Mitochondrial response to oxidative stress is intricately related to cellular homeostasis due to the high susceptibility of the mitochondrial genome to oxidative damage. Octocoral mitogenomes possess a unique DNA repair gene, mtMutS, potentially capable of counteracting the effects of oxidative stress induced mtDNA damage. Despite this unique feature, the response of octocoral mitochondria to increased oxidative stress remains unexplored. Here we explore the response of the octocoral Sinularia cf. cruciata to elevated temperature and low-pH stress and its ability to reverse acute oxidative mtDNA damage caused by exogenous agents like hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). The differential transcriptional response to these climate change-related stresses was recorded for two mtDNA-encoded genes and three stress biomarkers. Only HSP70 was significantly upregulated during thermal stress whereas significant reduction in the expression levels of HSP70, GPX, and COI was observed along with an increased number of mtMutS transcripts during low-pH stress. Damage to mtDNA was evident, accompanied by changes in mtDNA copy number. Damage caused by H2O2 toxicity was reversed within 5 hours and initial mtDNA copy number apparently influenced damage reversal. Our results indicate that different stress-specific resilience strategies are used by this octocoral species and its mitochondria to reverse oxidative stress and associated mtDNA damage. These experiments provide the first account on the response of octocoral mitochondria with its unique gene repertoire among animals to different stressors and highlight its potential role in conferring resilience to the host cells during different climate change scenarios.


Xenoliths from Hawk's Nib (Bute, SW Scotland), entrained in alkali basalt of late Carboniferous–early Permian age, generally possess unrecrystallized igneous cumulate textures. Most are inferred to derive from lower crustal (20–30 km) depths, with a small minority from the underlying restitic mantle. Compositions range from ultramafic cumulates (dunite, wehrlite, websterite, clinopyroxenite) to gabbros and anorthosites. The suite is unique in being dominated by poikilitic wehrlites and olivine clinopyroxenites. Major element variation in the cumulates is controlled by modal mineral variations. The ultramafic cumulates all have high REE contents and light REE (LREE)-enriched patterns, with websterites being the least enriched. Gabbroic xenoliths have uniform patterns in which both LREE and heavy REE are depleted relative to the middle REE, with small positive Eu anomalies. Present-day Sr–Nd isotopic data for the suite are the most depleted among Scottish xenoliths. The xenoliths are inferred to be products of young replenishments of the lower crust by basaltic magmas during continental underplating. Orthopyroxene-bearing lithologies crystallized from tholeiitic magmas whereas alkali basalts formed the clinopyroxene-rich samples; both parental magma-types were derived from similar mantle sources.


In this work, design a hybrid control wheeled robot which is capable of detecting buried landmines and marking their localization in uneasy accessible areas, while enabling the operator to control the robot wirelessly from a distance. As a universal solution to the landmine problem is unlikely to be achieved in the short time, according to what many other researchers think, time is worth spent on trying to solve a specific aspect of the global problem, rather than treating the problem as a whole. The problem becomes even more difficult if the environment is hazardous, presents a potentially wide temperature range, and is subject to rain, dust and other natural factors. Such environments are typical for minefields. Landmines still continue to kill, injure and penalize on a daily basis mainly a civilian population. Replacing human demines or trained dogs in the mine searching task is challenging, and promises better detection capabilities. This paper presents an autonomous mine searching wheeled robot using hybrid controller.


EMPHO has produced summary reports for the five spearhead Local Authorities within the East Midlands. These reports use the ranked HPI score for the 40 LAs in the East Midlands to enable comparisons against various indicators of local resources, conditions and services.


Apache ZooKeeper is a distributed data storage that is highly concurrent and asynchronous due to network communication, testing such a system is very challenging. Our solution using the tool "Modbat" generates test cases for concurrent client sessions, and processes results from synchronous and asynchronous callbacks. We use an embedded model checker to compute the test oracle for non-deterministic outcomes, the oracle model evolves dynamically with each new test step. Our work has detected multiple previously unknown defects in ZooKeeper. Finally, a thorough coverage evaluation of the core classes show how code and branch coverage strongly relate to feature coverage in the model, and hence modeling effort.


The emerging paradigm of distributed Web services has promised seamless business integration across the Internet that shares not only computing power but also applications. One major challenge is resource allocation to each end user in an economically efficient and low latency manner. A common solution is proportional sharing where each user gets his resource in proportion to the predetermined weight. However, this does not allow users to differentiate the value of their services and to dynamically adjust the weights. A resource reservation mechanism may improve the information and service sharing but usually introduces a high latency. In this paper, we propose a progressive auction based market mechanism for resource allocation that allows user differentiation of the service value and ensures the resource acquisition latency to be limited only to the communication delay in service-oriented architecture (SOA) systems. We present a service sharing prototype for selecting services for further business process composition or solution creation and show experimental results on the formation of reliable user ranking in resource sharing through the progressive auction.


Proceedings: AACR 102nd Annual Meeting 2011‐‐ Apr 2‐6, 2011; Orlando, FL

In epidemiologic studies, high intake of beta-cryptoxanthin has been associated with a decreased risk of lung cancer, particularly among current smokers. However, data are not available from well-controlled animal studies to examine the effects of beta-cryptoxanthin on cigarette smoke-induced lung lesions, and the biological mechanisms by which beta-cryptoxanthin might affect lung carcinogenesis. We evaluated the effects of beta-cryptoxanthin supplementation on cigarette smoke-induced squamous metaplasia, inflammation, and changes in protein levels of pro-inflammatory cytokine [tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha)] and transcription factors [nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kappa B) and activator protein-1 (AP-1)], as well as on smoke-induced oxidative DNA damage [8-hydroxy-2′-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG)] in the lung tissue of ferrets. Thirty six male ferrets were assigned to cigarette smoke exposure or to no exposure and to no dose, low-dose, or high-dose beta-cryptoxanthin supplementation (2 × 3 factorial design) for 3 months. Beta-cryptoxanthin supplementation dose-dependently increased plasma and lung beta-cryptoxanthin levels in ferrets, whereas cigarette smoke exposure lowered plasma and lung beta-cryptoxanthin levels. Beta-cryptoxanthin at both doses significantly decreased smoke-induced lung squamous metaplasia and inflammation. Beta-cryptoxanthin also substantially reduced smoke-elevated TNF-alpha levels in alveolar, bronchial, bronchiolar and airway serous/mucous gland epithelial cells and in lung macrophages. Moreover, beta-cryptoxanthin decreased smoke-induced activation of NF-kappa B and expression of AP-1 and 8-OHdG. The beneficial effects of beta-cryptoxanthin were stronger for high-dose beta-cryptoxanthin than for low-dose beta-cryptoxanthin. Data from this study indicate that beta-cryptoxanthin provides a beneficial effect against cigarette smoke-induced inflammation, oxidative DNA damage and squamous metaplasia in the lungs. Beta-cryptoxanthin may prevent lung carcinogenesis through its inhibitive effects on lung inflammation and oxidative DNA damage.

Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2011 Apr 2-6; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2011;71(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 832. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2011-832


Although smoke alarms are effective when it comes to quickly detecting a fire, it appears that there are still many households without the presence of a working smoke alarm. This is not only a problem in the Netherlands, but is also a topic of research in the United States and other European countries. Much research has focused on the question how the intervention should be designed so that it would motivate people to obtain, install and maintain a smoke alarm. However the effectiveness of these smoke alarm programs is often minimal and education alone seldom leads to behavioral change.
For many health threats a social cognitive model is used to examine the determinants which accounts for behavioral change. This way it is know what should be communicated so that it would motivate people to engage in healthy behaviors. When it comes to the use of smoke alarms this is still an unknown domain. The purpose of this research is to identify the social cognitive determinants which are strongly associated with the intention to purchase a smoke alarm.
To make this research also scientifically interesting the Protection Motivation Theory is used. This theory is originally proposed in the context of health threats but is also successfully applied to other risks like earthquakes and flood. However, studies applied to other risks are rare and mainly took place in the United States.
Based on the constructs of the PMT an education about home fires and the use of home smoke alarms is designed. In an experimental study, where the experimental group is receiving the education and the control group a different text, the effects of the education have been measured. It was expected that the respondents in the experimental group should have a higher perception of perceived severity, perceived vulnerability, fear, response efficacy and self efficacy and a lower perception of response costs. It was also expected that the intention to purchase a smoke alarm was higher in the group who received the intervention than the intention of the respondents from the control group. However, no significant differences have been found.
Because the education about smoke alarms had no effect on the social cognitions, the group with smoke alarms is compared to the group without smoke alarms. Do they differ in demographic or social cognitive characteristics? When compared on demographic factors no significant differences can be found. Comparison based on social cognitive factors reveals a significant lower score on Afstudeerscriptie Augustus 2010 Maike Bont 4 Master of Communication Studies
response costs for the group with smoke alarms. The intention to buy a smoke alarm is significant higher in the group without smoke alarms.
To find out if there are special groups for education further analysis are executed. Are there for example groups who are less convinced of the effectiveness of a smoke alarm? Besides tenants the education should be directed at women because they are more afraid of fire and are less convinced of their ability to install a smoke alarm. Nevertheless do they have a higher intention to purchase a smoke alarm than men.
Despite the fact that the education was not effective in changing cognitions, it is possible to determine the factors that are the most important predictors of intention. Correlation analysis showed that fear, severity and response efficacy are the constructs where the education should focus on.
Using regression analysis the applicability of PMT in the case of home fire and the use of smoke alarms is tested. Severity (physical), fear, response efficacy and response costs can account for 25% of the variance in intention together with income and ownership.


