminated from future studies by using better‐defined patient populations of newly diagnosed and untreated individuals and by improved sampling procedures.


Sepsis continues to account for a second peak in mortality in patients with severe acute pancreatitis. The prevention of these septic complications and subsequent development of multiple organ dysfunction syndrome remains a major focus for investigators, yet despite considerable clinical and experimental work addressing its etiology, septic complications remain high. Several studies have been designed to demonstrate the mechanism of origin of these septic complications with an attempt to define strategies for their prevention to improve patient outcomes. There is clear evidence that the origin of this secondary bacterial infection arises from enteric bacterial translocation secondary to disruption of the gut mucosal barrier during acute pancreatitis. Strategies designed to prevent secondary pancreatic infection include aggressive fluid resuscitation to maximize organ perfusion, early systemic antibiotic treatment or selective gut decontamination, and recently attempts to block mediators of the systemic inflammatory response. This discussion will summarize our present understanding of the etiopathogenesis of secondary bacterial 'superinfection' of necrotizing pancreatitis and how the initiation of enteral feeding early in the course of acute pancreatitis may prove to be an effective means of preventing and/or reversing the breakdown of the gut mucosal defense barrier.


Missing data imputation forms the first critical step of many data analysis pipelines. The challenge is greatest for mixed data sets, including real, Boolean, and ordinal data, where standard techniques for imputation fail basic sanity checks: for example, the imputed values may not follow the same distributions as the data. This paper proposes a new semiparametric algorithm to impute missing values, with no tuning parameters. The algorithm models mixed data as a Gaussian copula. This model can fit arbitrary marginals for continuous variables and can handle ordinal variables with many levels, including Boolean variables as a special case. We develop an efficient approximate EM algorithm to estimate copula parameters from incomplete mixed data. The resulting model reveals the statistical associations among variables. Experimental results on several synthetic and real datasets show superiority of our proposed algorithm to state-of-the-art imputation algorithms for mixed data.


Dolutegravir (DTG) is an integrase strand transfer inhibitor that is used for the treatment of HIV infection. DTG inhibits organic cation transporter 2 on the basolateral side of proximal tubule cells of the kidney and leads to increased serum creatinine levels without true renal function deterioration. In HIV patients who receive DTG, an alternative test to serum creatinine measurement is needed to determine the correct renal function. We retrospectively evaluated 18 HIV-infected men who had received combination antiretroviral therapy (cART), including DTG, and who had available data on serum creatinine and cystatin C levels. We used paired t-test to assess the changes in estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) calculated by serum creatinine or cystatin C level, after the start of cART. In all 18 patients, only 2 cases were naive, whereas 16 cases switched treatment. Based on serum creatinine level, eGFR significantly changed from 67.9 (61.2-95.7) ml/min per 1.73 m2 [medians and interquartile ranges ] to 63.6 (55.5-83.7) ml/min per 1.73 m2 (p = .0004). Conversely, eGFR was almost unchanged [79.8 (77.7-82.5) to 80.0 (77.1-82.5) ml/min per 1.73 m2; p = .132] when serum cystatin C level was used for estimation. In HIV patients receiving DTG, measurement of serum cystatin C as an alternative renal function test might be clinically valuable because it is not affected by DTG administration.


: Our understanding of the prevalence of mental health disorders (MHDs) in society is in the midst of a paradigm shift: where MHDs were once considered rare within a population, studies through the last decade have converged to the conclusion that they are, in fact, near universal. Consequently, the demand for mental health treatment has resulted in the training of Prima-ry-Care Physicians (PCPs) to identify, diagnose, and treat common MHDs. As generalists, PCPs require specialised point-of-care clinical resources to educate their patients and provide them with evidence-based treatment plans; UpToDate is one such resource. As a database of synthesized peer-reviewed medical information, written and approved by physician-experts from their review of contemporary peer-reviewed literature, this resource is considered a gold standard. Here, we examine an MHD-spe-cific investigative case study on Generalized Anxiety Disorder where the synthesized UpToDate medical information was found to be in conflict with the original studies. In this era of unrelenting bombardment of digital data, the responsibility of assessing the truth of the information falls to the consumer. While a reliance on reputable information-sharing platforms facilitates both the access and assessment of truth, we discuss the risks of unintended errors, their propagation, and the potential impact at the point-of-care.


In future deployments of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) safety-related applications such as local danger warning (LDW) will use broadcast-based communication schemes to transmit information to other vehicles within the network. The unlimited flooding of a message throughout the whole network however, is neither feasible nor intended. The high resulting traffic load would congest the shared wireless medium and prevent other, potentially highly relevant and time-critical messages from getting access to the medium. Existing strategies to limit redundant packet retransmissions manage to make broadcast-based data packet dissemination more efficient and reliable. However, they do not take into account the individual network's nodes interest in information. In fact, the static mechanisms proposed are not adequate to leverage the limited network resources as efficiently as possible in varying network conditions and to transport information to where it is needed as fast as possible. Therefore, we propose an altruistic communication scheme which differentiates data traffic according to the benefit it is likely to provide to potential recipients. A system for calculating and leveraging message benefit and two different node architectures are presented. With the help of a comprehensive simulation environment, the performance of our concept is analyzed. Comparative simulative studies show that an improvement of the benefit provided to all the participants in a VANET is also possible with the help of the readily available IEEE 802.11e standard, but to a lower extent.


We introduce a scalable framework for novel view synthesis from RGB-D images with largely incomplete scene coverage. While generative neural approaches have demonstrated spectacular results on 2D images, they have not yet achieved similar photorealistic results in combination with scene completion where a spatial 3D scene understanding is essential. To this end, we propose a generative pipeline performing on a sparse grid-based neural scene representation to complete unobserved scene parts via a learned distribution of scenes in a 2.5D-3D-2.5D manner. We process encoded image features in 3D space with a geometry completion network and a subsequent texture inpainting network to extrapolate the missing area. Photorealistic image sequences can be finally obtained via consistency-relevant differentiable rendering. Comprehensive experiments show that the graphical outputs of our method outperform the state of the art, especially within unobserved scene parts.


Over the last ten years, sulfuric acid dewpoint corrosion has become a more important concern in refinery furnaces since sulfur levels in fuels have increased. Electroless nickel phosphorous coating is one of the most widely used industrial coatings owing to its good corrosion resistance in many highly corrosive environments. In this work, electroless Ni-P-SiO2 composite coatings were prepared on AISI 1020 carbon steel. And the corrosion behaviors of Ni-P-SiO2, Ni-P coatings and carbon steel substrate were evaluated by immersion, electrochemical tests in 5%wt sulfuric acid solution, and dewpoint corrosion tests in simulated furnace flue gas. The experimental results indicated that corrosion resistance properties of Ni-P-SiO2 coating was best, followed by Ni-P coating and carbon steel was worst.


