Aims: This study was conducted to assess the efficiency of the basic life support (BLS) training program provided for nurses in a university hospital. To evaluate the efficiency of the BLS training program provided for nurses in a university hospital. Methods: In this a quasi-experimental study, a total of 404 nurses who received BLS training were enrolled. The study was performed in two stages. In stage one, the participant nurses were given a pre-test that consisted of 25 questions, four points each, before the training on the first day of the 2-day BLS training. The post-test was conducted in addition to practical exams on manikins to determine nurses' practice skills on BLS. Results: There was a statistically significant difference between the nurses with previous BLS training and the difference between their pre- and post-test results (p<0.05), and high statistically significant difference was found between the nurses with previous advanced life support (ALS) training and the difference between their pre- and post-test results (p<0.001). Conclusion: Nurses should receive BLS training in hospitals and the training should be repeated on a regular basis. The BLS training that the nurses received in this study was effective and increased their knowledge level on BLS.


The dripping dynamics of Newtonian liquids emanating from a tilted nozzle is studied. A high speed camera is employed to observe the drop breakup process. The level of viscosity, flow rate, nozzle diameter, and nozzle inclination angle had been varied independently. The drop break up time tb, which is the time interval between two subsequent drops, and the different modes of dripping have been identified. The new experiments reveal that increasing the nozzle inclination angle results in lowering the drop breakup times for all viscosities and nozzle diameters investigated, suggesting that the surface tension forces cannot hold the drops longer despite the weakened effective gravitational pull. This counter-intuitive finding is further corroborated by pendant drop experiments and computations. In the modes of dripping, as the liquid flow rate increases, the system transitions from period-1(P1) dripping to limit cycle (LC) before showing chaotic (C) responses. A phase diagram showing the transition between the different dripping modes for different nozzle inclination angle is constructed in the (We, Ka) space, where We (Weber number) measures the relative importance of inertia to surface tension force and Ka (Kapitza number) measures the relative importance of viscous to surface tension forces. At low values of We and Ka, the system shows a transition from period-1 to limit cycle before chaos. The limit cycle region narrows down with increase in inclination. Further increase in the values of We and Ka gives a direct transition from period-1 to chaos. The experimental volumes of primary drops by image analysis show good agreement with the volumes obtained from the correlation developed, showing a maximum of 15% error. The experimental data obtained from image analysis further suggest that, in the P1 regime the pendant drop volume varies such that the trend of the primary drop volume differs significantly from that of the breakup time.


The Criminal Justice Act 2003, Criminal Justice Act 1982, and s.14 of the Criminal Justice & Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 inserted new provisions (sections 227A to 227ZO) and Schedule 13 into the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 which facilitates the transfer of Community Court Orders within Scotland as well as to and from Scotland, England, Wales & Northern Ireland. This allows for a more straightforward process for the transfer of community orders including Scottish Community Payback Orders and English Community Orders and Suspended Sentence Orders. Previously, community orders could not be easily transferred due to a lack of equivalent legislation. These arrangements are only applicable to those aged 16 and over. The Community Payback Order Practice Guidance sets out the process for transferring a CPO within Scotland.


Abstract This article describes OutHistory.org, the public Web site on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) history hosted by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. OutHistory.org uses MediaWiki software to compile community-created histories of LGBTQ life in the U.S. and make the insights of LGBTQ history broadly accessible. Project Coordinator Lauren Gutterman explains how the public history project employs digital history to collect, advance, and project LGBTQ history, and how it serves as a model for other interactive history Web sites.


How is emptiness made and what historical purpose does it serve? What cultural, material and natural work goes into maintaining 'nothingness'? Why have a variety of historical actors, from colonial powers to artists and urban dwellers, sought to construct, control and maintain (physically and discursively) empty space, and by which processes is emptiness discovered, visualised and reimagined? This volume draws together contributions from authors working on landscapes and rurality, along with national and imperial narratives, from Brazil to Russia and Ireland. It considers the visual, including the art of Edward Hopper and the work of the British Empire Marketing Board, while concluding with a section that examines constructions of emptiness in relation to capitalism, development and the (re)appropriation of urban space. In doing so, it foregrounds the importance of emptiness as a productive prism through which to interrogate a variety of imperial, national, cultural and urban history.


What will 5G be? What it will not be is an incremental advance on 4G. The previous four generations of cellular technology have each been a major paradigm shift that has broken backward compatibility. Indeed, 5G will need to be a paradigm shift that includes very high carrier frequencies with massive bandwidths, extreme base station and device densities, and unprecedented numbers of antennas. However, unlike the previous four generations, it will also be highly integrative: tying any new 5G air interface and spectrum together with LTE and WiFi to provide universal high-rate coverage and a seamless user experience. To support this, the core network will also have to reach unprecedented levels of flexibility and intelligence, spectrum regulation will need to be rethought and improved, and energy and cost efficiencies will become even more critical considerations. This paper discusses all of these topics, identifying key challenges for future research and preliminary 5G standardization activities, while providing a comprehensive overview of the current literature, and in particular of the papers appearing in this special issue.