Methods are available to measure conductivity, charge, surface potential, carrier density, piezo-electric and other electrical properties with nanometer scale resolution. One of these methods, scanning microwave impedance microscopy (sMIM), has gained interest due to its capability to measure the full impedance (capacitance and resistive part) with high sensitivity and high spatial resolution. This paper introduces a novel data-cube approach that combines sMIM imaging and sMIM point spectroscopy, producing an integrated and complete 3D data set. This approach replaces the subjective approach of guessing locations of interest (for single point spectroscopy) with a big data approach resulting in higher dimensional data that can be sliced along any axis or plane and is conducive to principal component analysis or other machine learning approaches to data reduction. The data-cube approach is also applicable to other AFM-based electrical characterization modes.


Aim: This paper discusses the current mental health and social and emotional wellbeing in Indigenous Australian mental health and wellbeing, the gaps in research, the need for transformative and decolonising research and practice, and the opportunities and recommendations to address existing mental health inequities. Method: This paper reviews key mental health and social and wellbeing policy documents and frameworks, and examines relevant literature documenting current decolonising strategies to improve programs, services and practice. It also draws on the key findings of the Centre of Best Practice in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention (CBPATSISP) and Transforming Indigenous Mental Health and Wellbeing research projects. In addition this work builds on the substantial work of the national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention Evaluation Project (ATSISPEP) which outlines a range of solutions to reduce the causes, prevalence, and impact of Indigenous suicide by identifying, translating, and promoting the adoption of evidenced based best practice in Indigenous specific suicide prevention activities. Discussion and Conclusion: This paper details the challenges as well as the promise and potential of engaging in transformative and decolonising research and practice to address the existing health service inequities. Acknowledging and addressing these health inequities is an urgent and critical task given the current COVID-19 pandemic and potential for further increasing the adverse mental health and wellbeing gap for Indigenous Australians.


The effect of the dihydropyridine L-Type Ca chanel agonist Bay K 8644 on post-rest contractions in ferret ventricular muscle and isolated myocytes was investigated. Bay K 8644 was shown to abolish rest potentiation and greatly accelerate rest decay. The post-rest contraction suppressed by Bay K 8644 was accompanied by action potentials of large amplitude and longer duration, but voltage-clamp measurements showed that this suppression was not due to a supra-optimal ICa trigger. Caffeine-induced contractures and rapid cooling contractures demonstrated an accelerated rest-dependent decline in sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) Ca content in the presence of Bay K 8644, which was present even with Ca-free superfusion during rest. Thus, the Bay K 8644-induced decline of SR Ca during rest was independent of extracellular Ca or ICa. To explore whether the binding of Bay K 8644 to the dihydropyridine receptor could alter the SR Ca release channel/ryanodine receptor in a more direct way, ryanodine binding was measured in the absence and presence of Bay K 8644. Ryanodine binding to isolated ferret ventricular myocytes was increased by Bay K 8644 under conditions where sarcolemmal-SR junctions might be expected to be intact, but not after physical disruption. These results are consistent with a working hypothesis where Bay K 8644 may bind to the dihydropyridine receptor and this may lead to physical changes in the linkage between the dihydropridine receptor and a subset of ryanodine receptors, thereby increasing the opening of the SR Ca release channel during rest (and accelerating resting Ca loss).


Analysis of the preliminary results from the Voyager mission to the Neptune system has provided the scientific community with several methods by which the temperature of Neptune's satellite Triton may be determined. If the 37.5 K surface temperature reported by several Voyager investigations is correct, then the photometry reported by the imaging experiment on Voyager requires that Triton's surface have a remarkably low emissivity. Such a low emissivity is not required in order to explain the photometry from the photopolarimeter experiment on Voyager. A low emissivity would be inconsistent with Triton having a rough surface at the ∼100-�m scale as might be expected given the active renewal processes which appear to dominate Triton's surface.


In this paper we used three dimensional kinetic Monte Carlo simulations on super-lattices to study the hetero-polytypical growth of cubic silicon carbide polytype (3C-SiC) on hexagonal 6H-SiC substrates with miscuts towards the <11-20> and <1-100> directions. We analyze the grown film for different miscut angles (in the range 2° to 12° degrees) and different growth rates, finding that substrates with miscut of 3-4° degrees towards the <1-100> direction should be the best choice for the growth of high quality cubic epitaxial films, being able to promote, given a suitable pre-growth treatment to induce step bunching, the nucleation of single domain 3C-SiC films.


In a retrospective study we reviewed 24 patients treated by venous thrombectomy for acute thrombosis of the axillary vein during the past 23 years. We performed 25 venous thrombectomies without any complications. Complete recanalisation could be achieved in all cases of acute thrombosis. Whereas similar clinical results can be achieved by thrombolytic therapy, complete recanalisation by thrombolytic therapy is only achieved in 60% of cases.


Mechanical brushing of machined AA5083H11 surface, performed in optimized conditions of brush wire hammering, generates distributions of compressive residual stresses. These distributions are controlled by the process parameters such as the pressure of the brush wires on the surface, the speed of rotation or the number of passes. X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements relative to different surface preparations show that the stresses due to brushing are less deep and that the maximal values in compression are the same as the ones from shallow shot-peening treatment (without defects). Moreover, the bushing provides high quality surface at a microscopic scale (low roughness) and integrity state of the treated surfaces, better for cyclic stability of compressive stresses. The stabilized state of residual stresses resulting from brushing and shot-peening is determined by finite element analysis. These analyses are experimentally validated by XRD using the psi-tilt method on tested fatigue specimens. Fatigue results show that the good surface topography generated by the wire brushing process compensates the reduction of the amplitude and the depth of the compressive residual stress profiles compared to shot-peening so that it could provide an equivalent fatigue improvement rate (20 to 30% of σD 2.106 cycles) of the AA5083H11.


Abstract The aim of the present study was to focus on how students articulate and discuss what factors influence students' decisions to defend or not defend victims when witnessing bullying. In this unique qualitative cross-collaborative study, where two research teams collected interviews from two cultural contexts, eighty-nine students with an age-range from 9 to 14 years old participated. Participants included 43 Swedish students and 46 US students (50 girls, 39 boys). The interviews were analysed through a collaborative qualitative analysis aimed at constructing shared concepts of our data as a whole. The results revealed five broad factors among the students when they reasoned about how they act as a bystander in bullying situations: (a) informed awareness, (b) bystander expectations, (c) personal feelings, (d) behavioural seriousness, and (e) sense of responsibility. The results indicated that each of these considerations could make the students more or less likely to defend as well as to defend in a certain way. According to these five broad factors, students seemed to adjust their bystander acts, which suggests that students' bystander acts vary depending on situational factors that influence bystanders' interpretations of bullying and decision-making about how to respond to observed bullying.


Speech sounds within a linguistic system are both categorical and combinatorial and there are constraints on how elements can be recombined. To investigate the origins of this combinatorial structure, we conducted an iterated learning experiment with human participants, studying the transmission of an artificial system of sounds. In this study, participants learn and recall a system of sounds that are produced with a slide whistle, an instrument that is both intuitive and non-linguistic. The system they are exposed to is the recall output of the previous participant. Transmission from participant to participant causes the system to change and become cumulatively more learnable and more structured. This shows that combinatorial structure can culturally emerge in an artificial sound system through iterated learning.


Background Experimental studies demonstrate that granulocyte colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) promotes neovascularisation and confers cardioprotection. Objective To assess the efficacy of repeated low dose G-CSF plus exercise on myocardial ischaemia in patients with severe chronic ischaemic heart disease. Methods 18 patients with Canadian Cardiovascular Society class III–IV angina completed a randomised, double blind, crossover study of dose adjusted G-CSF versus placebo. Exercise was commenced 6 weeks prior and continued for the duration of the study. G-CSF or placebo was administered daily for 5 consecutive days at fortnightly intervals for three cycles, followed by crossover after 6 weeks. Primary outcome was myocardial perfusion by cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Secondary outcomes were: Seattle Angina and Utility Based Quality of Life Heart Questionnaire (SAQ/UBQ-H), Exercise Stress Test (EST) and quantification of endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) by flow cytometry and angiogenic cytokines by immunoassay. Results Compared with placebo, G-CSF had no effect on myocardial ischaemia by cardiac MRI, EST or SAQ/UBQ-H, despite effective EPC mobilisation (peak fold increase: CD34+=19, CD34+CD133+=37, CD34+ vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 (VEGFR-2)+=5, CD34+CD133+VEGFR-2+=3; all p<0.05 vs placebo). Plasma levels of stromal cell derived factor 1, angiopoietin 1, interleukin 8 and tumour necrosis factor α decreased after a symptom limited EST while vascular endothelial growth factor and platelet derived growth factor remained unchanged. All cytokines were unchanged following G-CSF. Seven troponin I positive events occurred with G-CSF compared with three with placebo (p=0.289). High sensitivity C reactive protein and N terminal prohormone brain natriuretic peptide increased with G-CSF (both p<0.01 vs placebo). Conclusion In patients with chronic ischaemic heart disease, G-CSF mobilises EPCs but does not improve myocardial perfusion or angina. G-CSF increases plasma levels of adverse prognostic cardiac biomarkers. Clinical trial registration information Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: http://www.anzctr.org.au. Unique identifier: ACTRN012607000354482.