Objectives: Early and proper treatment is crucial to prevent neuropsychologic deficits in congenital hypothyroidism (CH). Considering the high prevalence of CH in Isfahan, the aim of this study was to evaluate the outcome of treatment in CH patients. Methods: In this study CH neonates diagnosed during screening program in Isfahan from May 2002 to September 2009 were studied. Frequent visits were performed to CH patients to monitor and follow their treatments. Quality of treatment was assessed by evaluating mean age of treatment initiation and mean TSH and T4 levels before and after treatment and during the first and second years according to their normal reference ranges. Results: Of 225,224 screened neonates, 536 were diagnosed as CH patients. The prevalence of CH was 1/420 live births. Mean age at starting treatment was 22.9 ± 13.2 days. In 93.7% of patients, treatment was begun before the 45th day of life. In the first measurement after initiating the treatment, T4 and TSH were not in their acceptable range in 3.9% and 9.8% of CH patients, respectively. Mean T4 and TSH reached to normal range during the treatment period. T4 reached the normal range earlier than TSH. Conclusions: The mean age of treatment initiation was in acceptable range but the findings suggest that both early and high-dose treatments are crucial for optimal treatment, especially in patients with severe CH. Further studies are needed to determine the outcome of treatment specially regarding to different etiologies of CH.


Importance Approximately 1 in 10 children worldwide are born to consanguineous parents. The literature on consanguinity and mental health of progeny is scarce despite the fact that many of the factors associated with consanguineous unions are also associated with mental health. Objective To investigate if children of consanguineous parents are at increased risk of common mood disorders or psychoses. Design, Setting, and Participants This investigation was a retrospective population-wide cohort study of all individuals born in Northern Ireland between January 1, 1971, and December 31, 1986, derived from the Child Health System data set and linked to nationwide administrative data sources on prescription medication and death records. Data from the Child Health System data set identified all 447 452 births delivered to mothers residing in Northern Ireland between 1971 and 1986. The final data set comprised 363 960 individuals, alive and residing in Northern Ireland in 2014, with full data on all variables. The dates of analysis were June 1 to October 31, 2017. Main Outcomes and Measures Degree of parental consanguinity was assessed from questions asked of the parents during routine health visitor house calls within 2 weeks of the child's birth. Potential mental ill health was estimated by receipt of psychotropic medication in 2010 to 2014. Ever or never use was used for the main analysis, with sensitivity analyses using a cutoff of at least 3 months' prescriptions. Receipt of antidepressant or anxiolytic medications was used as a proxy for common mood disorders, whereas receipt of antipsychotic medications was used as a proxy indicator of psychoses. Results Of the 363 960 individuals (52.5% [191 102] male), 609 (0.2%) were born to consanguineous parents. After full adjustment for factors known to be associated with poor mental health, multilevel logistic regression models found that children of first-cousin consanguineous parents were more than 3 times as likely to be in receipt of antidepressant or anxiolytic medications (odds ratio, 3.01; 95% CI, 1.24-7.31) and more than twice as likely to be in receipt of antipsychotic medication (odds ratio, 2.13; 95% CI, 1.29-3.51) compared with children of nonrelated parents. Conclusions and Relevance A child of consanguineous parents is at increased risk of common mood disorders and psychoses.


Aim To investigate the relationship between myopic progression and intermittent exotropia, and the impact of surgery for exotropia on myopic progression in early school-aged children (from 7 years to 12 years of age). Methods Medical records of early school-aged patients with myopia were reviewed. Patients were divided into three groups; (A) Patients with intermittent exotropia and myopia at presentation and who underwent bilateral lateral rectus muscle recession for exotropia when 7–12 years old; (B) Patients with intermittent exotropia and myopia at presentation and who were merely observed for exotropia; and (C) Patients with myopia and straight ocular alignment. Main outcome measurements were the simple rate of myopic progression per year, the preoperative and postoperative rates of refractive growth with regards to the logarithmic age model in Group A, and the rate of high myopia development at the end of the early school period. Results The rates of myopic progression were −0.43±0.14 dioptre (D) per year in Group A, −0.49±0.17 D/year in Group B and −0.42±0.24 D/year in Group C. There was no significant difference in the rate of myopic progression among three groups. There was no significant intergroup difference in the preoperative and postoperative rates of refractive growth in Group A. There were no significant intergroup differences in the rates of high myopia development among three groups. Conclusions Whether patients with intermittent exotropia underwent surgical correction for intermittent exotropia did not influence the rate of myopic progression. There was no significant difference in the rate of myopic progression between patients with accompanying intermittent exotropia and myopia and those with myopia alone.


In order to prepare our graduates for the ever-changing global landscape, in the Fall 2013, the Whitacre College of Engineering (WCOE) at Texas Tech University (TTU) established the International Experience Initiative (IEI), a bold initiative that requires all undergraduate students in the college of engineering to complete an experience abroad before graduation. In addition, the IEI, aligned with the college's funding priorities for years 2013-2018, contributes to increase the college global presence by increasing graduate international enrollment, increasing research related activities and support with international partners, expanding international partnerships, and strengthening academic quality and reputation. To support the IEI, the college developed a strategic plan for years 2013-2018. The plan included a budget increase from $100,000 to $800,000 per year for the international programs office to invest in office staff and operations. New priorities for 2013-2018 consisted in 1) the refocusing on academic cost neutral offerings abroad after identifying the need to create more internships, research and service programs abroad, 2) a program assessment plan and 3) the development of a travel scholarship fund for students under financial hardship which currently represent a 27% of the undergraduate population. Results from these priorities from 2013-2016 include: 1) on academic offerings and enrollment, a 565% increase in abroad enrollment was achieved by growing from 79 to 525 students. By 2016, many programs in new locations were created, mostly non-faculty led study abroad programs and also many internship opportunities abroad. 2) A new assessment plan of all program components is in its implementation and testing phase and will be ready to be used by January 2017. 3) A travel scholarship fund has been developed, consisting of endowed funds and donations/gifts. A cost comparison study of our programs abroad vs on campus costs was used together with data from the financial aid office on the amount of students under financial hardship to determine how many students needed financial aid and what programs /locations were the most affordable. It was concluded that the Americas is the most affordable option for summer programs and the Asia/Africa/Australia/NZ regions are the most affordable option for semesters abroad. The average cost of airfare equivalent to $1,500 was used to calculate the travel scholarship budget needed per year. Given 150 students per year are under financial hardship in the college and each would receive $1,500 on average, $225,000 per year is the minimum needed amount in the travel scholarship fund. As a result of these findings, the WCOE established as funding priority for 2016-2020 to develop at least a $5 million travel scholarship endowed fund to guarantee the sustainability of this wonderful initiative. The WCOE International Initiative: A bold requirement for engineering undergraduates.


This study aims to analyze the semantic comments made by a dyad of newly literate students (6 to 8 years), during writing processes in real time. Affiliated to the field of studies proposed by the Textual Genetics, from an enunciative approach, we treat as a unit of analysis the Dialogical Text (DT) established in face-to-face interaction, respecting their multimodal dimension (gestures, expressions, body movements) and spontaneous speech and co-enunciation of the students in pairs. The DT constitutes the recognition by one of the speakers of Textual Objects (TO) and comments related to these objects. The relationship between the TO and recognized semantic comments is defined as a type of Commented Oral Erasure (COE).Our analysis was based on a data set composed by the filmic record of 16 writing process stories invented by the same dyad of students. We discussed the occurrence of this type of COE in 3 writing processes. Our results indicate that the semantic comments directed to OT aimed at the establishment of textual unit, indicating how the students were thinking about this problem for the manuscript in progress. The relationship between the TO and uttered semantic comments mapped the genesis and the textual creation process. Moreover, the semantic COE show the students' linguistic and textual knowledge that are not possible to identify in the finished manuscript.