Joint source-channel coding schemes have been proven to be effective ways for reliable multimedia communications. In this paper, we develop a joint source-channel coding scheme that well combines the hidden Markov source (HMS) estimation and the powerful low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with an iterative estimation/decoding scheme. With this coding method, the source redundancy could be accurately extracted by the hidden Markov estimation without using any priori information about the source. Moreover, the interleaver that is likely used to separate the source coding and channel coding is exempted by exploiting the randomizing property of the LDPC codes, while the channel decoding procedure may be implemented in parallel, resulting in good performance with a fairly low decoding complexity and delay. Simulation results have shown that the proposed scheme may achieve a much better performance than that of the standard coding scheme over the binary input additive white Gaussian noise (BIAWGN) channels.


: Syncope is a common problem for which accurate diagnosis is the key to effective therapy. A detailed description of each of the syncopal spells with attention to the aura, association with effort, patient position at the onset of syncope, description of ictal events from witnesses, and detailed description of the postictal state will permit accurate diagnosis and appropriate therapy.


Background: Acne vulgaris is a common dermatological disorder of the pilosebaceous unit affecting younger age groups but presenting usually at puberty and is of cosmetic concern. There are various treatment modalities available ranging from topical/oral anti-acne preparations to hormonal therapy depending on the severity of acne. Use of synthetic retinoid is highly regulated due to its potential for severe adverse events, primarily teratogenicity. There is a need for periodic prescription auditing. By providing feedback to the prescribers to formulate the guidelines enhances therapeutic efficacy by rational use, minimizes the adverse effects and cost of treatment. Objectives: to assess the prescription pattern for Acne vulgaris. Methods: A medication details and prescribers information are collected in pre-designed proforma along with the demographic details from 210 study subjects after personal briefing about the study. The data was analyzed using SPSS. Results: Out of 210 prescriptions of acne patients, majority were in between 21-40 years (48.09%), M:F ratio was1:1.41, female were 58.57% when compared to males 41.43%. Topical agents accounted for 54.13% and 36.36% of oral antibiotics (most common was azithromycin). Fixed dose combinations accounted for 4.39% and concomitantly administered drugs (antihistaminics, proton pump inhibitors, H2 blockers, emollients and skin protective agents) accounted for 53.82% of the prescribed drugs. Conclusions: Drug utilization study periodically can be an eye opener for the prescribers to prescribe the drugs in a rational way and it could reduce the prescription error and minimizing the untoward effects will subsequently reduce the cost of treatment.


Objective To investigate the relationship between elevated maternal serum alpha–fetoprotein (MSAFP) and abnormal placental adherence (placenta accreta/percreta/increta). Methods We reviewed the MSAFP levels of 11 women who had cesarean hysterectomies because of placenta accreta/percreta/increta. The control group consisted of 14 women who delivered by cesarean because of placenta previa but who had no abnormal placental adherence. Results Five of the 11 women with placenta accreta/percreta/increta had elevated MSAFP, whereas all 14 controls had normal levels. Conclusion These results indicate a significant association between elevated MSAFP and placenta accreta/percreta/increta (P=.017). Patients with an unexplained elevation of MSAFP as well as placenta previa may be at increased risk for abnormal placental adherence.


![Figure][1]

CREDIT: BEN EMERY (CENTRE FOR NEUROSCIENCE AND FLOREY NEUROSCIENCE INSTITUTES, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA) AND SARA MULINYAWE (STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA, USA)

Research on glial cells has come of age. Until a few years ago, gliobiologists felt they had to justify their existence, often in a department of neuroscience or neurobiology, and they regularly stressed the abundance of glia as compared to that of neurons in the nervous system. Now, however, the outdated notion that glia are simply the glue that holds the nerve cells together but otherwise have no active role in the brain has been laid to rest for good. Years of thorough research and the steady accumulation of solid evidence have confirmed that glia are highly complex cells engaged in a plethora of functions. The role of glia in, among other examples, synapse formation, synapse maturation and plasticity, and the rapid conduction of action potentials, as well as their immunological functions in the nervous system, have by now been unequivocally established. Hence, this year's neuroscience special issue is devoted to glial cells.

Astrocytes are an important fraction of glial cells in the brain. The molecular mechanisms underlying astrocyte specification and growth and their interactions with other cell types to assemble the nervous system are still not completely understood. In his Review, Freeman (p. [774][2]) presents and discusses exciting findings and ideas concerning the development, specification, and morphogenesis of astrocytes. Another type of glial cell, oligodendrocytes, is central to the brain's myelination, which ensures the efficiency and speed of action potentials. Emery (p. [779][3]) reviews new approaches to investigating oligodendrocyte differentiation and myelination in the central nervous system. Microglia are another fascinating subpopulation of glial cells. They sense pathological tissue alterations and they can develop into brain macrophages and perform immunological functions. In a Perspective, Graeber (p. [783][4]) outlines the involvement of microglia in the treatment of higher brain functional defects.

In the research section of the magazine, Lee et al. (p. [790][5]) report that tonic inhibition in the cerebellum is due to GABA released from glial cells by permeation through the Bestrophin 1 anion channel. Ginhoux et al. (p. [841][6]) investigate the developmental origin of microglia and show that adult microglia derive from primitive myeloid progenitor cells that arise before embryonic day 8. In a Perspective, Fields (p. [768][7]) presents his hypothesis that white matter, which consists mostly of myelinated axons, may play a role in brain plasticity and learning.

