Abstract. The Climate Research Facility of the US Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program operates a network of ground-based microwave radiometers. Data and retrievals from these instruments have been available to the scientific community for almost 20 yr. In the past five years the network has expanded to include a total of 22 microwave radiometers deployed in various locations around the world. The new instruments cover a frequency range between 22 and 197 GHz and are consistently and automatically calibrated. The latest addition to the network is a new generation of three-channel radiometers, currently in the early stage of deployment at all ARM sites. The network has been specifically designed to achieve increased accuracy in the retrieval of precipitable water vapor (PWV) and cloud liquid water path (LWP) with the long-term goal of providing the scientific community with reliable, calibrated radiometric data and retrievals of important geophysical quantities with well-characterized uncertainties. The radiometers provide high-quality, continuous datasets that can be utilized in a wealth of applications and scientific studies. This paper presents an overview of the microwave instrumentation, calibration procedures, data, and retrievals that are available for download from the ARM data archive.


Current conservation debates place high emphasis on the need to integrate the views and needs of local communities in conservation processes. Understanding local community perceptions of forest management and the factors that influence these perceptions is important for designing management policies that are sensitive to their needs. However, more often than not local communities' perceptions do not receive as much attention as they deserve. This study investigated the perceptions of communities towards three existing forest management approaches in the Kakamega forest in Kenya and further analysed factors that influenced these perceptions. The three management approaches are: a state-led incentive-based approach, a state-led protectionist approach, and a quasi-private, incentive-based-approach. Data was obtained from a random sample of 376 households living within a radius of about 10 km around the forest margin. The results showed that local communities' perceptions were expressed through three common underlying components across the three management approaches. In order of relative importance, these components are: a) involvement in decision-making processes, b) forest extraction and other mitigation measures c) conservation incentives offered. Regression results showed that these perceptions were influenced by different factors across the three management approaches. These factors included: membership in social groups, distance from the forest, farm size, distance from market center, livestock ownership and dependency on forest for extraction. The results provide information that can be applied by forest managers to better address local communities' needs in forest conservation.


A new images encryption method using The Discrete Fractional Fourier Transform (DFrFT) and the Jigsaw transform is proposed. The main feature of this encryption scheme is that the encrypted image is real and has the same size as the original one, being this encrypted image much more convenient for either its storage or its transmission on digital communication networks. Using the Jigsaw transform the security of the encrypted image is increased and the random phase masks used in many images cryptosystems based on Fractional Fourier Transform (FrFT) are eliminated. Finally, for the new proposed encryption method, a fingerprint encryption digital algorithm was developed. There are twelve keys used in the cryptographic algorithm implemented, which are constituted by the six DFrFTs fractional orders and the six random permutations used in Jigsaw transform; all these keys are necessary for a correct decryption, obtaining a high level security in protecting fingerprints for a particular application.


Troponin consists of three subunits-troponin I, troponin T, and troponin C. Each subunit has a function: Troponin T binds the troponin components to tropomyosin, troponin I inhibits the interaction of myosin with actin, and troponin C contains the binding sites for Ca2+ that helps initiate contraction. Cardiac troponins are the products of different genes consisting of immunological distinct entities. The total quantity of troponin is very less compared to myofibrillar protein actin and myosin. Cardiac isoforms of troponin T and Troponin I are known to be cardiospecific and are increased in myocardial damage. Release kinetics following MI show a first peak due to loosely bound troponin pool and a second prolonged elevation due to degradation of the contractile apparatus [1]. cTnT have characteristic higher molecular weight, higher fraction of unbound cTnT, less degradation, whereas cTnI is more frequently found as binary or tertiary complex in blood. Previous studies proves that early appearing troponin pool may give information on the quality of microvascular reperfusion, while the concentration of cTn on Day 3 or 4 reflects myocardial infarct size [2].


For electrocardiogram (ECG) detection, the position of conventional patch-type electrodes based on solid-state metals are difficult to manipulate after attachment and also can lead to poor interface with stretchable, rough skin surfaces. Herein, we present a liquid form of ECG electrodes that can be magnetically reconfigured on human skin by providing its conformal interfacing. These electrodes consist of biocompatible liquid-metal droplets where magnetic particles are homogeneously dispersed, and their conformal contact with skin can yield significantly low impedance as well as high signal-to-noise ratio of ECG peaks. These electrodes are also capable of complex motions such as linear movements, splitting, and merging under external magnetic fields. Furthermore, magnetic manipulation of each electrode position on human skin enables precise monitoring of ECG signals with the change in ECG vectors. The integration of liquid-state electrodes with electronic circuitry demonstrates wireless and continuous ECG monitoring while magnetically moving this entire system on human skin.


The research was taken place in PT. Alandick Indonesia located in TB
Simatupang Kav 1 street, Cilandak Jakarta Selatan, aiming (1) to find out how the
remuneration system in PT. Alandick Indonesia is, (2) to identify the weakness
and strength of remuneration system applied in PT. Alandick Indonesia.
The methods employed in this research were direct and indirect interview,
and literary study. Furthermore, an evaluation was conducted on the research
conducted by comparing the data and the theory.
The result of research shows that the remuneration system of PT. Alandick
Indonesia has been conducted well because the related function, used document,
used accounting record, procedure network, internal control element and main
security control of computer-based system are the same. The difference lies only
in the timer, procedure of remuneration and the limited control elements. PT.
Alandick Indonesia used thetimer (Finger Print) reliable for its validity about the
personnel presence recording. The payroll software is easily to be added with the
new regulation about the tax tariff and other regulations, the Bank Service
constitutes the autopay system that can improve the efficiency and reduce the
remuneration process cost.
However, there are still some weaknesses in the remuneration system of
PT. Alandick Indonesia: non-authorized timesheet and salary allocation, payment
voucher without printed sequence number,more authority on the salary payment
division, the dysfunction of accounting and financial divisions, File in the form of
flashdisk and CD has not been made doubly, and there is still internet access to
the personnel.
Considering such finding, the writer recommends that in the remuneration
system of PT. Alandick Indonesia, the timesheet and salary allocation should be
authorized by the competent party, the payment voucher should be made with
printed sequenced number, authority of salary payment division should be reduced
or there should be a new job description, the accounting and financial division
should be more involved in the remuneration process, the file in the form of
flashdisk and CD should be made doubly and placed in the secured place outside
the company, and there should be a rejection of internet access to the personnel.


Microbicides are products that can be applied to vaginal or rectal mucosa with the intent of preventing, or at least significantly reducing, the transmission of sexually transmitted infections including HIV-1. Unfortunately, the last 5–10 years of microbicide research have generated a number of disappointments. Large scale phase 2B/3 studies or topical microbicides have failed to demonstrate product efficacy, have been stopped prematurely for futility, or in the worst case scenario have possibly demonstrated microbicide induced harm including increased risk of HIV acquisition. Although the CAPRISA 004 study of vaginal peri-coital tenofovir gel demonstrated a significant reduction in HIV acquisition (39%; p = 0.017), the most recently completed microbicide effectiveness study, MTN-003 (the VOICE study), did not demonstrate the effectiveness of daily tenofovir gel, largely due to product non-adherence by study participants. However, the ongoing FACTS-001 study has the potential to confirm the results of the CAPRISA 004 study and may lead to licensure of tenofovir gel. In addition, current microbicide research is increasingly focused on technology, such as intravaginal rings, that provide sustained release of antiretrovirals to the cervicovaginal mucosa and may minimise adherence problems associated with peri-coital or daily use of vaginal gels. Two Phase 3 studies of a dapivirine vaginal ring are currently ongoing. The development of combination products that might provide contraceptive and antiretroviral drug delivery is also gathering momentum. Rectal microbicide research has moved from Phase 1 to Phase development. The MTN-017 study, which will be conducted in the USA, Peru, Thailand, and South Africa, will evaluate the safety and acceptability of oral Truvada and rectal tenofovir gel in men who have sex with men and transgender women. This talk will provide a comprehensive update on the challenges and opportunities associated with microbicide development.


Oral administration of a single bolus of leucine in an amount equivalent to the daily intake (1.35 g/kg body wt) enhances skeletal muscle protein synthesis in food-deprived rats. To elucidate whether smaller amounts of leucine can also stimulate protein synthesis, rats were administered the amino acid at concentrations ranging from 0.068 to 1.35 g/kg body wt by oral gavage. Thirty minutes following the administration of doses of leucine as low as 0.135 g/kg body wt, skeletal muscle protein synthesis was significantly greater than control values. The increase in protein synthesis was associated with changes in the regulation of biomarkers of mRNA translation initiation as evidenced by upregulated phosphorylation of the translational repressor, eukaryotic initiation factor (eIF)4E-binding protein 1 (4E-BP1), the association of eIF4G with the mRNA cap binding protein eIF4E, and the phosphorylation of the 70-kDa ribosomal protein S6 kinase. Alterations in the phosphorylation of eIF4G, as well as the association of 4E-BP1 with eIF4E, were observed following leucine administration; however, these changes appeared to be biphasic with maximal changes occurring when circulating insulin concentrations were elevated. Thus it appears that leucine administration affects mRNA translation and skeletal muscle protein synthesis through modulation of multiple biomarkers of mRNA translation. The ability of small doses of leucine to stimulate skeletal muscle protein synthesis suggests that future research on the regulation of skeletal muscle protein synthesis by orally administered leucine will be feasible in humans.