Nearly anyone can be a tax preparer. There is no test to pass or code of ethics to follow. With few barriers to entry, the field of tax preparation has drawn unscrupulous players, many of whom prey on low-income families who claim the earned-income tax credit. In 2011, the IRS endeavored to regulate the anything-goes world of tax preparation. But a group ofsmall-government activists at the Institutefor Justice challenged the IRS's regulations in federal court. And they won. The U.S. Court of Appeals Jbr the D.C. Circuit struck down the regulations as beyond the I.R.S.'s authority under section 330 of Title 31 of the United States Code. In the wake of that decision, Loving v. IRS, the only path fbrward for advocates of taxpayer protection is for Congress to explicitly empower the IRS to regulate swindlers posing as tax professionals. This Article is, fundamentally, a story of political and judicial failure in the age of small government absolutism. In a different era, federal oversight of unscrupulous tax preparers who have represented the blandest kind ofcommon sense. But the Institute for Justice was able to convince a panel ofjudges on what is widely regarded as the second most influential court in the country that IRS oversight of tax preparers is unlawful. The government's litigation strategy proved bumbling and ill-considered, it was easily outmaneuvered by its ideologically-driven adversary. In the Article, I provide background on the IRS regulations and the process by which they were developed; I detail the pervasive fraud and incompetence that motivated the IRS to act: I explore the Institute for Justice's push to invalidate the regulations in court, and I look at the arguments it made outside the courtroom; I evaluate the state-level experience with tax preparer regulations to see what can be learned from these "laboratories of democracy "; and, finally, I discuss how to proceed in the aftermath of Loving.


The anisotropic nonlinear third-order susceptibility of nanocomposites consisting of aligned ellipsoidal metallic nanoparticles embedded in a dielectric matrix is modeled from the generalized Maxwell-Garnett equation involving depolarization factors. Depolarization factors take into account different anisotropic particle geometries such as flat disks, rods, or ellipsoids. The equations traditionally used to model third-order susceptibility of nanocomposites are valid only for very low metal volume fractions. Modified equations that allow metal volume fractions up to the limit of validity of the Maxwell-Garnett equation are used. The effect of the different model parameters, namely, the metal volume fraction, the real and imaginary parts of the metal dielectric constant, the matrix dielectric constant, and, finally, the ratio of the real and imaginary parts of the metal third-order susceptibility were investigated using the model gold/silica nanocomposite system. As previously reported in the literature for the isotropic particle case, counterintuitive effects such as sign reversal between the bulk metal and composite nonlinear susceptibilities have been observed. The calculations were applied to the case of gold nanorods embedded in silica that were experimentally found to exhibit anisotropic saturable absorption.


The paper analyses the condition and the basic directions of military psychologists in the American armed forces. It gives an account of specific features, problems, basic fields of activity, general structure of military psychologists' vocational training. Issues of military psychological community functioning as component of the American psychological association are discussed. The paper shows that the direction and content of the military psychologists is determined by the peculiarities of the domestic and foreign policy of the American leadership, problems solved by the US armed forces at a particular stage of its historical development, the specific features of the psychological problems that are observes in the Army, the Air Force and the Navy at the today level of the psychological science and practice. The main problems that are the targets of the military psychologists (post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide, drug addiction, war crimes, and relations in military units) are revealed. The subject field of the American military psychology, and its main objectives are analyzed. The consistency in determining the main points of the practical application of military psychology is given special attention to. The main areas of activity of military psychologists are analyzed. The specific tasks solved by military psychologists of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marine Corps are shown. The direction and methods of clinical psychologists, experts in information operations support of military troops, psychologists in teaching (psychological training of troops) and educational areas are shown. Staff positions and organisations where psychologists works in the interests of the military administration are reviewed. The paper provides an overview of the measures taken by the military leadership of the United States that claim to improve the system of psychological work in the armed forces at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries. The main structure of professional training for the psychologists who are working on solving defense problems are analyzed. A comparative analysis of remuneration system for military psychologists is given. The issues of military-psychological community functioning as an integral part of the American Psychological Association are discussed. A review of periodicals, literature and events held by the section of military psychology of American Psychological Association ( APA) are provided.


Despite of the important role international migration fills in the United States' labor-intensive agricultural sector, few studies have addressed the individual characteristics and circumstances surrounding entry and exit by farm laborers. With increasing public attention on international migrant labor, policymakers have a need to understand the labor market patterns of these workers if they are to formulate appropriate immigration reforms, including temporary worker programs geared towards agriculture. In this analysis, we model the likelihood of entering agricultural employment by migrants to the United States. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project we find that migrants with higher levels of education and a greater command of English are less likely to work as agricultural laborers. Those that do enter agricultural occupation stay in the United States for shorter periods of time per trip than those who enter non-agricultural occupation. In future analysis we will attempt to model the demand for agricultural farm work as a determinant of the decision by migrants to enter the U.S. market for hired farm labor.


The international conference "'Between the Carrot and the Stick': Emerging Needs and Forms for Non-State Actors including NGOs and Informal Organizations in Contemporary Russia" was held at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, on January 28-29, 2016. The conference was organized by the Centre for Independent Social Research (St. Petersburg, Russia) in collaboration with the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (Helsinki, Finland), Uppsala University (Uppsala, Sweden), and the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Studies (Oslo, Norway). The organizing committee comprised Linda Cook (Brown University, USA), Ann-Mari Satre (Uppsala University, Sweden), Elena Bogdanova (Centre for Independent Social Research, Russia), Meri Kulmala (Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Finland), Aadne Aasland (Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Studies, Norway), and Eleanor Bindman (Queen Mary College, University of London, United Kingdom). The conference was dedicated to the problems of non-profit organizations in Russia in the context of the transformation of the political and legal conditions. The conference consisted of six sections, covering such topics as the transformation of the institutional conditions of the NGO sector in Russia, Russian NGOs in an international dimension, and new types of NGO emerging in the changing organizational environment. There were 24 papers presented during the conference by researchers from 10 countries. In addition, a round table was organized with participants from Russian and Finnish NGOs and researchers, during which issues of cooperation between social scientists and representatives of NGOs was discussed. Over 70 people attended the conference. The working language of the conference was English.


This paper introduce a historical geographical study on the process of land cover transformation in the Bükk Region, which can be regarded as a two-faced area concerning its anthropogenic disturbance. Based on historic mapping that began as early as the late 18th century, a database was produced, and the data was interpreted in the context of economic and social processes that took place in the area. Results could be presented in maps using the so-called Anthropogenic Disturbance Index (ADI). These maps demonstrate the peculiar land use pattern in the Bükk Region, namely co-habitation of the significantly transformed margins and the natural or quasi-natural central part. Between them, there are linear areas of intermediate disturbance. These areas, however, due to the foundation and activity of the Bükk National Park and modification of their economic value after the change of the political system, have not increased during the last several decades; rather a re-naturalization of the landscape is aimed.