The 9 November issue of Science Signaling complements this Science special issue on glia with research into signaling pathways involved in drug-resistant glioma, which is a type of aggressive brain cancer ([www.sciencemag.org/special/glia][8]). A Perspective by Ballanyi et al. describes how astrocytes sense changes in pH to stimulate the neurons that control breathing and, in a Podcast, Fields discusses mechanisms by which nerve and glial cells communicate outside of synapses.

 [1]: pending:yes
 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1190928
 [3]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1190927
 [4]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1190929
 [5]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1184334
 [6]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1194637
 [7]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1199139
 [8]: http://www.sciencemag.org/special/glia


The electronic structures of cubic structure of ABX3(A=CH3NH3, Cs; B=Sn, Pb; X=Cl, Br, I) are analyzed by density functional theory using the Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof exchange–correlation functional and using the Heyd–Scuseria–Ernzerhof hybrid functional. The valence band maximum (VBM) is found to be made up by an antibonding hybridization of B s and X p states, whereas bands made up by the π antibonding of B p and X p states dominates the conduction band minimum (CBM). The changes of VBM, CBM, and band gap with ion B and X are then systematically summarized. The natural band offsets of ABX3 are partly given. We also found for all the ABX3 perovskite materials in this study, the bandgap increases with an increasing lattice parameter. This phenomenon has good consistency with the experimental results.


Peri-urban mangroves in Maputo Bay were studied to assess changes on forest area cover and the effect of cut pressure on the forest structure and condition, based on GIS techniques and measurement of forest trees' structural parameters. The results show a 5% increase in forest area in 2003, with 64% of total forest being unhealthy mangrove. Deforestation took place at a mean rate of 17 ha/year. Avicennia marina dominated over other 5 species. Overall the forest was composed by small trees (mean height 2.6 m; mean DBH 7.45 cm), height and DBH varying significantly when comparing species and communities (p< 0.05 for both). When looking at forest condition, only semi-intact community conserved essentially the structural characteristics of a healthy forest.  Selective tree cutting targeted most on A. marina and on trunks with diameter among 6-12 cm. The regeneration potential of the forest was of 181 ind/ha, new mangrove area having the highest density of juveniles (671 ind/ha). By identifying the most critical areas of the Incomati and describing its condition, this study raises the question of peri-urban mangroves poor condition, and highlights the need for further understanding of estuary regimes that may influence mangrove community changes other that deforestation.


As problems associated with shortage in resource supply arise, wastewater treatment plants turn to innovation to transform themselves into resource recovery facilities. Water groups worldwide recognize that wastewater treatment plants are no longer disposal facilities but rather sources of clean water, energy and nutrients.One of the most important resources that can be recovered from wastewater treatment plants is phosphorus. Mathematical modelling can be utilised to analyse various operational strategies to recover phosphorus from the wastewater. However, incorporating phosphorus transformation processes in plant-wide models is complex. Firstly, the tri-valence of phosphates suggests non-ideality, which requires the use of a physico-chemical model to account for this non-ideality. Secondly, phosphorus has strong interlinks with sulfur and iron, which necessitates inclusion of their transformations in biological and physico-chemical models. Lastly, consolidating these into a plant-wide model aimed at describing phosphorus removal and/or recovery requires interfacing, modifications to the plant layout, addition of recovery unit processes and development of new control and operational strategies. The research work presented in this thesis addresses the aforementioned challenges.A physico-chemical model is developed to take into account ion activity corrections, ion pairing effects, aqueous phase chemical equilibria, multiple mineral precipitation and gas stripping/adsorption. The model is then linked with standard approaches used in wastewater engineering, such as the Activated Sludge Model Nos. 1, 2d and 3 (ASM1, 2d, 3) and the Anaerobic Digestion Model No. 1 (ADM1). The extensions of the ASM2d and ADM1 with phosphorus, sulfur and iron-related conversions followed. And finally, the extended models and the physico-chemical model are consolidated into a plant-wide model provided by the Benchmark Simulation Model No. 2. The resulting model is used for simulation-based scenario analysis for finding ways to improve the operation of a wastewater treatment plant aimed at phosphorus removal and recovery.


This paper describes the development of an improved method for reliable, repeatable, and accurate matching of engine performance models to test data. The centerpiece of this approach is a minimum variance estimator algorithm with a priori estimates which addresses both deterministic and probabilistic aspects of the problem. Specific probabilistic aspects include uncertainty in the measurements, prior expectations on model matching parameters, and noise in the power setting parameters. The algorithm is able to produce optimal results using any number of measurements and model matching parameters and can therefore take advantage of all measured data to produce the best possible match. This improves on current matching algorithms which require that the number of measured parameters be equal to the number of model matching parameters. This algorithm has been implemented in the Numerical Propulsion System Simulation (NPSS) and tested on a generic high-bypass turbofan model typical of those used in commercial service. The baseline engine model and simulated test data are described in detail. Several exercises are discussed to illustrate results available from this algorithm including the matching of a typical power calibration data set and matching of a typical production engine data set.Copyright © 2005 by ASME


Mast cells and microglia, working singly and in partnership, produce proinflammatory agents which play key roles in a wide array of nervous system disorders. Such neuroinflammatory settings may compromise integrity of both the blood-nerve barrier and blood-brain barrier (BBB) and blood-spinal cord barrier. While both belong to the innate immune system mast cells are far more ubiquitous, are resident in peripheral nerves and the central nervous system, and can influence blood-nerve barrier characteristics. Mast cells, being near the perivasculature especially within the dura, on the brain side of the BBB, are strategically located to play havoc with the BBB. Mast cells and glia are endowed with homeostatic mechanisms/molecules which come into play following tissue damage. These include the N-acylethanolamine family, especially N-palmitoylethanolamine, which is posited to be a key player in maintaining cellular homeostasis against external stressors provoking, for example, inflammation. This review is intended as an overview covering the pathobiology of neuroinflammation in the context of mast cells and microglia, their role in BBB integrity, and therapeutic perspectives in targeting these cells to preserve BBB function.