Listeria monocytogenes (LM) is a gram-positive bacterium and is a common contaminant in processed meats and dairy products. In humans, ingestion of LM can result in intracellular infection in the spleen and liver, which ultimately leads to septicemia, meningitis, and spontaneous abortion. Interleukin (IL)-23 is a cytokine that regulates immune responses by inducing the production of IL-17A, IL-17F, and IL-22, and is required for clearance of LM. IL-17A and IL-17F have been shown to recruit neutrophils to sites of infection, while IL-22 has been shown to induce secretion of antimicrobial peptides and has the ability to protect tissues from damage by preventing apoptosis. The role that IL-22 might play in LM bacterial clearance and resistance during an innate or adaptive immune response has not been thoroughly investigated. During infection, we have found that LM induced the production of IL-22, and during primary infection, IL-23 is required for IL-22 production. However, our findings suggest that IL22 is not required for clearance of LM and does not seem to be required for the protection of the spleen and liver during a LM infection during a primary or secondary systemic or mucosal infection. Understanding the role of IL-22 will enable us to better understand the immune response against LM as well as similar pathogens. This knowledge will aid in the generation of effective vaccines against intracellular pathogens.


Speech is the most natural means of communication for humans. Therefore, since the beginning of computers it has been a goal to interact with machines via speech. While there have been gradual improvements in this field over the decades, and with recent drastic progress more and more commercial software is available that allow voice commands, there are still many ways in which it can be improved. One way to do this is with visual speech information, more specifically, the visible articulations of the mouth. Based on the information contained in these articulations, visual speech recognition (VSR) transcribes an utterance from a video sequence. It thus helps extend speech recognition from audio-only to other scenarios such as silent or whispered speech (e.g. in cybersecurity), mouthings in sign language, as an additional modality in noisy audio scenarios for audio-visual automatic speech recognition, to better understand speech production and disorders, or by itself for human machine interaction and as a transcription method. In this thesis, we present and compare different ways to build systems for VSR: We start with the traditional hidden Markov models that have been used in the field for decades, especially in combination with handcrafted features. These are compared to models taking into account recent developments in the fields of computer vision and speech recognition through deep learning. While their superior performance is confirmed, certain limitations with respect to computing power for these systems are also discussed. This thesis also addresses multi-view processing and fusion, which is an important topic for many current applications. This is due to the fact that a single camera view often cannot provide enough flexibility with speakers moving in front of the camera. Technology companies are willing to integrate more cameras into their products, such as cars and mobile devices, due to lower hardware cost for both cameras and processing units, as well as the availability of higher processing power and high performance algorithms. Multi-camera and multi-view solutions are thus becoming more common, which means that algorithms can benefit from taking these into account. In this work we propose several methods of fusing the views of multiple cameras to improve the overall results. We can show that both, relying on deep learning-based approaches for feature extraction and sequence modelling, as well as taking into account the complementary information contained in several views, improves performance considerably. To further improve the results, it would be necessary to move from data recorded in a lab environment, to multi-view data in realistic scenarios. Furthermore, the findings and models could be


Deinking of Mixed Office Waste [MOW] paper was carried out by using a flotation device and adding enzymes as defibrillators. Employing the computational simulation of the molecular coupling between the cellulase enzyme obtained from Trichoderma sp. and cellulose, the enzyme-cellulose molecular complex and the main amino acids endo- β -1,4-D-glucanase of this molecule, responsible for the hydrolysis of cellulose, were obtained. Three of these amino acids were used for deinking. The deinked cellulose fibers were evaluated according to the standards of the paper industry (ISO whiteness [brightness], factor of reflectance, opacity, and tonality) to determine the efficiency of deinking. The experimental results show that the best optical characteristics of the sheets of deinked paper with amino acids are those where a mixture of aspartate, glutamate, and asparagine was applied, instead of their individual dosage. In addition to the aforesaid, the use of enzymes instead of the traditionally used reagent, such as sodium hydroxide, avoids the contamination of wastewater; additionally, the operation of the column is carried out easily, taking into consideration that the pH of the system goes from alkaline to neutral.


The aim of this work was to investigate the rheological properties of different saline solutions of sodium hyaluronate (NaHA) with special interest for medical applications. The experimental results were compared with literature data for commercial ophthalmic viscosurgical devices (OVDs) used in cataract surgery. We offer some tools to tailor the rheological behavior of OVDs for different purposes. We have investigated to which extent surgical requirements can be fulfilled by adjusting either the molecular weight of NaHA or its concentration, parameters that are in some respects equivalent but not in others. Furthermore, we demonstrate that moduli and complex viscosities of NaHA saline solutions are adequately falling on master curves, using either empirical or calculated shift factors, the latest ones being based on a modified Rouse model.


Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a major cause of paralysis with currently no effective treatment. Epidural electrical stimulation (EES) of the lumbar spinal cord has been shown to restore locomotion in animal models of SCI, but has not yet reached the same level of efficacy in humans. The mechanisms through which EES promotes locomotion, and the causes underlying these inter-species differences remain largely unknown, although essential to fully exploit the therapeutic potential of this neuromodulation strategy. Here, we addressed these questions using a deductive approach based on computer simulations and hypothesis-driven experiments, and proposed complementary strategies to enhance the current efficacy of EES-based therapies. In the first part of this thesis, we studied the mechanisms through which EES enables locomotion in rat models of SCI. Performing simulations and behavioral experiments, we provided evidence that EES modulates proprioceptive afferents activity, without interfering with the ongoing sensory signals. We showed that this synergistic interaction allows muscle spindle feedback circuits to steer the unspecific excitation delivered by EES to functionally relevant pathways, thus allowing the formation of locomotor patterns. By leveraging this understanding, we developed a stimulation strategy that allowed adjusting lesion-specific gait deficits, hence increasing the therapeutic efficacy of EES. In the second part of this thesis, we evaluated the influence of trunk posture on proprioceptive feedback circuits during locomotion, and thus on the effect of EES, in rat models of SCI. By combining modeling and experiments, we showed that trunk orientation regulates leg proprioceptive signals, as well as the motor patterns produced during EES-induced stepping. We exploited these results to develop a control policy that by automatically regulating trunk orientation significantly enhanced locomotor performance. In the last part of this thesis, we investigated the causes underlying species-specific effects of EES. Hypothesis-driven simulations suggested that in humans continuous EES blocks the proprioceptive signals traveling along the recruited fibers. We corroborated this prediction by performing experiments in rats and people with SCI. In particular, we showed that EES disrupts the conscious perception of leg movements, as well as the afferent modulation of sensorimotor circuits in humans, but not in rats. We provide evidence that in humans, due to this phenomenon, continuous EES can only facilitate locomotion to a limited extent. This was insufficient to provide clinically relevant improvements in the tested participants. Finally, we proposed two sensory-compliant stimulation strategies that might overcome these limitations, and thus augment the therapeutic efficacy of EES. In this thesis we elucidated key mechanisms through which EES promotes locomotion, we exposed critical limitations of continuous EES strategies when applied to humans, and we introduced complementary strategies to maximize the efficacy of EES therapies. These findings have far-reaching implications in the development of future strategies and technologies supporting the recovery of locomotion in people with SCI using EES.


ABSTRACT In the northeastern Big Horn Basin, a thin lens of spherulitic limestone occurs locally in a red non-marine shale which is both overlain and underlain by limy sandstone. Calcite spherulites form 85 percent of the rock. The interstitial material is a mature detritus composed chiefly of clays and quartz. The spherulitic limestone is considered to have formed in an alkaline flood-plain lake with little detrital contamination.


The visualization of diffusion tensor fields remains a challenging topic. A representation based on volume rendering of a scalar field is presented. The method uses the tensor to correlate a noise field in the direction of greater diffusivity while preserving the high frequency components of the noise field in transversal diffusion directions.


When completed, this three-volume anthology will be the most balanced, inclusive, and comprehensive anthology of American poetry ever published. The New Anthology of American Poetry is designed to become the standard text for college courses in American poetry, and it will also appeal to general readers who wish to explore the range and diversity of this literary form. The series demonstrates how a succession of canons of American poetry have evolved, with certain poets silenced until the present day, while others who emerged and then faded are now ready to be retrieved. Readers will find more attention devoted to women poets and to artists from African American, Asian American, Latino, and Native American cultures than in any previous anthology. Readers will also encounter an extremely solid presentation of long-established writers. The anthology offers not just a unique and teachable selection of poets and poems, but also concise introductions to periods and styles, brief bibliographies of key primary and secondary texts, and critical selections on the art of poetry by the anthologized poets themselves. VOLUME I: Traditions and Revolutions, Beginnings to 1900 Volume I begins with a generous selection of Native American materials, then spans the years from the establishment of the American colonies to about 1900, a world on the brink of World War I and the modern era. Part One focuses on poetry from the very beginnings through the end of the eighteenth century. The expansion and development of a newly forged nation engendered new kinds of poetry. Part Two includes works from the early nineteenth century through the time of the Civil War. The poems in Part Three reflect the many issues affecting a nation undergoing tumultuous change: the Civil War, immigration, urbanization, industrialization, and cultural diversification. Such well-recognized names as Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Phillis Wheatley, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Stephen Crane appear in this anthology alongside such less frequently anthologized poets as George Horton, Sarah Helen Whitman, Elizabeth Oakes-Smith, Frances Harper, Rose Terry Cooke, Helen Hunt Jackson, Adah Menken, Sarah Piatt, Ina Coolbrith, Emma Lazarus, Albery Whitman, Owl Woman (Juana Manwell) Sadakichi Hartmann, Ernest Fenollosa, James Weldon Johnson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and-virtually unknown as a poet-Abraham Lincoln. It also includes poems and songs reflecting the experiences of a variety of racial and ethnic groups.


Abstract The aim of this study was to assess a 12-min self-paced walking test in patients with McArdle disease. Twenty patients (44.7 ±11 years; 11 female) performed the walking test where walking speed, distance walked, heart rate (HR) and perceived muscle pain (Borg CR10 scale) were measured. Median (interquartile range) distance walked was 890 m (470–935). From 1 to 6 min, median walking speed decreased (from 75.0 to 71.4 m∙min–1) while muscle pain and %HR reserve increased (from 0.3 to 3.0 and 37% to 48%, respectively). From 7 to 12 min, walking speed increased to 74.2 m∙min–1, muscle pain decreased to 1.6 and %HR reserve remained between 45% and 48%. To make relative comparisons, HR and muscle pain were divided by walking speed and expressed as ratios. These ratios rose significantly between 1 and 6 min (HR:walking speed P = .001 and pain:walking speed P < .001) and similarly decreased between 6 and 11 min (P = .002 and P = .001, respectively). Peak ratios of HR:walking speed and pain:walking speed were inversely correlated to distance walked: rs (HR) = −.82 (P < .0001) and rs (pain) = −.55 (P = .012). Largest peak ratios were found in patients who walked < 650 m. A 12-min walking test can be used to assess exercise capacity and detect the second wind in McArdle disease.


