Since 1995, the James Irvine Foundation has invested more than $11 million to support the growth and development of Collaborative Regional Initiatives (CRIs) throughout the state -- nonprofit organizations that engage key players from business, environmental, and a variety of other advocacy groups with players from local governments and public agencies to create improvements in their regions. CRIs work on issues ranging across transportation, land use, housing, and economic development. They work in a variety of ways from developing legislation to media campaigns to practical work on particular projects. All are directed at building civic capacity and filling in gaps where government does not or cannot act. Some CRIs have been in place for years; others are more recently formed. They represent experiments in regional governance. The Irvine Foundation tapped a team of Berkeley faculty to perform an assessment of the CRIs so the foundation can target its resources in order to make them effective and sustainable over time and assist them in producing valuable outcomes for their regions. Together the team published case studies of four major CRIs -- the Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Communities, Joint Venture: Silicon Valley, the San Diego Dialogue and the Sierra Business Council -- as well as an analysis of regional workforce development collaboratives in California. The study of regional workforce development collaboratives in California looks at a new approach to the problem of linking economic and workforce development -- in particular, a theory of change proposed by a group of stakeholders from a variety of sectors (government, foundations, and the workforce development system) in the late 1990s. To meet the multiple goals of increasing economic opportunity, decreasing poverty, and increasing regional economic competitiveness, these experts advocated a new workforce development system that was collaborative in scope, regional in scale, career-oriented in focus, and data-intensive in strategy. This study examines five cases that broadly follow this model of regional collaboration in order to determine how effective they are at problem-solving. The California Center for Regional Leadership (CCRL), the James Irvine Foundation (JIF), and the California Employment Development Department (EDD) worked with organizations to produce proposals that developed career progressions and identified partners and funding. Four organizations -- three Collaborative Regional Initiatives (CRIs) and one community college that was formerly part of a CRI -- were selected in March 2001. Of the CRIs, Fresno Area CRI was to train in occupations related to its water technology cluster; Gateway Cities Partnership (GCP) was to train in logistics; and Orange County Business Council (OCBC) was to train in information technology. Cabrillo College -- formerly part of a CRI called the Santa Cruz Clusters Project -- created the Watsonville Digital Bridge Academy (WDBA) also to train in information technology. This study compares these four workforce demonstration projects with another regional workforce development collaborative, the San Francisco Information Technology Consortium (SFITC). SFITC, which is funded in part by the James Irvine Foundation, consists of a network of community-based organizations and community colleges offering entry-level computer training, job placement, upgrade training, and needed social support to current and prospective IT workers. Based on 40 interviews with collaborative leaders and key informants, as well as review of related documents, this study asks whether the CRIs organize problem-solving around workforce development more effectively than do other collaboratives. It finds that regional collaboration is not well suited to addressing both workforce and economic development goals; however, it can make workforce development programs more effective if partners from both inside and outside the current system are engaged in a networked structure with clear roles and responsibilities, as opposed to a collaboration on paper. The report looks first at how organization structure (origin, mission, and organization), economic development focus, program design, and collaborative style shape program and other outcomes such as adaptiveness, ability to mobilize resources, and system change. A final section addresses the potential for sustainability of these workforce development innovations and the policy implications that emerge from the comparison of collaboratives.


Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) focus in the Ordubad District of the Nakhichevan ASSR has become active for the last years. Complex study of the focus, performed in 1985-1987, allowed to establish the following: VL causative agent, circulating in the Ordubad District belongs to the Leishmania infantum species. It was identified by isoenzymatic analysis (for 12 enzymes) and the Adler serological test. Disease cases prevailed in the upper part of the town of Ordubad and were confined to a small area (4 adjoining streets). Little children (up to 2 years old) prevail among patients. Spatial distribution of the disease correlated with indirect EIA data on healthy urban population (3116 persons examined) and stray dogs (152 animals examined). Mean percentage of positive assay results for the titers ranging from 1:80 to 1:20 was 8.0, for human population of Ordubad, and 19.1 for the dogs. Ten Phlebotominae species were found in Ordubad and its suburbs: Phlebotomus (Laroussius) major, Ph. (L.) kandelakii, Ph. (Adlerius) halepensis, Ph. (A.) balcanicus, Ph. (Phlebotomus) papatasi, Ph. (Paraphlebotomus) sergentii, Ph. (Par.) caucasicus, Ph. (Par.) alexandri, Sergentomyia dentata, S. palestinensis. Authors suggest that stray dogs are reservoirs of infectious agents in the Ordubad focus, while Phlebotominae of the Laroussius and Adlerius subspecies are disease carriers, the disease being regarded as a Mediterranean form of visceral leishmaniasis.


In advanced computer-aided design systems, an object is defined by a
collection of geometric elements along with a set of geometric
constraints between them. Given the values assigned to the constraint
parameters, solving the geometric problem consists of computing the
coordinates of the points of the geometric elements defining the
object.

Traditionally, constraint parameters have been considered to be exact
values. In many applications, however, it is more realistic to
consider that some dimensions of the object may take values in given
intervals. As a result, the coordinates of the points are also
intervals. In this situation, known geometric constraint solving
techniques cannot solve directly the geometric problem.

In this paper, we report on an interval-based method to solve
geometric problems with interval parameters. We assume that we are
given a construction plan for a geometric problem, and an assignment
of interval values to the constraint parameters. We present an
algorithm that computes precise and rigorous intervals for the
coordinates of the points. We illustrate the performance of the
algorithm with a case study.


Commonly, complex and uncertain plants cannot be faced through well-known linear approaches. Most of the time, complex controllers are needed to attain expected stability and robustness; however, they usually lack a simple design methodology and their actual implementation is difficult (if not impossible). Fuzzy logic control is an intelligent technique which, on its basis, allows the translation from logic statements to a nonlinear mapping. Although it has been proven to effectively deal with complex plants, many recent studies have moved away from the basic premise of linguistic interpretability. In this work, a simple fuzzy controller is designed in a clear way, privileging design easiness and logical consistency of linguistic operators. It is simulated together to a nonlinear model of a quadcopter with added actuators variability, so the robust operation of the controller is also proven. Uneven gain, bandwidth, and time-delay variations are applied among quadcopter's motors, so the simulations results enclose those characteristics which could be found in reality. As those variations can be related to actuators' performance, an analysis can be driven in terms of the features which are not commonly included in mathematical models like power electronics drives or electric machinery. These considerations may shorten the gap between simulation and actual implementation of the fuzzy controller. Briefly, this chapter presents a simple fuzzy controller which deals with a quadcopter plant as a first approach to intelligent control.


Twitter influences political debates. Phenomena like fake news and hate speech show that political discourse on micro-blogging can become strongly polarised by algorithmic enforcement of selective perception. Some political actors actively employ strategies to facilitate polarisation on Twitter, as past contributions show, via strategies of 'hashjacking'. For the example of COVID-19 related hashtags and their retweet networks, we examine the case of partisan accounts of the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and their potential use of 'hashjacking' in May 2020. Our findings indicate that polarisation of political party hashtags has not changed significantly in the last two years. We see that right-wing partisans are actively and effectively polarising the discourse by 'hashjacking' COVID-19 related hashtags, like #CoronaVirusDE or #FlattenTheCurve. This polarisation strategy is dominated by the activity of a limited set of heavy users. The results underline the necessity to understand the dynamics of discourse polarisation, as an active political communication strategy of the far-right, by only a handful of very active accounts.


Different invasive and non-invasive diagnostic tests are available for the diagnosis of H. pylori in the individual patient. In practice, endoscopic tests are best for a primary diagnosis of H. pylori infection because endoscopy allows assessment of treatment indications. The new rapid urease tests may help the clinician in treatment decision-making. Culture is currently not recommended for routine evaluation, but it is becoming increasingly important in certain populations with higher prevalence of drug resistance, since it allows testing for susceptibility to antibiotics. Serological testing has been recommended for initial pre-endoscopy or pre-treatment screening in dyspeptic patients. However, several current 'in-office' tests appear insufficiently accurate or would need further validation before being recommended for use in clinical management strategies at a primary care level. The urea breath tests are best suited to confirm eradication early after treatment, while laboratory serology tests are of limited use, since 6 months are required before a result can be obtained. The serological office tests cannot be used for post-treatment assessment of H. pylori status.


Anisometropia relates to the differences in refractive power between both eyes. Hence, anisometropia is expected to have deleterious effects on visual functions due to dissimilar retinal images formed on both eyes. This study explored the outcome of induced blur in terms of a refractive defocus on visual functions. Imposing different levels of blur was believed to mimic the anisometropia condition. Twenty emmetropic adults enrolled in this study. Myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism were induced using soft contact lenses in steps of 1.0 Dioptre (D) ranging from 1.00DS until 4.00DS as well soft toric contact lenses 1.00DC until 4.00DC (with the rule (WTR). Visual acuity (Standard logMAR), contrast sensitivity (Pelli Robson), stereoacuity (TNO stereotest) and aniseikonia (retinal image sizes) (Smart Optometry application) were assessed at baseline and each level of defocus. Results: All myopic, hyperopic and astigmatic anisometropia resulted in significant deterioration of visual acuity, and stereoacuity at all level refractive defocuses (p<0.05). With a maximal of 4D anisometropia magnitude, visual acuity in myopic and hyperopic anisometropia reduced by 9 lines and 5 lines for astigmatic anisometropia. Contrast sensitivity remained steady throughout all level of defocuses in all mimicked anisometropia groups. The stereoacuity was lost among the 4D magnitude of myopic and hyperopic anisometropia while astigmatic anisometropia retained the stereoacuity.  Highest slope value obtained from linear regression of stereoacuity for each myopic, hyperopic and astigmatic anisometropia (slope value of 0.33, 0.30 and 0.26) respectively corresponding with logMAR acuity and contrast sensitivity. Aniseikonia also was significant in all anisometropia groups (p<0.05). Mimicked myopic anisometropia experienced aniseikonia at each magnitude of anisometropia but, the cut off magnitude for hyperopic and WTR astigmatic anisometropia were 3D. Conclusion: Small amount of anisometropia was accountable in affecting visual functions. Even at the low magnitude of mimicked myopic anisometropia, stereoacuity affected the most as compared to visual acuity and contrast sensitivity, thus contributing to the high prevalence of anisometropic amblyopia.