Abstract Occupational therapists (OTs) are expected to maintain up-to-date knowledge and clinical competence by engaging in continuing professional education (CPE). The objective of this research was to obtain information on CPE needs and opportunities in developed and developing countries. A survey was created and emailed to 520 OTs in various countries, asking questions about CPE requirements, opportunities, and the avenues of CPE available to OTs. One hundred-nineteen OTs from 17 different countries responded. Of the 119 OTs, 28 practice in developing countries and 91 practice in developed countries. Thirty-nine percent of the OTs in developing countries stated that they have certain requirements for CPE. In developed countries 73% of the OTs indicated such requirement were necessary to practice. In developed countries 67% of OTs reported that CPE was easily available, whereas in developing countries only 25% of OTs reported that CPE was easily available. Therapists in developed countries are more likely to participate in CPE activities, whereas their counterparts in developing countries are not. International OT stakeholders need to explore avenues to make CPE more available to OTs in developing countries and remote areas.


The most common goal of automatic bank cheque treatment systems is the recognition of handwritten information. However, in order to do this, it is necessary to use a reliable and efficient process able to identify and to extract the information, which can then be submitted to a further recognition phase. We present a process for identifying and distinguishing between handwritten information and machine printed text based on a set of local features. This process is based on the characterization of textual elements via properties derived from their content and their shape. The main advantage of this process compared with other similar approaches is that no a priori information of the treated document is used, thus making it more generic and effective.


In addition to its important influence on soil quality and therefore crop productivity, soil organic carbon (SOC) has also been identified as a possible C sink for sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide. Limited data are available on the impact of management practices on the rate of SOC change in agricultural soils in Australia. In this paper, results of three long-term trials (13–25 years) located near Wagga Wagga in temperate Australia were used to assess C dynamics under different tillage and stubble management practices, and under cropping intensities in pasture/crop rotations. Experimental results confirm the importance of management practices and pasture in determining first the steady-state SOC concentrations that are characteristic of given rotations and crop management systems, and second the rates of change of SOC concentrations as they approach steady-state concentrations in agricultural soils of this agro-ecological zone. A long-term crop/pasture experiment at a site with initial high SOC showed that the rate of SOC change in different treatments ranged from –278 to +257 kg C/ha.year over 0–0.3 m soil depth. Under continuous cropping, even under conservation agriculture practices of no-tillage, stubble retention, and crop rotation, the high initial SOC stock (0–0.3 m) present after a long-term pasture phase was, at best, maintained but tended to decrease with increased tillage or stubble burning practices. The effect of tillage was greater than that of stubble management. Increases in SOC were observed only in rotations incorporating a pasture phase. Our results suggest that improved soil nutrient and grazing management of permanent pasture can lead to an increase of 500–700 kg C/ha.year where the initial SOC concentrations are well below steady-state concentrations that could be expected after long periods of improved management. No difference was found between perennial pasture and annual pasture to the depth measured (0–0.3 m). Our results suggest that pasture holds the key to maintaining, and even increasing, SOC under crop/pasture in this environment.


Abstract We prove global subelliptic estimates for systems of quadratic differential operators. Quadratic differential operators are operators defined in the Weyl quantization by complex-valued quadratic symbols. In a previous work, we pointed out the existence of a particular linear subvector space in the phase space intrinsically associated to their Weyl symbols, called singular space, which rules a number of fairly general properties of non-elliptic quadratic operators. About the subelliptic properties of these operators, we established that quadratic operators with zero singular spaces fulfill global subelliptic estimates with a loss of derivatives depending on certain algebraic properties of the Hamilton maps associated to their Weyl symbols. The purpose of the present work is to prove similar global subelliptic estimates for overdetermined systems of quadratic operators. We establish here a simple criterion for the subellipticity of these systems giving an explicit measure of the loss of derivatives and highlighting the non-trivial interactions played by the different operators composing those systems.


Objectives: To determine whether changes in levels of anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (anti-CCP) and rheumatoid factor (RF) are associated with the spontaneous improvement of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) during pregnancy and with the subsequent flare post partum. Methods: Disease activity scores from the Pregnancy-induced Amelioration of Rheumatoid Arthritis (PARA) study of 118 patients were available for analysis. Before conception (if applicable), at each trimester and at 6, 12 and 26 weeks post partum, levels of the autoantibodies anti-CCP, IgM-RF, IgG-RF and IgA-RF were determined. Responses in disease activity were classified according to European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) response criteria during pregnancy and post partum, and associated with the presence or absence of autoantibodies. Results: The median levels of anti-CCP and all subclasses of RF during pregnancy were stable, whereas post partum the levels of anti-CCP, IgM-RF and IgA-RF declined. A significantly higher percentage of women without autoantibodies (negative for anti-CCP and RF) improved compared with women positive for either or both autoantibodies (75% vs 39%, p = 0.01). The occurrence of a flare post partum was comparable between these groups. Conclusions: Improvement of disease activity of RA during pregnancy was not associated with changes in levels of autoantibodies during pregnancy, however, improvement may occur more frequently in the absence of anti-CCP and RF.


Extending an Internet subnet by connecting resource-constrained nodes (e.g., embedded sensors and actuators) over multiple wireless hops is necessary to support the future Internet of Things (IoT). RPL, the IPv6 routing standard for low-power and lossy networks, tried to achieve this goal but has not seen wide adoption in practice. As an alternative, Thread is a recently standardized low-power network protocol for IoT, driven by the Thread group, an industry consortium led by Google/Nest. We provide a comparative analysis of the technical aspects of RPL and Thread based on their specifications, explaining why using Thread, as opposed to RPL, may make sense for the future Internet. Specifically, the fundamental differences between RPL and Thread are their respective scopes and multihop network architectures, which result in Thread's unique design and advantages over RPL. Lastly, we evaluate Thread in an indoor multihop wireless testbed using OpenThread, an official open source implementation of Thread. This work serves as the first analysis of the Thread protocol in academia.


The urgent need for efficient energy storage devices greatly stimulates the development of high power, highly efficient, environmentally friendly, and low-cost energy storage devices. Supercapacitors, unlike batteries, store energy by ion adsorptions on high surface area electrodes. The physical ion migration provides a high charging/discharging rate, power density, and reversibility. In this work, we synthesize graphene materials by a rapid thermal annealing process and examine the material properties. With the synthesized graphene as electrodes, the outstanding electrochemical performance of these supercapacitors is demonstrated. This provides a new method for developing supercapacitors with high charge/energy storage capability at low cost.


an increase of 190.8% (p < 0.05). Vmean of the renal artery increased significantly between the 20–24 week and the 37th–40th week (9.56 cm/s vs. 20.15 cm/s, p < 0.05). Area of the renal artery increased significantly between the 20–24 weeks and the 37–40 weeks (6.78 mm2 vs. 10.12 mm2, p < 0.05). No significant increase in RI or PI was observed. At the 20–24 weeks of gestation, renal artery waveforms consisted of 43.5% type I (only systolic waves) and 56.5% (systolic waves and some diastolic waves). Type III (systolic waves and persistent diastolic waves) was not recognized. At 25–28 weeks, they consisted 28.3% type I, 63.0% type II, and 8.7% type III. At the 29–32 weeks, type I decreased, and frequency of type II was 78.2%. At the 37–40 weeks, 76.1% type III, type II decreased to 23.9%, and type I was not recognized. Conclusions: Vmax was found to be the most effective index because it was easy to measure and the significant change of gestation progresses. The renal blood flow waveforms changed as advanced gestation in normal growth fetuses.


Spaceborn optical payload consists of optical elements supported by mechanical structure in desired orientation. Mechanical structure made up of various dissimilar materials like aluminum & invar possess dissimilar thermo-elastic behavior. Opto-mechanical assembly subjected to temperature change will results to change in optical element orientation which ultimately leads to change in optical parameters like registration. This is mainly due to dissimilar materials subjected to temperature variation will result to structural distortion. Use of dissimilar materials in an Opto- mechanical payload affects the angular stability of optical element due to temperature variation and results to change in optical element orientation. Flexure is required to be introduced within the opto-mechanical system having dissimilar materials to accommodate differential thermal expansion due to temperature variation and to maintain the registration. This paper explains, stability in dichroic element orientation of an opto-mechanical payload having dissimilar material & flexure design to maintain the orientation in opto-mechanical payload subjected to temperature variation without deterioration of fundamental frequency. It also explains theoretical thermo-elastic analysis and experimental test for validation of design, static and dynamic structural analysis like frequency response analysis to check the flexure survivability for vibration load.


This paper aims to explore the approaches that designers take when storytelling. Design artefacts, such as sketches, models, storyboards and multimedia presentations, are often described in terms of stories. We aim to observe designers' approaches to storytelling during a design project ran in The Global Studio, an international conglomerate of design students from various universities throughout the world. Literature that provides theory surrounding storytelling is used to provide a framework of analysis with which we used to observe the design artefacts produced by the students. The paper concludes by discussing the themes in approach to storytelling that have emerged upon observing the students' design artefacts and the implications that we believe this has for Design Education.