Complex networks is an interdisciplinary research area which focuses on the study of properties of complex systems that have many functional or structural subunits. Community detection algorithms are one of the major approaches to analyse complex networks with multilevel or overlapping community structures. This research work focuses on constructing a novel community detection approach for simplification of a given complex demographic network. The general process of the abstraction from concrete problems as well as the general definition of communities have not been well defined and all the existing methods are derived from specific backgrounds, leaving the reliabilities in other fields open to question. This specificity of the existing methods reveals the need for a general approach for community definition and detection. Here, we devise a general procedure to find community structures in concrete problems by classifying the concrete networks into two basic types: Transmission networks and Similarity networks. The relation among nodes in transmission networks are constructed by material transmission and the ones in similarity network are constructed by the similarity in properties of the nodes. We show that both the types can be represented based upon an unified graph model. Based on the model, we propose a generic approach, Relation Strength Measurement (RSM), to define the communities. We have demonstrated that the Effective Resistance Function (ERF), from the Klein and Randic's electrical network model, is applicable for quantifying the relation among nodes. We have also introduced a community threshold parameter (CP) based on which, the RSM algorithm categorizes the network nodes into communities. We have compared the performance of our algorithm with other well known community detection methods. The simulation results show that the algorithm accurately obtains the division of community structure both in real-world and synthetic networks.


An experiment was conducted with the goal of exploring strain differences between female inbred Roman High and Low Avoidance rats (RHA-I, and RLA-I, respectively) on acquisition and extinction of a food-rewarded running response in a straight alley. Acquisition proceeded faster in the less emotional RHA-I and Wistar rats (used as controls) than in the more emotional RLA-I rats. However, extinction proceeded slower in RHA-I rats than in RLA-I and Wistar rats. This strain-based asymmetry on instrumental performance between acquisition and extinction is discussed in terms of strain differences in locomotor activity, associative flexibility and emotional


Palynological notes of Northern Argentina. Altoanc1ine Province. 1. Compositae. The present paper is the first of a series of contributions dealing with the description of polien grains and spores of the plants living in tbe Altoanc1ine Province, with special reference to the flora of Tucuman. These studies are in relation to peat investigation which is now being carried in the Calchaquies Mountains, at 4.500 m of altitude. Four species of Compositae, belonging to the genera: Perezia cornlescens Wedd, Hypochoeris eremophila Cabrera, wemeria heteroloba "'edc1, anc1 Senecio anconquiiae Cabrera, are c1escribec


Abstract BACKGROUND Recurrent aneurysms after initial clipping have been discussed as an important issue in the surgical management of aneurysm. OBJECTIVE To report our experience with recurrent cerebral aneurysms after neck clipping and to discuss classification and recommended management. METHODS Aneurysm treatments from a single institution over a 20-year period were retrospectively reviewed. Twenty-three recurrent aneurysms in 23 patients were managed during the study period. Recurrent aneurysms were classified using the concepts of closure line and closure plane, as follows. Type 1: neck situated in an almost different site from the previous clip. Type 2: existing closure plane and reconstructive closure plane are almost the same. Type 3: existing closure plane and reconstructive closure plane cross (type 3a); in rare cases, the existing closure line is sufficiently distant from the neck (type 3b). Type 4: no reconstructive closure line is identifiable. RESULTS Nine patients presented with subarachnoid hemorrhage at recurrence. The mean interval to recurrence was 15.0 years. Management comprised clipping with elective subsequent old-clip removal (n = 7), clipping with preceding old-clip removal (n = 2), bypass occlusion (n = 1), coating (n = 1), combined surgery (n = 1), endovascular surgery (n = 4), and observation (n = 3). Therapeutic intervention was not indicated in 4 patients. Types 3a and 4 required more complex surgical procedures or coil embolization. Procedural complications were observed in 2 patients. CONCLUSION A small but definite propensity toward recurrence after neck clipping exists, and most recurrent aneurysms require some form of retreatment. The novel classification scheme may provide conceptual clarity and therapeutic guidance for decision making.