This thesis attempts to rationalize two diverging practices in Architectural discourse, that of Western pedagogy and that of the 'Other'. A disparity in approach to understanding architecture as a permanent object, can be noted in the dialogue between resilient architecture and temporary structure, this manifests itself in transient spaces and adaptive urban fabrics.  The increased danger of flooding within China; with a particular emphasis on river infrastructure, posits an interesting position for new urban typologies and innovative floating solutions. Positioned on the expansive Yangtze River Delta, Nanjing encompasses a complex narrative of historical reverence and progressive tendencies, that encourage experimental approaches. The process and methodology within, seeks to provide an adaptable and affordable response to the recurring floodings, through in depth concise historical, cultural and philosophical analysis of the social, spiritual and architectural landscape within China as a whole as well as in specificity.  These insights, juxtaposed with traditional western technique intends to produce an intricate and considered response to flood situations, with a particular focus on community generation and maintenance.  Although Nanjing remains the central focus of the research, the concepts and practical results are intended to be abstracted and drawn into all cultures within Asia, primarily those with Buddhist and Taoist social structures. The proliferation of Feng Shui and the Metaphysical throughout the region provide a framework from which to expand. This network of social and cultural similarity allows for cross disciplinary and pan Asian approaches, noting the Japanese Metabolist Movement as a practical indication of socio-cultural influence on architectural theory.


The incidence of drug induced liver injury (DILI) is about 1/1000 to 1/10000 among patients who receive therapeutic drug doses. Drug induced hepatotoxicity is a major cause of acute and chronic liver disease. The severity of liver damage ranges from nonspecific changes in liver structure to acute liver failure, cirrhosis and liver cancer. Some common agents that can cause liver injury are acetaminophen, antibiotics, statins, INH and herbal drugs.Drug-induced hepatotoxicity can be categorized based on the pattern of liver enzyme alteration (hepatocellular, cholestatic or mixed pattern), the mechanism of hepatotoxicity (direct, immune mediated or idiosyncratic) and histologic findings on liver biopsy (steatosis or sinusoidal obstruction syndrome). Treatment options for DILI include discontinuing the drug, conservative measurements and liver transplantation in the case of non-acetaminophen induced hepatotoxicity


This paper purports to scrutinize the evolving trends of major technologies that have shaped the world's technology frontier, and at the same time, measure relative standings of major industrial nations in their innovative capacity in production of those technologies. We consider all (over 5 million) utility patents granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) over the period of 1976-2015. In analysis, we find the continued dominance of US, the steady performance of Japan, the signs of European decline, and the emergence of new economies that include Korea, Taiwan and Israel. By considering the most popular technologies per each decade, we observe a clear pattern in the evolution of world economic structure, most notably, the IT revolution. Interestingly, it is precisely in these IT-related technologies in which Korea have performed especially well. In the fastest growing technologies of the most recent decade, however, Korea's performance thus far bucks this rosy trend. Korea's innovative capacity is not as evenly distributed across all technologies as other advanced nations. US, Japan, Europe, and other Western economies, as well as Israel, all exhibit solid and steady performance in all our rankings.


Here, we compared the traditional nutritional definition of the dispensable and indispensable amino acids for humans with categorizations based on amino acid metabolism and function. The three views lead to somewhat different interpretations. From a nutritional perspective, it is quite clear that some amino acids are absolute dietary necessities if normal growth is to be maintained. Even so, growth responses to deficiencies of dispensable amino acids can be found in the literature. From a strictly metabolic perspective, there are only three indispensable amino acids (lysine, threonine and tryptophan) and two dispensable amino acids (glutamate and serine). In addition, a consideration of in vivo amino acid metabolism leads to the definition of a third class of amino acids, termed conditionally essential, whose synthesis can be carried out by mammals but can be limited by a variety of factors. These factors include the dietary supply of the appropriate precursors and the maturity and health of the individual. From a functional perspective, all amino acids are essential, and an argument in favor of the idea of the critical importance of nonessential and conditionally essential amino acids to physiological function is developed. J. Nutr. 130: 1835S—1840S, 2000.


Peak oil has acquired prominence in the political lexicon of an increasing number of critical and radical perspectives during the ongoing ecological and economic crisis. By examining examples within academia as well as initiatives such as the Degrowth Movement and the Transition Network, this paper documents how a series of red-green discourses and movements mobilise the narrative of peak oil as an alarm bell that signals the inevitability of the present ecological crises and of the coming collapse of the fossil-fuel economy. The paper, developing an analysis on two levels, argues that the 'red-green' mobilisation of peak oil is problematic. First, a close reading of red-green discourses shows how the weaknesses of the narrative highlighted in the literature (such as a naturalising and de-politicising understanding of the materiality and finitude of oil) are reproduced by the red-greens. Second, building on discourse and political theory, the paper highlights that red-green interpellations of peak oil fail to transcend hegemonic discursive structurations in the field of environmental and energy security, where geopolitical apocalyptic imaginaries and biopolitical forms of securitisation are linked in reproducing post-politicisation processes. Hence, the paper insists that the invocation of peak oil forecloses the possibilities for radical alternatives to the present socio-ecological regime of accumulation and circulation.


This handbook sets out the processes and products of 'digital' research. It is a theoretical and practical guide on how to undertake and navigate advanced research in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Topics covered include: - how to make research more accessible - the use of search engines and other sources to determine the scope of work - research training for students - what will theses, dissertations and research reports look like in ten years' time? - the storing and archiving of such research - ethics and methodologies in the field - intercultural issues The editors focus on advances in arts and practice-based doctorates, and their application in other fields and disciplines. The contributions chart new territory for universities, research project directors, supervisors and research students regarding the nature and format of Masters and doctoral work, as well as research projects. This handbook is an essential reference for researchers, supervisors and administrators on how to conduct and evaluate research projects in a digital and multimodal age.


An integrated DC-DC hysteretic buck converter with ultrafast adaptive output transient response for reference tracking is presented. To achieve the fastest up-tracking speed, the maximum charging current control is introduced to charge up the output voltage with the maximum designed current. For down-tracking, the output is discharged by the load only to save energy. Although the converter works with hysteretic voltage mode control, an adaptive delay compensation scheme is employed to keep the switching frequency constant at 850 kHz to within plusmn2.5% across the whole operation range. The integrated buck converter was fabricated using a 0.35 mum CMOS process. With an input voltage of 3 V, the output voltage can be regulated between 0.5 and 2.5 V. With a load resistor of 10 Omega, the up-tracking speed of the maximum reference step (0.5 to 2.5 V) is 12.5 mus/V. All design features are verified by extensive measurements.


The so-called Pelusium Megashear System (PMS), consists of echelon left-lateral megashears crossing Africa from the Nile-Delta since the Precambrian times. Although this system is questioned by some scientists, its existence is sup- ported by others. This research work provides evidences for the existence of the PMS near Egypt's capital (Cairo city). Evidence is interpreted from gravity, magnetic, and seismological data, which proves that it has been in existence since 2800 BC [1]. To support the existence of this fault zone system, all available tectonic data are reviewed; new magnetic tilt derivative TDR map and recent fault plane solution map are introduced. Moreover available earthquake catalogue for historical and recent occurrences in and around the Pelusium zone is compiled. The collected recent and historical seismicity data is supporting the existence of PMS system. The faults excluded from magnetic maps were found to be in a good agreement with tectonic and gravity data introduced by some authors. Available fault plane solutions for old and recent earthquakes gave rise to the hypothesis that the PMS is right lateral shear system. Additionally, the Pelusium zone is evaluated for the rate of seismic activity. The hazards of these zones are studied by calculating the earthquake recurrence rates using Richter-Gutenberg formula (LogN = a – bM). A statistical method is applied to exclude the effect of lack of data due to little seismograph station in the early records, or lack of population density. The Pelusium Megashear fault system proved to be active at least in Egypt, however, it plays a role only over big time window, may be thousands of years to dissipate stresses accumulated within the west of Sinai Peninsula in the African Eurasian-Arabian plates. Finally integrated tectonic model including the effect of PMS is introduced to solve the complexity of intraplate tectonics in Northern Egypt.