Purpose: To determine the spatial correlation between four‐dimensional computed tomography (4DCT) ventilation and single photon emission computed tomography(SPECT) perfusion hypo‐functioning pulmonary defect regions in patients with malignant airway stenosis. Methods: Treatment planning 4DCT images were obtained retrospectively for 8 lungcancer patients with radiographically demonstrated airway obstruction due to gross tumor volume. Each patient also received a SPECT perfusion study within one week of the planning 4DCT, and prior to the initiation of treatment. Deformable image registration was used to map corresponding lungtissue elements between the extreme component phases, from which quantitative images representing the pulmonary specific ventilation were constructed. Semi‐automated segmentation of the percentile perfusion distribution was performed to identify regional defects distal to the known obstructing lesion. Semi‐automated segmentation was similarly performed by 3 independent observers to delineate corresponding defect regions depicted on 4DCT ventilation. The Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) was determined for each observer between SPECT and ventilation hypo‐functioning regions to assess spatial correlation. Results: Tidal volumes determined from 4DCT ventilation were evaluated versus measurements obtained from lung parenchyma segmentation. Linear regression resulted in linear fit with slope = 1.01, and r2 = 0.99. Average DSC among all observers ranged from 0.67‐0.99, with coefficient of variation for any single case < 10% (range: 0.5–9%). Linear correlation was further assessed between average DSC values and corresponding percent volume of the perfusion defect relative to the affected lung, with rho = 0.59 (p = 0.1627) indicating correlation not significantly different from zero. Conclusions: This study is the first to quantitatively assess three‐dimensional spatial correlation between clinically acquired SPECT perfusion and specific ventilation from 4DCT. Results suggest high correlation between methods within the sub‐population of lungcancer patients with malignant airway stenosis. Efforts are currently underway to increase the patient sample size included in this ongoing work.


ABSTRACT The study investigates reliability measures for performance scores given by random judges (Execution and Artistic scores) and the agreement between more expert judges (Control Scores) and the two middle Execution/Artistic scores (Panel scores) during Qualifying and Final competitions performed at the 10th European Age Group Competition (EAGC) and at the 29th European Acrobatic Gymnastics Championships (ECh). To assess agreement, mean absolute Control-Panel score deviations were calculated using Bland-Altman and Kaplan-Meier plots. Reliability average measures ranged from 0.88 to 0.97. Control Score reliability was higher in ECh for Execution and Artistic scores. Artistic scores showed higher variability and lower agreement between judges in Qualification for ECh. Significant differences were found in Control and Panel score mean deviations for Execution scores at the EAGC and for Artistic scores at the ECh. No significant reliability differences were found between competitions. Control-and-Panel score correlations ranged from 0.862 to 0.915 for Execution scores and from 0.864 to 0.899 for Artistic scores. Overall results exceeded 80% agreement for Execution and Artistic scores. Reliability and strength of agreement of judging were high and very acceptable respectively. We suggest that judging reliability should be regularly examined to optimise technical and artistic criteria set by FIG for fairer competition.


A micro-scale chemical/CD (FDCD) exciton chirality protocol has been realized for determining the absolute configuration of C=C double bond containing compounds. This method is based on the conversion of the preexisting and/or introduced double bonds into the p-substituted styrenoid chromophores and/or fluorophores via cross olefin metathesis, that function as the new CD and FDCD reporter groups. The method has been applied to a variety of natural and synthetic compounds, i.e., (i) allylic alcohols and amines, (ii) macro-cyclic molecules, (iii) unstable alcohols where acylation by Mosher's acid fail, (iv) chiral molecules bearing no other functional groups than ene moieties, in which other methods are not accessible, (v) substrates bearing the sterically hindered hydroxyls, and (vi) large compounds where two hydroxyls are separated by a long distance. Based on the established method, the configurational assignment of gymnocin-B, a new polyether marine natural product containing 15 contiguous polyether skeleton, has been realized.


(Kampung Senah Rayang Darul Ehsan is a Bidayuh village, located in Padawan District,
Kuching Sarawak and comprises of 81 households. A study has been carried out to assess the
impacts of oil palm establishment on the livelihood among 37 participant families in the
studied area. Three specific objectives of the study are (1) To identify the types of changes in
the livelihood strategies in relation to the diversification of livelihood strategies and
migration, (2) To assess to what extent that the project has given the impacts on income and
food security in the studied area and (3) To investigate the effectiveness of Ahli
Jawatankuasa Pembangunan Peserta (AJKP) in defending the right of the participant
families in the studied area. In order to collect the information for the study, several social
science methods were used. These include, key informants interview, in-depth household
interview and some PAR/PRA methods. The findings from the study shows that this project
failed to improve the households' standards of living. Based on the result obtained, this
project failed in stabilizing the households' monthly income. This subsequently, has led to 20
of 25 families understudied diversified their livelihood strategies by retaining their past
livelihood as well as reconstructing the new livelihood strategies in order to sustain their
living in the area rather than only depending on the benefits from the farm. This project also
failed to stop 60 persons of 144 beneficiaries who form 25 participant families understudied
from migrating out of Senah Rayang to engage in off-farm employment in the major towns.
This because the wages paid by working in the farm and the yearly dividend received from
the farm are very low and quite unsustainable. However, this project does not affect the level
of income of the participants for most of the months except for the month that they receive
dividend from FELCRA which is paid yearly. The project also does not affect the food
supply as the area was converted from idle land to oil palm plantation. Apart from that, even
though there is a committee that was established by FELCRA Berhad to represent the
participants to claim their rights but this committee seen failed in overcoming the main issues
that were faced by the participants. These issues include: (1) Unreasonable rate of yearly
dividend, (2) Nepotism in the farm as well as (3) The land title issue but this committee was
seen failed to play their role effectively. These findings show great contradiction with the
goals of land development by the Ministry of Land Development, Sarawak that establishment
of oil palm would eradicate poverty, reducing rural-urban migration and increase the standard
of living in the rural area


Reactive Ti2AlC and Nb2AlC particles are encapsulated in a continuous boehmite shell by hydrolysis of ultrafine AlN powder in aqueous environment. The hydrolysis of AlN leads to the heterogeneous precipitation of nanolamellar boehmite on the surface of the Mn + 1AXn phase particles after 24 h reaction time. The boehmite coatings completely cover the MAX phase particles (Nb2AlC d50 = 7.9 μm; Ti2AlC d50 = 9.6 μm) with a thickness of 200 nm (Nb2AlC) and 135 nm (Ti2AlC). The lamellar structure of the boehmite coating is maintained after calcination at 400 °C in air, resulting in coatings with a maximum surface area of 41 m2 g−1 (Nb2AlC) and 50 m2 g−1 (Ti2AlC). The stability of the coating is assessed by using the coated Nb2AlC as particle filler in ZrO2. The coating is stable after the spark plasma sintering process and covers complex features of the particles. The present work shows the feasibility to encapsulate reactive MAX particles with a continuous oxide shell. The coated particles can be used as ductile crack bridging or healing filler in reactive matrixes requiring a spatial separation between filler and matrix. Higher surface charges by Al–O bonds on the surface facilitate the dispersion of the carbide particles in aqueous slurries.


This paper introduces models and a system for designing 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs) using flexible channelization— the choice of an appropriate channel width and center frequency for each transmission. In contrast to current 802.11 systems that use fixed width channels, the proposed system, FLUID, configures all access points and their clients using flexible channels. We show that a key challenge in designing such a system stems from managing the effects of interference due to multiple transmitters employing variable channel widths, in a network-wide setting. We implemented FLUID in an enterprise-like setup using a 50 node testbed (with off-the shelf wireless cards) and we show that FLUID improves the average throughput by 59 percent across all PHY rates, compared to existing fixed-width approaches.


Abstract Background/Aim: Oral essential amino acids (AAs) containing supplements (EAS) and AA containing dialysate (ACD) are frequently used in peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients with malnutrition. The present study was conducted to investigate two strategies and compare their effects on the malnutrition status of PD patients. Materials and Methods: A total of 31 EAS, 14 ACD patients were enrolled in this study. Serum albumin levels were lower than 3.5 g/dL in all subjects. EAS group patients took five pills containing AAs three times a day with meals. In the other, 2.000 cc of 1.1% ACD was given to patients daily during the study. Demographic and laboratory parameters were analyzed and compared at baseline and 6th month. Results: Significant increases in BMI, albumin, and protein in both groups. Mean albumin levels increased significantly by 0.54 g/dL in ACD group (p < 0.005) and 0.49 g/dL in EAS group (p < 0.001) following 6 months. Mean albumin and delta albumin levels did not differ between two groups. Conclusion: These strategies may play an important role in increasing albumin levels and improving the nutritional status of PD patients.


The genetic stability of the capacity of an improved strain of Streptomyces hygroscopicus to produce the macrolide antibiotic turimycin was investigated during long-term continuous culture. Dilution rate, growth-limiting substrate and culture temperature were varied. Certain culture conditions resulted in the stable propagation of the inoculated turimycin-producing population. Other conditions led to segregation of the initial population. Turimycin non-producing phenotypes appeared, and in each case the simultaneous loss of ability to form aerial mycelium was observed. The non-differentiating clones were found to be stable, without any reversion to the parental phenotype, indicating that a loss of genetic information probably took place.


