A Harvest of Technology: The SuperGreen Revolution in the Jordan Valley, by Sharif S. Elmusa. Washington, DC: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 1994. xxvii + 195 pages. Bibl. to p. 210. Index to p. 217. $19.95 paper. Reviewed by James A. Miller At the intersection of political and economic rivalries, the east bank of the Jordan River has undergone a profound environmental and social transformation since the early 1970s. The East Ghor Canal project, Jordan's most notable agricultural infrastructure, has promoted steady technological change in the region. Sharif S. Elmusa assesses the socioeconomic and environmental extent of technological change in the Jordan Valley by looking at the most visible aspects of these changes and the development of drip irrigation and greenhouses, and then asks who benefits. At the same time, he is concerned with the nature of economic development and attempts to link local changes with the broader body of theory developed in economics and rural sociology. Elmusa views the development of the Jordan Valley from the perspective of dependency theory and finds the following mixed results: Food production has increased dramatically, raising incomes sharply for those who got in on the ground floor; wheat imports, however, have soared as vegetables have replaced grain production in the Valley; technology accumulation has increased, placing Jordan in the forefront of specific agricultural technologies and research; Jordanian agriculture has come to rely on Egyptian labor, linking regional economies, but placing Egyptians (in this discussion) in a new dependency relationship to Jordanians (87 percent of the Jordan Valley's labor force was Egyptian in 1986). Despite developments in the Jordan Valley, agriculture has declined in relative importance in the Jordanian economy (as in modernizing economies generally), and Jordan itself remains strongly enmeshed in patterns of dependency. Questions arise: What is dependency? Who profits from the transformation of the Jordan Valley? What are the consequences of technological change? In this case study of the relationship between technological change and development theory, it may be that theory overwhelms reality. Seeking to understand the nature of innovation and technological adoption, the theoretical discussion introducing Elmusa's work (Chapter 1, "The Basic Concepts") weeds through modernization studies and sorts out two models of diffusion of technology-individually based versus socially based. In studies of the Middle East, individual-based models can be traced to Daniel Lerner's 1958 study, The Passing of Traditional Society.' Not surprisingly, Elmusa finds these models lacking and turns to models of development that are framed within broader social structures that allow the "social, economic, and political positions of farmers, rather than their personality variables, [to determine] their decisions on whether to adopt new technologies" (p. 5). Dependency is understood as the interplay of domestic and international structures involving a country's surplus production. …


The main aim of present work is to study the impact of various excipients and co-processed excipients on dissolution rate. Direct compression is the preferred method for the preparation of tablets. Co processing is the one of the most widely explored and commercially utilized method for the preparation of directly compressible vehicle. The objective of present study is to prepare and characterize various co processed excipients and its application in tablet formulation. Co-processed excipient prepared was characterized by flow properties, solubility, Hardness, Friability, % drug content in tablet formulation. FTIR and SEM show no physical interaction between them with no chemical change. Co processing of excipients was evaluated for Drug release, mean dissolution time and dissolution efficiency Sucrose: MCC (2:1) used to extend the drug release up to 6 hr, we can prepare sustain release tablet of this CO processing by incorporation of sustain release polymer. MCC: Kyron was used to prepare immediate drug release. So based on these properties we was prepared immediate release formulation and sustain release formulation. Co-processing of Sucrose: MCC have been used to achieve sustain release by incorporation of pectin, by using this combination we can achieve sustain release up to 10 hr similarly Kyron: MCC was used in immediate release formulation. Comparison with both IR and SR marketed product and evaluated for F2 test shows there is similarity in dissolution profile between both the batches.


We present three new approximate versions of the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), all of which require only knowledge of subgradients of the subproblem objectives, rather than bounds on the distance to the exact subproblem solution. One version, which applies only to certain common special cases, is based on combining the operator-splitting analysis of the ADMM with a relative-error proximal point algorithm of Solodov and Svaiter. A byproduct of this analysis is a new, relative-error version of the Douglas-Rachford splitting algorithm for monotone operators. The other two approximate versions of the ADMM are more general and based on the Lagrangian splitting analysis of the ADMM: one uses a summable absolute error criterion, and the other uses a relative error criterion and an auxiliary iterate sequence. We experimentally compare our new algorithms to an essentially exact form of the ADMM and to an inexact form that can be easily derived from prior theory (but again applies only to certain common special cases). These experiments show that our methods can significantly reduce total computational effort when iterative methods are used to solve ADMM subproblems.


Research on the economic impact of migration on hosts and the migrants themselves has tended to focus on the short term. This column traces the economic impact of population diversity in the US resulting from the Age of Mass Migration of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. High levels of population fractionalisation have had a strong, positive influence on economic development, while high levels of polarisation have undermined development. Despite a stronger effect on income levels in the first 30 years following the initial migration shock, the relationships are found to be extremely long-lasting.


Tragicomedy is an exceedingly slippery genre that can incorporate the tragic and the comic, the melodramatic and the farcical, the romantic and the satiric in a variety of combinations. It can boast antecedents in Euripidean, Terentian, and medieval drama and cognates in sentimental comedy, the drame (serious drama that is neither tragic nor comic), melodrama, savage farce, and so on. But the dramaturgical and emotional fusion of tragic and comic elements to create a distinguishable and theoretically significant new genre, tragicomedy, has developed only twice in the history of drama. Controversial in the Renaissance, tragicomedy has in modem times replaced tragedy itself as the most serious and moving of all dramatic kinds.


This paper is concerned about the family physician's role in early cancer diagnosis and follow-up with his/hers patients who have just been diagnosed with cancer; treatment modalities for cancer; and family physician continuous roles for patients who are under definitive cancer treatment, experiencing side-effects of cancer treatment; some of the effective means to reduce these side-effects during cancer treatment and management of oncologic emergencies. Having some knowledge on the current cancer therapies would undoubtedly help family physicians to follow up patients with cancer more confidently, to appreciate their side-effects, symptomatic treatment, recognize the limit of primary care and be even useful for counseling and consultation with patients or their family members with a family history of cancer. Systematic searches with terms comprised "cancer", "malignancy", "primary care", "general practice", "cancer AND diagnosis" and "cancer AND follow-up" were done in the major databases such as Pubmed, ScienceDirect and Ovid. We employed selective searches with the above terms and their combination in some of the major journal such as The Lancet Oncology, The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, etc. These were followed by snowballing the relevant articles from the citation of references in those selected papers. The goal of this narrative review is not to provide exhaustive documentation of sound evidence for practice of primary care for cancer patients at diagnosis and follow-up. It mainly aims to provide specific evidence-based information and suggestions that are thought to be relevant for primary care professionals and policymakers.


Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) is a novel cloud service model allowing to develop fine-grained, provider-managed cloud applications. In this work, we investigate which challenges motivate researchers to introduce or enhance FaaS platforms and tools. We use a systematic mapping study method to collect and analyze the relevant scientific literature, which helps us answering the three clearly-defined research questions. We design our study using well-established guidelines and systematically apply it to 62 selected publications. The collected and synthesized data provides useful insights into the main challenges that motivate researchers to work on this topic and can be helpful in identifying research gaps for future research.


The cutting performance (tool wear, surface roughness of machined work-piece and chip formation)of wet, dry and Minimum Quantity Lubrication (MQL) machining when milling of high strength steel (PCrNi2Mo) using cemented carbide tools under different (cutting speed, depth of cut, feed rate) was analyzed. The experimental results showed that as the cutting speed, depth of cut and feed rate changed, MQL conditions provided the lowest flank wear and the highest surface quality. Chip formation produced under MQL conditions become more favorable in terms of color and shape. The results obtained prove the potential of using MQL technique in the milling process of high strength steel (PCrNi2Mo) for high cutting speed, feed rate and depth of cut.


Point counts of birds are made for many reasons, including estimating local densities, determining population trends, assessing habitat preferences, and exploiting the activities of recreational birdwatchers. Problems arise unless there is a clear understanding of what point counts mean in terms of actual populations of birds. Criteria for conducting point counts depend strongly on the purposes to which they will be put. This paper provides a simple mathematical conceptualization of point counts and illustrates graphically some of the influences on them.


In the present study, we use the fluorescent DNA base analog tC° to investigate the thermal stability of a small DNA hexagon and the thermodynamic factors that govern the formation of such a structure. The DNA molecule is becoming increasingly popular as a material for bottom-up construction of nanostructures; however, relatively little attention has been given to the thermodynamics of such biomacromolecule-based constructs. With the goal of increasing information density and structural complexity, the size of the nanoarchitectures decreases and, more importantly, the fine structure is becoming more detailed. In this process the thermal stability and formation of unwanted byproducts will become critical features to consider in the design and assembly of such structures. Using tC° as a fluorescent probe in fluorescence monitored DNA melting allows for individually observing the denaturing of each of the six 10-mer sides in the pseudohexagonal multicomponent system. Experimental results demonstrate that the ring-opening of the cyclized hexamer is virtually exclusive to one side and that the stability of this side is increased as a result of the cyclization. Moreover, a theoretical model describing the formation and melting of the nanostructure is presented. The results show that the cyclized structure is thermodynamically favored over linear polymeric structures under the conditions and concentrations used for the self-assembly.