The majoritarian conception of democracy implies that countermajoritarian institutions such as federalism — and even representative institutions — are derogations from democracy. The majoritarian conception is mistaken for two reasons. First, it is incoherent: majoritarianism ultimately stands against one of democracy's core normative commitments — namely, political equality. Second, majoritarianism is premised on a mistaken view of power, which fails to account for the power of numbers and thereby fails to explain the inequality faced by members of persistent minorities. Although strict majority rule serves the democratic values of political agency and equality as interpreted by a set of formal conditions, an adequate conception of power shows why in real-world conditions formal-procedural inequalities, instantiated by countermajoritarian institutions such as federalism, are sometimes required to serve democratic equality. [R]


Motivated by PID control simplicity, robustness and validity to deal with the nonlinearity and uncertainties of dynamics, through simulating the intelligent behavior of human manual control, and only using the elementary information on hand, this paper introduces a simple formulation to represent prior knowledge and experiences of human manual control, and proposes a simple and practicable control law, named Human-Simulating Intelligent PID control (HSI-PID), and the simple tuning rules with the explicit physical meaning. HSI-PID control can not only easily incorporate prior knowledge and experiences of experts control into the controller but also automatically acquire knowledge of control experiences from the past control behavior to correct the control action online. The theoretical analysis and simulation results show that: HSI-PID control has the better flexibility, stronger robustness, and especially the faster self-learning ability, and it can make the motion of system identically track the desired response, whether the controlled system has the strong nonlinearity and uncertainties of dynamics or not, even under the actions of uncertain, varying-time and strong disturbances.


Language is one of the most important possessions at the disposal of man to help him shape and dominate his environment. Man therefore uses language in various contexts and situations either to offer information, influence attitudes or to maintain social relationship. Because of these variegated functions which language is called upon to perform differences exist in vocabulary and style. This paper focuses on Lexico-Semantic Analysis of military language. The aim is to describe the language of the military as a specialized variety with its own distinctive features. Data collection was by oral interview and observation technique. The findings show that the features of military Language are comparatively quite distinct from all other varieties. The author concludes that language of the military is peculiar as well as relevant to those in the military profession.


Research question: The aim of the study is to examine the inclination of engineering students in Serbia to adopt M-learning. Motivation: Mobile technologies provide new solutions in the current concept of learning. Students today have a new approach to learning since they live in the era of digital technology. The use of mobile technology in higher education came along with the technological enlightenment of professors and students, eradicating geographical boundaries and enabling cooperative learning. Idea: Mobile learning (M-learning) is unthinkable without the use of mobile devices and it plays an increasingly important role in the development of teaching methods in higher education. The research refers to the analysis and assessment of M-learning in higher education with the aim to identify problems and weaknesses related to the application of M-learning in order to set alternatives and criteria for the proposed model. Data: The survey was conducted through a questionnaire, and 341 correctly filled out questionnaires were collected. The obtained data were processed by the Visual Promethee software package. Tools: The research methodology was based on the Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) method which was used in the form of PROMETHEE II/GAIA technique. In order to rank the student programmes from different study areas, groups of questions were used as criteria, and study programmes were used as alternatives. Findings: The acquired results indicated that M-learning was mostly used by the students of Engineering Management, since they frequently used mobile technology in certain required courses, as well as for obligatory business practice. It was also concluded that the study programme Metallurgical Engineering had the lowest performance concerning the implementation of M-learning among all other observed study programmes. Contribution: The conclusions of this study can add to the awareness-raising of the higher education institutions' interested parties and alert them to improve the quality of M-education by pointing out that there are differences in the adoption of M-learning depending on the type of engineering sciences.


In order to further investigate the influence of mold temperature in rapid heat cycle molding on shrinkage of plastic past, a self-developed vehicle-used blue-tooth front shell high-gloss mold and an auxiliary device for controlling the mold temperature were employed in experiments. And the effect of the other parameters on shrinkage of part with fixed or changed mold temperature conditions was also studied. Results reveal that the shrinkage of RHCM part is reduced obviously compared with a conventional one, decreasing as quasi-linear with mold temperature increased gradually. At same mold temperature conditions, packing pressure, followed by packing time, is the most significant parameter on shrinkage of part, while cooling time has almost no impact on it. Melt temperature and injection pressure effecting on shrinkage of part exists a critical value, near the thermal deformation temperature of plastic. When mold temperature is set below this temperature, injection pressure has more significant than melt temperature, but it is the opposite. With being elevated gradually of mold temperature, shrinkage of part shows a slight decrease trend under same melt temperature and injecting pressure. While it fluctuates as a "V" shape with a narrow range under same packing pressure, packing time and cooling time presumed conditions, and reaches the minimum near the thermal deformation temperature of plastic.


Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) was examined at 86 loci distributed on every chromosomal arm in 50 human ovarian tumors. Frequent allele losses were observed on chromosomes 13q (42%), 17p (42%), 17q (45%), and Xp (41%). Deletion mapping on chromosome 17 revealed a candidate gene on the long arm distal to D17S41/S74 for ovarian cancer which is distant from the locus for early onset breast cancer. LOH on chromosome 17q was found to be concordant with LOH on chromosomes 3p, 13q, 17p and Xp suggesting that it may be an early event in neoplastic development. These findings indicate that multiple tumor‐suppressor genes for ovarian cancer possibly exist on chromosomes 13q, 17, and/or Xp and provide the basis for the identification of candidate gene(s) associated with ovarian cancer. The chromosomal mechanisms resulting in allele losses in ovarian cancer include deletion, deletion/duplication, mitotic recombination and monosomy, in concordance with the developed genetic model.


Objective : Management of heart failure is complex and multifaceted but adherence to medications remains the cornerstone of preventing avoidable readmissions, premature deaths, and unnecessary healthcare expenses. Despite of evidence-based efficacy on anti-failure drugs, poor adherence is pervasive and remains a significant barrier to improving clinical outcomes in heart failure population. Results : We enrolled 459 patients with established diagnosis of heart failure. The mean age was 46.4 years and participants aged ≤50 years constituted 55.4% of the cohort. There was a female predominance (56.5%), 67.5% resided in urban areas and 74.2% had primary education. Of the 419 participants eligible for assessment of medication adherence, 313 (74.7%) had poor adherence and 106 (25.3%) had good adherence. Possession of a health insurance was found to be the strongest associated factor for adherence (OR 8.7, 95% CI 4.7-16.0, P <0.001). Participants with poor adherence displayed a 70% increased risk for rehospitalization compared to their counterparts with good adherence (RR 1.7, 95% CI 1.2-2.9, p = 0.04). Poor adherence was found to be the strongest predictor of early mortality (HR 2.5, 95% CI 1.3-4.6, p<0.01). Poor medication adherence in patients with heart failure is associated with increased readmissions and mortality.


This article identifies the spatial correlation between the social determinants of health in the housing area (housing prices, overcrowding, poor-quality building materials, and household socioeconomic vulnerability) and the spread of COVID-19 in Santiago de Chile. The research used data from the 2017 Census conducted by the National Institute of Statistics of Chile and data on confirmed cases of COVID-19 (PCR) by communes provided by/obtained from Chile's Ministry of Health. The article provides a two-fold examination/analysis of the spatial correlation using the Pearson measure to observe how the virus spread from areas with high-quality housing in the early stage of the contagion to then become concentrated in areas with low-quality of housing. The second examination/analysis is a multiple linear regression to identify the housing factors that inform virus propagation. The test results show that of the four social determinants of health relating to housing assessed here, housing prices is the variable that best predicts how the social determinants of health based on housing explain the progress of the pandemic for the Santiago case, following the collinearity factors according to the data used in this study. The conclusions suggest that public policy should treat housing quality as a factor in public health and health risks that needs to be addressed with a transdisciplinary approach to urban planning in Chile.