In MRI, deep neural networks have been proposed to reconstruct diffusion model parameters. However, the inputs of the networks were designed for a specific diffusion gradient scheme (i.e., diffusion gradient directions and numbers) and a specific b-value that are the same as the training data. In this study, a new deep neural network, referred to as DIFFnet, is developed to function as a generalized reconstruction tool of the diffusion-weighted signals for various gradient schemes and b-values. For generalization, diffusion signals are normalized in a q-space and then projected and quantized, producing a matrix (Qmatrix) as an input for the network. To demonstrate the validity of this approach, DIFFnet is evaluated for diffusion tensor imaging (DIFFnetDTI) and for neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (DIFFnetNODDI). In each model, two datasets with different gradient schemes and b-values are tested. The results demonstrate accurate reconstruction of the diffusion parameters at substantially reduced processing time (approximately 8.7 times and 2240 times faster processing time than conventional methods in DTI and NODDI, respectively; less than 4% mean normalized root-mean-square errors (NRMSE) in DTI and less than 8% in NODDI). The generalization capability of the networks was further validated using reduced numbers of diffusion signals from the datasets and a public dataset from Human Connection Project. Different from previously proposed deep neural networks, DIFFnet does not require any specific gradient scheme and b-value for its input. As a result, it can be adopted as an online reconstruction tool for various complex diffusion imaging.


In 2000 a Committee of the United Nations Economic and Social Council recognised health as essential for exercising all other rights (Djite 2008). The World Health Organization (1998) also sees health as a vital resource for enabling citizens to lead individually, socially and economically productive lives. However health is one space where the opportunities to participate and exercise voice is directed by the provision of health resources and material. Now in late modernity health has become a goal for citizens to work towards or they risk suffering from chronic illness and premature death (Cockerham 2005). The procurement of health has also shifted from the state as the provider of equitable health care to all citizens to a commodity that can be purchased in an expanding health market place (Kickbusch 2004). If health has become the responsibility of the citizen, issues of health literacy, multimodal access to information and multilingualism need to be considered. This research report focuses on work produced as part of the first author's doctoral project, exploring the phenomenon of consumption of health resources for health citizenship in the private health insurance industry. Based on data collected from 75 participants through an electronic questionnaire, as well as different genres of information utilised for health promotion, the project investigated how the construction of information and the multimodal tools used by two leading South African health insurers influenced the consumers' health subjectivity. Data collected showed the importance of multilingual information, health literacy and multimodal tools for enabling participation and voice among consumers. In addition, the consumers proposed more accessible information and better designed newsletters and web sites to help them with information seeking for health knowledge and health citizenship.


declarative facts regarding which stimuli had been paired. The second patient, with selective bilateral hippocampal damage, could not learn the facts but did acquire the conditioning. The third patient, with bilateral damage to both the amygdala and hippocampus, could acquire neither the conditioning nor the factual information. These results suggest that the amygdala is required for emotional conditionmg or the coupling of exteroceptive sensory information with interoceptive information concerning somatic states (emotion and affect). In contrast, the hippocampus and the medial temporal lobe


The negotiations for the Mid-Term Review of the Fourth Lome Convention marked the introduction of multiple conditionality - economic adjustment and good governance - into the Lome relationship. It placed additional demands on the two parties, giving rise to the essential concern of this thesis: do the two sides possess the requisite institutional capacity to meet those demands. The introduction was not a sudden development. The origins of multiple conditionality lay in the Pisani Memorandum and its proposal of policy dialogue. The path from the proposal to multiple conditionality was assisted by developments within the Lome relationship, including the unintended effects of ACP initiatives. This thesis is thus, in one sense, the history of the Memorandum's legacy of inverted conditionality through policy dialogue. It is also an analysis of the capacities generated by the Convention and their applicability to multiple conditionality. My analysis of bargaining, operational and instrumental capacities demonstrates a weak ACP capacity and an asymmetrically greater EU capacity. My initial conclusion is that the EU is much more capable of meeting the demands of multiple conditionality. However, it too faces limits on its capacity, especially in dealing with the sociopolitical aspects of governance. This recognition highlights an ignored factor: there is a second legacy of the Pisani Memorandum. In addition to the instrument of policy dialogue, the Memorandum identified institutional capacity as the means to help overcome the problems of development. The new tale of two legacies illustrates an EU emphasis on policy control at the expense of capacity building. It has failed to perceive the importance of the link, in the Pisani Memorandum, between the instrument and the means. It forces me to amend my initial conclusion: neither side is adequately prepared for the demands of multiple conditionality.


The study tries to evaluate the service quality of a Nigerian Airline with objectives todetermining what constitutes the service variables in the Nigerian air transport Industry, how satisfied are the passengers with the services of the above mentioned airline and suggest to managers of these airlines on how to  improve and promote satisfaction level of passengers. Data was collected from the respondent using a well structured questionnaire to discover the perception of the passengers of the airline under study.  The "SERVQUAL" model was utilized to analyze and determine the service quality gaps between the customer's expectation and its perception of the service attributes.  It was discovered from the result that aerocotractors airline exhibited a good service quality in the empathy, responsiveness and the technical dimension of their services but the reliability; tangible dimension needs a lot of improvement and generally a mean score of -5.71 showed a poor service level. On this ground, recommendations were made for airline managers to improve the service that exhibited a below expectation level of service and regular survey of their performance from their customers should be carried out to stay informed with the current needs of its passengers.

 Key words: Servqual, Tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, empathy, Technical and assurance.


Tomato has quickly become a favoured species for metabolomics research. Tomato fills a niche that cannot be occupied by Arabidopsis, particularly regarding studies on fleshy fruit. Variations in genotype and phenotype have been broadly exploited using metabolomics approaches in order to gain a better understanding of fundamental aspects of plant physiology, fruit growth and fruit development. The commercial importance of tomato as one of the world's most important and widely grownand consumed vegetables is a significant driving force behind this fruit research. Therefore, many metabolomics studies have specifically been focused on traits of importance to the food and agro-industries. Fruit quality, nutritional value as well as the influence on these traits of fruit storage, transport and processing into pasteurized and cooked products have also been subjects for extensive metabolomics analyses. These studies have already considerably expanded our knowledge, and continue to do so, concerning many aspects of the tomato fruit phenotype, both visible and chemical. Furthermore, increased knowledge of the genetics of tomato, the recently available draft of the tomato genome sequence as well as the emerging technologies for next generation sequencing, large-scale phenotyping and systems biology approaches have generated many novel research concepts that are also placing metabolomics analyses of tomatoes right at the forefront of fruit research


The characteristics of optical bistability in a vertical-cavity semiconductor optical amplifier (VCSOA) operated in reflection are reported. The dependences of the optical bistability in VCSOAs on the initial phase detuning and on the applied bias current are analyzed. The optical bistability is also studied for different numbers of superimposed periods in the top distributed bragg reflector (DBR) that conform the internal cavity of the device. The appearance of the X-bistable and the clockwise bistable loops is predicted theoretically in a VCSOA operated in reflection for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. Moreover, it is also predicted that the control of the VCSOA's top reflectivity by the addition of new superimposed periods in its top DBR reduces by one order of magnitude the input power needed for the assessment of the X- and the clockwise bistable loop, compared to that required in in-plane semiconductor optical amplifiers. These results, added to the ease of fabricating two-dimensional arrays of this kind of device could be useful for the development of new optical logic or optical signal regeneration devices.


This paper entitled corruption prevention and controls that aims to examine the factors causing corruption; control and prevention strategy of corruption. The study was conducted by a normative approach and the concept of law through the analysis of legal interpretation. The results showed that there were four aspects of the factors causing corruption in Indonesia, namely: 1) individual behavior aspect, 2) organization, 3) society aspect and 4) legislation aspect. The strategy of corruption prevention and controls can be done through: 1) the preventive action that is to prevent corruption by eliminating or minimizing the causative factors / opportunities of corruption; 2) the detective action that is instrument to support the prevention of corruption through internal supervision by the relevant government agencies and external supervision through CPC, DPR/DPRD, NGOs and communities; 3) the repressive action by means of curbing or processing those committed corruption in accordance with the legislation without exception or it is done indiscriminately. Keywords: Control, Prevention, Corruption.


Herbarium specimens are critical components of the research process - providing "what, where, when" evidence for species distributions and through type designation, providing the basis for un-ambiguous, standardised nomenclature facilitating the interpretation of scientific names. Specimen references are embedded within research article texts, by convention usually presented in a relatively formalised fashion. As this is a domain-specific practice, general publishers tend not to provide tools for detecting and tracking specimen references to enable bibliometric-style calculations and navigation to the referenced specimen, as is common practice in literature reference management. This means that it is difficult to measure impact, which affects both the individuals responsible for the collection and determination of herbarium specimens (McDade et al. 2011), and the institutions responsible for their long-term management.
 Specimen digitisation - creating searchable data repositories of metadata and/or images - has enabled many new and larger scale uses for herbarium specimens and their associated data, and stimulated interest in quantifying usage and measuring institutional impact. To date, these impact measures have been conducted by examining usage statistics for specimen portals, or by text searching for specimen identifier patterns.
 This research uses text mining and document classification techniques to detect article sections likely to contain specimen references, which are then extracted, classified and counted. A dataset of taxonomic publications categorised into paragraph-level units is used to train a text classifier to predict the presence of specimen references within component units of articles (sections or paragraphs). The input to the classifier is a set of features derived from the text contents of paragraphs, which detect content such as latitude/longitude, dates and bracketed lists of herbarium codes. Article units classified as containing specimen references are processed to extract a minimal representation of the specimen reference, including the abbreviated codes for the institutional holder(s) of the specimen material. This allows total and per-institution counts to be calculated, which can be compared to datasets of Global Biodiversity Information Facility data citations, to institutional-level type citations in nomenclatural acts recorded by the International Plant Names Index and to usage statistics recorded by institutional data repositories. As well as counting specimen references, distinct specimen reference styles are detected and quantified, including the use of numeric and persistent identifiers (Güntsch et al. 2017) which can be used to access a standardised metadata record for the specimen.
 We will present an assessment of the classification and detection process and initial results, and discuss future work to develop this approach to work with different kinds of literature inputs. These techniques have the potential to allow institutions to make better use of existing information to help assess the use and impact of their specimen and data holdings.