Brain-inspired computing architectures, brought by Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), are an attractive solution to reduce the energy consumption of the conventional von Neumann's computation, with an excellent parallel processing capability. Therefore, critical applications, such as Space & Satellite, which impose severe constraints in terms of power consumption and computing efficiency, are excellent candidates to embed such networks. Nonetheless, integrated circuits operating during long-term and cumulative exposure to incidence levels of ionizing radiation may have their physical components degraded, thus drastically reducing their reliability and expected lifetime. A possible solution to enhance the radiation hardening characteristics of a conventional bulk CMOS device is to use the non-standard gate geometry referred to as Enclosed Layout Transistor (ELT). In this work, we propose to harden the design of an existing OxRAM-based neuron circuit [1] through the inclusion of ELTs, i.e., to improve the radiation hardening characteristics of a preexistent convenient neuron circuit topology by using the enclosed gate geometry for the n,pMOS devices. Electrical simulations, considering a standard commercial bulk CMOS fabrication process, in a 1SO nm technology, have been carried out to validate our proposed design. The simulation results, supported by the analysis of former works regarding the incidence of ionizing radiation in OxRAM and ELTs, indicate that the proposed hardened neuron circuit is a feasible solution to embed neuromorphic computing in aerospace applications.


Pole assignment problems are special algebraic inverse eigenvalue problems. In this paper, we research numerical methods of the robust pole assignment problem for second-order systems. The problem is formulated as an optimization problem. Depending upon whether the prescribed eigenvalues are real or complex, we separate the discussion into two cases and propose two algorithms for solving this problem. Numerical examples show that the problem of the robust eigenvalue assignment for the quadratic pencil can be solved effectively.


Abstract. This investigation built upon previous studies that compared effectiveness and efficiency among instructional methods. Instructional effectiveness and efficiency were compared among three conditions: an incremental rehearsal, a more challenging ratio of known to unknown interspersal word procedure, and a traditional drill and practice flashcard method. Six first-graders who demonstrated basic word reading difficulties participated in this study. Instructional effectiveness was measured by cumulative words read accurately on next-day retention probes, and instructional efficiency was measured by cumulative rate of words retained per minute of instructional time. Results revealed that incremental rehearsal was the most effective method for students as a group, whereas the traditional drill and practice was the most efficient method on reading performance. Students as a group maintained and generalized reading more words that were taught in the incremental rehearsal condition. Implications for school psychologists who work with educators to design, implement, and evaluate instruction are provided.


Nationally, 4-H has placed renewed emphasis in the areas of Science and Technology as a way to prepare youth for the 21st century workplace. Home access may become necessary to youth as they develop science and technology literacy via 4-H programs. A survey was sent to a random sample of 1,414 Nebraska families from a total population of 13,516. The survey examined the percentage of families that have access to computers and the Internet at home, computer components, use characteristics and specific areas of interest in science and technology. Results indicate that 96 percent of Nebraska 4-H families have access to computers at home. Nearly 92 percent of families had a connection to the Internet with a majority using dial-up connections. Families are interested in technology programs focused on basic computer knowledge and office application. In science, 4-H families indicated environment sciences and botany were areas of interest.


Abstract. The specific surface area (SSA) of a soil is commonly estimated from adsorption isotherms determined in a limited range of relative pressures (p/p0), admitting a non fractal model. Nitrogen adsorption (NAI) and desorption (NDI) isotherms determined over the full range of p/p0 have been described using the multifractal approach. This study aimed to assess effects of soil texture on the multifractality of NAIs and NDIs, and to analyze the association between multifractal parameters and soil properties. Six soil profiles were taken to get two groups of samples with contrasting pedogenetic origin, texture (medium or clayey), susceptibility to water erosion and quality for agricultural uses. These two soil groups also were significant differences in SSA and cation exchange capacity (CEC), but not in organic matter content (OMC). Consistent with previous studies, the scaling properties of both NAIs and NDIs from all the soil horizons studied could be fitted reasonably well with multifractal models. Values of parameters D−5, D1, D2 and D5, extracted from the generalized dimension function, Dq, were higher for clayey soils during adsorption, but during desorption all of them were higher for medium textured soils. Therefore, the measure was more evenly distributed for clayey soils during adsorption and for medium textured soils during desorption. Width of Dq function given by parameter (D−5–D5) was significantly higher clayey soils for NAIs, but not significant differences were detected for NDIs; subsequently scaling heterogeneity of NAIs was higher for clayey than for medium textured soil. Differences in multifractal behaviour of NAIs and NDIs were consistent with a wider hysteresis loop of the medium texture soils compared to that of the clayey soils. Linear correlations were found between parameters D−5 and (D−5–D5) and clay content or SSA, which were positive and negative for NAIs and NDIs, respectively. Agronomical and environmental characterization of these soil groups with contrasting properties be enhanced by evaluating SSA and by inspecting NAIs and NDIs for multifractality.


Clay mineral analyses of 300 surface sediment samples in the Skagerrak, Kattegatt, and the southwestern Baltic Sea have yielded qualitative evidence of considerable advective transport of suspended fine-grained terrigenous matter from the North Sea to the Baltic Sea. The transport is related to periodic near-bottom saltwater inflows, whereas the outflow of less saline surface water carries little suspended matter of Baltic origin. Although there are not enough data at this stage for exact budgeting, it is evident that this process contributes considerably to the sedimentation in the southwestern Baltic Sea and has probably done so during the past 6 k.y. It has been neglected so far. Hence, the southwestern Baltic Sea is believed to be a final sink for fine-grained North Sea material. This fact is corroborated by a compilation of sediment thickness data in the major basins of the Baltic Sea, which shows that the shallow southwestern basins accumulate more Holocene mud than the eastern and central basins. The external terrigenous matter also has far-reaching implications concerning the assessment of organic and inorganic pollutants, which are bound to fine-grained, clayey material. The Baltic Sea can no longer be regarded as a closed sedimentary system, and pollution assessment and control must be considered with a wider perspective.


Seafloor backscatter data are used to image the product of one of the youngest major mass-wasting events in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea: a 26 km3 debris-flow deposit that covers 2000 km2 of the Ebro continental slope and base of slope, offshore Spain. Backscatter images provide unprecedented insights on debris-flow dynamics in the deep sea. A pattern of low-backscatter patches represents large sediment blocks that moved while keeping their internal coherence. High-backscatter alignments restricted to topographic lows that represent coarse sediment pathways separate the blocks. The results presented prove the occurrence of large catastrophic sediment failures near heavily populated coastal areas even in continental margins considered to be geodynamically quiet, such as those of the northwestern Mediterranean.


The mission of this project was to teach the elderly citizens the basic information and communication technology (ICT) skills. Students of information and communication sciences (museum studies and heritage management and librarianship) planned and realized this service learning project through interactive collaboration between Tin Ujevic public library, Tresnjevka retirement home and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. The education for the elderly, a social group that is least connected with the rest of the today's society through information technology, represents a very important issue for their social inclusion and staying in life's mainstream. The students taught the end beneficiaries the basics of information technology with the emphasis on social networks (Facebook and Skype). Out of 15 participants, the first level (basic computer skills) was successfully completed by 13 participants. Two participants had physical deficiencies (they could not coordinate the movements of their body with the visual input). The second level was completed by 9 participants, while 6 participants were able to complete the third level (creating and managing the Facebook account). The last level (creating and managing the Skype account) was successfully completed by only two participants.


Although bone age estimates are traditionally used to monitor children receiving growth hormone therapy, few data support this practice. Bone age determination is fraught with technical difficulties, resulting in high interobserver differences. Longitudinal studies show that an individual's bone age can change erratically over time. The resulting errors in predicted adult heights based on these bone age determinations are large. Moreover, growth hormone therapy appears to accelerate bone maturation. The radiographic evidence of this acceleration can be delayed. In this setting, improvements in predicted adult heights can be artifactually large. Routine monitoring of bone age during GH therapy is unnecessary. Bayley and Pinneau, bone age determination, Greulich and Pyle, predicted height, radiography, Tanner and Whitehouse.


Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable results. But existing models are expensive to train and deploy, and it is also difficult to expand their knowledge beyond pre-training data without forgetting previous knowledge. This paper proposes a new neural network architecture, ModuleFormer , that leverages modularity to improve the efficiency and flexibility of large language models. ModuleFormer is based on the Sparse Mixture of Experts (SMoE). Unlike previous SMoE-based modular language model [Gururangan et al., 2021], which requires domain-labeled data to learn domain-specific experts, ModuleFormer can induce modularity from uncurated data with its new load balancing and load concentration losses. ModuleFormer is a modular architecture that includes two different types of modules, new stick-breaking attention heads, and feedforward experts. Different modules are sparsely activated conditions on the input token during training and inference. In our experiment, we found that the modular architecture enables three important abilities for large pre-trained language models: 1) Efficiency, since ModuleFormer only activates a subset of its modules for each input token, thus it could achieve the same performance as dense LLMs with more than two times throughput; 2) Extendability, ModuleFormer is more immune to catastrophic forgetting than dense LLMs and can be easily extended with new modules to learn new knowledge that is not included in the training data; 3) Specialisation, finetuning ModuleFormer could specialize a subset of modules to the finetuning task, and the task-unrelated modules could be easily pruned for a lightweight deployment.


This paper investigates the data aggregation problem for a multi-agent system. In this framework, agents are assumed to be independent reliable sources which collect data and collaborate to reach a common knowledge. In particular, agents are assumed to dynamically gather data over time, i.e., a dynamic scenario. A protocol for distributed data aggregation which is proved to converge to the basic belief assignment (BBA) given by a centralized aggregation based on the Transferable Belief Model (TBM) is provided.