In May 2015, 8,000 migrants were abandoned by their smugglers in the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal, left adrift in conditions of malnourishment, suffocation, dehydration, starvation, and violence. Many of those on board were members of Myanmar's minority Rohingya population, who lack citizenship, endure systematic discrimination, have limited access to education and healthcare, and cannot move around freely. Their plight was worsened by the crudely-termed game of 'human ping pong', involving the Thai, Malaysian, and Indonesian authorities repairing the vessels, providing the migrants with food and water, and escorting them beyond their territorial seas. The death toll is unknown, however Amnesty International estimates that these actions resulted in hundreds or even thousands of deaths.
The scope of protection under international law to which these people were entitled is unclear. First and foremost, none of the states specially affected by this crisis are party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, which contains the refugee definition, sets out the rights associated with refugee status, and prohibits states from engaging in refoulement. The relative lack of Asian states' participation in the Refugee Convention is particularly regretful in this context, as the Rohingya are clearly victims of persecution based on race and would thus most likely qualify as refugees if the Refugee Convention were applicable. Thus Asia is sometimes described as having 'rejected' refugee law. In comparison, Europe is seen as having the most developed regional system of protection for those who choose to migrate by sea, as all states are party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the European Court of Human Rights judgment of Hirsi explicitly states that push-back operations at sea engage the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Consequently, there is significant literature on refugee protection in Europe, whereas very little has been written in relation to Asia. Likewise, although the term 'migrant crisis' makes regular headlines, much of the media and political attention, and indeed many of the other papers in this volume, have focused predominately on refugees in Europe.


Maintaining consistent VoIP quality is a challenging task, especially where it is carried using a mobile internet connection. With greater than 50% of the world's mobile user population using older GSM incarnations, this is very much a present technical research challenge. This paper presents an approach to improving mobile VoIP telephony by drastically lowering the bandwidth consumption while maintaining acceptable call quality when compared to competitor solutions. Although initial test had good results, we've found that a detailed experiment might be necessary to benefits of the implementation.


This book offers an innovative and refreshing look at forest conservation in Palawan Island, the Philippines, where the indigenous Batak peoples make a living from shifting cultivation and collection of non-timber forest products. Through a systematic comparison of Batak practices with those of lowland Filippino migrants, the author demonstrates how the traditions and beliefs of the Batak can help to conserve one of the world's most precious resources, forests. He argues that, in order to harness the strengths of the traditional Batak system, and deal with its weaknesses, grassroots communities need to be empowered to develop and enforce incentives for the sustainable use and conservation of forests.


We evaluated the cytotoxicity of antiglaucoma ophthalmic solutions preserved with the same concentration of benzalkonium chloride (BAK) in four cultured corneal and conjunctival cell lines. The viability of cell cultures was determined following the exposure of cells to timolol maleate, dorzolamide, and their fixed combination, Kosoputo(®) (MSD, a Japanese formulation of Cosopt(®) (Merck)), and two commercially available eyedrop solutions, 0.5% Timpotol(®) (containing 0.5% timolol maleate, MSD) and 1% Trusopt(®) (containing 1% dorzolamide, MSD) for varying exposure times and at various dilutions using the MTT and neutral red assays. All the three commercially available eyedrop solutions tested in this study were preserved with 0.005% BAK. The toxicity of each solution was compared using the % cell viability score (CVS) . Cell viability was also subjected to statistical analysis using ANOVA, Dunnett's multiple comparison tests and a chi-square test. %CVS50/%CVS40/80s for the tested solutions were 53/-13 for 0.5% Timoptol(®), 100/88 for preservative-free 0.5% timolol maleate, 50/ -10 for 1% Trusopt(®), 72/100 for preservative-free 1% dorzolamide, and 44/-17 for Kosoputo(®). The results of statistical analysis were consistent to them. In conclusion, Kosoputo(®) had greater cytotoxicity than each component; however, in actual use it may have the advantages of reduced toxicity (side effect) due to reduced instillation frequency, and better patient adherence to the treatment regimen as well as a comparable pressure reduction effect.


Background: Agitation is an array of syndromes and types of behaviors that are common in patients with psychiatric disorders. In Europe, the estimation of prevalence of agitation has been difficult due to the lack of standard studies or systematic data collection done on this syndrome. Objective: An observational, cross-sectional, multicenter study aimed to assess the prevalence of agitation episodes in psychiatric emergencies in different European countries. Method: For 1 week, all episodes of acute agitation that were attended to at the psychiatric emergency room (ER) or Acute Inpatient Unit (AIU) in the 27 participating centers were registered. The clinical characteristics and management of the agitation episode were also described. A descriptive analysis was performed. Results: A total of 334 agitation episodes out of 7295 psychiatric emergencies were recorded, giving a prevalence rate of 4.6% (95% CI: 4.12-5.08). Of them, 172 [9.4% (95% CI: 8.2-10.9)] were attended at the ER and 162 [2.8% (95% CI: 2.4-3.3)] at AIU. Only data from 165 episodes of agitation (those with a signed informed consent form) was registered and described in this report. The most common psychiatric conditions associated with agitation were schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and personality disorder. The management of agitation included from non-invasive to more coercive measures (mechanical, physical restraint or seclusion) that were unavoidable in more than half of the agitation episodes (59.5%). Conclusion: The results show that agitation is a common symptom in the clinical practice, both in emergency and inpatient psychiatric departments. Further studies are warranted to better recognize (using a standardized definition) and characterize agitation episodes.


Scientific Children Health Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2 lomonosovsky Avenue, Moscow, 119991, Russian federationBronchial asthma ranks among the most common allergic diseases in children. It is chronic inflammatory disease of the respiratory tract, in which many cells of innate and adaptive immune system participate together with epithelial cells causing the main clinical syndromes typical for the disease. Currently, bronchial asthma therapy aims at obtaining the control over the symptoms and course of asthma by providing an anti-inflammatory baseline therapy using different groups of pharmaceuticals: inhaled glucocorticosteroids, leukotriene receptor antagonists, cromones, beta-2-agonists and long-acting theophyllines, systemic glucocorticosteroids and anti-IgE-therapy. However, despite a wide range of approaches to anti-inflammatory baseline therapy, it is still a problem to obtain the disease control in most patients indicating the necessity for searching new therapeutic approaches. In this regard, to optimize pathogenetic therapy of bronchial asthma, the work is being currently carried out to improve the existing anti-inflammatory drugs and their combinations. Moreover, there is a search for crucially new approaches to asthma treatment with due consideration of the disease phenotypes and endotypes including development and practical application of pharmaceutical drugs with anti-cytokine and anti-mediator effects. Probably, as far as the knowledge of molecular characteristics of asthma endotypes is being refined, and there being introduced the biomarkers enabling to diagnose asthma phenotypes and endotypes and monitor asthma control, there will be implemented an individual approach in individual therapy administration.Key words: bronchial asthma; children; bronchial asthma control; baseline anti-inflammatory therapy of bronchial asthma.For contacts: Eliseeva Tatiyana Ivanovna, e-mail: email@example.com


Abstract: We describe the spatial aggregation of the magpie goose (Anseranas semipalmata) in relation to the dynamics of the ephemeral floodplains of northern Australia. Past broad-scale studies have linked geese to floodplains dominated by the sedge, Eleocharis dulcis, but the type of response has not been determined, nor the impact of predation on food plants. Moreover, departure thresholds are not known. We develop hypotheses on aggregation and departure and confront these with field data. Thus, from 2005–2007 we established two sites on the floodplains of Kakadu National Park (three 1-ha plots per site, six plots in total) and used for monthly, dry season bird counts. An airboat was used to collect data from each of the six plots, including sedge tubers and measures of water level and soil viscosity. Further, we built exclosures (three per site, six in total) to test the impact of herbivory on E. dulcis. Generalized linear models and information theory were used to test the strength of supporting evidence for alternate hypotheses. Geese showed a clear aggregative response to E. dulcis tubers, were forced to depart following floodplain drying and had a marked impact on E. dulcis tuber density. Despite this, there was no evidence of a negative-feedback mechanism between plant–herbivore populations, suggesting that the system is driven by extrinsic parameters (here rainfall).


The last 4 decades have seen the transformation of food supply chains from being supply driven to becoming much more closely integrated with consumer demand. With this development, the transaction mechanism in food marketing channels has changed from an open-market mechanism to coordination through the use of contract-supply arrangements between farmers and food processors and retailers. In this article, we assess the interaction of marketing channel members through the use of contracts and its impact on incentives, coordination costs, risk aversion, risk allocation, and risk management strategies. For this purpose we specify a 3-stage principal-agent supply chain model involving producers, wholesalers, retailers, and a futures market. We compare the situation with and without a futures market. The empirical results regarding the Dutch ware potato marketing channel during 1971 to 2003 reveal that as a result of increases in incentives to producers and wholesalers, the coordination costs of the marketing channel decreased significantly, both with and without futures trade. The coordination costs of the marketing channel in the case with a futures market appear to be lower than without futures, demonstrating the informational (i.e., price discovery) role of futures markets.


This paper examines relationships between size and risk in financial markets. Based on the work of Makridakis / Taleb [2009] and Taleb / Tapiero [2009], presents the problems of excessive risk and imbalances caused by the size of firms. Markets mixed on firm growth traps externalities can influence risk, high-cost for the commons. A policy of regulation and control in markets, while necessary, are still insufficient in economies with little institutional support. Externalities of risk and firm size categories are fundamental to understanding the present financial crisis since the economies of scale.