We present a model of Ostwald ripening of nanosized clusters and apply it to study the time evolution of metal particles attached to carbon nanotubes. The Ostwald ripening of metal clusters attached to carbon nanotubes differs from that of free metal clusters. While free clusters experience a rapid broadening in the size dispersion, this may be delayed by the nanotubes, which may therefore limit the ripening. The diameter and chirality of the carbon nanotubes were also seen to affect the Ostwald ripening of the catalyst particles. For a collection of carbon nanotubes that contains different diameters and chiralities, the clusters attached to carbon nanotubes with large diameters and strong carbon–metal adhesion are the most likely to survive the Ostwald ripening.


Abstract Aim The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the EQ-5D-3L and the EQ-5D-5L in patients with back and neck pain. Materials and methods Participants from two independent clinical survey studies was included in this study. In total 164 participants were answering either the EQ-5D-3L or the EQ-5D-5L after their visit to a physiotherapist in primary care for back and neck pain. Rasch analysis was performed to measure the psychometric properties of the two instruments. Main findings Overall, the EQ-5D-5L showed preliminary evidence of good psychometric properties. The items in both the EQ-5D-5L and the EQ-5D-3L showed acceptable goodness-of-fit indicating unidimensionality for both instruments measuring the concept health-related quality of life. All test persons fit the model, but the person separation reliability and person separation index were only barely acceptable for the EQ-5D-5L. Conclusions The results indicate that the EQ-5D-5L should be the preferred option when evaluating health-related quality of life with the EQ-5D, especially for patients with back and neck pain.


Inserting a contamitaned vascular catheter during the surgical procedure is a factor that might promote biofilm formation on the catheter, possibly leading to bacteremia. The use of experimental models to evaluate organic changes allows a better understanding of infectious processes of multiple organs. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of methicillin resistance based on bacterial genetic differences in induced infection and subcutaneous catheter colonization, when comparing MRSA and MSSA infections outcomes. Subcutaneous infections with MRSA and MSSA bacterial suspension were performed in 15 Wistar rats divided into three groups as following: saline solution control group, MRSA and MSSA suspension at a 1 x 105 CFU/mL for infection. Subcutaneous polyestilene catheters were surgically inserted into the skin of the animals before the infection. After 72 hours, subcutaneous implants, heart, spleen and kidneys were harvested and evaluated. The animals presented a typical auto resolutive case of bacteremia. The catheters and organs presented the same S. aureus isolate genotype as inoculated with evident biofilm formation. Our results showed both MRSA and MSSA bacteremia can compromise multiple organs within 72 hours of infection.


This paper explores the time required for the CO2 levels in a sealed lecture theatre,  filled with 100 students, to reach life threatening levels, effectively giving a estimated time limit for a lecture.We  found  that  for  the  lecture  theatre  we  modelled,  it  would  take  30  hours  and  55  minutes  for CO2 levels to rise to deadly levels.  Therefore, we estimate that a 31 hour lecture is the maximum lecture length students can endure, in a sealed lecture theatre, before they literally die.


Objective:  to describe the implementation of good practices of attention to labor at a reference maternity.  Methods:  descriptive, documentary study, with 300 Forms for Monitoring Assistance to Labor and Birth. The data were gathered on tables and submitted to descriptive and numerical inferential analysis.  Results:  in category A we observed that 48.3% of the births filled the partogram; 84.0% of women did not use pharmacological methods for pain relief; 67.0% remained at zero diet during labor; 84.7% had no companion during labor, delivery and after giving birth; 57.0% had skin-to-skin contact; and 65.3% breast-fed in the delivery room. In category B it was found that 54.0% of women remained in venoclysis; 60.7% remained in semi-sit position in the expulsive period; and 14.7% women were shaved.  Conclusion:  some practices proved useful in childbirth are still not implemented in many cases, while others that are harmful or ineffective are still being carried out.


We have investigated the oxidation behavior of epi-Si0.7Ge0.3 films in dry oxygen ambient. Epi- Si0.7Ge0.3 films about 500Å in thickness were deposited on (100) Si wafers by UHV-CVD system. Oxidation was carried out in a conventional tube furnace at 800 °C . In this study, it was found that Ge piles up at the oxide/substrate interface, forming a Ge-rich layer. Because of the large difference in the heat of formation between SiO2(-730.4KJ/mol at 1000K) and GeO2(-387.07 at 1000K) [1], the Si is to be more reactive than Ge to oxygen. The oxidation rate of SiGe in a dry oxygen environment is found to be essentially the same as that of pure Si.


Although the overall rate of colorectal cancer (CRC) has remained stable, studies have shown an increase in the rate of CRC in young patients (<50) nationwide. We hypothesize that the rectal cancer (RC) rate in young people has increased in rural Appalachia. The goal is to provide insight into the future of RC epidemiology in underserved populations. This Institutional Review Board–approved retrospective study evaluated RC patients diagnosed in 2003 to 2016, and compared the ratio of early-onset RC to the state and national ratios using West Virginia State Cancer Registry, North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR) and Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program Database. Demographics include age, gender, ethnicity, and county. We also evaluated cancer stage, family history, and comorbidities, including body mass index, smoking, and alcohol history. The rate of early-onset RC in our area is 1.5 times higher than the national rates. In our population, 100 per cent of patients were white with an equal gender distribution. Young patients with RC were noted to be more overweight than national rates. Young RC patients are more likely to have a first- or second-degree relative with cancer diagnosis. Smoking was strongly associated with young RC. Compared with national statistics, a higher proportion of young patients had Stage 1 or 2 disease which correlated with better survival. The rate of early-onset RC in the Tristate Appalachian area in West Virginia is higher than the national rate with risk factors including white ethnicity, obesity, diabetes mellitus, smoking, family history, and history of pelvic surgeries. It warrants further investigation and discussion of current CRC screening guidelines that begin at age 50.


The dye-oxidized or dithionite-reduced forms of the MoFe protein of molybdenum nitrogenase of Azotobacter chroococcum were shown to bind 2 mol of MgADP/mol of protein, as determined by column equilibrium techniques. The gel-filtration elution profile of unbound Mg[14C]ADP was not symmetrical, consistent with a low rate of dissociation from the protein. Symmetrical elution profiles were observed for the oxidized Fe protein of nitrogenase, which bound 2 mol of MgADP/mol of protein. The low rate of dissociation of MgADP from MoFe protein was shown by non-equilibrium column techniques, where 1 mol of MgADP/mol of MoFe protein remained tightly bound during chromatography. Very weak binding of MgATP (less than 0.01 mol of MgATP/mol of MoFe protein) to dye-oxidized but not to dithionite-reduced MoFe protein was observed. These results are discussed in terms of their relevance to the catalytic cycle of nitrogenase catalysis.


Background In 2005, China established an internet-based Tuberculosis Information Management System (TBIMS) to monitor changes in tuberculosis (TB). Many scholars have conducted epidemiological research using TBIMS; however, few studies assessing control strategies have been performed based on this platform data. Henan province is a high TB incidence area in China where, in addition to following the nationwide TB strategies, a series of local intervention combinations have been implemented. Objective Our study aims to evaluate the impact of nationwide TB intervention combinations on epidemiological changes and determine whether Henan province can achieve the World Health Organization's (WHO) goal of reducing TB incidence by 50% and TB mortality by 75% by the year 2025. Methods We used descriptive statistical methods to show the spatial and temporal distribution of pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) reported to the TBIMS database from 2005 to 2018, and logistic regression analysis was performed to identify the risk factors of bacteriological-positive TB. The dynamic compartmental model and Bayesian melding approach was adopted to estimate the burden of TB under the impact of different TB control policies. Results In total, 976,526 PTB cases were notified to the TBIMS in Henan in a period of 14 years. Although the overall incidence of PTB declined from 91.4/105 to 58.5/105, and the overall incidence of bacteriological-positive PTB declined from 44.5/105 to 14.7/105, the WHO's 2025 goal could not be met. The distribution of high incidence and poverty-stricken counties were basically overlapped. Men, farmers and herdsmen (in rural areas), and subjects aged ≥60 years were more likely to develop bacteriological-positive PTB. The increasing treatment success for drug-susceptible tuberculosis and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis has not provided the desired reduction in incidence and mortality. Conclusions To achieve the targeted goal, while improving the cure rate of TB, new active (rather than passive) detection and intervention strategies should be formulated based on epidemiological characteristics in Henan province.


Introduction: Appropriate use of antimicrobial agents is important and is essential if the usefulness of antibiotic is to be preserved and the further spread of resistance is to be limited. Antibiotics are one of the pillars of modern medicine are important in prophylaxis and treatment of infectious diseases. Objective: To assess rational use of antibiotics for prophylaxis and treatment among patients in orthopedic department who undergone surgery. Methods: A prospective and observational study was conducted on 300 medical records of orthopedic patients who undergone surgery. Data was collected by using structured questionnaire from Sep2019 to Dec 2019 and then analyzed using SPSS version 20.0 software. Results: Out of 300 patients who undergone surgery 179 patients were male and 121 patients were females. Based on age group classification 30 – 40 years of age i.e. 50 (38.46%) was mostly affected. The most common diagnosis was ORIF(43.07%) followed by THR (20%) of cases. The most frequently prescribed antibiotics for prophylaxis Cefuroxime (67.40%), amikacin (14.91%) and for treatment Cefuroxime (58.17%), amikacin (18.90%). The commonly used antibiotics combination for prophylaxis is Ceftriaxone + Amikacin+ Cefuroxime (20.68%) and treatment includes Ceftriaxone+ Cefuroxime + clavulanic acid (34.04%). It was found that 50% of cases for prophylaxis was inappropriate where as 73.07 % of treatment antibiotics failed to adhere guidelines. Conclusion: Generally, this study indicated that orthopedic patients underwent surgical procedures by majority of patients were ORIF and THR. Mostly prescribed antibiotics were cefuroxime, Amikacin. This study result indicated some level of inappropriateness in antibiotic prescription. Key words: Antibiotics, Surgery, Resistance, Prophylaxis, Treatment.