Deception exists in all aspects of life and is particularly evident on the Web. Deception includes child sexual predators grooming victims online, medical news headlines with little medical evidence or scientific rigour, individuals claiming others' work as their own, and systematic deception of company shareholders and institutional investors leading to corporate collapses.
This thesis explores the potential for automatic detection of deception. We investigate the nature of deception and the related cues, focusing in particular on Verbal Cues, and concluding that they cannot be readily generalised. We demonstrate how deception-specific features, based on sound hypotheses, can overcome related limitations by presenting approaches for three different examples of deception – namely Child Sexual Predator Detection (SPD), Authorship Identification (AI) and Intrinsic Plagiarism Detection (IPD). We further show how our approaches result in competitive levels of reliability.
For SPD we develop our approach largely based on the commonality of requests for key personal information. To address AI, we introduce approaches based on a frequency-mean-variance and a frequency-only framework in order to detect strong associations between co-occurring patterns of a limited number of stopwords. Our IPD approaches are based on simple commonality of words at document level and usage of proper nouns; document sections lacking commonality can be identified as plagiarised.
The frameworks of the International Workshop on Uncovering Plagiarism, Authorship, and Social Software Misuse (PAN) competitions provided an independent evaluation of the approaches. The SPD approach obtained an F1 score of 0.48. F1 scores of 0.47, 0.53 and 0.57 were achieved in AI tasks for PAN2012, 2013 and 2014 respectively. IPD yielded an overall accuracy of 91%. Through post-competition adaptations we also show how to improve the approaches and the scores and demonstrate the importance of suitable datasets and how most approaches are not easily transferable between various types of deception.


Laser micro-machining is a growing field for micro manufacturing in many different materials. To obtain a better understanding of the accuracy of laser micro-machining equipment, moreover machine's specification, a precise verification test is needed to measure the absolute performance of the machine. Available capability information is usually based on specifications given for the machine installations by machine deliverers. But in practice the absolute performances of some of the micro laser machines are way far off from their specifications. When forming the EUMINAfab infrastructure consortium it was decided that independent high precision verification tests should be made on different installations to help the micro-manufacturers to get the real capability information of their equipment and be able to improve performance to a higher EUMINAfab level. In this study a comprehensive verification test was designed and carried out by using an ultra-precision metrology method in order to establish more knowledge about the capabilities of the laser micro-machining equipment. The measurement results show the machine's X,Y position accuracy, pseudo-repeatability and reproducibility of three different laser micro-machining installations.


In Fall 2009, a National Science Foundation (NSF) STEP grant award (# 0856834) was made to support a collaboration between a Research I University and five rural (non-metropolitan) community colleges (CC). The grant followed a smaller NSF grant (# 0836050) which supported the exploration of a four-year school working with three rural CCs. This paper will first look at the enrollments of transfer students in engineering and computer science at the university for the past seven years. Large increases have occurred in the past two years. An analysis of the smaller transfer enrollment increases from the five non-metropolitan community colleges will then be discussed. This paper will describe the challenges, lessons learned, and results of the program for its first year and a half of existence. The primary challenge was known before the project began: only one school is within an hour's drive of the four-year institution. The other four schools are three to four hours distant. In spite of this, strong collaborations and interactions are occurring between the schools. The paper will describe participation in high school recruitment, presentations in classrooms, student feedback from class room visits, and the advantages of being available at a table in the student union so that students can come by and ask questions. The paper will also discuss the changes that have taken place in the community colleges to better support their programs in engineering and computer science.


The dynamics of international economic competition have prompted governments to re-examine accustomed policies, and search for alternative strategies, in order to re-position their economies for the future. This paper takes a look at Singapore's search for a competitive positioning in the global marketplace, and focuses on the city-state's much-publicized, and controversial, flagship project in China, viz, the Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP). This strategic initiative is premised on the perceptions that Singapore's positive reputation with multinational corporations, and 'guanxi' (or connections) with regional governments, will give the regional sites a strategic advantage in the competition for foreign investments. Earlier studies have established that the privileges secured for the investment enclaves are vulnerable to changes in the socio-political milieu, and that Singapore's reputation for efficiency, is at risk from the administrative complexities in emerging economies. This paper, however, contends that with the 'realignment of interests' in 2001, the outlook of the SIP project is promising.


: The medical expert is not the guarantor of the individual he has examined and thus cannot be held liable for overlooking facts which are irrelevant as far as the fulfillment of his brief is concerned. In a verdict of the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal German Constitutional Court; Art. 3, Art. 14 GG) the extent of the expert's liability in cases where basic laws have been infringed is indicated: he has to bear a portion of the responsibility for the verdict.


Any analysis performed to gather data about architectural and urban heritage always begins with the observation of reality and the involvement established between the observer and the space around them. A spectator inevitably interprets what they see in a personal manner so as to give objects a specific meaning. The ability to understand the data and the relationship between the parts and then assign it a value varies from person to person. That the mind can mediate the mental processes of perception-action-thought means that any direct analysis to understand a cultural asset is scientifically extremely important. The critical process sparked by an on-site study exploits the concise graphic transcription of what is visible, including the graphics tool used to achieve that representation. This contribution will present a study performed by the author to gather data using the drawings of several domes in the historical centre of the city of Rome.


Vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) is commonly used for general temperature applications (<150 °C) such as boat hulls and secondary aircraft structures. With growing demands for applications of composites in elevated temperature environments, significant cost savings can be achieved by employing the VARTM process. However, implementation of the VARTM process for fabricating elevated temperature composites presents unique challenges such as high porosity and low fiber volume contents. In the present work, a low cost and reliable VARTM process is developed to manufacture elevated temperature composites for aerospace applications. Modified single vacuum bagging infusion and double vacuum bagging infusion processes were evaluated. Details of the method to obtain high quality composite parts and the challenging issues related to the manufacturing process are presented. Density and fiber volume fraction testing of manufactured panels showed that high quality composite parts with void content less than 1% have been consistently manufactured. A property database of the resin system and the composites was developed. A three-dimensional mathematical model has also been developed for flow simulation and implemented in the ABAQUS finite element package code to predict the resin flow front during the infusion process and to optimize the flow parameters. The results of the present study indicate that aircraft grade composite parts with high fiber volume fractions can be manufactured using the developed elevated temperature VARTM process. © 2013 Society of Chemical Industry