: Despite the great interest in studying the medial septal area, the interactions of its neurochemical systems are not yet clearly understood. The aim of this study was to elucidate the role of nicotinic receptors in the interaction of glutamatergic and cholinergic systems of the medial septal area. The effect of L-glutamate (1 microM) on septal neurons was studied under the application of hexamethonium, nicotinic cholinoreceptor blocker by using the method of extracellular recording of neuronal activity in brain slices of ground squirrels. The response of septal neurons to glutamate depended on the type of their initial activity and on the presence of pacemaker properties. For the first time, the ability of septal neurons to respond to glutamate with an increase in burst frequency was shown. The influence of hexamethonium on the neuronal activity was similar to that of glutamate. After a preliminary application of hexamethonium, the reactions of neurons to glutamate changed. The excitatory reactions were masked, while the inhibitory reactions became stronger. It was found that nicotinic cholinergic receptors modulated the reactions of MS-DB cells to glutamate and the expression of the oscillatory properties of the septal neuronal network.


This article attempts to examine the use of graphological deviation in Timothy Wangusa's poetry as a style of foregrounding in Timothy Wangusa's poetry. It is hoped to fill knowledge gaps in the Wangusaic scholarship as previous studies on Wangusa are on issues of originality of his poetry and conclude that the trajectory of his poetry is mainly Christian, African, and English traditions. The studies conclude that Wangusa's poetry was greatly influenced by classical and western literary traditions (Alfredo Okello 2005). Some studies are on Wangusa's novels and short stories, and as such, they focus on aspects like themes and narrative techniques but not graphological deviation. This leaves much to be studied on the variable of graphological deviation in Wangusa's poetry. This justifies why this research article is worthwhile as it evaluates how Timothy Wangusa employs graphological deviation to create foregrounding. Besides, the researcher used the theory of defamiliarisation proposed by Viktor Shyklovsky throughout the study. The theory emphasises the use of poetic devices, which makes it an apt one as this study is on graphological deviation (which is used as a poetic device to achieve emphasis/foregrounding). The researcher used a textual analysis method and a descriptive research design in an attempt to explicate and make sense of the variable of graphological deviation. The results and findings from the data analysis prove that Wangusa uses graphological deviation to emphasise his message, shock or surprise readers (estrangement) and create mood in his poetry. This study recommends that studies be carried out on Timothy Wangusa's use of deviation of register


We have recently shown that a streptococcal preparation (OK-432) inhibits insulitis and prevents diabetes in nonobese diabetic (NOD) mice, an animal model of insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM). We extended this study to another model of IDDM, namely BB rats. Male and female BB rats were injected weekly with 0.2 mg OK-432 i.p. starting from 5 to 6 wk and continuing through 20 or 30 wk of age. The cumulative incidence of IDDM over 20 wk in the OK-432-treated BB rats (4 of 54, 7.4%) was significantly (P < .01) lower than that found in the nontreated BB rats (13 of 47, 27.7%). We examined some of these rats as follows. All of the OK-432-treated BB rats tested showed normal glucose levels before and after oral glucose administrations, as did the nontreated and nondiabetic BB rats. Histological examination of pancreatic sections revealed that the OK-432-treated rats retained a greater number of intact islets without infiltration of the mononuclear cells than did the nontreated BB rats. A preliminary in vitro study further demonstrated that the cytotoxic activities of spleen cells against a rat insulinoma cell line, RIN, were suppressed in the OK-432-treated rat. However, the treatment of BB rats with OK-432 showed no suppressive effects in the spleen cell number, the responsiveness of spleen cells to concanavalin A, the populations of OX19+, W3/25+, and OX8+ peripheral blood lymphocytes, or in the titers of cell surface antibody against RIN. These results suggest that a nonimmunosuppressive immunomodulator such as OK-432 may be useful as an agent for immunotherapy of IDDM.


This paper presents an FSK wake-up receiver with a −80 dBm sensitivity using a packet structure and a duty cycling scheme compliant with the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol trading off power with latency. Event-driven applications achieve power lower than 240nW from a 0.75V supply while latency-critical systems wake up in almost 200μ« at a 230μW consumption. A within-bit LC oscillator duty-cycling scheme is proposed to provide an extra 24% power reduction. Additionally, a custom FSK transmitter can trigger wake-up at 17nW only for an average latency of 5 seconds.


Purpose/value: With the growing complexity of organizations, it becomes increasingly important to tune the strategies of different business functions. In order to add maximum value to the organization, real estate strategies have to be aligned with corporate strategy. The purpose of this paper is to provide more insight in the alignment process itself, instead of focussing on distinguishing different possible strategies and their outcomes like most previous papers. Method: We compared and evaluated 8 models that claim to align corporate and real estate strategies and tried to pinpoint the mechanisms behind these alignments. The clearest alignment process is then applied to the rapidly changing care sector of the Netherlands. This sector was chosen because current developments place care institutions in a much more competitive market then before, so a change in driving forces is eminent. In total, 20 experts in this sector were interviewed extensively. Findings: Studies on alignment of corporate real estate tend to use many different corporate strategies, which is the main reason that there exist so many different alignments. And although possible real estate strategies are clear, the alignment itself is where most models become vague and rely on expert knowledge. To start alignment, the focus should be on the first step of strategy formulation, represented by the concept of driving forces from Tregoe & Zimmerman (1980). Results from the application to the care sector provide insight in the importance of each real estate strategy for each driving force for this sector specifically. But more importantly, they show how strategy alignment is still a disputable field with a lot of necessary research ahead.


Transcriptional regulation controlling pathogen-responsive gene expression in Arabidopsis
is believed to underlie the plant defence response, which confers partial
immunity of Arabidopsis to infection by Botrytis cinerea. In this thesis networks
of transcriptional regulation mediating the defence response are studied in various
ways.
First transcriptional regulation was predicted for all genes differentially expressed
during B. cinerea infection by development of a novel clustering approach, Temporal
Clustering by Affinity Propagation (TCAP). This approach finds groups of
genes whose expression profile time series have strong time-delayed correlation, a
measure that is demonstrated to be more predictive of transcriptional regulation
than conventionally used similarity measures. TCAP predicts the known regulation
of GI by LHY, and co-clusters ORA59 and some of its downstream targets.
Predicted novel regulators of pathogen-responsive gene expression were then studied
in a reverse genetics screen, which discovered several novel but weakly altered
susceptibility phenotypes. Comparison of predicted targets to known targets was
complicated by the sparsity of mutant versus wildtype gene expression experiments
performed during B. cinerea infections in the literature.
To explore the context-dependence of transcriptional regulation, evidence of transcriptional
regulation in different contexts was collected. This was compiled to generate
a qualitative model of transcriptional regulation during the defence response.
This model was validated and extended by experimental analysis of transcription
factor-promoter binding in Yeast and transcriptional activation in planta. Comparative
transcriptomics showed that downstream genes of some of these regulators
| TGA3, ARF2, ERF1 and ANAC072 | are over-represented in the list of genes
differentially expressed during B. cinerea infection, which is consistent with these
targets being regulated by them during B. cinerea infection.
Finally this qualitative model was used as prior information and was used along
with gene expression time series to infer quantitative models of the gene regulatory
network mediating the defence response. Some known regulation was predicted,
and additionally ANAC055 was predicted to be a central regulator of pathogenresponsive
gene expression.


This study investigated the basic physico-chemical property and binding functionality of commonly used commercial direct compression binders/fillers. The compressibility of these materials was also analyzed using compression parameters derived from the Heckel, Kawakita, and Cooper-Eaton equations. Five classes of excipients were evaluated, including microcrystalline cellulose (MCC), starch, lactose, dicalcium phosphate (DCP), and sugar. In general, the starch category exhibited the highest moisture content followed by MCC, DCP, lactose, and finally sugars; DCP displayed the highest density, followed by sugar, lactose, starch, and MCC; the material particle size is highly processing dependent. The data also demonstrated that MCC had moderate flowability, excellent compressibility, and extremely good compact hardness; with some exceptions, starch, lactose, and sugar generally exhibited moderate flowability, compressibility, and hardness; DCP had excellent flowability, but poor compressibility and hardness. This research additionally confirmed the binding mechanism that had been well documented: MCC performs as binder because of its plastic deformation under pressure; fragmentation is the predominant mechanism in the case of lactose and DCP; starch and sugar perform by both mechanism.


Background Previous preeclampsia, gestational hypertension and gestational diabetes mellitus show a firm epidemiological association to maternal cardiovascular disease risk. Cardiovascular disease risk assessment is recommended in women after these pregnancy complications, but not offered in most countries. We therefore wanted to evaluate the applicability of currently recommended cardiovascular disease risk scores for women one-year postpartum of such pregnancy complications. Design and methods We tested applicability of three scoring systems, the Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease (ASCVD) score, the Joint British Societies for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease (JBS3) score and Framingham 30 year Risk Score-Cardiovascular Disease (FRS-CVD) in 235 women one-year postpartum (controls: 94, gestational hypertension: 35, preeclampsia: 81, gestational diabetes mellitus: 25). Statistical analysis was performed with Mann–Whitney U test for continuous and Fisher's mid-corrected p and Pearson's r for dichotomous variables. A value of p < 0.050 was considered significant. Results Most women (87.7%) were below 40 years of age, rendering 10-year risk estimations recommended by American and European societies inapplicable. FRS-CVD could be assessed in all women. Significantly fewer could be assessed by the ASCVD (81.5%) and JBS3 (91.6%). All scoring systems showed small, but significant increases in risk scores for one or more of the pregnancy complication groups, but none at the risk magnitude for cardiovascular disease shown in epidemiological studies. Conclusion We demonstrate that ASCVD, JBS3 and FRS-CVD are inadequate in assessing cardiovascular disease risk one-year postpartum. We suggest that pregnancy complications need to be considered separately when evaluating maternal cardiovascular disease risk and need for postpartum follow-up.