Prednisone alone or a lower dose of prednisone in combination with azathioprine induces remission and enhances survival in autoimmune hepatitis. Treatment failure, incomplete response, drug-induced side effects, and relapse after drug withdrawal are unsatisfactory outcomes that justify the search for new therapies. Potent new drugs promise greater blanket immunosuppression than current regimens, and insights into the pathogenic mechanisms of the disease make site-specific interventions possible. Cyclosporine and tacrolimus are calcineurin inhibitors that impair the transcription of interleukin 2, reduce the expression of cytokines, and diminish T lymphocyte proliferation. Mycophenolate mofetil antagonizes the synthesis of purines and depletes stores of guanine nucleotides necessary for DNA synthesis and expansion of T cell clones. Controlled clinical trials are warranted to establish the role of these new drugs in the treatment of autoimmune hepatitis. Promising site-specific therapies include peptides that competitively block autoantigen presentation, agents such as cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen 4 that inhibit the second co-stimulatory signal of immunocyte activation, T cell vaccination, oral tolerance therapy, and cytokine manipulation with monoclonal antibodies and recombinant supplements. Confident animal models of experimental autoimmune hepatitis are necessary to mature these interventions. In conclusion, promising immunosuppressive agents that alter cytokine expression and T lymphocyte proliferation may be of value in the treatment of autoimmune hepatitis. Critical mechanisms of immunocyte activation, cytotoxic T cell expansion, and cytokine modulation are the targets of site-specific interventions.


"The spores from the following cone species have been studied: Lepidostrobus goldenbergi Schimper, Lepidostrobus variabilis Lindley and Hutton, Sigillariostrobus goldenbergi Feistmantel, and Selaginellites elongatus Goldenberg, and it has been found that more than one cone species may produce microspores that are morphologically alike. The association of particular megaspore species with Lepidostrobus goldenbergi and Lepidostrobus variabilis is not considered conclusive proof of their having been produced in these cones."


"In the game of entrepreneurship, the process is more important than the goal. When you start building a business, you begin a journey, a process. This process has a beginning and an ending and between the beginning and end lays a lot of challenges. You will win only if you remain faithful to the process." – Rich Dad.
As can be understood from the title, this thesis, under the umbrella of the EPICC project, is a research study focusing on the understanding of the influence of national culture on entrepreneurial processes. There is no need to say that national culture of each country has an influence on almost all aspects of life starting from people's mentality, mindsets and behaviors. As the world turns into a global village, national cultures are paid more and more attention in business arenas. Entrepreneurial processes, with a growing attention within the entrepreneurship research, deal with entrepreneurs' decision making mechanisms, reasoning and logics throughout the course of turning a business idea into a new venture creation. With Sarasvathy's fresh theory of effectuation as opposed to already existing causation theories, a new trend has been established in the field of entrepreneurial processes. In contrast to conventional methods such as entrepreneurship education, business plan developments, business courses, market research etc. the scholars of this new stream assert that entrepreneurs start off with three basic questions: "Who am I? What I know? Whom I know?". which serves as the fundamentals of an effectual thinking.
Despite an aggregated attempt to investigate culture's impact on entrepreneurship in the course of recent decades, research on the influence of culture directly on entrepreneurial processes is lacking. This theoretical gap between two very important concepts is the set-off point for this project. In this study, 22 student entrepreneurs from both Turkey and the UK are researched. With the think-aloud methods, verbal protocols are collected and coded based on Sarasvathy's schema. Subsequently, the hypotheses are constructed upon Hofstede's national culture dimensions and a possible link is sought after between these dimensions and the components of entrepreneurial processes. Results however show, with single exception, no significant difference between two sample groups with respect to the tested elements; therefore there is insufficient evidence to conclude a positive correlation between culture and entrepreneurial processes. Yet, a number of discussion points are found and there is a lot of room for improvement in further research.
Key Words: National Culture, Hofstede's cultural dimensions, Entrepreneurial


The thermal decomposition of 5-morpholino-1,2,3,4-thiatriazole (7), which leads to the extrusion of an active form of sulfur, in the presence of different thioketones is described. The interception of the S-atom by the C=S bond leads to in situ formation of an elusive thiocarbonyl S-sulfide of type 5. This
intermediate is a prone 1,3-dipole, which undergoes effectively [2+3] cycloadditions with thioketones to yield 1,2,4-trithiolane derivatives in a regioselective manner. Unexpectedly, 3,3-dichloro-2,2,4,4-tetramethyl-3-thioxocyclobutanone (1c) does not lead to the expected symmetrical 1,2,4-trithiolane. This result can be explained by the reduced stability of the corresponding thiosulfine 5c. Three-component reactions, which were carried out in the presence of equimolar amounts of two different thioketones, result in the formation of 'mixed' 1,2,4-trithiolanes of type 8.


IntroductionYoung people who have contact with the youth justice system are distinguished by a high prevalence of complex, co-occurring health problems, including known risk factors for preventable mortality. However, almost nothing is known about health outcomes for these young people after separation from the youth justice system.
Objectives and ApproachWe aimed to examine the incidence, timing, causes and risk factors for death in justice-involved young people. We linked youth justice records in Queensland, Australia 1993-2016 (N=48,963) with adult correctional records and the National Death Index. We split the cohort into three subgroups: those who had ever been in detention (n=7,643), those supervised in the community but never detained (n=12,953), and those charged with an offence but never convicted (n=28,367). We calculated all-cause and cause-specific crude mortality rates (CMRs), and indirectly standardised mortality ratios (SMRs). We used Cox regression to identify static and time-varying risk factors for death.
ResultsDuring a median of 13.6 years of follow-up there were 1,452 deaths (3.0%). The all-cause CMR was 2.2 (95%CI 2.1-2.3) per 1000 person-years, and the all-cause SMR was 3.1 (95%CI 3.0-3.3). The leading external causes of death were suicide (32% of all deaths), transport accidents (16%), accidental drug-related causes (13%), and violence (3%). In adjusted analyses, independent risk factors for all-cause mortality included being male (HR=1.4, 95%CI 1.2-1.6) and older (>=15 vs. vs. charge only; HR=1.6, 95%CI 1.2-2.0) and subsequent incarceration as an adult (HR=1.8, 95%CI 1.4-2.4).
Conclusion/ImplicationsYoung people who have contact with the youth justice system are at markedly increased risk of preventable death, after separation from that system. Efforts to improve long-term health outcomes for justice-involved youth have the potential to reduce preventable deaths in these highly vulnerable young people.


Over the past 30 years the Marlborough Family Service in London has pioneered multi-family work with marginalized families presenting simultaneously with abuse and neglect, family violence, substance misuse, educational failure and mental illness. The approach is based on a systemic multi-contextual mode and this chapter describes the evolving work, including the establishment of the first permanent multiple family day setting, specifically designed for and solely dedicated to the work with seemingly 'hopeless' families. The ingredients of 'therapeutic assessments' of parents and families are outlined and the importance of initial network meetings with professionals and family members is emphasized


ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to analyse the practices of virtual reality marketing in the Bali tourism sector in Indonesia. This is a qualitative and descriptive research with the purposive sampling method used to acquire data on Bali's tourism components through in-depth interviews, observation, journals, and the Netnographic approach. The result showed hegemony in the practice of virtual reality marketing to tourists and potential consumers, using significant technology. The marketers practice the hegemony of virtual reality marketing on tourists and potential consumers. Tourism capitalism as a chain link in the tourism business can be integrated into marketing through virtual reality. This study acts as a guide to the application of virtual reality marketing and limited to Bali Province, Indonesia. Practically, it acts as a guide to the application of virtual reality marketing, with its social implication as a disconnection to tourism networks.


: Attention is a term that has been used to describe a broad range of topics in the sport and exercise literature (Nougier, Stein, & Bonnel, 1991). Research focusing on attention has included studies on selectivity, concentration, mental set, visual search, arousal, and information processing (Abernethy, 2001), and a variety of techniques (e.g., occlusion methods, eye-tracking tasks, dual-task paradigms) have been used to examine the attention-related behaviors of participants during sport task performance. Many studies in sport have used occlusion and eye-tracking techniques to assess the orientation of visual attention during ball-tracking tasks (Land & McLeod, 2000; Ripoll & Fleurance, 1988; Singer et al., 1998; Whiting, 1968, 1970; Whiting, Alderson, & Sanderson, 1973; Whiting & Sharp, 1974). The findings of this research has shown that performers do not need to track the entire ball flight but rather that skilled sport participants track the initial flight of the ball, and then their eyes "shoot ahead" to the final portion of flight.


Human papilloma virus (HPV) family include approximately 150 known subtypes of viruses that can infect humans and other animals. Among these, HPV-16 is known for its association with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), particularly within the oropharynx. HPV 16 genotype can be found in a variety of oral lesions, its presence being frequently observed in papillomas. Treatment of oral papillomas can sometimes be challenging as HPVs tend to shed to different oral sites, causing multifocal lesions. Moreover, HPV-related lesions tend to recur if incompletely removed. Several light-amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (laser) wavelenghts are currently used in dentistry as surgical tools both on soft and hard tissues. Among these diode laser is one of the most used. Advantages of laser surgery include, among others, good precision, optimal hemostasis, possible biostimulative and antibacterial effects and a reduced post-operative discomfort. Here we report the case of a 26-year old man with multiple, recurrent p-16 positive papillomatous lesions, which was successfully treated through diode laser (445 nm) surgery.