Visual Abstract Current theories suggest that the ability to control the body and to predict its associated sensory consequences is key for skilled motor behavior. It is also suggested that these abilities need to be updated when the mapping between motor commands and sensory consequences is altered. Here we challenge this view by investigating the transfer of adaptation to rotated visual feedback between one task in which human participants had to control a cursor with their hand in order to track a moving target, and another in which they had to predict with their eyes the visual consequences of their hand movement on the cursor. Hand and eye tracking performances were evaluated respectively through cursor–target and eye–cursor distance. Results reveal a striking dissociation: although prior adaptation of hand tracking greatly facilitates eye tracking, the adaptation of eye tracking does not transfer to hand tracking. We conclude that although the update of control is associated with the update of prediction, prediction can be updated independently of control. To account for this pattern of results, we propose that task demands mediate the update of prediction and control. Although a joint update of prediction and control seemed mandatory for success in our hand tracking task, the update of control was only facultative for success in our eye tracking task. More generally, those results promote the view that prediction and control are mediated by separate neural processes and suggest that people can learn to predict movement consequences without necessarily promoting their ability to control these movements.


According to expansive soil, consolidated drained tests and undrained tests are carried on under saturated and remoulded conditions. The stress-strain characteristics of saturated soil are researched systematically under different confining pressure, initial dry density, initial water content, shearing rate and drainage condition. The inherent unity of diversity of shearing strength for the same samples measured by different experimental methods is indicated according to the normalization of critical state test results.


This paper focus on IKEA's efforts to meet the challenges of globalization with diversity management. We will discuss the managerial and theoretical implications in order to understand the effects of utilizing diversity management as means for keeping the core corporate culture key values alive when the organization becomes larger and more diverse.


The modeling of spatio-temporal trends in temperature extremes can help better understand the structure and frequency of heatwaves in a changing climate. Here, we study annual temperature maxima over Southern Europe using a century-spanning dataset observed at 44 monitoring stations. Extending the spectral representation of max-stable processes, our modeling framework relies on a novel construction of max-infinitely divisible processes, which include covariates to capture spatio-temporal non-stationarities. Our new model keeps a popular max-stable process on the boundary of the parameter space, while flexibly capturing weakening extremal dependence at increasing quantile levels and asymptotic independence. This is achieved by linking the overall magnitude of a spatial event to its spatial correlation range, in such a way that more extreme events become less spatially dependent, thus more localized. Our model reveals salient features of the spatio-temporal variability of European temperature extremes, and it clearly outperforms natural alternative models. Results show that the spatial extent of heatwaves is smaller for more severe events at higher altitudes, and that recent heatwaves are moderately wider. Our probabilistic assessment of the 2019 annual maxima confirms the severity of the 2019 heatwaves both spatially and at individual sites, especially when compared to climatic conditions prevailing in 1950-1975.


We assessed the utilization of inorganic and organic nitrogen compounds of different complexity by primary producers and bacteria in a seagrass ecosystem. Using double-labeled ( 13 C and 15 N) substrates, the net transfers from the dissolved nitrogen and carbon pools to phytoplank- ton, planktonic bacteria, epiphytes, seagrasses (Zostera noltii and Cymodocea nodosa), and a macroalga (Caulerpa prolifera) were quantified in field incubations. Phytoplankton was the largest nitrogen sink, followed by the epiphytic community. In contrast, carbon fixation was dom- inated by the macrophytes. Although compartment-specific variations existed, NH4 + was gener- ally preferred over NO3 � and urea. Specific uptake rates of individual amino acids were inversely related to their C:N ratio and their structural complexity (glycine > L-leucine > L-phenylalanine). In addition, biomarker-specific measurements (polar lipid-derived fatty acids and D-alanine) indi- cated increasing bacterial contributions to carbon uptake with increasing amino acid structural complexity. All primary producers acquired nitrogen from a complex pool of algae-derived dis- solved organic matter (DOM), but algae-derived dissolved organic carbon (DOC) was almost exclusively used by the planktonic compartment. In contrast, a similar complex pool of bacteria- derived DOM was not taken up in significant quantities by any of the primary producers. Our results illustrate that dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) can provide bioavailable nitrogen to pri- mary producers and bacteria in seagrass ecosystems on very short time-scales, and DON and DOC dynamics are largely uncoupled and must be investigated as 2 separate interacting pools.


Infestations by rhabditiform nematodes and acarids of the genus Raillietia are considered the primary causes of external otitis in cattle in tropical regions. Recently, yeasts of the genus Malassezia have been associated with a relatively high percentage of otitis cases, but the occurrence of other yeasts and mycelial fungi has not yet been reported in the literature. This work studied the presence of fungi in the ear canal of 45 cattle with external parasitic otitis. The results were positive for yeasts of the genus Malassezia in 31 (68.9%) of the 45 cultures in Mycosel medium supplemented with olive oil. The 45 cultures in Sabouraud dextrose medium revealed the growth of seven (15.5%) yeasts of the genus Candida, five (11.1%) Rhodotorula mucilaginosa, two (4.4%) fungi of the genus Aspergillus and eight 'Micelia sterilia'. Future studies may confirm and elucidate the importance of these agents in the aetiology of bovine otitis.