In this paper, we employ a unique new data set (the Philanthropy Panel Study (PPS), a module within the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)) to test whether the propensity to donate out of inherited wealth is equal to the propensities to donate out of other wealth, earned income, and transfer payments. We find that the elasticity of giving from non-inherited wealth is much greater than from inherited wealth for total giving and gifts to religion, combined causes, people in need, health, education, and other causes. The effects of income derived from inherited wealth and labor income are similar in terms of elasticities, although inherited wealth creates a higher marginal propensity to donate. Transfer income has either a small or no apparent effect on donations.


ABSTRACT The period of adolescence represents a particularly critical and sensitive phase in relation to health. Emancipatory work on health inequalities and social justice suggests that understanding both social structures and individual human agency have important implications for how public health efforts should seek to improve the health and social well-being of young people. Despite a resurgence of interest in 'agency', there has been far less theorising of young people's agency and agentic practices in relation to health. In this article, we offer our conceptualisations of agency and agency practices, focusing particularly on non-performative and reflexive conceptualisations, which allow for agency and agency practices to be decoupled from one another. We consider forms of collective agency that may catalyse structural change and disrupt existing power relations, and explore how collective agency may have currency in the promotion of health and social wellbeing of young people. Ultimately, to move towards greater health equity and social justice for young people, it's vital to direct our attention towards a structurally transformative agency. We draw upon Sen's Capability Approach to firstly suggest the utility of such an approach to expanding our evaluative field to capture agency change and expansions in wellbeing freedom, and secondly as a way to identify policies and collective actions for transformative individual agency. We hope that new thinking in these areas may help fuel collective agency in ways that promote social justice for young people in relation to health and wellbeing.


Fetuses of pregnant CD-1 Swiss albino mice, exposed to 0.1% nicotine sulphate at a dose of 1.67 mg/kg body weight from the 6th to the 15th gestational day, were compared with control fetuses to assess the effects of nicotine on first molar odontogenesis. Mothers were sacrificed on the 18th day of gestation. The 130 nicotine treated fetuses, as well as the 348 control fetuses were embedded in paraffin and sectioned in the frontal plane. The developing molars of the experimental fetuses were retarded, less differentiated, and reduced in breadth in comparison with controls. The developing molars of the control fetuses were in the bell stage of odontogenesis, whereas those of the experimental population were either in the late cap or early cap stage, depending on the absence or presence of palatal cleft, which occurred in 9.6% of the fetuses. It is suggested that nicotine, or its metabolic byproducts, interfere with normal interaction between the epithelial and mesenchymal components of the developing tooth.


This paper presents a new design algorithm for the decentralized output feedback control problem of large-scale interconnected systems. Each subsystem is composed of a linear (possibly unstable) time-invariant part and an uncertain additive nonlinearity which is a discontinuous function of time and state of the overall system. The nonlinear function is assumed to be bounded by a quadratic inequality, and a decentralized estimated state feedback controller and a decentralized observer are designed for each subsystem, based on linear matrix inequalities. Sufficient conditions for the synthesis of feedback action are provided, under which the proposed controllers and observers can achieve robust stabilization of the overall large-scale system. An attractive feature of the proposed scheme is that it guarantees connective stability of the overall system and requires no intersubsystem communication. The controller design is evaluated on a natural circulation drum boiler, where the nonlinear model describes the key dynamical properties of the drum, the risers, the downcomers, and the turbine-generator unit. The linearized system has two poles at origin, one associated with water dynamics and the other with generator dynamics. Simulation results are presented that show the effectiveness of the proposed control against instabilities following sudden load variations. The control is also effective for steady-state operation.


Several studies have suggested Indonesia to be among the top plastic polluting countries globally. Data on the presence and amounts of plastic pollution are required to help design effective plastic reduction and mitigation strategies. Research quantifying plastic pollution in Indonesia has picked up in recent years. However, a lack of central coordination in this research has led to research output with different goals, methods, and data formats. In this study we present a meta-analysis of studies published on plastic pollution in Indonesia to uncover gaps and biases in current research, and to use these insights to suggest ways to improve future research to fill these gaps. Research gaps and biases identified include a clear preference for marine research, and a bias toward certain environmental compartments within the marine, riverine, and terrestrial systems that have easy to apply methods. Units of measurement used to express results vary greatly between studies, making it difficult to compare data effectively. Nevertheless, we identify polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene variants (PE, HDPE, LDPE) to be among the most frequently found polymers in both macro- and microplastic pollution in Indonesia, though polymer identification is lacking in a large part of the studies. Plastic research is mostly done on Java (59% of the studies). We recommend research methods used to quantify plastic pollution to be harmonized. Moreover, we recommend a shift in focus of research toward the riverine and terrestrial environments and a shift of focus of environmental compartments analyzed within these systems, an increase in spatial coverage of research across Indonesia, and lastly, a larger focus on polymer characterization. With these changes we envision future research which can aid with the design of more effective and targeted reduction and mitigation strategies.


The CES production function was introduced to economics in the 1961 paper "Capital-Labor Substitution and Economic Efficiency," by Kenneth Arrow, Hollis Chenery, Bagicha Minhas, and Robert Solow. The paper had an immediate and substantial impact on economic research, and the CES production function remains an important tool for both theoretical and empirical researchers. I review how the CES production function was derived and used in the paper, and, relying on archival sources, present a fine-grained account of the collaborative process that produced the paper. I also discuss the CES production function as an example of multiple simultaneous discovery and suggest reasons for its broad and rapid diffusion.


The combination of the generalized transverse resonance technique, a field-matching method, and the generalized scattering matrix (GSM) concept is proposed in this paper as an efficient, versatile, and accurate method for the analysis of laterally open periodic waveguides. The proposed method accounts for both open and periodic boundary conditions without any approximation. Its only drawback is its restriction to the analysis of structures that can be segmented in the Cartesian coordinate system. How ever, a staircase approach has been successfully applied to over come this basic limitation. The segmentation of the waveguides, the field expansions for TMp,qz Bloch modes in each partition, and a modification of the well-known GSM cascading procedure for the analysis of a particular type of structure are detailed. In order to demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed approach, four structures, similar to the substrate integrated waveguide, have been analyzed, built, and measured. These examples include single-row square-post and circular-post waveguides, and displaced-row and multiple-row square-post waveguides. The computations and measurements confirm the efficiency, accuracy, and great versatility of this method.


We used the polymerase chain reaction with degenerate oligonucleotide primers to search for Csk-related kinases. A cDNA coding for a Csk-like protein-tyrosine kinase was cloned from mouse brain and was designated ctk, for csk-type protein-tyrosine kinase. The 1.9-kb ctk mRNA was found to be expressed predominantly in brain and capable of encoding a 52-kDa protein-tyrosine kinase. The amino acid sequence of Ctk was found to possess 53% identity with mouse Csk, shared all the predicted structural features of Csk, and was capable of phosphorylating the carboxyl-terminal conserved tyrosine of Src family members. Our results thereby indicate that ctk represents a gene that defines a family of structurally and functionally related Csk-like protein-tyrosine kinases.


Between Jan 15 and March 15, 1971, forty-eight grade-school patients living in western Chicago were hospitalized with an encephalopathic illness. Fourteen of these children had illnesses compatible with Reye syndrome (encephalpathy with liver impairment). Most of the children showed evidence of central nervous system (CNS) dysfunction within ten days after onset of a febrile upper respiratory tract illness. Seizures developed in 11 of the 48 patients (including 4 of the 14 with Reye syndrome). Eight of the encephalopathic patients, including 6 of the 14 with Reye syndrome, died. Two children without Reye syndrome had abnormalities of liver enzymes coincident with cerebrospinal fluid pleocytosis. Sixteen of the 24 patients tested had titer rises in serum against influenza type B only; influenza type B was isolated from throat cultures of 2 patients. This, the seventh report of CNS complications (Reye syndrome) associated with influenza type B, suggests that surveillance for neurologic sequelae should become part of the epidemiologic evaluation of influenza epidemics.


1. Abstract This paper looks at the sculptures that result from representing a group G of order 8 as a group of three dimensional transformations. The action is realized as a quotient of a full quadrilateral group and so all cells have four edges. We use tetrahedra to represent the regions and each cell is adjacent to four others. The model of this 3-manifold in space must have a boundary. These sculptures are dynamic in the sense that each cell on this boundary may be moved to another part of the boundary to give a different sculpture.


Toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems are gene modules that are ubiquitous in free-living prokaryotes. Diverse in structure, cellular function, and fitness roles, TA systems are defined by the presence of a toxin gene that suppresses bacterial growth and a toxin-neutralizing antitoxin gene, usually encoded in a single operon. Originally viewed as DNA maintenance modules, TA systems are now thought to function in many roles, including bacterial stress tolerance, virulence, phage defense, and biofilm formation. However, very few studies have investigated the significance of TA systems in the context of plant-microbe interactions. This review discusses the potential impact and application of TA systems in plant-associated bacteria, guided by insights gained from animal-pathogenic model systems.