Efficiency property of liability rules when courts make errors in estimation of the harm suffered by the victim is studied. Effects of courts' errors on parties' behaviour regarding the levels of care they take to prevent the accident and their decisions to buy information about courts' errors are analyzed. A condition called negligent injurer's liability is introduced. When courts make upper-biased errors, condition negligent injurer's liability is shown to be necessary and sufficient for a simple liability rule to motivate the parties to take efficient care and simultaneously not to spend on information. The notion of simple liability rules is also introduced. Analysis is carried out in a quite broader framework. In particular, the standard assumption that costs of care and expected loss functions are such that total costs of accident are minimized at a unique configuration of care levels is relaxed.


Abstract Objective: To investigate two hospital outbreaks of Lassa fever in southern central Nigeria. Setting: Hospitals and clinics in urban and rural areas of Imo State, Nigeria. Design: Medical records were reviewed in hospitals and clinics in both areas. Patients with presumed and laboratory confirmed Lassa fever were identified and contracts traced. Hospital staff, patients, and local residents were questioned, records were carefully reviewed, and serum samples were taken. Serum samples were assayed for antibody specific to Lassa virus, and isolates of Lassa virus were obtained. Results: Among 34 patients with Lassa fever, including 20 patients, six nurses, two surgeons, one physician, and the son of a patient, there were 22 deaths (65% fatality rate). Eleven cases were laboratory confirmed, five by isolation of virus. Most patients had been exposed in hospitals (attack rate in patients in one hospital 55%). Both outbreak hospitals were inadequately equipped and staffed, with poor medical practice. Compelling, indirect evidence revealed that parenteral drug rounds with sharing of syringes, conducted by minimally educated and supervised staff, fuelled the epidemic among patients. Staff were subsequently infected during emergency surgery and while caring for nosocomially infected patients. Conclusion: This outbreak illustrates the high price exacted by the practice of modern medicine, particularly use of parenteral injections and surgery, without due attention to good medical practice. High priority must be given to education of medical staff in developing countries and to guidelines for safe operation of clinics and hospitals. Failure to do so will have far reaching, costly, and ultimately devastating consequences.


When it comes to statutory interpretation, the traditional approaches fail to consider how the laws being interpreted by the courts were actually made. Instead, they tend to presume a uniform lawmaking process. In reality, the lawmaking process tends to be highly variable, both among, and even within, different areas of law. Traditional interpretive approaches also fail to consider the actual institutional capabilities of Congress or the courts. Textualist approaches give primacy to the words that Congress chose. By doing so, they implicitly assume that legislators accurately constructed the statutory text but pay no attention to whether the actual lawmaking process was reliable or trustworthy. By contrast, purposivist approaches idealize the role of judges by assuming they have the capacity to uncover the purposes that motivated lawmakers to enact what they did. But whether judges indeed have the capacity to discern Congress's intent might be influenced by whether the interpreters are subject-matter specialists or generalists. In short, the traditional approaches are unsuccessful to the extent they fail to account for the quality of statutory texts or the quality of courts interpreting those texts.

One-size-fits-all approaches might cause judges to fall short in fulfilling their role to accurately interpret statutory text as faithful agents of Congress. The faithful-agent model assumes that the role of courts, as agents of Congress, is to interpret statutory text to reflect congressional intent. This model gives lawmaking deference to Congress consistent with the Constitution's separation of powers. Failing to place what Congress said into the context of what it actually did could hinder judges from accurately interpreting laws consistent with Congress's intent. Likewise, ignoring the expertise of courts considering the meaning of statutory texts might result in imprecise or incomplete interpretations.

Although scholars have recognized that ready-made interpretative approaches, like ready-made clothing, might be a poor fit, this Article is the first to apply these insights to tax law by exploring the suitability of a custom-tailored interpretive doctrine specifically for the Internal Revenue Code, arguably the mother of all statutory regimes. In so doing, this Article finds that tax seems to be especially well-suited to a bespoke statutory interpretive approach, with experts involved in conceptualizing and writing tax laws as well as a specialized Tax Court with national jurisdiction interpreting the laws. This Article contends that when courts interpret federal tax laws, they should explicitly and consistently take account of these unique characteristics.


Programming languages exist to enable people to create and maintain software as effectively as possible. They are subject to two very different sets of requirements: first, the need to provide strong safety guarantees the need for users to effectively to protect against bugs; and second, and efficiently write software that meets their functional and quality requirements. This thesis argues that fusing formal methods for reasoning about programming languages with user-centered design methods is a practical approach to designing languages that make programmers more effective. By doing so, designers can create safer languages that are more effective for programmers than existing languages. The thesis is substantiated by the introduction of PLIERS: Programming Language Iterative Evaluation and Refinement System. PLIERS is a process for designing programming languages that integrates formal methods withuser-centered design. The hypothesis that PLIERS is beneficial is supported by two language design projects. In these projects, I show how PLIERS benefits the programming language design process. Glacier is an extension to Java that enforces transitive class immutability,which is a much stronger property than that provided by languages that are in use today. Although there are hundreds of possible ways of restricting changes to state in programming languages, Glacier occupies a point in the design space that was justified by interview studies with professional software engineers. I evaluated Glacier in case studies, showing that it is expressive enough for some real-world applications. I also evaluated Glacier in lab studies and compared it to Java's final keyword, finding both that Glacier is more effective at expressing immutability thanfinal and that Glacier detects bugs that users are likely to insert in code. Blockchains are a distributed computing platform that aim to enable safe computation among users who do not necessarily trust each other. To improve safety relative to existing languages, in which programmers have repeatedly deployed software with serious bugs, I designed Obsidian, a new programming language for blockchainapplication development. From observations about typical blockchain applications, I derived two features that motivated the design of Obsidian. First, blockchain applications typically implement state machines, which support different operations in different states. Obsidian uses typestate, which lifts dynamic state into static types,to provide static guarantees regarding object state. Second, blockchain applications frequently manipulate resources, such as virtual currency. Obsidian provides a notion of ownership, which distinguishes one reference from all others. Obsidian supports resources via linear types, which ensure that owning references to resources are notaccidentally lost. The combination of resources and typestate results in a novel set of design problems for the type system; although each idea has been explored individually, combining them requires unifying different perspectives on linearity. Furthermore, no language with either one of these features has been designed in a user-centered way or evaluated with users. Typical typestate systems have a complex set of permissions that provides safety properties, but these systems focused on expressiveness rather than on usability. Obsidian integrates typestate and resources in a novel way, resulting in a new type system design with a focus on simplicity and usability while retaining the desired safety properties. Obsidian is based on a core calculus I designed, Silica, for which I proved type soundness. In order to make Obsidian as usable as possible, I based its design on the results of formative studies with programmers. I evaluatedObsidian with two case studies, showing that Obsidian can be used to implement relevant programs. I also conducted a randomized controlled trial comparing Obsidian to Solidity, a popular language for writing smart contracts. I found that most of the Obsidian participants learned Obsidian and completed programming tasks after only a short training period; further, in one task, 70% of the participants who used Solidity accidentally inserted bugs that Obsidian's compiler would have detected. Finally, Obsidian participants completed significantly more tasks correctly than did Solidityparticipants.


An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of weaning time (PM or AM) on nursery-pig growth performance. The objective was to see how weanling pigs would adjust to the nursery environment if sows were removed from the farrowing crates 12 h before moving pigs into the nursery. Each sow and litter was randomly allotted to a wean time (PM or AM). Half of the litters had their sow removed on Thursday afternoon (PM), leaving the pigs in the farrowing crate. The other litters remained on the sow until weaning on Friday morning (AM). All pigs, both PM and AM treatments, were moved from the farrowing house to the nursery on Friday morning. A total of 542 weanling pigs (PIC 327L × C22) from 50 litters were used in the experiment. Pigs were approximately 21 d of age with an average initial body weight of 13.4 lb. All pigs were weighed in the farrowing house in the morning of the day that half of the sows were removed from the farrowing house that afternoon. Pigs were again weighed on d 7, 14, 21, and 28 after weaning to determine ADG, ADFI, and F/G. There was an improvement in F/G (P<0.002) from d 0 to 7 for pigs that were left on the sow until actual weaning in the AM, but this was because litters were weighed on Thursday morning and their pigs were allowed to nurse for 2 h longer than pigs in those litters whose sows were removed Thursday afternoon (PM), which caused gut loss in the pigs. Removing sows from the farrowing house early (PM) had no benefit or detrimental effect on ADG, ADFI, or F/G for the overall 28-d study.


This article discusses the concept of professional autonomy from an ethical viewpoint. First it is explained how the professional autonomy of the dentist relates to the autonomy of the patient. Subsequently the influence of the health care system is discussed.


Objectives: In today's Technological World, Information Security is an essential aspect for the internet applications. Cloud computing is an increasing current class of services for any type of users of the internet. Authentication is a major security problem in the cloud system and internet. This paper proposes an Authentication Password Generation (APG) algorithm, Authentication Key Generation (AKG) and Authentication Verification Algorithm (Auth_V) for security in the cloud system. Methods/Statistical Analysis: Authentication is more important among other security parameters such as integrity, confidentiality and privacy. Authentication mechanism includes different cryptography techniques that can be used for securing the data in cloud systems. These proposed three algorithms are used in the authentication process of cloud environment. It executes the ASCII code of each value in the original data. Findings: Proposed APG, AKG and Auth_V authentication algorithms are implemented in .NET and deployed on the windows azures platform of cloud environment. These proposed authentication algorithms easily fit into any type of service in the cloud system. APG is used to create a password which generates the alphabets along the special characters. Application/Improvements: Security is more important in the cloud computing. The proposed APG, AKG and Auth_V algorithms have provided better authentication mechanism to the cloud user. These techniques are suitable for education, healthcare and agriculture based applications to securely access the data in a cloud computing environment.