Borax is used in Ayurveda to treat various diseases like asthma, ulcer, and others, after removal of the water for crystallization. It causes toxicity when accumulated in the body, leads to vomiting, fatigue, and renal failure. The present study was carried out to evaluate the acute and the sub-acute toxicity and cardiac activity of processed borax in rats. Acute toxicity of processed borax was observed at the doses of 112.5, 225.0, 450.0, 900.0, and 1800.0 mg/kg. Processed borax solution at 22.5 and 112.5 mg/kg/day dose was administered for 30 consecutive days in sub-acute toxicity study. Cardiac activity of processed borax was studied by giving borax solution at 22.5 and 112.5 mg/kg/day dose for 30 days and taking ECG. In the acute toxicity test, the processed borax did not produce any deaths. The sub-acute treatment with the processed borax (22.5 and 112.5 mg/kg, n = 6/group) failed to induce serious alterations in almost all the parameters, except toxicity in kidney at 112.5 mg/kg. No change in ECG was observed in cardiac activity study. The LD 50 of processed borax is above 1.8 mg/kg. It has no serious toxicity on sub-acute exposure and has no pathological intervention on heart in rats.


Within Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) waters there are two main species of marine turtle that nest and forage: green and hawksbill turtles. Both are listed on the global IUCN Red List as endangered and critically endangered, respectively, but are fished legally in TCI waters. The fishery is mostly unregulated, and the government of TCI and the Marine Conservation Society of the United Kingdom (MCS-UK) have been working with fishers to improve management. Over the past two years, MCS-UK has conducted extensive fisher engagement and research on the nature and scope of the fishery. Based on research and fisher input, MCS-UK will recommend a new management plan in 2011. Through an extensive literature review and analysis of the TCI turtle fishery, I assess the potential for co-management in the fishery by fishermen and government. Analysis of fisher interviews demonstrates perspectives on management of the turtle fishery in general, and fisher preference for certain management techniques. Coupling my analysis of the fishery and comanagement theory with fisher and community member responses leads me to recommend the following management measures: closed areas; protection of nesting females and eggs; a slot size limit; a closed season and some gear restrictions. The analysis also reveals the possibility of co-management in the fishery and I suggest increasing fisher involvement in the decision-making process. After implementing and assessing a co-management plan for the marine turtle fishery in the TCI, it may act as a guide for initiating similar programs for the more economically important conch and lobster fisheries.


A multiwavelength fiber laser is constructed with an elliptical core erbium-doped fiber serving as an anisotropic gain medium. A broadband fiber reflector and a Sagnac loop reflector form a Fabry-Perot resonant cavity. Three lasing wavelengths are obtained which are stable over an hour at room temperatures. With one of them as reference wavelength, we can switch the other two by a polarization controller. The lasing wavelengths are also tunable. The effects of the anisotropic gain behavior of the erbium-doped fiber are also explored.


The coupled transmission-line equations for a three-conductor, lossless transmission line are solved in symbolic form for its crosstalk voltages using various approximations [1, 2]. The most frequently-used approximate model for predicting crosstalk is referred to as the Jarvis model after its original publisher in 1963 [3]. The Jarvis model uses three approximations that simplify the result. One of the approximations requires that all four line terminations be matched which is unrealistic for virtually all crosstalk problems.


The goal of testing is to gain confidence in a physical computer based system by means of executing it. More than one third of typical project resources are spent on testing embedded and real-time systems, but still it remains ad-hoc, based on heuristics, and error-prone. Therefore systematic, theoretically well-founded and effective automated real-time testing techniques are of great practical value. Testing conceptually consists of three activities: test case generation, test case execution and verdict assignment. We present T-UPPAAL-a new tool for model based testing of embedded real-time systems that automatically generates and executes tests "online" from a state machine model of the implementation under test (IUT) and its assumed environment which combined specify the required and allowed observable (realtime) behavior of the IUT. T-UPPAAL implements a sound and complete randomized testing algorithm, and uses a formally defined notion of correctness (relativized timed input/output conformance) to assign verdicts. Using online testing, events are generated and simultaneously executed.


The natural world is filled with diverse - not to mention quirky and odd - animal behaviors. Consider the male praying mantis that continues to mate after being beheaded; the spiders, insects, and birds that offer gifts of food in return for sex; the male hip-pocket frog that carries his own tadpoles; the baby spiders that dine on their mother; the beetle that craves excrement; or the starfish that sheds an arm or two to escape a predator's grasp. "Headless Males Make Great Lovers" and "Other Unusual Natural Histories" celebrates the extraordinary world of animals with essays on curious creatures and their amazing behaviors. In five thematic chapters, Marty Crump - a tropical field biologist well known for her work with the reproductive behavior of amphibians - examines the bizarre conduct of animals as they mate, parent, feed, defend themselves, and communicate. Crump's enthusiasm for the unusual behaviors she describes - from sex change and free love in sponges to aphrodisiac concoctions in bats - is visible on every page, thanks to her skilled storytelling, which makes even sea slugs, dung beetles, ticks, and tapeworms fascinating and appealing. Steeped in biology, "Headless Males Make Great Lovers" points out that diverse and unrelated animals often share seemingly bizarre behaviors - evidence, Crump argues, that these natural histories, though outwardly weird, are successful ways of living. Illustrated throughout and filled with vignettes of personal and scientific interest, "Headless Males Make Great Lovers" will enchant the general reader with its tales of blood-squirting horned lizards and intestine-ejecting sea cucumbers - all in the service of a greater appreciation of the diversity of the natural histories of animals.


The German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure is currently preparing the 2015 Federal Transport Investment Plan. Because this effort includes an update to the overall methodology of the ministry's cost–benefit analysis, both the value of reliability (VOR) and the value of travel time (VOT) for personal and business travel will be estimated. The VOT will replace a set of existing values, but the VOR will be estimated for the first time because they are not yet incorporated in the standard appraisal. A two-stage approach was used for data collection: first respondents reported about current trips (revealed preference), and then these responses were systematically varied to become the basis for stated preference experiments. This paper presents the findings of estimating the VOR. In the stated preference experiments the reliability of the travel modes was presented with different formats. The final model formulation differed in the definition of reliability for private and public transport. For car trips, saving travel time had more value for the respondents than reducing the variability. The calculated VOR for the mean expected unscheduled delay of public transport trips was slightly lower than the VOT; this result indicates that the reliability was less important to the respondents than the relevant travel time saving. A mean expected unscheduled delay of 1 min and 1 min of standard deviation are almost equivalent to 1 min of travel time saving (reliability ratio). Because this was the first official estimation of VOR and VOT for Germany, the values should be reconsidered and updated on a regular basis.