When mice infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain BCG were inoculated intravenously with old tuberculin (OT) or living BCG cells, both migration inhibitory factor (MIF) and interferon appeared in the circulation within a few hours. In such animals, which showed delayed hypersensitivity by footpad tests, as little as 1.5 mg of OT or as few as 1.7 x 106 bacteria per mouse were capable of eliciting circulating MIF and interferon. Uninfected animals inoculated with large doses of OT or living BCG cells did not produce MIF or interferon. When nonspecific stimuli such as bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS; from Salmonella typhimurium strain LT-2), heat-killed Brucella abortus, Newcastle disease virus (NDV), and polyinosinic acid: polycytidilic acid (poly I: C) were inoculated intravenously into BCG-infected mice, MIF was produced in the circulation of animals challenged with LPS or Brucella but not in those challenged with NDV or poly I: C, although all the stimuli were capable of eliciting an interferon response. The interferon elicited in BCG-infected mice by specific antigen differed in at least one important property from the viral inhibitor produced by the nonspecific stimuli. The interferon which appeared after injection of OT or living BCG cells was destroyed by treatment at pH 2 for 24 hr at 4C, whereas the interferons produced after injection of the nonspecific stimuli were stable under the same conditions. The MIF activity in plasma from sensitized mice inoculated with specific antigen was also destroyed by treatment at pH 2. When mouse plasma containing both MIF and interferon activity was filtered through Sephadex G-100, both mediators were excluded in the same peak fractions. Sensitization of mice with complete Freund adjuvant instead of infection with BCG cells produces a different pattern of response. Although hypersensitive to specific antigen by footpad swelling tests, mice sensitized with complete Freund adjuvant failed to produce MIF or interferon when they were inoculated intravenously with OT or living BCG cells.


Higher managerial and professional occupations are now the most incentivized occupational class in Britain. It is not yet known whether the rise in pay for performance (PFP) signifies an erosion or enhancement in the 'service relationship' that purportedly characterizes these occupations. Taking an occupational class perspective, this article investigates the implications of the rise in PFP for the employment relationship and conditions of work across the occupational structure using two nationally representative datasets. In fixed-effects estimates, PFP is found to heavily substitute base earnings in non-service class occupations, but not in service class occupations. PFP jobs generally have no worse conditions relative to non-PFP jobs within occupational classes. The article concludes the rise in PFP should be conceptualized more as a form of 'rent sharing' for service class occupations, enhancing the service relationship, and as a form of 'risk sharing' for non-service class occupations.


Key decisions at the collection, pre-processing, transformation, mining and interpretation phase of any knowledge discovery from database (KDD) process depend heavily on assumptions and theoretical perspectives relating to the type of task to be performed and characteristics of data sourced. In this article, we compare and contrast theoretical perspectives and assumptions taken in data mining exercises in the legal domain with those adopted in data mining in TCM and allopathic medicine. The juxtaposition results in insights for the application of KDD for Traditional Chinese Medicine.


The opportunity exists in the Forum to put together a new vision for the future of oral health for New Zealanders and for an appropriate system to meet their future needs. If we can develop a shared view of that future, it is a simple matter of planning, discussing, and compromising, but moving toward that vision. If we do not have a vision of where we want to be, we have no idea of how to get there. We need a vision of "oral health services in New Zealand" in the private sector, in the public sector--on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand, in the specialist practices of Auckland and Christchurch, in rural practices in Waimate and Waihi, on marae from Te Aupouri to Kati Mamoe, in the Executives of the New Zealand Dental Association and the Dental Council of New Zealand, in Government, in district boards to community halls in Mangere. Your vision of the future for oral health and oral health services in New Zealand should be known, talked about, and shared as a national value. If you can achieve nothing more than a shared vision, you have achieved a lot.


Since Hong Kong's reversion to China in 1997, the Special Administrative Region's government and its people have been grappling with a dual-sided problem. Firstly, to adjust to being a "new" part of China and what that means in terms of national consciousness and local identities, particularly given the Beij ing leaders' expectations that Hongkongers should come to "love China". Secondly, drawing at least in part on the past British colonial legacy, to maintain Hong Kong's international role as a cosmopolitan and commercial city, not least through the aspiration to be "Asia's world city". In the past few years, however, typified most clearly in the discourse surrounding the Occupy Central movement, there has emerged a third trend, the so-called "localism", which posits a separate and unique identity for Hong Kong. This article explores the ways in which these three competing narratives intersect in the sporting arena. Sport is frequently seen as a means to express or reflect nationalism or at the very least contribute to the formation of national identity. By using the case studies of the 2008 Beij ing Olympics, the 2009 East Asian Games and recent post-Occupy


ABSTRACT The dengue viruses (DENVs) exist as numerous genetic strains that are grouped into four antigenically distinct serotypes. DENV strains from each serotype can cause severe disease and threaten public health in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide. No licensed antiviral agent to treat DENV infections is currently available, and there is an acute need for the development of novel therapeutics. We found that a synthetic small interfering RNA (siRNA) (DC-3) targeting the highly conserved 5′ cyclization sequence (5′CS) region of the DENV genome reduced, by more than 100-fold, the titers of representative strains from each DENV serotype in vitro. To determine if DC-3 siRNA could inhibit DENV in vivo, an "in vivo-ready" version of DC-3 was synthesized and tested against DENV-2 by using a mouse model of antibody-dependent enhancement of infection (ADE)-induced disease. Compared with the rapid weight loss and 5-day average survival time of the control groups, mice receiving the DC-3 siRNA had an average survival time of 15 days and showed little weight loss for approximately 12 days. DC-3-treated mice also contained significantly less virus than control groups in several tissues at various time points postinfection. These results suggest that exogenously introduced siRNA combined with the endogenous RNA interference processing machinery has the capacity to prevent severe dengue disease. Overall, the data indicate that DC-3 siRNA represents a useful research reagent and has potential as a novel approach to therapeutic intervention against the genetically diverse dengue viruses.