The latest Geographic Information System (GIS)
technology makes it possible to administer the spatial components of
daily "business object," in the corporate database, and apply suitable
geographic analysis efficiently in a desktop-focused application. We
can use wireless internet technology for transfer process in spatial
data from server to client or vice versa. However, the problem in
wireless Internet is system bottlenecks that can make the process of
transferring data not efficient. The reason is large amount of spatial
data. Optimization in the process of transferring and retrieving data,
however, is an essential issue that must be considered. Appropriate
decision to choose between R-tree and Quadtree spatial data indexing
method can optimize the process. With the rapid proliferation of
these databases in the past decade, extensive research has been
conducted on the design of efficient data structures to enable fast
spatial searching. Commercial database vendors like Oracle have also
started implementing these spatial indexing to cater to the large and
diverse GIS. This paper focuses on the decisions to choose R-tree
and quadtree spatial indexing using Oracle spatial database in mobile
GIS application. From our research condition, the result of using
Quadtree and R-tree spatial data indexing method in one single
spatial database can save the time until 42.5%.


[extract] There is, at least in large principle, freedom of information in the United States, a presumption that government and its functions will be and should be open to the public. This means that many government documents ranging from budgets to extraterrestrial life investigations to arrestees' mugshots are available to anyone who makes a request for them. The idea is that robust openness gives citizens the ability to learn exactly what government players are doing and, as the documents may sometimes reveal, why. There are groups with interests that compete with such openness, however, including those professors and researchers whose salaries are paid by the government. These scholars work in public colleges and universities; they are, therefore, public employees and subject to freedom-of-information laws. This essay focuses on public information within the academy – and the effect that such openness has on academics' First Amendment-based academic freedom. Academic freedom gives many of them rights within reasonable limits to research what they want, to learn what they want, and to teach as they choose. In that way, these government players have a constitutional layer of privacy-related protection for their educational interests that seemingly competes with a presumption of openness. Given the strongly ideological interests behind many requests for academic information, and given the tempering effect on academic expression excessively open access could have, the essay focuses on the threat to academia when states or government or courts are too willing to expose certain academic information. It argues that information privacy law and related Supreme Court concerns about thought investigation could well help shift judicial perception back toward the importance of academic freedom.


Vacuum Beam Studies of Ruthenium EtchingRu is known to have two volatile oxidation products, RuO3 and RuO4, although the etch rate is negligible when Ru is exposed to an O2 plasma discharge. The introduction of a small amount of additive gas, such as Cl2, has been shown to increase the Ru etch rate sixfold. The reason for this dramatic shift in etching is poorly understood, primarily because it is difficult if not impossible to study plasma-surface interactions in a plasma environment. The unique capabilities of the beam system have made it possible to explore the mechanism of Ru etching. It has been shown that under 500 eV Ar+ ion bombardment, the addition of O radicals lowered the etch rate by a factor of 2.5. This process was relatively insensitive to temperature over the range studied (room temperature to ~175°C). It was also shown that O radicals alone spontaneously etched Ru at a very slow rate over the entire temperature range.Statistical Analysis of Polysilicon Etching and Gate Profile Evolution in Dual-Doped Polysilicon GatesPolysilicon gate etching for the 90nm lithography node and below requires extremely precise control of the gate CD and profile. Generally speaking, the current requirement for Gate CD control is that the 3 sigma should less than ~5 nm for all gates, including across the chip, across the wafer, wafer-to-wafer, lot-to-lot, and tool-to-tool variations. Similarly, for gate sidewall angle control, the 3 sigma angle variation should be less than ~1 degree, inclusive of all sources of variation. This is particularly challenging for technologies which employ dual-doped gates, since the chemistry and physics of the etching process induces a different profile evolution between gates with different doping.The goal of this project was to identify a parameter space where the differences in gate profile evolution across different polysilicon dopant types were minimized. Blanket etch rates and patterned wafers were used to determine the effect of different gate etch process variables on the gate profile. The materials studied were undoped polysilicon and polysilicon that had been doped with P, As, Sb, and B. Prediction models were created for the blanket etch rate studies that were used to optimize the processing conditions and to propose some simple mechanisms that identify which species are adsorbed on the surface.


ABSTRACT Bioacoustic recordings are often used to conduct auditory surveys, in which human listeners identify vocalising animals on recordings. In these surveys, animals are typically counted regardless of their distance from the survey point. When these surveys are carried out in patchy habitat or near edges, detected individuals may frequently occur in a different land-cover type than the survey point itself, which introduces uncertainty regarding species-habitat associations. We propose a method to restrict detections from single microphones to within a pre-specified survey radius. The method uses logistic regression to select a sound level threshold corresponding to the desired distance threshold. We applied this method to acoustic data from the centre of 21 1-ha oil wellsites in northern Alberta. To compare our approach with the results from auditory surveys from the same locations, we used sound localisation to locate birds detected via both methods. Just 22.4% of birds detected on auditory surveys fell within the desired survey area. Using our distance-truncation method, 96% of detections were within the desired survey area. We propose that distance truncation via sound level will be useful for surveys of patchily distributed habitat, or when greater certainty about bird locations or habitat associations is desired.


The result of holographic processing is described by using the well-known mode approximation. This approximation yields new expressions for degenerate read-write holography in the optically thick scattering regime in the case in which many transverse modes are occupied. The approach differs from those of previous efforts by the inclusion of the effect of multiple dynamic gratings. The presentation makes clear the limitations of the practical applicability and the mathematical validity of the new result in relation to the better known regimes, using various approximations to predict the lowest-order fields. The application of reconstruction holography to aberration compensation is specifically considered. The effects of phase-mismatch terms are estimated. The effects of both phase and absorption gratings are obtained. Self-modulation of the recording wave is included and unstable solutions are predicted for some regimes. It is found that the various regimes have fundamentally different processing capabilities.


Jewish, Islamic and Near Eastern Studies is an interdisciplinary program whose purpose is to explore the historical experience; literary, religious and cultural expression; and political and material life of the Jewish, Islamic and Near Eastern civilizations. Our program is unique in the United States because it integrates Islamic studies and Jewish studies. Whether students favor the study of language, literature, religion, history or politics, they will find in our courses a way to deepen their appreciation of these complex and diverse societies and cultures. Students also will be encouraged to explore the interaction of Jews and Muslims with neighboring societies and cultures in the Middle East, Europe, North Africa and other parts of the world.


Objective: To determine whether or not Jamaican coaches' knowledge and practices of fluid replacement are on par with that of the National Athletic Association's and the American College of Sports Medicine Standards. Methods: A descriptive survey of 90 high-school track and field coaches in Jamaica was con -ducted. Coaches were given a 29-item survey questionnaire which adapted the content from previous surveys and also based on the National Athletic Trainers' Association guidelines for fluid replacement and information sources of fluid replacement. A pass score of 80% was employed. Results: Approximately 26.6% of participants passed the knowledge-based assessment with the minimum requirement of 80% and 73.4% of participants had an unacceptable level of knowledge about fluid replacement and hydration. Only 26 (28.9%) coaches received training in fluid replacement therapy. Most of them therefore relied on reading materials ranging from magazines to journals, or learnt it on the job from other coaches. Conclusion: Findings suggest that the level of knowledge in Jamaican track and field high-school coaches about fluid replacement and hydration is very poor. However, their attitudes towards fluid replacement and hydration are very good, and this will facilitate their acceptance and adoption of correct fluid replacement guidelines. Tapping into this positive attitude and implementing workshops, seminars and onsite promotion should improve the coaches' knowl edge significantly.


New techniques in fast time-resolved X-ray crystallography provide a different approach to understanding the structural basis of protein function. Two biological systems have been studied as part of the refinement of these techniques, and have actually spurred new ideas in time-resolved structural studies. The dissociation of carbon monoxide from carbon-monoxy myoglobin has earlier been investigated over a time range spanning 18 orders of magnitude (femtoseconds to hours) using spectroscopic methods. Rapid time-resolved determination of the entire myoglobin structure made it possible to determine both the position of the CO after photodissociation and the entire globin structure, over a time range from nanoseconds to milliseconds, during which the heme and globin relax and the carbon monoxide rebinds. Photoactive yellow protein, a relative newcomer to biophysical research, has a fully-reversible photocycle containing several spectrally distinct intermediates. Identifying and solving the structures of each intermediate is the initial goal in time-resolved studies on this protein and will contribute to a greater understanding of the biological process of light driven signal transduction.


Since the World Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction in 2005, the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) has been promoting disaster risk reduction activities to improve the capacity of all nations to reduce the impact of natural hazards. In many countries, national risk reduction strategies are being developed in line with the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA 2005-2015). Along with risk reduction, adaptation to the impacts of climate change is gaining importance in the international agenda due to the increasing intensity and frequency of climatic hazards that are impacting environmental and socio-economic systems globally.
There is mounting evidence that Asia and the Pacific are experiencing more extreme weather patterns attributable to the effects of global climate change. For this reason, the Fourth Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, hosted by Government of the Republic of Korea's National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in partnership with UNISDR, has placed the issue of risks related to climate change high on its agenda. The 4th AMCDRR has adopted the Incheon Road Map and agreed on an Action Plan for the coming five years (2010-2015) to facilitate the adoption of disaster risk reduction strategies within national frameworks. As a part of the Action Plan, NEMA has commissioned Yonsei University to prepare the procedural guidelines that facilitate the integration of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation into development planning across all sectors at the national government level.
To provide a fuller explanation of the importance of DRR and CCA integration, the first volume of the guidelines details the trifecta of converging developmental challenges which Asia faces in its immediate future: the widespread impacts of climatic change; substantial projected population growth; and rapidly increasing urbanisation. Together, these factors will combine to escalate the multitude of risks posed to the population from weather-related hazards and for this reason it is crucial for governments to implement risk reduction and adaptation considerations in their current and future planning.
The second volume of the guidelines provides step-by-step recommendations for the procedural integration of DRR and CCA as considerations in policy-making at the national government level. This includes the education of all staff about the nature and context of the risks faced from weather-related hazards; asset information gathering; risk and vulnerability mapping exercises; and comprehensive policy, plan and programme reviews against this data to identify potential opportunities for DRR and/or CCA measures to be assimilated into these existing documents and proposals, and also to highlight where risk or the impacts of climate change may be exacerbated by current agendas and thus require changing. The guide also includes the need to maintain a continuous monitoring and feedback loop within departments wishing to successfully integrate DRR and CCA as this will enable the identification of effective and ineffective strategies, which in turn promotes financial efficacy and social value.