The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that international legal considerations played a vital role in the Cuban Missile Crisis All major areas of legal considerations are discussed, including both an American and Soviet perspective. An analysis of the American approach to the crisis exemplifies the participation of various departments of the Executive )branch, Congress, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, and the President. The approach by the Soviet Union in justifying the deployment of offensive nuclear weapons and the Kremlin's objection to the U. S. quarantine of Cuba were influenced by legal considerations. The time period that this study encompasses is August 1962 through October 1962, a period much'longer than is usually associated with the crisis.


An important strategic planning problem in shipping is the fleet renewal problem. The purpose for liner shipping companies is to minimize the company's costs while finding the best way in which to develop a fleet over time to service all trades. A number of restrictions and regulations must be regarded when making fleet optimization models, and one such concerns Emission Control Areas (ECAs). These are areas of the world seas where strict emission limits are set for $SO_x$ and $NO_x$ in exhaust gas from ships, introduced by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). The purpose of this thesis is to implement the changes to a fleet renewal model introduced by accounting for ECAs. To the author's knowledge, there is no work considering the inclusion of ECAs in fleet renewal models in the existing literature. The inspiration for the fleet renewal models proposed in this thesis has been the collaboration research project MARFLIX. Information about the sizes and characteristics of the vessels in the fleet, as well as trade information, has been provided by the liner shipping company WWL. This information is the basis for one of the test instances. The other two instances are reduced versions of the full WWL case. To investigate the effect on the fleet decisions of including speed optimization, one basic model with fixed speed and one extended model with variable speed is presented. The fleet decisions resulting from these models are compared, and the results show that speed optimization makes the fleet more flexible, which in turn leads to fewer changes to the fleet. The deployment cost for the optimal fleet from the two models is found, and a reduction in the size of the fleet in the speed extended model leads to a cost decrease of 0.297~\% and 0.330~\%, for the full and medium case, respectively. These numbers, though seemingly small in size, correspond to a significant amount of money as the magnitude of the total costs is several billion dollars. Based on the results from the speed optimization analysis, the conclusion is drawn that including variable speed in a fleet renewal model is profitable. Therefore, the speed extended model, hereby denoted as the original model, is the basis for the ECA extended model. To include the regulations ECA compliant vessels are defined as vessels with emissions beneath the ECA limits. Non-compliant vessels must either switch to low sulphur fuel (MGO) when sailing inside ECAs or be retrofitted with a scrubber. Scrubbers are used for exhaust gas cleaning, and operating with a scrubber allows the vessel to use Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) while keeping the emissions beneath the ECA limits. The emission limits must be followed by all vessels sailing inside an ECA. If the regulations are not considered when planning the future fleet, they must be when the deployment is decided. The results in this thesis suggest that taking ECAs into account when making the fleet renewal plan induces savings of 0.602~\% for the full case and 0.712~\% for the medium case. The fleet is adjusted to be more suitable for deployment in ECAs, and retrofitting reduces sailing costs for the upgraded vessels. There is high uncertainty related to some of the estimates made for the input values. To investigate possible future situations of demand, fuel price, and scrubber price analysis have been performed. The results from these show that a shift in demand towards ECAs, lower scrubber price and higher MGO price leads to an increase in the number of retrofitted vessels, and thus a reduction of total costs when accounting for ECAs in the fleet renewal model. With a decrease in the MGO price the benefit of retrofitting vessels disappear, and the cost of fuel switch decreases. Taking ECAs into account when making the fleet renewal plan is nevertheless beneficial. The fleet in the small test instance is large enough to service all trades without the need for fleet changes during the five year period. No saving occur with the original input values, and thus there is no benefit when including ECAs. It will however be profitable to retrofit vessels when the MGO price is increased and when scrubber price is decreased, which will lead to savings using the ECA extended model also in this instance. In some analysis there are no difference between the models in fleet changes for the first time period. In these cases there is no direct benefit of using the ECA extended model, but the trends shown in later time periods can nevertheless indicate a better long term plan than the one from the original model. When estimates for input values are made the model is easy to use, and the solving time for the full case is 11.9 seconds. These facts, in addition to the cost savings possible to obtain, show that there is great potential in using the ECA model for fleet renewal planning.


INTRODUCTION
Hemorrhage is a leading cause of death from potentially survivable civilian and military trauma. As projected conflicts move from settings of tactical and logistical supremacy to hyper-dynamic tactical zones against peer and near-peer adversaries, protracted medical evacuation times are expected. Treatment at the point-of-injury is critical. Although crystalloids like Lactated Ringer's (LR) are ubiquitous, whole blood (WB) is the preferred resuscitation fluid following hemorrhage; however, logistical constraints limit the availability of WB in prehospital settings. Hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers (HBOCs) offer both hemodynamic support and oxygen-carrying capacity while avoiding logistical constraints of WB. We hypothesized that low-volume resuscitation of severe hemorrhagic shock with an HBOC (PEGylated carboxyhemoglobin, [PC]) would improve hemodynamic recovery and 72-hour survival; comparable to WB and superior to LR.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
A total of 21 anesthetized male Sprague-Dawley rats underwent severe hemorrhagic shock followed by randomly assigned low-volume resuscitation with LR, WB, or PC, and then recovered from anesthesia for up to 72-hour observation. Mean arterial pressure (MAP) was recorded continuously under anesthesia, and arterial blood gases were measured at baseline (BL), 60 minutes post-hemorrhage (HS1h), and 24 hours post-resuscitation (PR24h). Survival was presented on a Kaplan-Meier plot and significance determined with a log-rank test. Cardiovascular and blood gas data were assessed with one-way analysis of variance and post hoc analysis where appropriate.

RESULTS
All measured cardiovascular and blood chemistry parameters were equivalent between groups at BL and HS1h. BL MAP values were 90 ± 3, 86 ± 1, and 89 ± 2 mmHg for LR, PC, and WB, respectively. Immediately following resuscitation, MAP values were 57 ± 4, 74 ± 5, and 62 ± 3 mmHg, with PC equivalent to WB and higher than LR (P < 0.05). WB and LR were both lower than BL (P < 0.0001), whereas PC was not (P = 0.13). The PC group's survival to 72 hours was 57%, which was not different from WB (43%) and higher than LR (14%; P < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS
A single bolus infusion of PC produced superior survival and MAP response compared to LR, which is the standard fluid resuscitant carried by combat medics. PC was not different from WB in terms of survival and MAP, which is encouraging because its reduced logistical constraints make it viable for field deployment. These promising findings warrant further development and investigation of PC as a low-volume, early treatment for hemorrhagic shock in scenarios where blood products may not be available.


Abstract. A portion of globally generated surface and groundwater resources evaporates
from wetlands, waterbodies and irrigated areas. This secondary evaporation
of "blue" water directly affects the remaining water resources available
for ecosystems and human use. At the global scale, a lack of detailed water
balance studies and direct observations limits our understanding of the
magnitude and spatial and temporal distribution of secondary evaporation.
Here, we propose a methodology to assimilate satellite-derived information
into the landscape hydrological model W3 at an unprecedented 0.05∘, or
ca. 5 km resolution globally. The assimilated data are all derived from
MODIS observations, including surface water extent, surface albedo,
vegetation cover, leaf area index, canopy conductance and land surface
temperature (LST). The information from these products is imparted on the
model in a simple but efficient manner, through a combination of direct
insertion of the surface water extent, an evaporation flux adjustment based on LST
and parameter nudging for the other observations. The resulting water balance
estimates were evaluated against river basin discharge records and the water
balance of closed basins and demonstrably improved water balance estimates
compared to ignoring secondary evaporation (e.g., bias improved from +38 to
+2 mm yr−1). The evaporation estimates
derived from assimilation were combined with global mapping of irrigation
crops to derive a minimum estimate of irrigation water requirements
(I0), representative of optimal irrigation efficiency. Our I0
estimates were lower than published country-level estimates of irrigation
water use produced by alternative estimation methods, for reasons that are
discussed. We estimate that 16 % of globally generated water resources
evaporate before reaching the oceans, enhancing total terrestrial evaporation
by 6.1×1012 m3 yr−1 or 8.8 %. Of this volume,
5 % is evaporated from irrigation areas, 58 % from terrestrial waterbodies and 37 % from other surfaces. Model-data assimilation at even
higher spatial resolutions can achieve a further reduction in uncertainty but
will require more accurate and detailed mapping of surface water dynamics and
areas equipped for irrigation.


Through a series of studies on arithmetic coding and arithmetic encryption, a novel image joint compression-encryption algorithm based on adaptive arithmetic coding is proposed. The contexts produced in the process of image compression are modified by keys in order to achieve image joint compression encryption. Combined with the bit-plane coding technique, the discrete wavelet transform coefficients in different resolutions can be encrypted respectively with different keys, so that the resolution selective encryption is realized to meet different application needs. Zero-tree coding is improved, and adaptive arithmetic coding is introduced. Then, the proposed joint compression-encryption algorithm is simulated. The simulation results show that as long as the parameters are selected appropriately, the compression efficiency of proposed image joint compression-encryption algorithm is basically identical to that of the original image compression algorithm, and the security of the proposed algorithm is better than the joint encryption algorithm based on interval splitting.


After giving a brief summary of the classical psychiatry contribution (taken down a medical pattern of psychiatry diseases) to the knowledge of manic-depressing disorder, the problem of clinical-biological connection to which this classical psychiatry is still confronted is underlined. As a possible answer to this problem, a new approach to mania is possible in a dimensional perspective of the mental disease taking into account the connection model as well as the pathological characteristics within the clinical chart. The notion of integrated behaviour will supply to notion of syndrome (in which all symptoms are equivalents). So, a behaviour dimension, well defined from a clinical analysis connected with a factorial analysis, is proposed as a specific maniac size and as a compartmental aim to the treatments. A dividing of mental pathology in terms of behaviour anomalies should allow a better link between the clinical and the biological.