An electronically sweeping radiation-pattern antenna using a new active cylindrical frequency-selective surface (ACFSS) is presented for 2.45-GHz operating frequency. The ACFSS screen is constructed by a new reconfigurable hybrid unit cell, providing more freedom to control the antenna radiation characteristics. A design guideline based on the reflector antenna principles is also introduced to estimate the overall dimensions of the antenna geometry, and then the required number of unit cells for the ACFSS surface is calculated. Furthermore, to confirm the proposed design guideline, the performance of the designed antenna is compared to three conventional reflector antennas constructed with solid perfect electric conductors. The achieved simulation results for these antennas are carefully examined and the impact of the FSS surface on enhancing the ACFSS antenna gain is discussed. Moreover, parametric studies for the crucial dimensions of the unit cell are also presented to demonstrate the effect of each parameter on the antenna radiation characteristics. To completely examine the achieved results, the transmission coefficient response of the applied FSS sheet is experimentally assessed, and the antenna measured parameters are accordingly interpreted.


In order to solve the damage detection problem, a damage detection method based on strain energy and evidence theory is presented in this paper. First, an evidence theory method is proposed to identify structural damage locations. Then, structural modal strain energy is utilized to quantify structural damage extents. In general, structural strain energy dissipation should be equal to the change of modal strain energy, according to this theory, a new energy equation is deduced, and structural damage extent can be obtained through the solution of the equation. The simulation results show that the method can perfectly identify damage locations and extents. Therefore, the proposed method is effective for the structural damage identification.


Abstract This study aims to determine the acceptability of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) self-sampling and the factors associated with willingness to buy HPV self-sampling kit in the future. A total of 164 women aged 28–60 years old from Obstetrics & Gynaecology clinics at a teaching hospital performed HPV self-sampling using the Digene HC2 DNA collection kit. After samples were taken, the participants were given self-administered questionnaires. The majority of the participants were Malay (93.9%), had attained tertiary education (65.2%) and were employed (70.1%). The acceptability was good. More than half of the participants felt that self-sampling was easy. Only 1.2% felt that the procedure was difficult to perform. Most reported no pain at all during the procedure (66.9%). The commonest concern was getting a good sample (90.1%). A number of Pap smears were found to be significantly associated with the willingness to buy the HPV self-sampling kit. HPV self-sampling has the potential to be included in the cervical cancer screening programme. Impact Statement What is already known on this subject: HPV self-sampling is acceptable in some developed and developing countries. It is acceptable because it was easy to perform with very minimal pain or discomfort. Studies on the acceptance of self-screening are needed to plan a policy on self-sampling in the future. What the results of this study add: Our study adds new findings to the body of knowledge on self-sampling in the local population. We found that more women are willing to do the self-sampling at the clinic rather than at home. Although more than 90% expressed willingness to do self-sampling in the future, only 70% of them were willing to purchase the kit. Cost is a potential barrier to women who have the interest to perform the self-sampling. Given the global economic challenges, cost is inevitably an important predictor that we have to consider. What the implications are of these findings for clinical practice and/or further research: Future research should examine women from the rural areas and those who are resilient to Pap smear screening. In clinical practice, clinicians should acknowledge that cost is a potential barrier for women who are willing to do self-sampling. Self-sampling could be an option for women with no financial constraint to buy the kit. However, clinicians should counsel women so that they can make an informed choice in determining their screening method.


The ability to control the active power, reactive power, AC voltage and DC voltage has provided the optimum utilisation of the power system.This paper presents the modeling of multi- terminal VSC based HVDC system. The reactive power by a particular terminal can be maintained constant or controlled. The DC bus voltage and AC voltage is controlled by separate terminal, the active power flow is maintained by another terminal. Each terminal can control up to 2 parameters depending on the requirement. Each controlled parameter requires tuning of PI controller gains in order to achieve satisfactory performance. The analysis of Voltage Source Converter based High Voltage Direct Current is carried out using vector control. The multi terminal response of a VSC-HVDC system during load changes, power reversal and line to ground fault on DC cable are analyzed. Simulation is carried out in RSCAD/RTDS software and the performance of the system is presented.


This quantitative study utilized 1,640 P-5 students' learning outcomes as a result of unit instructions that pre-service teachers gave to P-5 students in the field. The study investigated the difference in P-5 student learning outcomes after a unit instruction by three practicum course tiers, considering socioeconomic statuses, student grade levels, and subject areas of the content taught by the pre-service teacher. Using normalized gain scores, we used a t test and regression tests to analyze the data. Based on the findings, recommendations for pre-service teacher education include three items: a) to provide differentiated supervision based on pre-service teachers' experiences and needs, b) to require a proportionate and incremental assignment responding to the amount of pre-service teachers' experiences and hours in the classroom, and c) to incorporate co-teaching opportunities to facilitate peer learning and support in early field experiences.


In all modern industrial countries, redistributive expenditures are a larger component of the government budget than consumption of goods and services. In this paper, we use a general equilibrium, two- country model with exportables, importables and nontradables to study redistribution across different types of agents in a world characterized by the presence of labor unions and distortionary taxation. We show that an increase in transfers to, say, retirees, financed by distortionary taxation, can generate a loss of competitiveness (defined as an increase in relative unit labor costs for tradable goods), an appreciation of the relative price of nontradables, and a decrease in employment in all sectors of the domestic economy. The same qualitative effects would also obtain in the case of an increase in transfers towards the unemployed even if financed by non-distortionary taxation. Moreover, all these effects of labor taxation depend in a nonlinear way on the degree of centralization of the wage setting process in the labor market. We then estimate the effects of labor taxation on unit labor costs and the relative price of nontradables in a sample of 14 OECD countries. We find considerable empirical support for the model.


Although the gibberellin (GA) signaling pathway has been elucidated, very little is known about the steps linking first transcriptional activation to physiological responses. Among the few identified GA-induced genes are the plant-specific GAST1-like genes, which encode small proteins with a conserved cysteine-rich domain. The role of these proteins in plant development and GA responses is not yet clear. The Arabidopsis GAST1-like gene family consists of 14 members, GASA1-14. Here we show that over-expression of the GA-induced GASA4 gene in Arabidopsis promoted GA responses such as flowering and seed germination. Suppression of several GASA genes using synthetic microRNA (miR(GASA) ) also promoted seed germination. This was probably caused by suppression of GASA5, which acts as a repressor of GA responses. Previously, we proposed that GAST1-like proteins are involved in redox reactions via their cysteine-rich domain. The results of this study support this hypothesis, as over-expression of GASA4 suppressed ROS accumulation and the transgenic seeds were partially resistant to the NO donor sodium nitroprusside (SNP). Moreover, Escherichia coli expressing intact GASA4 or a truncated version containing only the cysteine-rich domain were resistant to SNP. Mutated GASA4, in which conserved cysteines were replaced by alanines, lost its redox activity and the ability to promote GA responses, suggesting that the two functions are linked. We propose that GA induces some GAST1-like genes and suppresses others to regulate its own responses. We also suggest that the encoded proteins regulate the redox status of specific components to promote or suppress these responses.


The nematicidal activity of Citrullus colocynthis seed, pulp, fruit and creeper extracts were evaluated against root- knot nematodes (Meloidogyne spp .) at 28 ± 2 � C in laboratory. Gas chromatograph interfaced to a Mass spectrometer (GC-MS) results indicated that C. colocynthis contains various bioactive compounds. The mentholic extracts of seed had the highest mortality (100%) at highest exposure time (72 hrs) while, the pulp and fruit extracts showed 60 and 80% mortality, respectively. Among various extracts of creeper hexane extract (HH-CC) showed 100% mortality after 72 hrs at all concentrations as compared with standard carbofuran. Whereas, HE-CC and HW- CC showed 100% mortality only at highest concentrations after 72 hrs. Ethyl acetate fraction was most active at highest concentrations causing 60% nematode mortality after 72 hrs. However, aqueous fraction (1 and 0.5) showed 40% mortality after 72 hrs exposure.


According to WHO, the definition of ideal mental health is not about absence of mental diseases or psychological problems.It is state of well-being in which the individual realizes his orher own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his/her community. In present paper core of focus is about the stresses and burnout situations to which a health professionals encountered in his/her daily routine. And how these things affect his/her mental and social wellness and what is the role of counselling in it. For the same in-depth interview has been performed by counsellor with 5 doctors. Content of the interview was comprehensive enough to ask about the basic interests, journey of becoming a successful professional and the kinds of problems the subjects face. Counsellor has emphasised on some important domains such as Drive, Collaboration, Humanity, Temperance, Humility and Accountability.Investigator has observed that counselling extends ability of judgment in the subjectin a positive manner. And its makes subject contextually aware, cognitively simpler, analytical, decisive, critical thinker, insightful and adaptable. This as a result helps the professional to make a better work life balance.