The guidelines do not presume to suggest the details of appropriate risk reduction and adaptation measures as this will be specific to each governmental department and location and are best defined once thorough assessments have been undertaken. The guidelines aim to increase the understanding and awareness of policy makers in Asia about the importance of considering disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in their development planning and suggest the procedure by which this may be achieved.


Objective: To investigate prevalence of internalized and externalized psychological symptoms and war-related adverse events among a representative secondary-school sample of Syrian refugee adolescents, and to compare levels of depression, anxiety, and stress between Syrian refugee adolescents and Turkish adolescents. Methods: Syrian refugee adolescents (n=70) and Turkish adolescents (n=70) were asked to complete the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales (DASS-42) and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Results: DASS and SDQ scores were significantly different between the two groups; scores in all problem areas were higher in refugees. Loss of a family member increased depression, stress, and total difficulty scored, whereas witnessing death increased anxiety and stress and experiencing multiple events increased depression, anxiety, and total difficulty scores. Maternal years of schooling correlated inversely with SDQ emotional symptoms, conduct problems, and hyperactivity/inattention problem scores. Both parents' years of schooling correlated inversely with SDQ total difficulties scores. Conclusion: Syrian refugee adolescents had higher depression, anxiety, behavioral problems, peer relationship problems, and general difficulties than their Turkish peers. Facilitating refugees' access to mental health services, educating their parents, consulting, and monitoring at-risk children may contribute to reducing psychosocial problems in refugee children.


Background: Communication between patients and providers is a crucial component of effective care coordination and is associated with a number of desired patient and provider outcomes. Despite these benefits, physician–patient and physician–physician communication occurs infrequently. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between a medical practice's external environment and physician engagement in communication activities. Methodology/Approach: This was a cross-sectional examination of 4,299 U.S. physicians' self-reported engagement in communication activities. Communication was operationalized as physician's time spent on communication with patients and other providers during a typical work day. The explanatory variables were measures of environmental complexity, dynamism, and munificence. Data sources were the Health Tracking Physician Survey, the Area Resource File database, and the Dartmouth Atlas. Binary logistic regression was used to estimate the association between the environmental factors and physician engagement in communication activities. Findings: Several environmental factors, including per capita income (odds ratio range, 1.17–1.38), urban location (odds ratio range, 1.08–1.45), fluctuations in Health Maintenance Organization penetration (odds ratio range, 3.47–13.22), poverty (odds ratio range, 0.80–0.97) and population rates (odds ratio range, 1.01–1.02), and the presence of a malpractice crisis (odds ratio range, 0.22–0.43), were significantly associated with communication. Practice Implications: Certain aspects of a physician's external environment are associated with different modes of communication with different recipients (patients and providers). This knowledge can be used by health care managers and policy makers who strive to improve communication between different stakeholders within the health care system (e.g., patient and providers).


Enzymic hydrolysis of cod fish waste was investigated using two
enzymes (trypsin and bromelain). A fish protein hydrolysate (FPH)
powder and frozen flake hydrolysate were produced using a spray drier
and an ice flake machine.
Functional properties of the FPH were assessed with respect to the
molecular weight (MW) spectrum. The characteristics of solubility and
emulsification for the hydrolysate showed it to be suitable for use as
a binder compared with egg albumin (EA) and soy bean isolate (ISB) for
fish products.
Fishburgers with improved texture, succulence and reasonable cooking
losses were made successfully from cod fish mince incorporating a
vegetable oil/water emulsion stabilised by FPH. Taste panels were
carried out and overall acceptability of the fishburgers made from the
FPH emulsion was better than fishburgers containing EA and ISB
emulsions.
Economic evaluation and specification of a pilot plant were done for
both FPH powder and frozen flake hydrolysate production.
This work strongly emphasises that FPH should only be used in fish
products which need a good binder and where the flavour/taint problems
of use in other products, e.g. beverages, pasta, will not arise.


This paper addresses the challenge of establishing a bridge between deep convolutional neural networks and conventional object detection frameworks for accurate and efficient generic object detection. We introduce Dense Neural Patterns , short for DNPs, which are dense local features derived from discriminatively trained deep convolutional neural networks. DNPs can be easily plugged into conventional detection frameworks in the same way as other dense local features(like HOG or LBP). The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated with the Regionlets object detection framework. It achieved 46.1% mean average precision on the PASCAL VOC 2007 dataset, and 44.1% on the PASCAL VOC 2010 dataset, which dramatically improves the original Regionlets approach without DNPs. It is the first approach efficiently applying dee p convolutional features for conventional object detection models.


The article discusses the results of study that demonstrated the possibility of successful application of radial hemolysis reaction in analyzing the human inoculation immunity to new strains of influenza virus serotype A - A (H5N1) and A (H5N2). The radial hemolysis reaction provides accurate results on introduction of erythrocytes of horse or sheep into hemolytic system instead of erythrocytes of hens applied previously. The technique combines high sensitivity (in comparison with reactions of hemagglutination-inhibition and micro-neutralization, correlation coefficient 0.84-0.85) and total absence of inhibitors impact on the reaction results. During the investigation of immune response of patients who had pandemic virus A (H1N1) pdm09, radial hemolysis reaction demonstrated not only primary detection of antibodies to virus-agent (67%) during pandemic, but also elective heightened sensibility in the zone of low titer serums (1:20) in hemagglutination-inhibition reaction. These characteristics are very important in analysis of antibodies levels at early stages of disease. The radial hemolysis reaction continues to be a reliable instrument in evaluating qualitative and quantitative indicators of humoral immunity in ill patients and persons inoculated with new strains of human influenza virus.


Learning for Jobs is an OECD study of vocational education and training (VET) designed to help countries make their VET systems more responsive to labour market needs.
Since 1989, Hungary has made significant efforts to restructure its VET system and it now has many strengths, including a strong national qualifications framework. But there are significant challenges, including weak links between VET and the labour market, early tracking and multiple selection mechanisms in the school system, and the low status of VET.
The OECD review assesses the main challenges faced by the VET system and presents an interconnected package of policy recommendations. For each recommendation, the report describes the challenge, the recommendation itself, supporting arguments, and issues of implementation.


Abstract This paper presents a new type of seismic isolator that uses the principle of electromagnetic attraction and repulsion, to control the friction force between two electromagnets during earthquakes. The two electromagnets are used in conjunction with a secondary high friction dissipating and damping mechanism composed from a 10mm thick neoprene ring layer and two steel surfaces coated with Si3N4 that are used to dissipate the kinetic energy in the bridge deck at some maximum ground accelerations. The isolator utilizes tri-axial accelerometers embedded in the abutments, high current rechargeable batteries and an automated controlling unit. The presented isolator was developed specifically for a concrete bridge deck with a span of 36 meters and simple supported on two abutments, using time history electromagnetic and structural analyses. The paper presents the advantages of using this active seismic isolation system, compared to classical passive devices and the important results obtained in terms of decreasing internal forces on the substructure elements cross sections together with the reduction of relative displacements between the two electromagnets.


Is it possible to explain all political behavior in terms of self-interest? If we interpret self-interest as narrow, direct and short-term, the answer is obviously no. Things that we might call culture, ideology, ideas and moral principles clearly affect individual choices, and, thereby, political outcomes. But inquiries into the the logic behind these other forces often bring us back to interest. Much behavior that appears at odds with self-interest can be "rationalized†by considering long time horizons and the complexities of social interaction. In acting against my short-term self-interest, I may be building a useful reputation, winning and maintaining allies, making credible commitments, or establishing a focal point. Recent game theoretic work has shown how patterns of behavior that we might attribute to culture (Kreps 1990, Fearon and Laitin, 1996), partisanship (Aldrich 1995), ideology (Bawn 1999) or ideas (Garret and Weingast 1993, Weingast 1995, Bates, de Figueiredo and Weingast 1998) can arise endogenously in models with no causal force other than self-interest. The seemingly non-interest based behavior arises as the result of long time horizons, uncertainty and complex social interaction. The success of the rational choice paradigm in explaining seemingly non-interest-based behavior motivates my initial question. What are the limits of self-interest explanations? While this paper cannot offer a comprehensive answer, it explores a particular alternative to interest, moral principle. I will focus here on a case in which the role played by interest seems to be quite small, and the role played by moral principle seems quite large – the abolitionist movement in the United States. The seemingly straightforward claim that the abolitionist movement was motivated by principle begs many questions. Under what circumstances are people motivated by principle? When does principle override interest? Why is a given principle important to one person and not another? Does the "success†of a principle in motivating behavior depend on the logical force of its content, or simply on the social context in which it is invoked? The argument developed here is that social context matters a lot. Specifically, in some social contexts, some individuals can benefit by taking modestly costly action in defense of a principle that has no direct link to their self-interest. They benefit because by defending the principle, they give a credible signal of their own trustworthiness. The idea that behavior contrary to one's short-term self interest can act as an effective signal is not new to game theoretic political science. Nor is it novel to claim that abolitionism sprang from a particular vision of social order held by evangelical communities in the early-to-mid 19th century. This paper's contribution is to show that this vision of social order created an unusual need for individuals to be able signal good intentions to their fellow community members.