SUMMARY. 1. Numerous hypotheses regarding the controls on species distributions in streams depend on longitudinal analyses of collections of stream organisms. Techniques for the detection of trends and for the detection of station groupings among biological collections have been widely reported, but rarely compared with each other. We have conducted an analysis of ten or eleven samples from each of thirteen stations along a stream abiotic gradient, and have compared several techniques.

2. An analysis of longitudinal distribution must first assess the existence of a gradient in biotic composition. Random skewers on species proportions were the most sensitive in demonstrating such a gradient. Q and M statistics were most useful in further describing the trend due to their additive properties; i.e. the importance of one or more stations in dictating the trend may be determined. Cluster analysis, as well as percent faunal similarity, was most efficient at isolating station groupings. Techniques such as faunal replacement and species loss calculations are generally more useful in testing hypotheses about controls on species distributions, and should be employed where potential causal factors may be isolated.


The strong absorption of tissue water is responsible for the low ablation threshold for biological tissues at the Er:YAG and Er:YSGG laser wavelengths. These lasers are therefore considered to be promising tools for medical treatments. As the existing transmission systems are still unsatisfactory, three types of liquid-filled light guides are investigated here as alternatives to conventional near-IR fibers. In addition to mechanical advantages, the minimum attenuation is below 3 dB/m, and losses at bending radii down to 20 mm are negligible. The maximum output energy densities of 14.2 J/cm(2) (free-running Er:YAG) or power densities of 7 MW/cm(2) (Q-switched Er:YAG) are sufficient for soft-tissue ablation. When the liquid was circulated, much higher energy densities, exceeding the hard-tissue ablation threshold, were achieved. These properties make liquid-core light guides promising delivery systems for many near-IR applications, including medical ones.


The human complement system is one of the principal effector systems of innate immunity and consists of more than 30 serum and cell surface proteins. Most complement components show a striking modular structure, which makes evolutionary studies feasible. The evolutionary origin of the complement system can be traced back to the common ancestor of eumetazoa, predating by far the origin of the canonical adaptive immunity unique to the jawed vertebrates. Although the complement system has been conserved by all deuterostomes analysed thus far, it has been lost multiple times independently in the protostome lineage. Sophistication of the complement system from a simpler system by gene duplications and exon shuffling occurred in the vertebrate lineage.

Key Concepts:

The complement system is one of the most ancient body defence mechanisms of eumetazoa.

Most complement components have a characteristic modular structure.

The modern complement system was established in a common ancestor of jawed vertebrates by gene duplication and exon shuffling of the primitive complement genes.

The complement system has been lost multiple times independently in protostome lineages, whereas it has been retained by all deuterostomes analysed so far.

The thioester-containing protein family is subdivided into two subfamilies, the C3 and A2M subfamilies.

Keywords:

gene duplication;
modular structure;
innate immunity;
deuterostome;
protostome;
cnidaria


This thesis examines the cultural politics surrounding public femininity in Britain and the United States between 1939 and 1949 in relation to glamour and the figure of the
film star pin-up.
Using Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth – the era's most popular Hollywood pin-ups - as its case studies, the study reveals the issues of taste, class, national identity, modernity and propriety which informed the wider reception of the film star
pin-up in wartime Britain and America.
A range of primary sources including magazine and newspaper articles, trade publications, promotional materials and advertising tie-ups, as well as contemporaneous surveys of public opinion which engage with these stars and with pin-up and with glamour are discussed with a view to exposing the varied and
nuanced discourse surrounding female sexuality in circulation in Britain during this era and exploring the translation, understanding and acceptance of American mores when such products are imported into differing cultural contexts.
Informed by Bourdieu's theorisations surrounding taste and cultural capital, Skeggs' work on glamour and working class respectability, Buszek's discussion of pin-up and sexual agency, Moseley's notion of resonance and Dyer's work upon star personas this study elaborates upon existing discussions (from the 1930s up to the
current day) regarding Hollywood's female representations at large and the Hollywood pin-up in particular as either objectifying and oppressing its female subjects and audiences within a wider discourse of patriotic 'beauty as duty' or offering a potentially radical and empowering form of female sexual agency.
This study therefore forms part of a wider reassessment of the film star pin-up and Hollywood glamour at large and of two popular Hollywood stars in particular, whilst contributing to revisionist histories of British and American women in the Modern era, of the study of class and taste, of transatlantic cinema audiences in the Second World War more generally.


Location and intersensor distance estimations are important functions for the operation of wireless sensor networks, especially when protocols can benefit from the distance information prior to network deployment. The maximum multihop distance that can be covered in a given number of hops in a sensor network is one such parameter related with coverage area, delay, and minimal multihop transmission energy consumption estimations. In randomly deployed sensor networks, intersensor distances are random variables. Hence, their evaluations require probabilistic methods, and distance models should involve investigation of distance distribution functions. Current literature on analytical modeling of the maximum distance distribution is limited to 1D networks using the Gaussian pdf. However, determination of the maximum multihop distance distribution in 2D networks is a quite complex problem. Furthermore, distance distributions in 2D networks are not accurately modeled by the Gaussian pdf. Hence, we propose a greedy method of distance maximization and evaluate the distribution of the obtained multihop distance through analytical approximations and simulations.


ABSTRACT To assemble a laboratory population of Blumeria graminis f. sp. hordei for a competition experiment, controlled crosses were performed among 30 parent isolates, which were characterized by their pathotype (i.e., the phenotype observed on a differential set containing lines including host resistance alleles) and their response to the fungicides ethirimol and triadimenol. Variability in the response to the chemical inducer of host-resistance acibenzolar-S-methyl (BTH: benzo[1,2,3]thiadiazole-7carbothioic acid-S-methyl ester) was introduced by using isolates collected in fields repeatedly treated with this chemical. Based on their pathotype and response to ethirimol, 137 isolates recovered from the crosses were chosen to assemble a laboratory population. This protocol produced variability in the laboratory population for traits chosen only in the parents (triadimenol) or both in the parents and the progenies (ethirimol). It was therefore postulated that the variability in the response to BTH, if present in the parents, was also present in the laboratory population. No association between these traits was observed. The effect of BTH on the evolution of the laboratory population was compared with the effect of the fungicide ethirimol. The laboratory population was exposed to selection pressures and its evolution was followed over 10 generations. Ethirimol treatments always induced a decrease in sensitivity, whereas no consistent trend was observed for sensitivity to triadimenol (not selected). This result indicates that the application of ethirimol induced a selection pressure. For BTH, (toxicological) sensitivity tests have not detected any consistent evolution, but pathotype diversity indicated that in cases when BTH was applied with ethirimol, BTH induced a further selection pressure in addition to that of ethirimol.


Purpose of reviewTo assess all the possible differential diagnosis of food protein-induced enterocolitis syndrome (FPIES), both in acute and chronic presentation, reviewing the data reported in published studies. Recent findingsThere is an increase of reported cases of FPIES in recent years. As the disease presents with nonspecific symptoms, it can be misunderstood in many ways. The differential diagnosis includes, in acute presentations, the following: sepsis, other infectious diseases, acute gastrointestinal episodes, surgical emergencies, food allergies. In its chronic forms, FPIES may mimic malabsorption syndromes, metabolic disorders, primary immunodeficiencies, neurological conditions, coagulation defects, and other types of non-IgE-mediated food allergy. SummaryA thorough clinical evaluation, including symptoms, signs, and laboratory findings, is necessary to lead the clinicians toward the diagnosis of FPIES. The major reason for delayed diagnosis appears to be the lack of knowledge of the disease.


Many philosophers agree that there is an epistemic norm governing action. However, they disagree on what this norm is. It has been observed that the word 'know' is prominent in ordinary epistemic evaluations of actions. Any opponent of the knowledge norm must provide an explanation of this fact. Gerken has recently proposed the most developed explanation. It invokes the hypothesis that, in normal contexts, knowledgelevel warrant is frequently necessary and very frequently sufficient (Normal Coincidence), so that knowledge-based assessments would be a good heuristic for practical reasoning and epistemic evaluations of action. In this paper, I raise three problems for this approach. First, I argue that Normal Coincidence is ad hoc: it relies on an unsupported frequency hypothesis that we should expect to be false given the warrant account that Gerken also endorses. Second, I argue that, in any case, Normal Coincidence is insufficient to support the hypothesis that knowledge-based evaluation of action constitutes a good heuristic. Third, I consider three other hypotheses close to Normal Coincidence apparently more likely to support the heuristic hypothesis, but I argue that they seem even more ad hoc than Normal Coincidence.