Volunteers in non-profit groups are a valuable workforce that contributes to economic development and supports people in need in the U.S. However, many non-profit groups face challenges including engaging and sustaining volunteer participation, as well as increasing visibility of their work in the community. To support non-profit groups' service, we explored how engaging community members in the volunteer-acknowledgment process may have an impact. We set up workstations and invited community members to write thank-you cards to volunteers in non-profit groups. We conducted 14 interviews with volunteers and community members, collected and analyzed 25 thank-you cards. We found that the acknowledgment activity can help circulate social goods through multiple stakeholders, that authenticity was valued in the acknowledgment process, and that non-profit groups intended to distribute, reuse, and publicize the acknowledgments to utilize them to a fuller extent. Our contributions include expanding knowledge on experiences, needs, and impact of community acknowledgment from different stakeholders, as well as presenting design opportunities.


The traditional pipelined RISC processors have been the mainstream technology in high-end embedded systems; it is due to that embedded applications are often satisfied with minimum performance requirement. However, the upcoming application domain of embedded systems will require more advanced microprocessor cores due to the future computing demands. Therefore, the system would eventually have to turn to advanced processors such as superscalars for the embedded processing cores. A drawback is that the conventional design of the superscalar processors possesses inherent complexity and power problems which are not easily acceptable in the domain of embedded processors. In this paper, we investigate the possibility to use multi-threaded processors to solve the problems with the traditional superscalar processors in embedded systems.


: One hundred and forty-one patients were examined for the correctness of the diagnosis of coronary heart diseases made on an outpatient basis and for criteria that determined the temporary disability of these patients in the course of a 4-year follow-up. The sick leaves had been given to the patients because of their complaints of pains in the left half of the chest, classified by physicians as angina pectoris. However, the diagnoses turned out questionable in almost half of the cases which accounted for 45.4% of all disability days during the period under analysis. The authors stress the necessity of a more strict approach to making the diagnosis of coronary heart disease on an outpatient basis, since erroneous diagnosis may predetermine the failure of medical measures and inflict economic damage.


Through an analysis of the films Altar mayor [High Altar] (Gonzalo Delgras, 1944), El clavo [The Nail] (Rafael Gil, 1944) and Tuvo la culpa Adan [Adam's Fault] (Juan de Orduna, 1944), I attempt to support the hypothesis of a certain kind of expulsion of female characters in Spanish fiction films in the years immediately following the Civil War, which would not only exclude them through ideological discourse, but also through the mise en scene. The analytical method adopted here moves away both from historiographical approaches and from the politique des auteurs, as well as from cultural studies and other similar disciplines, to take a direction already begun by other authors towards a possible history of forms in Spanish cinema. I thus analyse questions such as the relationship of the actress with the shot and the narration, her disappearance from the borders existing between them, her conversion into phantasmagoria, and, in short, the construction of an alternative, rebellious story in opposition to the official one. To conclude, I argue for the possibility of viewing the actress's body and gestures as instigators of a kind of materialist poetics in film analysis.


This paper summarizes new and recent apatite fission track analysis and vitrinite reflectance results from across the Irish Sea basin system and its margins, which provide new constraints on the magnitude and timing of post-Palaeozoic exhumation across this area. In particular, these results suggest that this region has experienced a complex, multi-phase exhumation history. Distinct episodes of kilometre-scale exhumation occurred during the early Cretaceous, early Palaeogene and late Palaeogene–Neogene times, with the overall magnitude of exhumation in each episode decreasing over time. Regional early Cretaceous exhumation removed up to 3 km of section from the Irish Sea basins, and appears to be related to incipient Atlantic rifting. Early Palaeogene exhumation attained up to 2 km and was driven by a combination of localized tectonic inversion and regional epeirogenic uplift, although early Palaeogene palaeotemperatures within parts of the Irish Sea basin systemare dominated by non-burial-related processes. A final phase of exhumation, related to late Palaeogene– Neogene tectonic inversion, uniformly removed c . 1 km of section from this region. Given that these exhumation episodes coincide temporally with important periods of deformation at pre-existing or incipient plate boundaries, events at plate margins are interpreted to have exerted the primary control on the Mesozoic–Cenozoic exhumation of the Irish Sea basin system.


BACKGROUND
Apples often experience postharvest damage due to being attacked by mold organisms. Several groups of molds such as Aspergillus sp., Penicilium expansum, Botrytis cinerea, and Venturia sp. can cause a serious postharvest disease exhibited as watery regions where areas of blue-green tufts of spores develop. Current methods using fungicides to control pathogenic fungi can cause resistance if applied in long term. An alternative procedure using yeast as a biological agent has been found.

OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study is to screen potential yeast which has ability to inhibit the growth of Aspergillus brasielensis (isolate A1) and Aspergillus flavus section flavi (isolate A17) isolated from apple fruits.

METHODS
Antagonism test using YMA dual culture medium using in vitro assays and ITS rDNA identification were performed.

RESULTS
The result showed that 3 out of 19 yeast isolated from Cerbera manghas L, T1, T3 and T4, demonstrated the potential ability as biocontrol agent. ITS rDNA identification demonstrated that T1 has similarity to Rhodotorula mucilaginosa while T3 and T4 were identified as Aureobasidium sp. nov.. The 3 isolates exhibited the ability to reduce the growth of A. brasiliensis sensu lato better than dithane 0.3% with a disease incidence (DI) of 100% and a disease severity (DS) value of 45%. Only isolate T1 and T3 were able to reduce decay symptoms in apples inoculated with A. flavus sensu lato (with DO and DS were 100% and 25%, respectively) compared to dithane pesticides 0.3%.

CONCLUSION
This study indicated that competition between nutrients occurs between pathogenic molds and under-yeast in vitro and in vivo conditions. However, further studies in the future might be able to elucidate the 'killer' activity and interaction with the pathogen cells and the bio-product production using Rhodotorula mucilaginosa and Aureoubasidium namibiae strains to control postharvest diseases.


This article will deal with methods for analyzing residues of pesticides and mycotoxins from molds in food. A general description of each topic is given directing the reader towards some key reviews, books or manuals published in the field with specific references added for more recent papers or topics of particular interest; techniques such as chromatography, spectrophotometry and immunochemical methods have been reviewed. In the first section sampling procedures are discussed, in the second section an overall description of the analytical methods used for pesticide residues in food is given with particular attention to multiresidue methods, in general those used most for assessing residue levels in crops at the international level, with consideration given to those less used methods dedicated to specific compound classes not covered elsewhere. The third section deals with mycotoxins with a brief description of the various mycotoxin types and some properties, followed by some discussion of analytical methods. The description of analytical techniques has been divided into extraction, cleanup and instrumental determination techniques for both pesticides and mycotoxins. Some tables of experimental data are also given.

The last section (four) deals with quality assurance aspects outlining the necessary steps, included interlaboratory trials, needed to validate a method and to assure reliability of the data.


The phage shock protein operon (pspABCE) of Escherichia coli is strongly expressed in response to stressful environmental conditions, such as heat shock, ethanol treatment, osmotic shock, and filamentous phage infection. We show that bacteria lacking the pspABC genes exhibit a substantial decrease in the ability to survive prolonged incubation in stationary phase under alkaline conditions (pH 9). The psp mutant bacteria grow approximately as well as wild-type strains in the alkaline medium, and stationary-phase survival of the psp mutants improves substantially at pH values closer to the optimal growth range (pH 6-8). In late stationary-phase (1- to 2-day-old) cells, the operon can be strongly induced under certain conditions, and PspA can become one of the most highly expressed bacterial proteins. The combination of stationary-phase starvation and alkaline pH is likely to place a severe strain on the maintenance of endogenous energy sources, and, consistent with these effects, we find that psp expression is also induced by uncouplers of oxidative phosphorylation and other agents that interfere with energy production. The death rate of psp mutants in stationary phase is accelerated by the presence of wild-type bacteria in the same culture, suggesting that the psp operon may play a significant role in enabling E. coli to compete for survival under nutrient- or energy-limited conditions.


Craig Calhoun argues that the self-constitution of Europe through public communication is an underestimated and neglected aspect of European integration. A functioning public discourse would not only be vital to the building of democratic European institutions, but in its ideal form the public sphere would shape and define the European integration project. Until now, the political and economic elites of Europe have failed to foster this public sphere.


In this paper, influence mechanism of variously physical factors for milling force in any feed direction is studied during the milling process. Firstly, the effects of spindle eccentricity, cutter deflection and cutter vibration for the instantaneously undeformed cutting thickness are analyzed, and the mathematical expressions of chip thickness is set up. Then,on this basis of cutting force and chip load, the milling force model of ball-end mill with considering integrated physical factors is established though the differential method, and a simulation system for prediction of milling forces during the milling process is developed. This milling force model is verified through simulation and analysis of milling forces.


How can Marxism, a theory and practice that emerged from the European experience, speak to contexts outside that experience? Recent scholarship has returned to the moment of the 1960s and 1970s to examine how political movements in the global South that embraced Marxism grappled with this question, aiming to reformulate Marxist theories and categories of analysis for postcolonial realities. Whereas this scholarship focuses on the writings of intellectuals, in this article, the authors supplement prose with oral history and ethnography to also identify the theory immanent in practice. They show how the translation of Marxist theory for political practice in the peripheries instantiated what the authors call a worldly Marxism: that is, a Marxism that is constantly renewed as it exceeds its origins in Europe and attends to the specificities of settler-colonies, (post-)colonies and metropoles. Worldly Marxism thus entails theorizing in the conjuncture, that is, from a particular historical moment, and involves arranging multiple conceptual elements to clarify and understand the political task at hand. The authors illustrate how such worldly Marxism was produced in Pakistan by examining the Mazdoor Kisan Party (MKP), the country's historically largest communist party, as it engaged with agrarian transitions, religion, and gender.