Do we need "architecture of resistance"?The modern city design adapts to the consumer behavior of its inhabitants. The city-dwellers, under various slogans and ideologies, are willing to pay for their apparent security and live in a soulless yet sheltered residential development spaces. The American visionary and architect Lebbeus Woods has recognized architecture as a political act. He also thought that most architects are egotistical, self-styled executives who consider themselves creators. In view of the increasing tendency of ghettoisation of public space in cities, a critical attitude has to be adapted. By analyzing the mechanisms of spatial segregation, I point to the architecture of resistance gaining in importance as a form of fulfilling utopia in the creation of an inclusive city.


In India, a number of national level institutions are digitizing their own information resources and varieties of rare items. The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology has also established Digital Library of India Initiative. The digital libraries and institutional repositories in India include digitized collection of academic publications, like, dissertations, theses, research reports, working papers and research papers other than rare books and manuscripts. All these digitized materials can be made available and accessible to the learners of distance education. The distance and open learners should not be confined into the study materials provided to them and can explore the universe of knowledge through the digital libraries, institutional repositories and learning objects repositories available today. Present study explores the digital libraries and institutional repositories initiatives, programmes and projects in India that can be helpful to the distant and open learners. There is also need of establishing a national level learning objects repository for the benefits of open and distance learners and their tutors.


This paper was inspired by an important aspect of Victor W. Sidel's career that is not usually associated with an academic in medicine: his arrest record.

Prominently displayed in Vic's office is a picture of a very determined (and somewhat younger) Vic Sidel being carried off in handcuffs by two policemen. The picture, taken in 1985 at an anti-apartheid protest, was published in The Nation's Health, the newspaper of the American Public Health Associa-tion. This was one of several arrests in Vic's career. As recently as 2012, Vic generously offered to be arrested as part of the Occupy Wall Street protests, citing his arrest record as qualification for this rather dangerous proposal.


We study the asymptotic behavior of solutions of semilinear PDEs. Neither periodicity nor ergodicity will be assumed. On the other hand, we assume that the coecients have averages in the Cesaro sense. In such a case, the averaged coecients could be discontinuous. We use a probabilistic approach based on weak convergence of the associated backward stochastic dierential equation (BSDE) in the Jakubowski $S$-topology to derive the averaged PDE. However, since the averaged coecients are discontinuous, the classical viscosity solution is not dened for the averaged PDE. We then use the notion of "$L_p$-viscosity solution" introduced in [7]. The existence of $L_p$-viscosity solution to the averaged PDE is proved here by using BSDEs techniques.


This article proposes and implements generic and detailed voltage source converter (VSC) models, and low-level switching control models for simulation of HVDC networks using Modular Multilevel Converters (MMCs) or conventional two-level converters. The low level control approaches for both MMCs and two-level converters are explained. The behavior of the test HVDC networks is analyzed with the detailed model of both types of converter. In addition, high level controls are briefly explained, focusing on their application in DC grids. The simulation results of test networks validate the proposed high level controls and low level switching controls for simulation with detailed models of MMCs and conventional two-level converters.


This work reflects its title in that it is in two parts. The first two chapters attempt to show that truth is not the property of statements or propositions alone but is directly related to the beliefs or intentions (or other dispositions) which they encode. The role of Christian expectation as a truth-bearer is given some prominence. The third chapter begins the interpretative aspect of the analysis. The truth-theory of Donald Davidson is outlined against the background of his whole philosophical system. This leads to a new understanding of propositional attitudes, for they are now seen to express a causal relationship with the reality which underlies them. Davidson's method of seeking a correspondence with that reality via a coherence theory of truth is then analysed. This relies upon a so-called 'Convention of Charity' embodying a holistic agreement about what it is to call a thing 'real'. Considerable attention is given to the way that Davidson is continually developing his philosophy in this respect. The fourth chapter discusses the ways in which the truth-conditional theory of Davidson could be applied to religious discourse. The problems of religious divergence and of figurative or metaphorical language are singled out for special attention. The final chapter attempts to unite the study by evaluating this interpretation in the light of the claims for truth which theologians might make. This involves outlining the form which a new non-foundationalist theological epistemology might take, given the application of a Davidsonian philosophical system. This study is seen as particularly fruitful in generating areas for future research. A secondary aim of this analysis has been to investigate what sort of realism is possible for religious discourse.


The mechanical behavior of the sintered nanostructured intermetallic alloys, Al67Ti25Mn8 and Al67Ti25Fe8 has been investigated by means of compression tests as a function of temperature. These intermetallic materials are produced by mechanical alloying and spark plasma sintering. The sintered alloys have been characterized by X-Ray Diffraction and Transmission Electron Microscopy. Their nanostructure consists of a single-phase with an L12 (cubic) structure and an average grain size in the nanoscale (lower than 30 nm). These nanostructured intermetallics show considerably high ductility in compression at high temperature but are brittle at temperatures below 400 °C. In such cases the compressive fracture strength can reach values as high as 1.8 GPa (Al67Ti25Fe8). At 500 °C, some ductility is found together with a relatively high flow stress (around 1 GPa), the corresponding deformation curve shows strain hardening and in some cases stress serrations (strain aging). At 600 °C, a low flow stress is measured (~300 MPa) with high ductility. At 700 and 800 °C, a quasi-superplastic behavior is found with a total deformation of around 45 and very low flow stresses. No evidence of dislocation motion is found at temperatures above 700 °C suggesting a deformation mechanism based on grain boundary sliding.


Canada's housing finance system exhibited considerable resilience during the recent financial crisis with comparatively little reliance on extraordinary government support. Several distinctive features of Canadian public policy and regulations have had a direct impact on the performance of the housing finance system. This article has three principal sections: The first section provides an overview of Canadian residential mortgage markets, including key features of the Canadian compared to the U.S. housing finance system, a comparison of Canadian and U.S. residential house offerings, and policy implications. The second section provides an overview of Canada's housing finance system, including relevant features of Canada's public policy landscape, the role of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), the role of the private sector, and current initiatives underway to improve the system. The third section shows how the Canadian financial system performed through the financial crisis, discussing the performance of the banking system, the impact of the recession on intermediation, and factors related to the banking, regulatory, and communication structures that contributed to favorable outcomes for the Canadian financial sector.


Injections of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) have been claimed to aid in weight reduction by reducing hunger, and affecting mood as well as aiding in localized (spot) reduction. We have tested these claims in a double-blind randomized trial using injections of HCG or placebo. Weight loss was identical between the two groups, and there was no evidence for differential effects on hunger, mood or localized body measurements. Placebo injections, therefore, appear to be as effective as HCG in the treatment of obesity.


Fragment has been in the pharma vocabulary for around 20 years. To most medicinal chemists the word means fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD), but from an academic perspective it can be much broader and it can range from trying to identify substrates for orphan proteins to understanding binding interactions involved in riboswitch regulation. Even within drug discovery the approach to FBDD can vary significantly in terms of library size, and screening techniques. The roles for fragments are also expanding. They have now been used in assessing druggability, identifying hotspots on protein surfaces, finding allosteric pockets etc. In this chapter we will briefly give a perspective on these different flavours of fragments, starting with the most well understood in FBDD.


Abstract Despite the high nutritional profile in pulses, pulse consumption in Sweden is still low. However, the recent increase in consumption of sustainable and locally produced food in Sweden is driving demand for a versatile, functional pulse‐based ingredient that can be incorporated into different food products. This study assessed different treatments (boiling, roasting, and germination) when preparing flour from domestically grown pulses (yellow pea, gray pea, faba bean, and white bean). Functional properties (water and oil absorption capacity, emulsion and foaming properties, and gelation concentration) of the flours produced following different treatments and their nutrient content (total dietary fiber, total choline, and folate content) were determined. Depending on pulse type, all treatments increased (p < .001) water absorption capacity up to threefold and gelation concentration up to twofold, whereas emulsion activity and foaming capacity decreased by 3%–33% and 5%–19%, respectively, compared with flour made from raw pulses. All treatments also had a significant effect (p < .001) on nutrient content. Total dietary fiber increased (p < .02) by 11%–33%, depending on treatment and pulse type. Boiling decreased (p < .001) total choline and folate content in all pulse flours, by 17%–27% and 15%–32%, respectively. Germination doubled folate content (p < .001) in flour from both pea types compared with flour from the raw peas. In conclusion, treated pulse flours could be useful in food applications such as coating batter, dressings, beverages, or bakery goods, to improve the content of fiber, total choline, and folate.


In the wake of Seattle and other dramatic displays of opposition to capitalist globalization, many people are now talking about capitalism and describing themselves as anticapitalist. Great! But what do they mean? That capital's international institutions are bad because they usurp the right of citizens to make democratic decisions? That financial speculation detracts from real, productive investment that creates real jobs? That the drive for profits on the part of transnational corporations has led them to ally with and strengthen authoritarian regimes that deny human rights? That neoliberal policies are producing a race to the bottom in terms of wages, working conditions, and environmental standards? These are all important to oppose—but in and by themselves these are objections to specific policies and practices of capitalism rather than to capitalism as such.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.