Black stain may develop on the coronal surfaces of human teeth, and this type of stain is common in the Hong Kong Chinese population. The present study was undertaken to ascertain if the deposit conforms in composition to the black stain found elsewhere, and to describe its ultrastructure using the scanning electron microscope. Gram-stained smears were made from black stain on the teeth of 11 adult Hong Kong Chinese and studied microscopically. From another 15 persons extracted teeth exhibiting black stain were obtained and fixed. Two ground sections were made from each tooth, one was stained with toluidine blue, the other was dried and prepared for scanning electron microscopy. The gram-stained smears demonstrated predominantly gram-positive filamentous microorganisms with an admixture of gram-positive cocci and rods. The ground sections revealed a deposit on the outer surface of the enamel, which was clearly divided into two distinctly different layers: an inner yellow opaque layer, and an outer layer of microorganisms. Scanning electron microscopy demonstrated that the deposit consisted entirely of microorganisms, and that in portions close to the enamel they were often obscured by a substance indicative of calcification. Thus the black stain found on the teeth of Hong Kong Chinese is similar in composition and structure to that reported to occur in other populations. The black stain is a special type of dental plaque characterized by its simple flora and its tendency to calcify.


Background Pressure ulcers have detrimental effects on our patients both physically and emotionally and have financial implications for health care providers. A five-year audit of pressure ulcers reported in the Evelina Children's Hospital, Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) identified that almost 50% were as a consequence of nasal endotracheal tubes. Objective A national survey was conducted to collect information on management of nasal endotracheal tubes and the perceived risk factors contributing to the formation of nasal pressure ulcers. The data gathered facilitated comparison of different techniques in methods of safe securement, skin protection and reduction of iatrogenic injury from nasal endotracheal tubes. The results add to existing knowledge around nasal pressure ulcers to contribute to the reduction of incidents. Method An electronic questionnaire was devised and circulated to twenty five Paediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland to gather information on current practice. Results The response rate was 88.5% (23/25). The results indicated that the incidents of nasal pressure ulcers in comparable units were similar. However, securement techniques, skin protection and methods to reduce injury were variable. This survey also identified no consistent method used for grading or reporting of pressure ulcers. Conclusion The survey identified nasal pressure ulcers as a national problem with no clear evidence of best practice, therefore, highlighting this issue as a priority for nursing research in PICU and NICU.


Objective To determine whether the timing of notification of critical international normalized ratio (INR) results (during or after clinic hours) altered the clinician's ability to affect same-day patient care.

Design Retrospective chart review.

Setting The Anticoagulation Management Service at the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton.

Participants A total of 276 patients with critical INR results (> 5.0) separated by at least 30 days were identified to have 200 critical INR results reported during clinic hours and 200 reported after hours.

Main outcome measures Differences in the proportion of patients with critical INR results having same-day care altered (by changing warfarin dose, administering vitamin K, or referring for assessment) between those with results reported during clinic hours compared with those with results reported after clinic hours. Differences by highly critical INR results (> 9.0 vs ≤ 9.0) and whether patients experienced thromboembolism or bleeding within 30 days were also assessed.

Results Same-day patient care was affected for 174 out of 200 (87.0%) critical INR results reported during clinic hours compared with 101 out of 200 (50.5%) reported after clinic hours ( P < .001). The most common reason for not being able to intervene was that warfarin had already been taken. Warfarin dose alteration was the most frequent change (97.1% during clinic hours and 96.0% after hours). When patients with INRs greater than 9.0 were assessed separately, the ability to affect care increased for INRs reported both during and after clinic hours (92.9% and 63.6%, respectively), largely attributable to oral vitamin K use. Overall, thromboembolic and major bleeding event rates were low and were similar in both groups.

Conclusion Same-day care was less likely to be affected by critical INR results communicated after hours, most commonly because the patient had already taken their daily warfarin dose. However, after-hours care was still affected for 1 out of 2 patients, which is meaningful and supports current practice.


Recent progress in reinforcement learning (RL) has started producing generally capable agents that can solve a distribution of complex environments. These agents are typically tested on fixed, human-authored environments. On the other hand, quality diversity (QD) optimization has been proven to be an effective component of environment generation algorithms, which can generate collections of high-quality environments that are diverse in the resulting agent behaviors. However, these algorithms require potentially expensive simulations of agents on newly generated environments. We propose Deep Surrogate Assisted Generation of Environments (DSAGE), a sample-efficient QD environment generation algorithm that maintains a deep surrogate model for predicting agent behaviors in new environments. Results in two benchmark domains show that DSAGE significantly outperforms existing QD environment generation algorithms in discovering collections of environments that elicit diverse behaviors of a state-of-the-art RL agent and a planning agent. Our source code and videos are available at https://dsagepaper.github.io/.


The Basel framework has produced complex definitions of "adequate" capital, expressed in terms of book (accounting) ratios. However, solvency actually depends not on accounting ratios but on private investors' valuation of the firm's assets' and liabilities' market values. At large banking firms, short-term liability-holders key off the firm's economic solvency when deciding whether to renew their claims. Runs can cause a large bank's failure regardless of its book capital ratio. Yet supervisors have been largely unable to maintain minimum risk-bearing capacity at large institutions. Actual default probabilities have often exceeded the 0.1% annual rate to which Basel II was calibrated. Over the past 25 years, the median probability of failure (PD) was 0.55%, with some large banks substantially higher. The value of conjectural guarantees has averaged 11.41% of the largest 25 U.S. BHCs' equity value. I conclude by discussing the extent to which orderly resolution or contingent capital bonds might improve supervisory oversight.


Tripping of boundary-layers from laminar to turbulent flow, which may be necessary in specific practical applications, requires high amplitude disturbances to be introduced into the boundary layers without large drag penalties. As a possible improvement on fixed trip devices, a technique based on vortex shedding for enhancing supersonic flow transition is demonstrated in the present paper for a Mach 1.5 boundary layer. The compressible Navier-Stokes equations are solved directly using a high-order (fifth-order in space and third-order in time) finite difference method for small-scale cylinders suspended transversely near the wall. For cylinders with proper diameter and mount location, asymmetry vortices shed within the boundary layer are capable of tripping laminar-turbulent transition. Full three-dimensional simulations showed that transition was enhanced. A parametric study of the size and mounting location of the cylinder is carried out to identify the most effective setup. It is also found that the vortex shedding can be suppressed by some factors such as wall effect. Keywords—Boundary layer instability, boundary layer transition, vortex shedding, supersonic flows, flow control.


Infants' imitation is influenced by causal and intentional cues. Here we examine whether imitation is influenced by prior social expectations. Infants (mean age = 27 months) first played one of three games either: 1) copying the experimenters' gestures, 2) establishing and working toward a shared goal or 3) a non-interactive control. They then participated in a separate imitation task involved both causally necessary and unnecessary actions and a goal. Infants who began by copying the experimenter were more likely to imitate causally unnecessary actions, infants who played a game with a shared goal were more likely to only perform causally necessary actions. Infants in the non-interactive control had no preferred response, and were least likely to achieve outcome as demonstrated. These results implicate the broader social context as an important factor guiding the actions infants choose to imitate, and have implications for the role of imitation in


Social activities are responsible for a large proportion of travel demands of individuals. Modeling of the social network of a studied population offers a basis to predict social travel in a more comprehensive way than currently is possible. In this paper we develop a method to generate a whole social network for a given population focusing on friendship relationships. The core of the method is a friendship-formation model that predicts for any two given persons from a population the probability that a friendship relationship exists between the persons. The model takes into account the degree of similarity in attributes, geographic distance between the persons as well as threshold values representing the persons' opportunities and base preferences for engagement in a friendship relationship. We show how the model can be estimated on the basis of observed personal social networks from a sample of individuals. We estimate and test the model using data collected in a recent survey in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. The results indicate that the model is able to generate networks that display the same structural properties as we find in the sample data. A synthetic network generated in this way can be used to microsimulate social interactions in a population in geographic space


The primary motivation for this study has been to give consideration to a model of
school leadership, which is based on the notion of 'practice' in Alasdair MacIntyre's sense of
that term. The intention is to provide school leadership with a language closer to what is
known about the nature and activity of the school, the actual complexity of the school
leadership situation and one that would give a much needed sense of coherence to the role
and relationship expectations than currently exists. Given the moral context of schools, the
study also contends that what is further required of such an account is that it is ethical in its
substance, with questions of value and the good to the fore. Arising from these
considerations, the study directs itself towards the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, in
particular his account of practices, with a view to crafting a lens that could inform a possible
new language for school leadership. MacIntyre's notion of practice connects well with
education in a broader moral context because it emphasises the importance of ethically rich
actions and notions of care and co-operation.
The study has taken account of the extensive body of literature both internationally
and in the Irish context which has looked at theoretical perspectives as well as the lives and
work of school leaders on the ground. Whilst there have been significant developments in the
field of school leadership research, a number of challenges exist. These are primarily
concerned with issues of competing purposes, a general lack of coherence with regard to
practice, role and relationship expectations, as well as conflicting accounts of what makes for
good leadership in a school context. Drawing on MacIntyre's theory of internal goods, the
study has sought to consider how a more appropriate framework for the cultivation of the
good of school leadership can be arrived at through addressing issues of purpose, coherence
and excellence in practice.