Abstract We examined maternal depression and maternal sensitivity as mediators of the association between maternal childhood adversity and her child's temperament in 239 mother–child dyads from a longitudinal, birth cohort study. We used an integrated measure of maternal childhood adversity that included the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and the Parental Bonding Index. Maternal depression was assessed with the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale at 6 months postpartum. Maternal sensitivity was assessed with the Ainsworth maternal sensitivity scales at 6 months. A measure of "negative emotionality/behavioral dysregulation" was derived from the Early Childhood Behaviour Questionnaire administered at 36 months. Bootstrapping-based mediation analyses revealed that maternal depression mediated the effect of maternal childhood adversity on offspring negative emotionality/behavioral dysregulation (95% confidence interval [0.026, 0.144]). We also found a serial, indirect effect of maternal childhood adversity on child negative emotionality/behavioral mediated first by maternal depression and then by maternal sensitivity (95% confidence interval [0.031, 0.156]). Results suggest the intergenerational transmission of the effects of maternal childhood adversity to the offspring occurs through a two-step, serial pathway, involving maternal depression and maternal sensitivity.


West Nusa Tenggara Barat has local peanuts that can be used as a source of germplasm, i.e. Bima, Pelat, and Lombok Utara. The productivity of peanut is greatly influenced by the attack of pests/diseases, like bacterial wilt disease. Bacterial wilt is one of the major diseases that can reduce peanut production up to 60% and one of the control mechanisms that can be used is local varieties that are resistant to bacterial wilt disease. This research aimed to evaluate the resistance of local peanut from West Nusa Tenggara to bacterial wilt disease (Ralstonia solanacearum) and to characterize the phenotype of the peanuts. The field research was conducted in the Genetic Resources Field Collection located in Narmada Experimental Field, on January until April 2016. The research method used was randomized complete block design (RCBD) single factorial with 9 replications, thus totally 27 plots were used. Three varieties of peanuts were evaluated, i.e two local varieties (Pelat Sumbawa and Lokal KLU) and Kelinci variety as control. The results showed that the pods and seeds were the main traits that distinguish Lokal KLU and Pelat varieties. The Lokal KLU had medium size pods with a weight of 100 seeds of 48.96 g, while Pelat and Kelinci had very large pod sizes with a weight of 100 seeds of 42.45  and 32.92 g, respectively, thus they were a potential high yielding plants. Lokal KLU had resistance to bacterial wilt compared to Kelinci that was medium resistant and Pelat that was susceptible to bacterial wilt disease.


Islam is a vital, growing religion in America. Little is known, however, about the religion except through the biased lens of media reports which brand African American Muslims as "Black Muslims" and portray their communities as places of social protest. African American Islam challenges these myths by contextualizing the experience and history of African American Islamic life. This is the first book to investigate the diverse African American Islamic community on its own terms, in its own language and through its own synthesis of Islamic history and philosophy.


Kimura's disease (KD) is a benign, rare and chronic inflammatory disorder of unknown etiology and it affects subcutaneous tissues, lymph nodes, and salivary glands. The clinical manifestation of cases reported is mainly small neoplasms or enlarged lymph nodes, while cases for large masses are rarely reported. This case reveals a female patient of KD with large masses in the head and neck region. The scope of the tumor is huge, which seriously affects the facial shape and psychology of the patient, thereby affecting the daily life of the patient. Although the patient had surgically removed the same site tumor 8 years ago, it was not possible to determine whether it was a recurrent case because the postoperative pathological diagnosis of first treatment was not confirmed. Under the general anesthesia, the right head and neck masses were removed. During the operation, the facial nerve branches were wrapped by the masses. After consulting the family members, it was agreed that the facial nerve should not be preserved for maximum extent removal of the tumor. Although the patient has facial paralysis symptoms after surgery, the facial shape and patient's psychology are greatly improved, and the patient is satisfied with the treatment effect. Surgical treatment is one of the effective ways to treat huge tumors in the head and neck of KD. This study has certain guiding significance for clinicians to treat huge tumors of head and neck in KD.


Composites prepared with whole sorghum stem fragments reinforcing a polyethylene matrix were studied using ten different sorghum genotypes. We first built of a robust protocol ensuring an accurate assessment of composite physical and mechanical properties. It shows that for a given sorghum genotype, the composition of the stem fragments is depending on the size of the fragments. This justifies the need to use a similar stem fragment size for comparing genotypes. During compounding and injection, fragments are broken, to an extend which depends on genotypes. This robust processing protocol shows that there are large differences in the final mechanical properties of the composites depending on the genotype. This is correlated with the histological structure and the biochemical composition of each genotype, showing correlations between the amount of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin present in the stem fragments with the mechanical properties of the composites, as well as the importance of the location of cellulose (sclerenchym fibers versus parenchym tissues and vessels). We will show the difficulties of working with small, well identified amounts of biological materials when dealing with composite-filler biochemical and structural characteristics which are heavily varying between on position to another along the plant stem. This work is the first step of a plant breeding process for identifying the best sorghum varieties to be used for preparing polymer composites.


Dr. Hughston: Although I agree with your goal of 100% good results in treating any injuries (American Journal of Sports Medicine 7: 219-220, 1979), I question the need to operate on all lateral ankle ligament ruptures. The success rate of 96% with plaster immobilization is acceptable, particularly since effective reconstructive procedures exist for the rare failures. If you defme a treatment failure as an ankle that comes to surgery, have you not increased your failure rate substantially above 4%?


Patients who have dialysis-dependent renal disease frequently present with coronary artery disease but are considered at high risk for coronary artery bypass grafting. From 1 September 2000 through 31 August 2003, we performed complete off-pump coronary revascularization in 6 patients who had end-stage dialysis-dependent renal failure, and we prospectively studied the perioperative and early postoperative results. The effect of off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting on mortality, morbidity, postoperative complications, and transfusion requirements in this group of patients was investigated. No perioperative deaths or ischemic cardiac events were observed after off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting. In all patients, anginal symptoms were relieved during the postoperative period. The mean duration of follow-up was 172 +/- 12.4 months. Patients with dialysis-dependent chronic renal failure who present with coronary artery disease should be thoroughly evaluated preoperatively for risk factors and coexistent severe diseases. We believe that in patients with end-stage dialysis-dependent chronic renal failure, off-pump coronary revascularization is a good alternative.


Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN), Long Short-Term Memory Networks (LSTM), and Memory Networks which contain memory are popularly used to learn patterns in sequential data. Sequential data has long sequences that hold relationships. RNN can handle long sequences but suffers from the vanishing and exploding gradient problems. While LSTM and other memory networks address this problem, they are not capable of handling long sequences (50 or more data points long sequence patterns). Language modelling requiring learning from longer sequences are affected by the need for more information in memory. This paper introduces Long Term Memory network (LTM), which can tackle the exploding and vanishing gradient problems and handles long sequences without forgetting. LTM is designed to scale data in the memory and gives a higher weight to the input in the sequence. LTM avoid overfitting by scaling the cell state after achieving the optimal results. The LTM is tested on Penn treebank dataset, and Text8 dataset and LTM achieves test perplexities of 83 and 82 respectively. 650 LTM cells achieved a test perplexity of 67 for Penn treebank, and 600 cells achieved a test perplexity of 77 for Text8. LTM achieves state of the art results by only using ten hidden LTM cells for both datasets.


Clustering is an important technique for identifying structural information in large-scale data analysis, where the underlying dataset may be too large to store. In many applications, recent data can provide more accurate information and thus older data past a certain time is expired. The sliding window model captures these desired properties and thus there has been substantial interest in clustering in the sliding window model. In this paper, we give the first algorithm that achieves near-optimal $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximation to $(k,z)$-clustering in the sliding window model, where $z$ is the exponent of the distance function in the cost. Our algorithm uses $\frac{k}{\min(\varepsilon^4,\varepsilon^{2+z})}\,\text{polylog}\frac{n\Delta}{\varepsilon}$ words of space when the points are from $[\Delta]^d$, thus significantly improving on works by Braverman et. al. (SODA 2016), Borassi et. al. (NeurIPS 2021), and Epasto et. al. (SODA 2022). Along the way, we develop a data structure for clustering called an online coreset, which outputs a coreset not only for the end of a stream, but also for all prefixes of the stream. Our online coreset samples $\frac{k}{\min(\varepsilon^4,\varepsilon^{2+z})}\,\text{polylog}\frac{n\Delta}{\varepsilon}$ points from the stream. We then show that any online coreset requires $\Omega\left(\frac{k}{\varepsilon^2}\log n\right)$ samples, which shows a separation from the problem of constructing an offline coreset, i.e., constructing online coresets is strictly harder. Our results also extend to general metrics on $[\Delta]^d$ and are near-optimal in light of a $\Omega\left(\frac{k}{\varepsilon^{2+z}}\right)$ lower bound for the size of an offline coreset.


The commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) crops is being accompanied by a debate with scientific, social, ethical, legal and metaphysical dimensions. In the face of this complex debate, governments need to regulate GM crops in a way that minimises negative impacts on biological and social environments. This paper is a critical examination of Australia's regulatory framework for the deliberate environmental release of GM crops, specifically in terms of its ability to advance ecologically and socially sustainable agriculture. Following a description of the novel nature of GM crops, I discuss how the approach selected, the definition of key terms and the parties being granted influence exclude social and ethical concerns from regulatory deliberation and threaten the development of socially sustainable agriculture. Threats to ecologically sustainable agriculture from the framing of GM crop regulation are discussed in relation to how the selected approach deals with ecological uncertainties and the baseline being used for acceptable risk comparisons.