Objective To understand whether the impact of smoking on chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) is reversible after smoking cessation. Study Design Cross-sectional study. Setting Academic tertiary care rhinology clinic. Subjects and Methods A total of 103 former-smoker CRS patients and 103 nonsmoker CRS patients were prospectively recruited. The primary outcome measure was sinonasal symptom severity measured with the 22-item Sinonasal Outcomes Test (SNOT-22), and secondary outcome measures were general health-related quality of life (QOL) measured with the 5-dimensional EuroQol visual analog scale (EQ-5D VAS) and patient-reported CRS-related antibiotic and oral corticosteroid usage in the past year. Outcome measures were compared between cohorts and checked for association with time since cessation of smoking for former smokers. Results Compared with nonsmokers, former smokers had worse SNOT-22 score (P = .019) and EQ-5D VAS score (P = .001) and reported using more CRS-related antibiotics (P = .003) and oral corticosteroids in the past year (P = .013). In former smokers, every year was associated with a statistically significant improvement in SNOT-22 score (β = −0.48; 95% CI, −0.91 to −0.05; P = .032), EQ-5D VAS score (β = 0.46; 95% CI, 0.02-0.91; P = .046), and CRS-related oral corticosteroid use (relative risk = 0.95; 95% CI, 0.91-0.98; P = .001). Given the differences in our study outcome measures between former smokers and nonsmokers, we estimate that the reversible impacts of smoking on CRS may resolve after 10 to 20 years. Conclusions CRS patients who are former smokers have worse sinonasal symptomatology, QOL, and CRS-related medication usage than nonsmokers. Every year since cessation of smoking is associated improvements in sinonasal symptomatology, QOL, and CRS-related oral corticosteroid use, potentially reaching nonsmoker levels after 10 to 20 years.


Background/Objectives: This study aims to identify on the convergence program based on rhizome thinking and expression in engineering. Methods/Statistical Analysis: Delphi survey on a panel of experts was chosen to be the main methodology for this study, drawing the main factors of rhizome thinking and expression in engineering. From September 5 to September 30, 2015, a three-round delphi survey was implemented to collect data. The panels of twenty experts were involved in this survey. For statistical processing, descriptive statistics including frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation were carried out along with internal reliability test on the survey instrument. Findings: The main findings were as follows. First, premise of rhizome thinking and expression were collaboration as a basic unit for convergence, convergence motive and convergence thinking. The collaboration appeared as a commitment of community projects, building cataloging system for using knowledge, exchanging and sharing of relevant knowledge, maintenance to a horizontal relationship, applying previous knowledge and showing creativity. Second, practice of rhizome thinking and expression was consilience as a lateral value, discovered in uniqueness and commonness of different disciplines. The consilience as a lateral value appeared as a communication using IT techniques, pursuit to unknown possibility in aesthetic, facing complete realities in engineering and science, a common thing between science and arts to an idea and creative thinking, convert ideas to actions in art and engineering. Third, method of rhizome thinking and expression was organic consolidation through a pattern of connection and communication. The organic consolidation appeared as a pursuit to apply a new form of technology, search for new and strange thing and plan for application using technologies, artificial intelligence, algorithm technology, conduct inference and verification repeatedly, analysis of human actions, design user interface, grasp similar products by market analysis. Application/Improvements: This study suggests the educational implications for improving convergence thinking and creative problem-solving for the engineering students.


This thesis is devoted to the analysis of asymptotically Anti-de Sitter (AdS) black holes arising as solutions of theories of gauged Supergravity in four spacetime dimensions. After a brief recap of the main features of gauged supergravity, the first part of the thesis deals with the explicit construction of solutions and the analysis of the Supergravity flow equations in Fayet-Iliopoulos N=2 gauged supergravity . First of all we analyze the known examples of static supersymmetric extremal Anti-de Sitter black hole solutions in this theory. Then we provide techniques to generalize these solutions to extremal non-supersymmetric ones, found by solving a set of first order equations. Subsequently we find nonextremal solutions, namely black holes with nonvanishing temperature. These configurations are found by solving the full system of the Maxwell-Einstein-scalar equations of motion. We finally make new steps towards a systematic approach to find the most general black hole solution in Fayet-Iliopoulos gauged supergravity. Configurations found by this procedure have nonvanishing angular momentum, electric and magnetic charge, mass and NUT charge. In the second part of the thesis we focus on the nonextremal AdS static solutions and we study the thermodynamics of these configurations. We compute the conserved charges of the solutions and we show that the first law of thermodynamics holds. In the canonical ensemble we discover a first order phase transition between small, hairy black holes and large, less-hairy ones, when the charge is below a critical value. We analyze this phase transition in the dual field theory via the AdS/CFT correspondence, and we find that the process can be interpreted as a liquid-gas phase transition in the dual field theory, that falls in the class of ABJM models. Furthermore we provide some details about the thermodynamics of the rotating configurations. We then compare the various definition of mass for asymptotically Anti-de Sitter configurations. We compute the mass with the Ashtekar-Magnon-Das procedure and by means of holographic renormalization techniques. We provide a set of first order equations for nonextrema static configurations by a suitable squaring of the one-dimensional reduced action. Finally we also provide the correct BPS bound for stationary configurations. We conclude the thesis with further remarks and possible directions of future research.


Up-conversion luminescent materials of Y2O2S: Yb, Tm with different doping concentrations of Tm3+ ion (0.5 mol%–4 mol %) and Yb3+ ion (4 mol%–16 mol %) were prepared by flux method. As Tm3+ doping concentration was 1 mol% and Yb3+ doping concentration was 8 mol%, the blue and red up-conversion luminescent intensity reached the maximum. The concentration quenching of Tm3+ was due to the reducing of the distance between Tm3+ ions and the cross-relaxation increasing. The concentration quenching of Yb3+ was attributed to increasing of nonradiative transition. The blue emission intensity of 1G4→3H6 was always weaker than the red emission intensity of 3F3→3H6, and the blue emission intensity of 1G4→3H6 is similar with the red emission intensity of 1G4→3F4.


The last few years have witnessed the emergence of several high-throughput (HTP) platforms that are based on the evolution of omic science through transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. With the huge data accumulation, the informatics and computational methods have become essential to understand the complexity of biomedical data. We lunched the special issue to address the demand for statistical models, biological omic data analyses, and meta-analysis of biomarker for complex diseases.

Statistical models are always important for the understanding of complex data; in this issue, Y. Liang et al. proposed a new adaptive L1/2 shooting regularization method for variable selection based on the Cox's proportional hazards mode. Simulation and the real gene expression dataset analysis showed that the method is more accurate for variable selection than Lasso and adaptive Lasso methods. L. Tian et al. employed a nonlinear model to analyze time course gene expression data. They firstly developed a method for estimating the parameters in the nonlinear model and then utilized the model to perform the significance analysis of individually differentially expressed genes and clustering analysis of a set of gene expression profiles. The simulation and real-life biological data analyses showed that their methods outperform some existing methods.

For the application of bioinformatics tools, Z. E et al. analyzed the gene expression in rice leaf blades at different temperatures. They analyzed the next-generation sequencing (NGS) datasets and characterized the transcription profiles of the samples in rice seedling leaf blades at 25°C and 30°C. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) databases were applied to study the effect of the temperature. Finally, they observed that temperature markedly regulates several superfamilies of transcription factors, including bZIP, MYB, and WRKY. Chronobiology is a field of biology that studies biological rhythms. R. Lopes et al. reviewed the bioinformatics or computational systems biology methods, tools, and databases which are very helpful to the understanding of the patterns and biological rhythms found in living organisms and the review will benefit the community for the application of bioinformatics in their future researches.

For the understanding of protein structure and structure-function relationship, two papers are selected in this issue. M. Shambhu et al. studied the surface accessibility of hydrophobic residues by considering their conservation score and knowledge of flanking regions. The accuracy of prediction is therefore improved. In the other work, D. Lu et al. applied molecular dynamics to investigate the effects of X-linked agammaglobulinaemia associated with amino acid mutations in pleckstrin homology (PH) domain on the binding of the domain with inositol 1,3,4,5-tetrakisphosphate (Ins(1,3,4,5)P4). The mutations were then classified as "functional mutations", and "folding mutations." The result provided new insights into the biological function of the Btk-PH domain and related mutation-causing diseases.