This study focused on eliminating the oil mist in the generator upper guide bearing assembly of CBK-Power Company Ltd. To meet this objective, feasible and effective solutions were identified and presented. The study found out that oil mist is present in the generator causing a short circuit in the generator field, thus, leading oil losses to the company. Three alternative solutions were recommended to solve the existing problem. Design calculations, schematic diagrams, and economic study for each alternative solution were discussed. The study considered factors such as practicality, feasibility, economy, and efficiency to come up with the best alternative solution.


Recently, semantic image retrieval has attracted large amount of interest due to the rapid growth of digital image storage. However, existing approaches have severe limitations. In this paper, a new approach to digital image retrieval using intermediate semantic features and multistep search has been proposed. Instead of looking for human level semantics which is too challenging at this stage, the research looks for heuristic information and intermediate semantic features which can describe image content objectively. Different from the conventional approaches, the intermediate features are used as filters to eliminate large amount of irrelevant images. Conventional content based image retrieval techniques and relevance feedback (RF) are applied following the filtering to improve the retrieval accuracy. The proposed system has the power of capturing both regional features and global features, and making use of both semantic features and low level features. The proposed system also uses a powerful user interface to provide users with convenient retrieval mechanisms including SQL, RF and query by example. Results show the system has a significant gain over existing region based and global image retrieval approaches.


In this lecture we argue that important aspects of the growth process cannot easily be accounted for using models where capital accumulation is the main source of growth. The four aspects we emphasize in this lecture are: the transition trap, secular stagnation, the recent rise in top income inequality, and firm dynamics. The lecture argues that by contrast these aspects can be addressed by the Schumpeterian growth paradigm in which: (i) growth results primarily from innovation; (ii) innovation responds to incentives shaped by economic policies and institutions; (iii) new innovations replace old technologies (creative destruction).


Computer crimes and attacks on data networks have increased significantly, so it has become necessary to implement techniques that detect these threats and safeguard the information of organizations. Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) allow detecting anomalies and attacks in real time, by analyzing the local and outgoing traffic of the network. At present, to improve its performance, it has been chosen to use Machine Learning (ML) techniques that automate these processes and improve the detection of an anomaly. This paper implements ML techniques through the use of datasets, in the context of a NIDS, for the detection and prediction of anomalies on networks. Tests were performed with non-supervised and supervised learning algorithms on NSL-KDD and UNSW-NB15 datasets. An exploratory analysis of data together with dimensionality reduction techniques allowed us to understand the nature of the data, prior to the modeling. The results show that the methodology can be extrapolated for real scenarios with different network configurations.


To the Editor: Keratoacanthoma (KA) is a rapidly growing benign neoplasia, wbich bas a tendency to regress spontaneously over a period of some montbs. Despite several reports on the recovery of buman papillomavirus (lli'V) from KA,' it is still unclear as to wbether viruses are really involved in the patbogenesis of this tumor. KA is generally located on exposed cutaneous areas, so cumulative exposure to ultraviolet radiation represents a possible induction factor. We had occasionally observed a higher prevalence of KA during some montbs of the year. We believed it to be of some interest to establish if a seasonal pattern of presentation of KA really exists.


Enzymes, immobilized on pH/temperature/ion-responsive carriers, relieve poor contact and could be conveniently recycled as well. Enzymes were immobilized on pH-responsive carriers often by covalent method, which was better than non-covalent method (adsorption). The immobilized enzymes showed slight steric hindrance for enzymatic reaction, but always lose much activity during recycle process. The Km values were often increased significantly via immobilization on temperature/ion responsive carriers, while the immobilized enzymes expressed superior reusability. Both covalent and non-covalent methods were fit for enzymes to be immobilized on temperature-responsive carriers. Non-covalent method (entrapment) was preferential choose for enzymes to be immobilized on ion-responsive carriers. Many drawbacks, such as large activity loss and slow respondence during stimulus occurrence, seriously restrained the effect of the immobilized enzymes. It was supposed to open up special stimuli-responsive materials for enzymes immobilization, and choose proper immobilization methods, correspondingly.


This research developed a real-time traffic condition assessment and prediction framework using Vehicle-Infrastructure Integration (VII) with computational intelligence to improve the existing traffic surveillance system. Due to the prohibited expenses and complexity involved for the field experiment of such a system, this study adopted state-of-the-art simulation tools as an efficient alternative.
This work developed an integrated traffic and communication simulation platform to facilitate the design and evaluation of a wide range of online traffic surveillance and management system in both traffic and communication domain. Using the integrated simulator, the author evaluated the performance of different combination of communication medium and architecture. This evaluation led to the development of a hybrid VII framework exemplified by hierarchical architecture, which is expected to eliminate single point failures, enhance scalability and easy integration of control functions for traffic condition assessment and prediction.
In the proposed VII framework, the vehicle on-board equipments and roadside units (RSUs) work collaboratively, based on an intelligent paradigm known as "Support Vector Machine (SVM)," to determine the occurrence and characteristics of an incident with the kinetics data generated by vehicles. In addition to incident detection, this research also integrated the computational intelligence paradigm called "Support Vector Regression (SVR)" within the hybrid VII framework for improving the travel time prediction capabilities, and supporting on-line leaning functions to improve its performance over time. Two simulation models that fully implemented the functionalities of real-time traffic surveillance were developed on calibrated and validated simulation network for study sites in Greenville and Spartanburg, South Carolina. The simulation models' encouraging performance on traffic condition assessment and prediction justifies further research on field experiment of such a system to address various research issues in the areas covered by this work, such as availability and accuracy of vehicle kinetic and maneuver data, reliability of wireless communication, maintenance of RSUs and wireless repeaters.
The impact of this research will provide a reliable alternative to traditional traffic sensors to assess and predict the condition of the transportation system. The integrated simulation methodology and open source software will provide a tool for design and evaluation of any real-time traffic surveillance and management systems. Additionally, the developed VII simulation models will be made available for use by future researchers and designers of other similar VII systems. Future implementation of the research in the private and public sector will result in new VII related equipment in vehicles, greater control of traffic loading, faster incident detection, improved safety, mitigated congestion, and reduced emissions and fuel consumption.


BACKGROUND
Accurate classification of individuals with kidney disease is vital to research and public health efforts aimed at improving health outcomes. Our objective is to identify and synthesize published literature evaluating the accuracy of existing data sources related to kidney disease.

STUDY DESIGN
A systematic review of studies seeking to validate the accuracy of the underlying data relevant to kidney disease.

SETTING & POPULATION
US-based and international studies covering a wide range of both outpatient and inpatient study populations.

SELECTION CRITERIA FOR STUDIES
Any English-language study investigating the prevalence or cause of kidney disease, existence of comorbid conditions, or cause of death in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). All definitions and stages of CKD, including end-stage renal disease (ESRD), were accepted.

INDEX TESTS
Presence of a kidney disease-related variable in existing data sets, including administrative data sets and disease registries.

REFERENCE TESTS
Presence of a kidney disease-related variable defined using laboratory criteria or medical record review.

RESULTS
30 studies were identified. Most studies investigated the accuracy of kidney disease reporting, comparing coded renal disease with that defined using estimated glomerular filtration rate. The sensitivity of coded renal disease varied widely (0.08-0.83). Specificity was higher, with all studies reporting values ≥0.90. Studies evaluating the cause of CKD, comorbid conditions, and cause of death in patients with CKD used ESRD or transplant populations exclusively, and accuracy was highly variable compared with ESRD registry data.

LIMITATIONS
Only English-language studies were evaluated.

CONCLUSIONS
Given the heterogeneous results of validation studies, a variety of attributes of existing data sources, including the accuracy of individual data items within these sources, should be considered carefully before use in research, quality improvement, and public health efforts.


A prototype transition path editing tool for use in an immersive environment has been developed, which can be used for 3D keyframe animation authoring and editing of 3D transition paths. Authoring tools using 2D GUI is normally used to develop 3D animation. However, it is more direct to create 3D contents in a 3D space than in a 2D GUI. Therefore hand direct manipulation is employed to utilize body motion in the developed tool. Direct manipulation by hand is easy to understand and easy to use for rough positioning but it is not suitable for fine adjustments of virtual objects in an immersive environment because it is difficult to hold a hand at a fixed point without support in midair. A gearbox widget has been newly implemented to enable a user to adjust a value both roughly and minutely. In the immersive path editing tool, the developed widget and direct manipulation are combined to enhance efficiency of the immersive 3D authoring of keyframe animation.


The task of finding and classifying proper nouns in natural language text is the core of most Named Entity Recognition (NER) systems. The NER problem has received much attention, as NER forms the basic building block of any Information Extraction system.Although finding and classifying proper nouns in text is a very challenging task in English, the task benefits a great deal from the distinguishing orthographic feature of capitalization. When this feature is missing, as in uppercase text, or is present at the start of a sentence, ambiguity increases, and requires more knowledge sources to resolve the problem.The lack of capitalization is, however, an intrinsic feature of Arabic, thus the NER task in Arabic becomes immediately harder than in English. The ambiguity caused by this feature is moreover increased, as most Arabic proper nouns are indistinguishable from forms that are common nouns and adjectives. Thus, a lookup approach relying on proper noun dictionaries would not be an appropriate way to tackle the problem, as ambiguous tokens that fall in this category are more likely to be used as non-proper nouns in text. In addition, Arabic is a highly morphological language, thus posing more challenges for the NER task.We hypothesize that Arabic NER is very closely bound to Part-of-Speech (POS) tagging. However, Arabic POS taggers would normally have their worst accuracy on proper noun tagging, especially person names, given the problem just mentioned. Thus, we first built a POS tagging tool with a good coverage using the corpus-based approach. Then, we used a filtering technique to help collect unique proper nouns from large gazetteers. Combined with the POS, gazetteer, and unique names list features, we defined and used a further set of features to build a corpus-based NER classifier from labelled data. Experiments on different datasets, against a baseline and incorporating different combinations of features, resulted in demonstrating the efficiency of our final set of proposed features. The unique names list moreover assisted in reducing, in particular, the POS feature?s noise on proper nouns. Evaluation of our approach shows that it performs comparably with systems that use more, and more sophisticated, knowledge sources, and hence is easier to deploy for practical use.