Field experiments were conducted in two Brazilian orchards to examine the effects of soil applications of calcitic lime (Ca-lime), phosphogypsum, CaCl₂, and magnesite (Mg-lime) on soil chemistry and Ca nutrition of apple (Malus domestica Borkh. cv. Gala/MM 106). One orchard was on a low Ca, high Al Inceptisol; the second orchard was on a low Ca, low Al Oxisol. The resulting soil chemical changes were strongly influenced by the initial soil chemistry and the composition of the soil amendments. The effects of Ca-lime, added at a rate calculated to neutralize the topsoil exchange acidity, were restricted primarily to the upper 20 cm of the soil, where it increased pH, increased total dissolved and exchangeable Ca, eliminated dissolved Al, and reduced exchangeable Al. Phosphogypsum, added at Ca rates equivalent to the Ca-lime treatment, slightly reduced soil pH in the Inceptisol and slightly increased soil pH in the Oxisol. Phosphogypsum did not appreciably affect dissolved Al in the topsoil; however, it did reduce exchangeable Al but to a lesser degree than did Ca-lime or Mg-lime. Phosphogypsum increased exchangeable Ca and decreased exchangeable Al in the subsoil to a depth of 40 to 60 cm. Calcium chloride, added at Ca rates equivalent to the Ca-lime treatment, produced dissolved and exchangeable Ca increases similar to the phosphogypsum treatment; however, soluble and exchangeable Al were increased and pH slightly decreased throughout the soil profiles. Mg-lime, added at an acidity-neutralizing rate equivalent to the Ca-lime treatment, produced results similar to Ca-lime except that soluble and exchangeable Mg rather than Ca were increased in the topsoil. Apple tree root densities were enhanced in the soil layers that were made simultaneously high in exchangeable Ca and low in exchangeable Al by the soil amendments. The trees with the more extensive root systems had higher leaf Ca concentrations and produced more and larger fruit. The Ca concentrations in these larger fruit were not reduced by fruit expansion, suggesting enhanced Ca supply from the soil


The Chinese Government has promoted the national fuel-ethanol program since 2002 to deal with the energy security and air pollution problem. Inferior corn has been allocated as the major raw material to produce fuel-ethanol, but is inadequate for this purpose. Contrary to the national government's decision, the Chinese fuel-ethanol facilities in Heilongjiang and Jilin use normal corn, which is used for feed, food and industrial raw material. This study examines the impacts the Chinese fuel-ethanol program would have on domestic and international corn markets, by applying a newly developed Chinese corn market model. Our simulation suggests moderate impacts of the problem on the world corn market.


Sialoglycans on the cell surface of human colon cancer (HCC) cells have been implicated in cellular adhesion and metastasis. To clarify the role of N-acetylneuraminic acid (NeuAc) linked alpha2,3 to galactose (Gal) on the surface of HCC cells, we studied the intercellular adhesion of HCC cell lines expressing increasing NeuAcalpha2,3Gal-R. Our model system consisted of the HCC SW48 cell line, which inherently possesses low levels of cell surface alpha2,3 and alpha2,6 sialoglycans. To generate SW48 clonal variants with elevated cell surface NeuAcalpha2,3Gal-R linkages, we transfected the expression vector, pcDNA3, containing either rat liver cDNA encoding Galbeta1,3(4)GlcNAc alpha2,3 sialyltransferase (ST3Gal III) or human placental cDNA encoding Galbeta1,3GalNAc/Galbeta1,4GlcNAc alpha2,3 sialyltransferase (ST3Gal IV) into SW48 cells. Selection of neomycin-resistant clones (600 microgram G418/ml) having a higher percentage of cells expressing NeuAcalpha2,3Gal-R (up to 85% positive Maackia amurenis agglutinin staining compared with 30% for wild type cells) was performed. These ST3Gal III and ST3Gal IV clonal variants demonstrated increased adherence to IL-1beta-activated human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) (up to 90% adherent cells compared with 63% for wild type cells). Interestingly, ST3Gal III and ST3Gal IV clonal variants also bound non-activated HUVEC up to 4-fold more effectively than wild type cells. Cell surface NeuAcalpha2,3Gal-R expression within the various SW48 clonal variants correlated directly with increased adhesion to HUVEC (r=0.84). Using HCC HT-29 cells, which express high levels of surface NeuAcalpha2,3Gal-R, addition of synthetic sialyl, sulfo or GalNAc Lewis X structures were found to specifically inhibit intercellular adhesion. At 1.0mM, NeuAcalpha2,3Galbeta1,3(Fucalpha1, 4)GlcNAc-OH and Galbeta1,4(Fucalpha1,3)GlcNAcbeta1,6(SE-6Galbeta1++ +, 3)GalNAcalpha1-O-methyl inhibited HT-29 cell adhesion to IL-1beta-stimulated HUVEC by 100% and 68%, respectively. GalNAcbeta1, 4(Fucalpha1,3)GlcNAcbeta1-O-methyl and GalNAcbeta1,4(Fucalpha1, 3)GlcNAcbeta1,6Manalpha1,6Manbeta1-0-C30H61, however, did not possess inhibitory activity. In conclusion, these studies demonstrated that cell surface NeuAcalpha2,3Gal-R expression is involved in HCC cellular adhesion to HUVEC. These specific carbohydrate-mediated intercellular adhesive events may play an important role in tumor angiogenesis, metastasis and growth control.


ABSTRACT Objective: Following migration, pregnant immigrant women may encounter social, cultural, and economic challenges that negatively affect their food choices and subsequent health outcomes. Culturally appropriate health care is crucial during the perinatal period to ensure the health of immigrant mothers and their children. This project aims to explore and understand how the health beliefs and practices of Chinese immigrant women affect their food choices during the perinatal period. Design: This qualitative study used the methodology of focused ethnography. Women participated in one semi-structured interview, followed by a second photo-assisted, semi-structured interview which incorporated photographs taken by the women themselves. Results: The food choices and health behaviors of immigrant women were influenced by their general health beliefs, cultural knowledge concerning particular types of foods, traditional Chinese medical beliefs, social advice and information, and socio-economic factors. Conclusion: The provision of culturally appropriate health care is crucial during the perinatal period, as it is not only a vulnerable life stage for women and their children but also a sensitive period of interaction with the Canadian health-care system. Understanding these intersecting factors can help to ensure culturally appropriate care and optimized health outcomes for Chinese immigrant women during the perinatal period.


Bulk nanostructured Cu samples with 20 mm in diameter and 1 mm in height were processed by HPT at a pressure of 6 GPa by 10 rotations. Measurements of texture by means of state-of-the-art XRD technique have been achieved in directions parallel and normal to the torsion axis. Local texture measurements were performed by a spot size of 500 -m in steps of 3.5 mm in order to examine the homogeneity of deformation. The texture data were resolved to shear plane and analyzed in terms of ideal shear orientations. At both inner and outer areas of the disc plane typical shear textures are observed. However, the intensity of components of textures at inner areas is higher than that of outer one. These results can be interpreted in terms of dynamic lattice relaxations rather than by heterogeneities in deformation.


ABSTRACT The aim of the present study was to examine how Swedish youth a) experience diversity and b) link those diversity experiences to their identities. Using a mixed-method approach, we coded written narratives for type of diversity experience, meaning-making, and analyzed qualitative differences due to the proximity of the setting and self-defined in- and outgroups. Out of 197 participants (age 15–29), 63 (31.5%) wrote about diversity in their narratives, and of those, 55 (87%) derived meaning about themselves or others. Qualitative differences were found between participants who self-identified with a majority, minority, or mixed ethnic identities. Youth who identified with a majority identity generally experienced being in the majority in the macro-setting while a lack of diversity in their micro-settings, and mainly derived meanings related to the ethnic identities of others. Youth who identified with minority or mixed ethnic identities, experienced being the minority in both micro- and macro-settings, and mainly derived meanings related to their own ethnic identity, such as enhanced identities or issues of belongingness. Results suggest that experiences of diversity trigger ethnic identity development, however, in a segregated society with unequal opportunities and power relations, those experiences and how they inform ethnic identity significantly vary significantly due to background.


The aim of this thesis was to develop a model of a receiver which could be quickly used to analyze radiated interference levels from data captured at the output of the antenna equipment used to measure radiated energy. Active circuits were mainly used in developing this model for the ease with which the design and simulations could be carried out in OrCAD.The guiding document for the thesis work has been CISPR 16-1-1 (International Special Committee on Radio Interference part 16-1-1) which specifies the characteristics and performance of equipment for the measurement of radiated interference.The testing of this receiver model was carried out as far as possible based on the test setupsrecommended in CISPR, and all results have been compared with the standards laid down for the model.Using the results, it will be shown that a CISPR EMI receiver can be modeled as a simple EMI receiver consisting of filtering, mixing and detecting circuits built according to specifications.


In unknown, cluttered environments, robots require online real-time mapping and collision checking in order to navigate robustly. Discrete map representations are inefficient for collision checking as they are expensive in terms of memory and computation. This paper takes a probabilistic approach to local mapping by representing the environment as a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and leverages its geometric properties to enable efficient collision checking given a time-parameterized trajectory. In contrast to current discretization-based methods, a GMM preserves geometric coverage of the environment without losing representation accuracy with varying map resolutions. We introduce a novel GMM local mapping algorithm that can be used with a single depth camera processed on a single CPU, and provide algorithms for collision avoidance given arbitrary trajectory representations. Finally, we provide experimentation results demonstrating safety, efficiency, and data coverage for real-time collision avoidance with a quadrotor navigating in a cluttered environment.


The modern concept of the diagram has evolved in various disciplines and professions in terms of both inscriptive and performative mediums since the 1950's. As a powerful abstract concept, the diagram shows dichotomous characteristics; while the inscriptive mode of the diagram is seen as representational, concrete, and reductive, the performative mode of the diagram is seen as generative, abstract, and proliferative. This paper compares the production and the role of the diagram respectively in representative and generative mediums to give an insight into how diagrams embody these dichotomous modes. To do so, first, it studies the concept of the diagram in the works of two French philosophers: Bruno Latour and Gilles Deleuze. On the one hand, for Latour, the inscriptive aspect of the diagram becomes prominent as a tool to render scientific processes or objects onto an abstract representation, which acts as a concrete, irrefutable, and referential object. On the other hand, the Deleuzian concept of the diagram is not representational or visual at all, but it is still real. According to Deleuze, diagrams are sets of relations of forces that define virtuality of assemblages as a space of possibilities. The modern concept of diagrams in the realm of architecture has evolved in between this dichotomy. After giving insights into the contrasting concepts of the diagram, this paper studies three different approaches to the diagram in architectural praxes: Analytical diagram in Sejima's works, textual diagram in Eisenman's works, and material diagram in Spuybroek's works. This paper identifies these three praxes as intermediary stages in between Latour's and Deleuze's concepts of the diagram. In conclusion, it shows the dichotomy of the diagram as a continuum in architectural praxes, characterized at one end by the inscriptive mode and at the other end by the performative mode of the diagram.