Finally, two works in this special issue are medical studies. The first is the work by B. Lv et al. They analyzed the 347 studies for the diagnostic value of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and found that the northern hemisphere group in the TNF-α test has higher sensitivity and specificity than those of southern hemisphere group. The second medical study is an association study. Z. Liu et al. reported the significantly association of NCK2 with opiates addiction in African-origin men by a comprehensive analysis of a dataset from the Study of Addiction: Genetics and Environment (SAGE). They employed both SNP and gene based methods of analysis and identified a strong and significant association between a SNP in the NCK2 gene on chromosome 2 with opiates addiction in African-origin men.

Bairong  Shen

Jian  Ma

Jiajun  Wang

Junbai  Wang


Reinforcement learning (RL) has been widely studied for improving sequence-generation models. However, the conventional rewards used for RL training typically cannot capture sufficient semantic information and therefore render model bias. Further, the sparse and delayed rewards make RL exploration inefficient. To alleviate these issues, we propose the concept of nested-Wasserstein distance for distributional semantic matching. To further exploit it, a novel nested-Wasserstein self-imitation learning framework is developed, encouraging the model to exploit historical high-rewarded sequences for enhanced exploration and better semantic matching. Our solution can be understood as approximately executing proximal policy optimization with Wasserstein trust-regions. Experiments on a variety of unconditional and conditional sequence-generation tasks demonstrate the proposed approach consistently leads to improved performance.


Introduction Eales' disease (ED) is an idiopathic inflammatory vasoproliferative retinal disease primarily affecting the peripheral retina of young and apparently healthy adult men, mostly from the Indian subcontinent. It is characterized by peripheral retinal inflammation, retinal neovascularization, and recurrent vitreous hemorrhage, with or without retinal detachment.
 Objective
This study was carried out to evaluate triple therapy, with intravitreal bevacizumab (IVB), posterior sub-Tenon's (SBT) triamcinolone, and panretinal photocoagulation (PRP), in ED patients with vitreous hemorrhage and its associated vasculitis, neovascularization, and macular edema.
 Design
This was a prospective, interventional case series.
 Patients and methods This study included 20 eyes of 20 patients with vitreous hemorrhage because of ED. Preoperative evaluation included patient age, sex, race, medical history, medications, complete ophthalmological examination, and diagnostic laboratory evaluation. All eyes were treated with IVB, posterior SBT triamcinolone, and PRP. The follow-up period was up to 6 months. The main outcome measures were visual acuity, intraocular pressure changes, and recurrence of vitreous hemorrhage.
 Results A statistically significant improvement in visual acuity was observed at 1 week and 1, 3, and 6 months postoperatively. There was no statistically significant change in intraocular pressure at any of the postoperative follow-up intervals. There was no intraoperative or postoperative complication. None of the patients included had any recurrence during the follow-up.
 Conclusion
The triple therapy with IVB, posterior SBT triamcinolone, and PRP seems to be effective in the treatment of ED patients with dense vitreous hemorrhage and its associated vasculitis, neovascularization, and macular edema.


The Indigenous Action Group (IAG) is an alliance of solidarity between Indigenous and settler faculty at the University of Toronto Mississauga with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (MCFN), whose Treaty lands the campus is located on. This partnership of responsibility supports the MCFN goals of truth (through public knowledge and recognition of their history), and reconciliation (through the support and equitable sustenance of Indigenous pedagogy, knowledge systems, and research methodologies in educational institutions). The IAG has developed a Community-Engaged Learning (CEL) course to bring ontological pluralism to the Academy to legitimize Indigenous knowledges, epistemologies, and involve the placemaking of local Indigenous communities (Tuhiwah Smith, 2012). This second year undergraduate course entitled "Anthropology and Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island (in Canada)" was developed and implemented by the Indigenous Action Group to prioritize first person voices from the local Indigenous community. We are hoping this diverse educational model will change the discourse in anthropology courses to begin a collective understanding of ongoing power imbalances and oppression in education from colonial mechanisms.


This study analyses the relationship between institutionalization of budget cuts and sustainable accountability in public health care supply chain during the ongoing financial crisis. It uses the theory of negotiated order to extend the institutional framework of management accounting change proposed by Burns and Scapens (2000). Field research was conducted in Finland in two hospital districts, a local health care centre and a municipality, between 2012 and 2014. Data are based on document analysis and interviews with key decision makers and medical professionals.The study shows that medical professionals use a negotiated order approach among themselves to institutionalize budget cuts in in hospital districts, which leads to sustainable accountability. At municipal and regional levels, however, budgets of primary health care services suffer from suffocation caused by political pressure to cut costs without sustainable accountability mechanisms in the supply chain of health care services.Major contribution is to show how institutionalization of budgetary cuts in public health care cannot be taken for granted to save costs of health care services and improve sustainable accountability among political decision makers and medical professionals when the supply chain is not integrated. As in any other field study, however, our findings cannot be generalized to other organizations than the organizations analyzed.


This study reviews the suitability of habitat for the green turtle in the Pangumbahan Turtle Park. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the existing zoning system and to provide recommendations of alternative zoning approach based on ecological suitability turtle habitat. Observations and fieldwork were undertaken throughout the coastal area of Pangumbahan from January to June 2015 by collecting data which include nesting site for turtles, sand temperature and moisture content, width of the beach, surface slope of the beach, vegetation cover, seagrass and secondary data. Methods of data analysis consists of suitability analysis with the spatial approach using Geographic Information System. The results of the analysis of overlay method were classified into three classes of suitability, which include very suitable covering 6,91 hectares, suitable covering 14,60 hectares and less suitable covering 37,21 hectares. The current existing zones needs to be revised using the recommended zoning system. As an implementation of the findings from this study as well as to effectively manage the conservation area based on the green turtle ecology, it is highly recommended to do a zoning system which is based on the principal of the green turtles habitat suitability to ensure the sustainability of the green turtle within the conservation area. This will ensure the zoning system suits the green turtles' characteristics hence enabling each of the zones to effectively functioning.


Objective To test the effectiveness of, and explore interactions between, three interventions to prevent falls among older people. Design a randomized controlled trial with a full factorial design. Setting Urban community in Melbourne, Australia. Participants1090 aged 70 years and over and living at home. Most were Australian born and rated their health as good to excellent; just over half lived alone. Interventions Three interventions (group based exercise, home hazard management, and vision improvement) delivered to eight groups defined by the presence or absence of each intervention. Main outcome measure Time to first fall ascertained by an 18 month falls calendar and analyzed with survival analysis techniques. Changes to targeted risk factors were assessed by using measures of quadriceps strength, balance, vision, and number of hazards in the home. Results the rate ratio for exercise was 0.82 (95% confidence interval 0.70 to 0.97, P=0.02), and a significant effect (P < 0.05) was observed for the combinations of interventions that involved exercise. Balance measures improved significantly among the exercise group. Neither home hazard management nor treatment of poor vision showed a significant effect. The strongest effect was observed for all three interventions combined (rate ratio 0.67 (0.51 to 0.88, P=0.004)), producing an estimated 14.0% reduction in the annual fall rate. The number of people needed to be treated to prevent one fall a year ranged from 32 for home hazard management to 7 for all three interventions combined. Conclusions group based exercise was the most potent single intervention tested, and the reduction in falls among this group seems to have been associated with improved balance. Falls were further reduced by the addition of home hazard management or reduce division management, or both of these. Cost effectiveness is yet to be examined. These findings are most applicable to Australian born adults aged 70-84 years living at home who rate their health as good.