Aggregate signature schemes combine the digital signatures of multiple users on different messages into one single signature. The Boneh-Gentry-Lynn-Shacham (BGLS) aggregate signature scheme is one such scheme, based on pairings, where anyone can aggregate the signatures in any order. We suggest improvements to its current chosen-key security model. In particular, we argue that the scheme should be resistant to attackers that can adaptively choose their target users, and either replace other users' public keys or expose other users' private keys. We compare these new types of forgers to the original targeted-user forger, building up to the stronger replacement-and-exposure forger. Finally, we present a security reduction for a variant of the BGLS aggregate signature scheme with respect to this new notion of forgery. Recent attacks by Joux and others on the discrete logarithm problem in small-characteristic finite fields dramatically reduced the security of many type I pairings. Therefore, we explore security reductions for BGLS with type III rather than type I pairings. Although our reductions are specific to BGLS, we believe that other aggregate signature schemes could benefit from similar changes to their security models.


Depressive disorders are a common source of disability among women. In addition to the economic and human costs of maternal depression, children of depressed mothers are at risk for health, developmental, and behavioral problems. Although most of the research examining the evidence and inter-generational aspects of maternal depression has been conducted in high-income countries, recent evidence suggests that rates of maternal depression may be higher in low- and middle-income countries, where nearly 90% of the world's children live. This review examines the evidence from low- and middle-income countries that links maternal depression with children's health, development, and behavior. We present recommendations for future policies and intervention programs related to maternal depression and examine how maternal depression affects the rights of millions of children living in these countries.


This review of the introductory instructional substance of functions and graphs analyzes research on the interpretation and construction tasks associated with functions and some of their representations: algebraic, tabular, and graphical. The review also analyzes the nature of learning in terms of intuitions and misconceptions, and the plausible approaches to teaching through sequences, explanations, and examples. The topic is significant because of (a) the increased recognition of the organizing power of the concept of functions from middle school mathematics through more advanced topics in high school and college, and (b) the symbolic connections that represent potentials for increased understanding between graphical and algebraic worlds. This is a review of a specific part of the mathematics subject mailer and how it is learned and may be taught; this specificity reflects the issues raised by recent theoretical research concerning how specific context and content contribute to learning and meaning.


The long-run social discount rate has an enormous effect on the value of climate mitigation, infrastructure projects, and other long-term public policies. Its value is however highly contested, in part because of normative disagreements about social time preferences. I develop a theory of 'non-dogmatic' social planners, who are insecure in their current normative judgments and entertain the possibility that they may change. Although each non-dogmatic planner advocates an idiosyncratic theory of intertemporal social welfare, all such planners agree on the long-run social discount rate. Nondogmatism thus goes some way towards resolving normative disagreements, especially for long-term public projects. JEL: H43,D61,D90


The current study aimed to investigate influences of rigid Ankle Foot Orthoses (AFOs) on gait in children with Cerebral Palsy (CP), immediate effects of tuning of AFO-FC (AFO-Footwear Combination) on gait of children with CP, short-term effects of tuning of AFO-FC on gait, muscle and joint characteristics and quality of life in children with CP, and the feasibility of conducting a larger trial.
The study included 11 healthy children and 8 children with CP. Outcome measurements included sagittal plane kinematics and kinetics derived using 3D motion analysis, Gait Deviation Index (GDI), physical examination, and quality of life using the PedsQL™ questionnaire.
Data from healthy children demonstrated influences of shoes on gait parameters and the role of the ankle joint in adapting to various wedges and rockers during gait.
When studying children with CP, beneficial effects of rigid AFO-FC on gait parameters were evident; these were thought to relate to the appropriateness of the AFO-FC and familiarisation with the prescription. Immediate effects of tuning varied according to gait patterns previously demonstrated with non-tuned AFO-FC; benefits to knee kinematics and kinetics were largely seen in legs with extended knee gait, followed by jump knee gait, and with poorest responses in legs with crouch knee gait.
Short-term effects of tuning were evident when comparing measurements taken before and after two-to-four months of wearing the tuned AFO-FC. Barefoot walking demonstrated significantly improved walking speed. Stride-length improved when comparing tuned AFO-FC at baseline with the tuned AFO-FC following the intervention period. No short-term changes were seen in PedsQL™ scores, muscle and joint characteristics, and GDI. Feasibility issues were also identified.
It was concluded from this exploratory trial that tuning of AFO-FC improved gait for children with CP, although initial gait pattern affected the amount of benefit. This was evident immediately after tuning and some parameters improved further after short-term intervention. A randomised controlled trial is required; power analysis indicates the need for a larger sample of 18 in each group to detect change in GDI with a medium effect size and at a power of 0.8 and p <0.05.


HVAC systems of large commercial buildings consume energy in excess of the sum total of the building loads. This excess energy use is due to the fact that a single air-handler unit in a HVAC system, having to provide conditioned air at different supply temperatures to different zones in the building, can do so only by resorting to either (a) a certain amount of mixing of cold and hot air streams as in dual-duct systems or (b) to terminal reheating in single-duct systems. This mixing of cold and hot air streams or terminal reheating result in an energy penalty which can be minimized by say, converting a constant air volume (CAV) system to a variable air volume (VAV) system, but it cannot be entirely eliminated. This paper proposes an index, called the Energy Delivery Efficiency (EDE), which characterizes this penalty and rates the energy performance of HVAC systems on an absolute scale. The authors develop the mathematical basis of the EDE approach for both one-zone and two-zone buildings, that allows determining the variation of the ideal EDE with outdoor temperature for a specific building. Year-long measured whole-building cooling and heating energy use data from two retrofitted buildings are finally usedmore » to illustrate differences between actual EDE plots of CAV and VAV systems, how they compare with the ideal EDE of a two-zone building, and how the approach can provide diagnostic insights into HVAC system efficiency in specific buildings.« less


Weak mechanical possession is one of the limiting factors in application of hydrogels. To modify this inherent disadvantage, different approaches have been studied including synthesizing interpenetrating polymer network (IPN) and nanocomposite hydrogels. So, this study has focused on preparation of a novel full-IPN structure based on anionic monomers of 2-acrylamido-2-methylpropane sulfonic acid/acrylic acid–sodium acrylate via facile solution polymerization technique in an aqueous media with incorporation of graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets. Mechanical performance of materials in the "as-prepared condition" and "swollen state" was characterized via tensile, compression, and rheology tests, respectively. Significant improvement of both elastic and storage modulus (ca. four times higher than pure hydrogel) is observed in this approach. Also dynamic mechanical thermal analysis results revealed that incorporation of high GO content (0.5 wt%) can suppress formation of full-IPN structure, whereas low GO content has not such an effect, interestingly. Moreover, these novel hydrogels could easily be stretched or compressed followed by full recovery after unloading.


Social media are emerging as an important platform for communication and health information exchange. Yet, despite the increase in popularity and use, only a limited number of empirical studies document which segments of the adult population are and are not using social media and with what, if any, affect on health. Preliminary studies highlight that while there are still significant inequalities by race and socioeconomic status in Internet access, once access is gained, use of social media such as social networking sites is equally prolific across socio-demographic groups. This ubiquity of use presents both significant opportunities and challenges for cancer communication efforts. With the new communication channel emerges a real need for refined measurement that adequately reflects the innate dynamism of the platform and a nuanced understanding of the links between computer/technology-mediated communication and health across populations to ensure that existing digital divides and health disparities are not exacerbated but rather narrowed. Citation Information: Cancer Prev Res 2011;4(10 Suppl):ED05-03.


The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of antioxidant additives (hypotaurine and cysteine) in different concentrations to the cryopreserving media on the
semen cytological parameters pre freezing and post thawing (motility, membrane integrity, morphology, acrosome integrity and viability).The experiment was done on 30 ejaculates collected by artificial vagina method from 5 boer goat bucks during April to May 2011. After collection, ejaculates qualifying standard criteria were pooled. Pooled ejaculates were washed for seminal plasma removal and then diluted in medium based on Tris in which antioxidants were added in various concentrations (hypotaurine 5, 10 and 20mM; cysteine 5, 10 and 20mM) or without antioxidants (control). The diluted semen was cooled at 4oC, filled
in 0.25ml French straws and then stored in liquid nitrogen. The results showed that semen quality did not differ (P < 0.05) in terms of morphology and acrosome integrity with
antioxidants supplementation after cooling. Hypotaurine and cysteine significantly improved the characteristics of boer goat semen motility, membrane integrity, morphology, acrosome integrity and viability after cryopreservation. Addition of hypotaurine at 10mM and cysteine at 5mM concentration leads maximum improvement in liquid and frozen boer goat sperm cytological characteristics.