The behaviors of trace element Er on binary Al-Mg and ternary Al-Mg-Mn alloys have been investigated through optical microscopy, x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectroscopy and transmission electron microscope. It was found that Er additions more than 0.4% (wt%) produced a remarkable refinement in grain size of Al-Mg and Al-Mg-Mn alloys castings. Er can enhance the tensile strength of the two group experimental alloys significantly but not greatly decrease the elongation due to the formation of many fine like spherical and dispersive primary and precipitation Al3Er particles during casting and heating process. Al3Er particles have L12 crystal structure (space group Pm3m) with a lattice parameter of 0.42119nm, and have a coherent relationship with the matrix phase α-Al (mismatch only 4.1%), which can be acted as the heterogeneous nucleus during solidification to increase the rate of nucleation, and the other hands it can strongly pin up dislocations and subgrain boundaries and retard the recrystallization of alloys.


Most research underscores the inefficacy of foreign aid as an instrument for influencing local perceptions of governance in countries affected by conflict. In contrast, we argue that aid can improve public perceptions of governing institutions during civil wars when those institutions arise from popular uprisings against authoritarian regimes. To evaluate our theory, we analyze new perceptions-based data, both quantitative and qualitative, which was collected from residents of 27 opposition-held communities inside Syria from 2014 to 2016. We find a positive statistical relationship between aid and perceptions of local institutions, but only when the populace does not believe the institutions were imposed by an outside actor. These results are further supported by placebo tests and a case study of Raqqa City, in which we show that aid boosted citizens' views of the local councils until ISIS took over.


The ability of the white rot fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium to enhance the biotransformation of benzo(a)pyrene (B(a)P) in contaminated soils was evaluated in compost bioreactors. Radiolabelled114C and chemical mass balances were used to evaluate: 1) rate of disappearance of test compound; 2) mineralization; 3) formation of bound contaminant residue; and 4) treatment costs.

Mineralization of B(a)P was found to be insignificant over the duration of test period. Moreover, no radioactivity was recovered in volatile organic traps indicating that transformation of B(a)P resulted in chemicals intermediates that remained associated with the compost matrix.

Bound contaminant residue formation was found to be the major mechanism of B(a)P removal accounting for nearly 100% of the contaminant loss from the solvent extract (methylene chloride/acetone). A maximum rate of bound contaminant removal of 1.36 mg B(a)P/Kg soil-day was estimated in fungal inoculated system over the first thirty days of treatment. This was significantly different from the maximum rate of bound residue formation estimated in the noninoculated systems (0.83 mg B(a)P/Kg soil-day) over the same time period. After thirty days, the rate of bound residue formation decreased to near zero in the inoculated system while remaining constant in the noninoculated reactors. The decrease in bound residue formation coincided with decline in benzo(a)pyrene removal. Data suggest that fungal activity may have been reduced over time by nutrient limitation.


Supplemental digital content is available in the text. INTRODUCTION Quetiapine is an atypical antipsychotic commonly used in critical care. Cellular and animal models demonstrated its novel anti-inflammatory properties in traumatic brain injury (TBI). Our study aimed to assess the effect of quetiapine on outcomes in critically ill TBI patients. We hypothesize that quetiapine improves neurological outcomes. METHODS The Multiparameter Intelligent Monitoring in Intensive Care database was queried, and all adult (age, ≥18 years) isolated TBI patients (extracranial Abbreviated Injury Scale, < 2) admitted to the intensive care unit for a period of >48 hours. Patients were stratified into quetiapine (+) and no-quetiapine (−) groups. Propensity score matching was performed (1:2 ratio). Outcome measures were intensive care unit length of stay, discharge Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), and mortality. A subanalysis was performed for patients who underwent intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring to ascertain the effect of quetiapine dose on ICP, and cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP). Survival curves and regression analyses were performed. RESULTS A matched cohort of (quetiapine, 116 vs. no-quetiapine, 232) patients was obtained. Mean ± SD age was 65 ± 21 years, median head Abbreviated Injury Scale was 3 (3–4), and median GCS was 10 (9–16). The median quetiapine dose given was 50 (25–125) mg. Patients who received quetiapine had lower mortality (17.2% vs. 27.6%; p = 0.03) and a higher median GCS at discharge (12 [11–14] vs. 11 [10–13]; p < 0.04) but no difference in intensive care unit length of stay (4.1 days vs. 4.7 days; p = 0.75) or discharge to skilled nursing facility (34.5% vs. 31.9%; p = 0.63). On subanalysis of patients who received quetiapine, 40% had ICP monitoring. Higher doses of quetiapine were independently associated with progressively lower ICP (β = −0.022 mm Hg/mg of quetiapine; p = 0.01) and higher CPP (β = 0.031 mm Hg/mg quetiapine; p = 0.01). CONCLUSION Quetiapine may decrease mortality and improve neurological outcomes in critically ill TBI patients. It has a dose-dependent effect to decrease ICP and increase CPP. Quetiapine may be a potential therapeutic modality in critically ill TBI patients, but further studies are required to explore these mechanisms. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Systematic Review, level III.


While traditional symmetric algorithms like AES and SHA-3 are optimized for efficient hardware and software implementations, a range of emerging applications using advanced cryptographic protocols such as multi-party computation and zero knowledge proofs require optimization with respect to a different metric: arithmetic complexity.In this paper we study the design of secure cryptographic algorithms optimized to minimize this metric. We begin by identifying the differences in the design space between such arithmetization-oriented ciphers and traditional ones, with particular emphasis on the available tools, efficiency metrics, and relevant cryptanalysis. This discussion highlights a crucial point—the considerations for designing arithmetization-oriented ciphers are oftentimes different from the considerations arising in the design of software- and hardware-oriented ciphers.The natural next step is to identify sound principles to securely navigate this new terrain, and to materialize these principles into concrete designs. To this end, we present the Marvellous design strategy which provides a generic way to easily instantiate secure and efficient algorithms for this emerging domain. We then show two examples for families following this approach. These families — Vision and Rescue — are benchmarked with respect to three use cases: the ZK-STARK proof system, proof systems based on Rank-One Constraint Satisfaction (R1CS), and Multi-Party Computation (MPC). These benchmarks show that our algorithms achieve a highly compact algebraic description, and thus benefit the advanced cryptographic protocols that employ them.


Medicinal plants play an important role in the lives of rural people particularly in remote parts of developing countries with few health facilities. It is estimated that around 70,000 plants species from lichens to towering trees has been used for medicinal purpose. The present review provides the importance of the plants with hepatoprotective activity. There are many plants with this activity and some of them are mentioned in the review. In this review article, an attempt has been made to compile the reported hepatoprotective plants from India and abroad and may be useful to the health professionals, scientists and scholars working the field of pharmacology and therapeutics to develop evidence based alternative medicine to cure different kinds of liver diseases in man and animals.


She is a victim of intimate partner violence, a woman who has been harmed. She is a criminal offender, a woman who has harmed others. Superficially, it seems she is two separate women. "Victim" and "offender" are binary categories used within law, social science, and public discourse to describe social experiences with a moral dimension. Such terms draw upon cultural narratives of good and bad people and have influenced scholarship, public policy, and activism. The duality of "good" and "bad" women, separated into mutually exclusive extremes of angels and demons, has helped segregate thinking about, and responses to, each group. In this groundbreaking study, Kathleen J. Ferraro exposes the limits of such thinking by exploring the link between victimization and offending from the perspective of the women charged with the crimes. Interviewing forty-five women charged with criminal offenses (more than half of whom killed their abusers; the others participated in a range of violent crimes related to domestic violence), Ferraro uses their stories to illuminate complex interactions with violent partners, their children, and the legal system. She shows that these women are neither stereotypical angels nor demons, but rather human beings whose complicated lives belie the abstract categorizations of researchers, legal advocates, and the criminal justice system. Ferraro begins with a general discussion of blurred boundaries and the complexity of experience, and moves from there to discuss women's interactions with the criminal processing system. In the course of her study, she reexamines, and finds wanting, many standard ways of evaluating women's violent behavior, including "mutual combat," "battered woman syndrome," and "cycle of violence." She argues that a more complex, nuanced understanding of intimate partner violence and how it contributes to women's offending will contribute to public policy less focused on control and accountability of individuals than on developing social conditions that promote everyone's safety and well-being and foster a sense of hope.


A thesis submitted to the department of economics in
Partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Science in economics


At container terminals, many cargo handling processes are interconnected and occur in parallel. Within short time windows, many operational decisions need to be made and should consider both time efficiency and equipment utilization. During operation, many sources of disturbance and, thus, uncertainty exist. For these reasons, perfectly coordinated processes can potentially unravel. This study analyzes simulation-based optimization, an approach that considers uncertainty by means of simulation while optimizing a given objective. The developed procedure simultaneously scales the amount of utilized equipment and adjusts the selection and tuning of operational policies. Thus, the benefits of a simulation study and an integrated optimization framework are combined in a new way. Four meta-heuristics—Tree-structured Parzen Estimator, Bayesian Optimization, Simulated Annealing, and Random Search—guide the simulation-based optimization process. Thus, this study aims to determine a favorable configuration of equipment quantity and operational policies for container terminals using a small number of experiments and, simultaneously, to empirically compare the chosen meta-heuristics including the reproducibility of the optimization runs. The results show that simulation-based optimization is suitable for identifying the amount of required equipment and well-performing policies. Among the presented scenarios, no clear ranking between meta-heuristics regarding the solution quality exists. The approximated optima suggest that pooling yard trucks and a yard block assignment that is close to the quay crane are preferable.