Scheduling the transmission of time-sensitive information from a source node to multiple users over error-prone communication channels is studied with the goal of minimizing the long-term average age of information (AoI) at the users. A long-term average resource constraint is imposed on the source, which limits the average number of transmissions. The source can transmit only to a single user at each time slot, and after each transmission, it receives an instantaneous ACK/NACK feedback from the intended receiver, and decides when and to which user to transmit the next update. Assuming the channel statistics are known, the optimal scheduling policy is studied for both the standard automatic repeat request (ARQ) and hybrid ARQ (HARQ) protocols. Then, a reinforcement learning (RL) approach is introduced to find a near-optimal policy, which does not assume any a priori information on the random processes governing the channel states. Different RL methods including average-cost SARSA with linear function approximation (LFA), upper confidence reinforcement learning (UCRL2), and deep Q-network (DQN) are applied and compared through numerical simulations.


Anatomical features on cortical surfaces are usually represented by landmark curves, called sulci/gyri curves. These landmark curves are important information for neuroscientists to study brain diseases and to match different cortical surfaces. Manual labelling of these landmark curves is time-consuming, especially when there is a large set of data. In this paper, we proposed to trace the landmark curves on cortical surfaces automatically based on the principal directions. Suppose we are given the global conformal parametrization of a cortical surface, By fixing two endpoints, the anchor points, we propose to trace the landmark curves iteratively on the spherical/rectangular parameter domain along the principal direction. Consequently, the landmark curves can be mapped onto the cortical surface. To speed up the iterative scheme, a good initial guess of the landmark curve is necessary. We proposed a method to get a good initialization by extracting the high curvature region on the cortical surface using the Chan-Vese segmentation. This involves solving a PDE on the manifold using our global conformal parametrization technique. Experimental results show that the landmark curves detected by our algorithm closely resemble to those manually labelled curves. As an application, we used these automatically labelled landmark curves to build average cortical surfaces with an optimized brain conformal mapping method. Experimental results show our method can help automatically matching brain cortical surfaces.


RPS3, a conserved, eukaryotic ribosomal protein of the 40 S subunit, is required for ribosome biogenesis. Because ribosomal proteins are abundant and ubiquitous, they may have additional extraribosomal functions. Here, we show that human RPS3 is a physiological target of Akt kinase and a novel mediator of neuronal apoptosis. NGF stimulation resulted in phosphorylation of threonine 70 of RPS3 by Akt, and this phosphorylation was required for Akt binding to RPS3. RPS3 induced neuronal apoptosis, up-regulating proapoptotic proteins Dp5/Hrk and Bim by binding to E2F1 and acting synergistically with it. Akt-dependent phosphorylation of RPS3 inhibited its proapoptotic function and perturbed its interaction with E2F1. These events coincided with nuclear translocation and accumulation of RPS3, where it functions as an endonuclease. Nuclear accumulation of RPS3 results in an increase in DNA repair activity to some extent, thereby sustaining neuronal survival. Abolishment of Akt-mediated RPS3 phosphorylation through mutagenesis accelerated apoptotic cell death and severely compromised nuclear translocation of RPS3. Thus, our findings define an extraribosomal role of RPS3 as a molecular switch that accommodates apoptotic induction to DNA repair through Akt-mediated phosphorylation.


Abstract The aim of this study is to evaluate the usefulness of serum procalcitonin (PCT) as a diagnostic biomarker for distinguishing pneumonia from pulmonary edema in patients presenting with pulmonary infiltrates on chest radiography. A comparative study was performed retrospectively in a university-affiliated hospital, from May, 2013 to April, 2015. Adult patients (≥18 years) who showed pulmonary infiltrates on chest radiography and had blood tests with C-reactive protein (CRP), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), PCT, and N-terminal pro-b-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) on admission were included in the study. Clinical parameters collected on admission were compared between the case group (n = 143) with pneumonia and the control group (n = 88) with pulmonary edema alone. During the study period, a total of 1217 patients were identified. Of them, a total of 231 patients were included in analyses based on exclusion criteria. In the multivariate logistic regression analysis, PCT ≥0.25 ng/mL, ESR ≥35 mm/h, CRP ≥18 mg/L, NT-proBNP ⩽200 pg/mL, underlying neurologic diseases, fever, sputum, absence of cardiomegaly, and a low Charlson comorbidity index were independently associated with pneumonia. For this model, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value in distinguishing between the 2 groups were 90.2%, 79.6%, 87.8%, and 83.3%, respectively, with an area under the curve of 0.93. This study suggests that the practical use of PCT in conjunction with clinical data can be valuable in the differential diagnosis of pulmonary infiltrates and guidance for clinicians to prevent antibiotic misuse.


: This paper reviews the clinical presentation, neuro-ophthalmologic, endocrinologic, and radiographic findings of 74 children (0-20 years) harboring parasellar lesions who were treated on our service between 1968 and 1977. Our data support the conclusion that earlier diagnosis is occurring, although there is still a significant lag between onset of symptoms and treatment, especially in histologically benign lesions. The differential diagnosis is facilitated by recognition of key features of four major tumor types: craniopharyngioma, parasellar glioma, germinoma, and pituitary adenoma.


There is little guidance regarding the impact of alcohol and cannabis on the clinical course of inflammatory bowel disease. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence, sociodemographic characteristics and impact of alcohol and cannabis use on the clinical course of the disease.

 We performed a retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data within the Swiss Inflammatory Bowel Disease Cohort Study with yearly follow-ups and substance specific questionnaires. We analyzed the prevalence of use, profile of users at risk for addiction and the impact of alcohol and cannabis on the course of disease.

 We collected data of 2828 patients included between 2006 and 2018, and analyzed it according to their completion of specific surveys on alcohol and cannabis use. The prevalence of patient-reported active use was 41.3 % for alcohol and 6% for cannabis. Heavy drinkers were over-represented among retired, married smokers receiving mostly aminosalicylates and less immunosuppression. In ulcerative colitis patients, low-to-moderate drinking was associated with less extensive disease. Cannabis users were often students with ileal Crohn's disease. A logistic regression analysis confirmed a risk of alcohol consumption in male workers > 50 years, whereas cannabis use was only associated with nicotine consumption. Female gender, retirement and being married were protective factors regarding cannabis consumption.

 A significant proportion of patients with inflammatory bowel disease consume alcohol or cannabis. Heavy alcohol consumption is most likely in male smokers > 50 years, whereas young men with ileal disease rather use cannabis.


The analysis is introduced by a brief account of the development of work on thermal comfort. The observations, which are fully described in relation to the interior climates which were experienced, were made in Singapore in 1949-50. The climate of Singapore is typical of the equator, being warm, damp and windless; and the annual variation is almost negligible. Buildings are unheated, of an open type, and shaded from the sun and sky. A multiple regression equation has been derived, giving the thermal effect on a number of subjects of variations in the air temperature, the water vapour pressure, and the air velocity within the ranges experienced. The implications of the equation are discussed, and a climatic index is derived from it which is similar in definition to the widely used "effective temperature" scale, but shows a better correlation with thermal sensation. The new index is named the Singapore index. At a further stage the thermal sensation scale is simplified for the purpose of probit analysis. The probit regressions of discomfort due to warmth and cold are separately given in relation to the new index, and are combined to yield a thermal comfort graph from which the optimum is obtained and explored. A comfort chart for the rapid assessment of these humid climates is supplied, and an alternative form of the index equation is given which is more suitable for rapid calculation. It appears desirable in an equatorial climate to attempt to minimize discomfort by allowing to some extent for individual thermal requirements, and the benefits of a suitable climatic spread within a room are described.


Probing catalytic reactions on a catalyst surface in real time is a major challenge. Herein, we demonstrate the utility of a continuous flow millifluidic chip reactor coated with a nanostructured gold catalyst as an effective platform for in situ investigation of the kinetics of catalytic reactions by taking 5-(hydroxymethyl)furfural (HMF) to 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) conversion as a model reaction. The idea conceptualized in this paper can not only dramatically change the ability to probe the time-resolved kinetics of heterogeneous catalysis reactions but also used for investigating other chemical and biological catalytic processes, thereby making this a broad platform for probing reactions as they occur within continuous flow reactors.


Using an interpretative approach, this paper examines the perspectives of Franco-Ontarian postsecondary students employing an exploratory qualitative research. Between January and June 2014, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted in Ottawa and Toronto with 18 Franco-Ontarian postsecondary students. The findings reveal that participants who study in bilingual postsecondary institutions would like to have access to courses in French, as well as see improvement in the quality of the language of instruction, and the opportunities to socialize in French. Participants who study in French-language postsecondary institutions express satisfaction with their learning experience, whereas participants who study in English-language postsecondary institutions express sentiments of linguistic isolation. In addition, the lack of socialization opportunities in French and the underrepresentation of Franco-Ontarian realities in the curriculum combined with instances of linguistic intimidation fuel linguistic insecurity.