We study the decoding of product codes and a class of parallel concatenated product codes (PCPC). PCPC improves the minimum distance while retaining the merit of low decoding complexity of turbo product codes (TPC). We prove that using the Fibonacci interleaver does help increasing the minimum distance. The regularity of the interleaver also reduces the implementation complexity and makes parallel interleaving feasible. We show that Pyndiah's algorithm for decoding product codes produce an annealing effect similar to that of the so-called annealed belief propagation (ABP) algorithms which adjusts the "temperature" of an augmented cost surface. Decoding methods based on modified Pyndiah and annealed BCJR algorithms for both PC and PCPC are proposed and their performance is compared.


Motor conduction velocity (MCV) was measured in the median, ulnar, and peroneal nerves of 52 referents and 95 workers from a shoe factory, in a search for dose-effect and dose-response relationships between exposure to organic solvents and subclinical impairment of the peripheral nervous system (PNS). According to the environmental concentrations, the exposure was expressed as the sum of the products between the median hygienic effect (ranging from 0.08 to 2.89) and worktime (from 1 to 29 a) in every job. The motor action potential (MAP) amplitudes, durations and shapes of the exposed workers were significantly affected even if to a different extent and significance level when compared to those of the MCVs of the referents. The MCVs of the median (t = 3.17, p less than 0.01) and peroneal (t = 2.11, p less than 0.05) nerves were reduced as compared to reference values. In the exposed group, the MCV of the median nerve was negatively correlated with exposure score (r = 0.45, p less than 0.01) but not with age. No relationship was found between MVCs of the ulnar and peroneal nerves and exposure. The MCV of the median nerve was particularly slow in a subgroup of workers with an exposure score of greater than 20 (t = 2.30, p less than 0.05 vs the other exposed workers; t = 5.56, p less than 0.01 vs the referents). This exposure score represents only 50% of the maximum allowable score for a worktime of 40 a. Even if none of the examined workers showed clinical signs of polyneuropathy, evidence of subclinical effects on the PNS were found among subjects with long-term exposure to hexacarbon mixtures. Therefore, our results suggest the need for a lowering of current threshold limit values at least for n-hexane.


This study aimed to determine the effect on the ability of the model Quantum Teaching poetry writing class X SMA Negeri 10-year field study 2012/2013. The sample of 40 people in the experimental class and 40 in the control class, of 246 population consisting of 6 classes. Techniques used in the determination of the sample is random technique class. The sample will be divided into two classes, the experimental class and control class. The method used in this study is an experimental method to design two-group posttest study desaign. The instrument used was a test essay writing poetry. The average value of the experimental class was 77.5, while for the control class is 68.125. Based on the analysis of data obtained using the t test t count = 5.54. At the significant level α = 5%, is obtained TTable = 2.00 and the significance level α = 1%, TTable = 2.65. So, thitung> ttable = 2.00 2.65. Thus, Ho is rejected and Ha accepted. Based on the above data, it was concluded that the use of models of Quantum Teaching positive influence on the ability to write poetry class X SMA Negeri 10 Medan Years Learning 2012/2013. Keywords: effect, the quantum model of teaching, skills, writing, poetry


The effect of coating thickness on photon tunneling behavior was investigated by measuring lasing spectra from a dielectric inner-coated cylindrical capillary filled with a dye-doped liquid. The lasing spectra showed a blueshift as the coating thickness decreased due to an enhanced photon tunneling probability of whispering gallery modes (WGMs). Cavity quality factors Q were quantitatively estimated from the center wavelengths and compared to those deduced by the WKB approximation model as well as a simplified multiple scattering formalism. The validity and limitation of two models were discussed at various coating thicknesses.


We consider a case where full-azimuth reflection angle gathers were generated using a background VTI depth model. Residual moveouts (RMO) which were automatically picked on these 3D gathers along major horizons indicate considerable periodic azimuthal variations. Our aim is to use the azimuthally dependent RMOs to convert the background VTI model into interval orthorhombic layer parameters. Our method is based on a newly derived generalized Dix-based theory, assuming a locally varying 1D orthorhombic model, where at each location the vertical axis is the same for all layers but the azimuthal orientations are different. An effective model for such a layered structure represents a single layer with identical vertical time, effective compression vertical velocity, effective Thomsen parameters and an effective orientation. The NMO velocity and the surface offset azimuth of the effective model coincide with the parameters of the original package of layers for any azimuth of the phase velocity. Our approach starts with a Fourier-based conversion of the RMOs into azimuthally dependent NMO velocities, which are then inverted into three effective parameters. Finally, we apply the proposed generalized Dix-based inversion approach to estimate the interval orthorhombic parameters within each layer.


Introduction: People approaching the end of life are extremely vulnerable and need special protection, not only through professional codes of conduct but also legislation. Palliative and End of Life Care (P&EOLC) is recognised under international human rights' legislation as a basic human right. Under Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, all member countries of the UN are obliged to safeguard patients at the end of life against pain and suffering, allowing them to die with dignity. Suffering includes: physical, psychological, sociological, spiritual and existential which are often interdependent requiring the palliative approach to holistic assessment and management. Increasing physical, psychological and social frailty often leaves patients dependent on family and professionals for the most basic activities of daily living. This may result in loss of the patient's autonomy and dignity.  To-date the human rights approach to P&EOLC has primarily focussed on relief of suffering, especially pain and symptoms. In 1998, the European Convention on Human Rights was incorporated into the UK Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA 1998). This has wide implications for P&EOLC as the HRA places a legal duty on public officials to respect human rights in everything they do and all legislation including health and social care laws must be compliant with the HRA 1998. Today, one of the biggest challenges for P&EOLC is to expand beyond the care of cancer patients to meet the needs of the increasing numbers of people dying in old age with multi-morbidity, prolonged frailty and dementia.  Aim: To assess delivery of P&EOLC in England against a Legislative Framework of Human Rights derived from the Human Rights Act 1998. Methods: Development of a Framework for assessment of P&EOLC provision based on the relevant Articles of the HRA 1998: Article 2 (Protection of Life), Article 3 (Alleviation of suffering  and protection against inhumane or degrading treatment) Article 8 (The right to a private and family life under which autonomous choice is located), Article 5 (The right to liberty), Article 9 (The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion), Article 14 (The right to enjoy these human rights without discrimination). Results: The diffusion of Human Rights' principles through health and social care law, policy, regulatory activity and professional regulations and guidelines ensures a strong safety network for the care of the dying patient. P&EOLC in England respects these diverse aspects of human rights, but there is room for improvement particularly to ensure that elderly patients, who account for two-thirds of all who die, have adequate access to specialist and generalist P&EOLC adapted to their specific needs. Discussion and Conclusions: Human rights legislation helps underpin Professional Codes in the provision of high quality P&EOLC. It holds health service planners and providers to account on matters of distributive justice and equality of treatment across different segments of the population. It emphasises the dignity of the human being to ensure care which protects them from neglect or degrading treatment.