Why does technology diffusion work to enhance productivity in some countries but not in others? We have examined panel data from 84 countries over fifty years to analyze which factors contribute to how productivity improvements diffuse from the technological frontier to those within it. We find that there is convergence of countries onto the frontier only amongst the very richest countries in our sample (OECD), and that there is little if any sign of convergence by others. This results in larger productivity gaps between the richer countries (at or near the frontier) and the poorer ones, and increasingly so for the very poorest. What can be done to aid diffusion to the problematic countries? We find that, for the very poorest countries, the most basic sorts of investments are required before absorption of technological change can occur. Educational attainment is an especially significant factor in poor countries, but of little significance in middle income states. Then, as basic needs are met, public policies become more important factors for diffusion in middle income countries. The openness of the economy becomes significant, as diffusion increases with the easy entry of new products and new technologies. Secondly, substantial public investments in R&D are also important to help in the transfer of technologies from abroad. Finally effective IPR policies are important to encourage private sector investments in diffusion. Ironically, these same policies have little or no benefit for the very poorest countries.


Why and how least developed countries can receive more FDI to meet their development goals by Ken Davies The 48 least-developed countries (LDCs), most of them in sub-Saharan Africa and a few in Asia, need foreign direct investment (FDI) to help meet their development targets. The FDI they now receive, although inadequate, is enough to demonstrate that investors see potential in them. It is therefore realistic for LDCs to seek more FDI, but they need to enhance their investment environments to attract it in the much greater quantities required. Donors can help by targeting official development assistance (ODA) on investment in human capital and supporting governance improvements. Meanwhile, LDCs should establish effective investment promotion agencies (IPAs).


Background and Purpose—To assess the gender differences in patients with acute ischemic stroke treated with and without tissue plasminogen activator. The primary purpose is to evaluate for differences in baseline risk factors, treatment times, and 90-day outcomes. Data regarding gender differences in acute stroke treatment shows a delayed treatment and evaluation in women with stroke, associated with poorer outcome. Methods—Review of the University of California San Diego Specialized Program for Translational Research in Acute Stroke (SPOTRIAS) database from 2001 to 2009. All "code stroke" patients with the admitting diagnosis of acute ischemic stroke were classified based on gender and tissue plasminogen activator treatment (group 1 with tissue plasminogen activator, group 2 without). Results—A total of 848 patients were included, group 1: 294 patients, baseline median NIHSS and mean age in men was 10 and 67.6 16.5 years, in women 13 and 72.4 16.5 years. group 2: 554 patients, baseline median NIHSS and mean age in men was 4 and 68.4 14.0 years, in women 5 and 72.2 14.0 years. Women and men had a similar tissue plasminogen activator treatment rate (women 38%, men 32%). Men were more likely to use tobacco and have a history of coronary artery disease and less likely to have a history of atrial fibrillation. In both groups, men had higher rates of a 90-day modified Rankin scale score of 0 to 1 compared to women (group 1 35.5% vs 22.6%; group 2 57.3% vs 47.3%). Multivariable analysis adjusting for observed confounders, namely admission NIHSS, coronary artery disease/myocardial infarction, and atrial fibrillation, indicate that this difference was not statistically significant. We found no significant difference between genders when assessing for treatment times in either group. Conclusions—Treatment times and patient outcomes after treatment for acute ischemic stroke were similar between genders. Previously identified gender differences in stroke treatment times and outcome were not found in our sample. (Stroke. 2010; 41:1755-1757.)


Arguably, Deformable Part Models (DPMs) are one of the most prominent approaches for face alignment with impressive results being recently reported for both controlled lab and unconstrained settings. Fitting in most DPM methods is typically formulated as a two-step process during which discriminatively trained part templates are first correlated with the image to yield a filter response for each landmark and then shape optimization is performed over these filter responses. This process, although computationally efficient, is based on fixed part templates which are assumed to be independent, and has been shown to result in imperfect filter responses and detection ambiguities. To address this limitation, in this paper, we propose to jointly optimize a part-based, trained in-the-wild, flexible appearance model along with a global shape model which results in a joint translational motion model for the model parts via Gauss-Newton (GN) optimization. We show how significant computational reductions can be achieved by building a full model during training but then efficiently optimizing the proposed cost function on a sparse grid using weighted least-squares during fitting. We coin the proposed formulation Gauss-Newton Deformable Part Model (GN-DPM). Finally, we compare its performance against the state-of-the-art and show that the proposed GN-DPM outperforms it, in some cases, by a large margin. Code for our method is available from http://ibug.doc.ic.ac.uk/resources.


The effect of increased dietary intakes of α-linolenic acid (ALNA) or eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) for 2 months upon plasma lipid composition and capacity for conversion of ALNA to longer-chain metabolites was investigated in healthy men (52 (SD 12) years). After a 4-week baseline period when the subjects substituted a control spread, a test meal containing [U-13C]ALNA (700 mg) was consumed to measure conversion to EPA, docosapentaenoic acid (DPA) and DHA over 48 h. Subjects were then randomised to one of three groups for 8 weeks before repeating the tracer study: (1) continued on same intake (control, n 5); (2) increased ALNA intake (10 g/d, n 4); (3) increased EPA+DHA intake (1·5 g/d, n 5). At baseline, apparent fractional conversion of labelled ALNA was: EPA 2·80, DPA 1·20 and DHA 0·04 %. After 8 weeks on the control diet, plasma lipid composition and [13C]ALNA conversion remained unchanged compared with baseline. The high-ALNA diet resulted in raised plasma triacylglycerol-EPA and -DPA concentrations and phosphatidylcholine-EPA concentration, whilst [13C]ALNA conversion was similar to baseline. The high-(EPA+DHA) diet raised plasma phosphatidylcholine-EPA and -DHA concentrations, decreased [13C]ALNA conversion to EPA (2-fold) and DPA (4-fold), whilst [13C]ALNA conversion to DHA was unchanged. The dietary interventions did not alter partitioning of ALNA towards β-oxidation. The present results indicate ALNA conversion was down-regulated by increased product (EPA+DHA) availability, but was not up-regulated by increased substrate (ALNA) consumption. This suggests regulation of ALNA conversion may limit the influence of variations in dietary n-3 fatty acid intake on plasma lipid compositions.


Abstract The aim of the present work was to study the distribution of the cation-independent (CI) and cation-dependent (CD) mannose-6-phosphate receptors (MPRs) in spermatozoa obtained from either rete testis or three regions of rat epididymis. We observed that both receptors underwent changes in distribution as spermatozoa passed from rete testis to cauda epididymis. CI-MPR was concentrated in the dorsal region of the head in rete testis sperm and that this labeling extended to the equatorial segment of epididymal spermatozoa. CD-MPR, however, changed from a dorsal distribution in rete testis, caput, and corpus to a double labeling on the dorsal and ventral regions in cauda spermatozoa. The percentages of spermatozoa that showed staining for either CI-MPR or CD-MPR increased from rete testis to epididymis. The observed changes were probably the result of a redistribution during transit rather than an unmasking of receptors. The fluorescence corresponding to CD-MPR and CI-MPR on the dorsal region disappeared when caudal spermatozoa underwent the acrosomal reaction. Receptors were localized on the plasmalemma of spermatozoa, as observed by immunoelectron microscopy. Changes in distribution may be related to a maturation process, which suggests new roles for the phosphomannosyl receptors.


The purpose of this study was to examine the subjective experience of a form of intuition called precognition (the ability to sense the future), purported by four elite golfers playing on the PGA European Golf Tour. The participants were selected for this study on the basis of their reported experiences of precognitions during their playing careers. An open-ended, semi-structured phenomenological interview was used to gain a description of their experiences. A Thematic analysis of transcripts describing their experiences resulted in the identification of five major themes associated with intuition in this context. These were 'clutch situations,' emotionally arousing stimuli,' 'pre-feeling,' 'self-talk,' and 'prospective imagery'. The results of this study suggest precognitions manifest in clutch situations and pre-empt performance excellence. The findings could provide valuable insight for researchers and practitioners interested in the phenomena of intuition and its role in optimizing performance.


Abstract Objective: A comprehensive questionnaire designed to assess the full spectrum of potential human papillomavirus (HPV)-related psychosocial effects in women does not exist. The HPV Impact Profile (HIP) was developed to determine the psychosocial impact of HPV infection and related interventions. Research design and methods: Draft instrument items and domains were developed using a literature review and cognitive debriefing interviews with women who had experienced HPV-related conditions. An importance rating questionnaire guided item ranking and reduction. A draft questionnaire was pilot-tested for comprehension and ease of completion. Psychometric evaluation of the final HIP was conducted in a survey of 583 women. Data quality, item acceptability, scale acceptability, reliability, and discriminate construct validity were assessed. Outcome measure: The final HIP contained 29 items rated on a 0–10 point discretized visual analog scales grouped into seven hypothesized domains. Results: Total HIP scores ranged from 0 (no impact) to 100 (worst impact). Data quality was high, with missing data for items ranging from 0 to 0.7% and over 99% of the scores were computable. Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.64 to 0.90 and was ≥0.7 for 5/7 domains. Discriminant construct validity was demonstrated. Appropriate modifications could potentially be made to improve some aspects of the HIP, including modification to include other HPV diseases such as head and neck, anal, and vulvovaginal cancers and HPV disease in men. Conclusions: The disease-specific HIP has favorable reliability and construct validity and a good ability to discriminate among disease severity.