Athletic performance is a polygenic trait influenced by both environmental and genetic factors.1 Genetics has a great influence over athletic performance such as strength, power, muscle fibre, flexibility and other phenotypes. HIF1A (hypoxia inducible factor 1 alpha), a master-regulator of oxygen-homeostasis, plays crucial roles in cellular metabolism.2 HIF1A regulates expression of nearly all enzymes involved in glycolysis. HIF1A mediates oxygen delivery to cells as well as allows cells to survive under oxygen deprivation by regulating expression of hundreds of genes involved in angiogenesis, erythropoiesis glucose metabolism and transport.2,3 The HIF1A gene is considered as a genetic marker of athletic ability because of its proposed role in shifting of oxidative type muscle fibres to glycolytic type and increasing hypoxia resistance to the cells.4 The aim of this study was to perform a meta-analysis of all available case-control-studies of athletes to systematically summarise the association between HIF1A C1772T (rs11549465) polymorphism and athletic performance. Literature-mining was performed for the last 15 years using PubMed and Google Scholar to retrieve relevant case-control studies. Odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using fixed or random effects model incorporating inverse-variance-weighted method for relating HIF1A 1772 C/T polymorphism (rs11549465; which results in Pro582Ser substitutions) with elite athlete's performance. In subgroup analyses top-level athletes were considered as 'elite athletes' who were competing in the Olympics Games &/World and European championships and won medals; and 'other athletes' being national level and regional competitors with no less than four years of experience participating in their sport. The distributions of genotypes in the controls were checked for HWE. Further subgroup-analysis of HIF1A 1772 C/T was carried out by ethnicity. A meta-analysis of 19 studies comprising 1616 cases and 9253 controls was conducted to identify the association of HIF1A rs11549465 (C/T) polymorphism with elite athlete's performance. Results demonstrated that the T allele is significantly associated with elite athletes under three genetic models (TT+CT vs CC: OR = 1.73, 95% CI: = 1.22–2.46, p 0.002); (CT vs CC: OR = 1.73, 95% CI: = 1.21–2.47, p 0.003); (T vs C: OR = 1.64, 95% CI: = 1.19–2.25, p 0.002) whereas other athletes group showed no significant associations (TT+CT vs CC: OR = 1.44, 95% CI: = 0.72–2.88, p 0.30); (CT vs CC: OR = 1.37, 95% CI: = 0.65–2.89, p 0.40); (T vs C: OR = 1.38, 95% CI: = 0.84–2.29, p 0.20). For elite athletes no significant heterogeneity was observed (T vs C: I^2 = 60.8% [0% - 86.9%]; Q = 7.6; p 0.054). For Caucasian population, sub-group analyses data suggested that the HIF1A 1772 C/T polymorphism is highly associated with athletic performance in three models (TT+CT vs CC: OR = 1.51, 95% CI: = 1.15–1.98, p 0.003); (CT vs CC: OR = 1.53, 95% CI: = 1.17–2.01, p 0.002); (T vs C: OR = 1.41, 95% CI: = 1.1–1.80, p 0.005). Results from this study revealed that HIF1A C1772T polymorphism is significantly associated with elite athletes compared with controls or other athletes. This suggests that the T allele variant could be one of the factors influencing the power athletic performance. Acknowledgment This work is supported by the research & development allocation Grant: Ministry of Science & Technology (MOST), Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh [39.009.002.01.00.057.2015-2016/1425] and the special allocation Grant: Ministry of Education, Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh [37.20.0000.004.033.013.2015]. References Drozdovska SB, Dosenko VE, Ahmetov II.,and Ilyin VN. The association of gene polymorphisms with athlete status in Ukrainians. Biol Sport. 2013;30(3):163–167. Ke Q, Costa M. Hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1). Mol Pharmacol. 2006;70:1469–80. Clifford SC, Astuti D, Hooper L, Maxwell PH, Ratcliffe PJ, Maher ER. The pVHL-associated SCF ubiquitin ligase complex: molecular genetic analysis of elongin B and C, Rbx1 and HIF-1alpha in renal cell carcinoma. Oncogene. 2001;20(36):5067–74. PMID 11526493 Cieszczyk P, Eider J, Arczewska A, Ostanek M, Leonska-Duniec A, Sawczyn S, Ficek K, Jascaniene N, Kotarska K and Sygit K. The HIF1A gene Pro582Ser polymorphism in Polish power-oriented athletes. Biol. Sport 2011;28:111–114.


We present deep Keck/MOSFIRE near-infrared spectroscopy of a strong Lyα emitting source at z = 6.1292, HSC J142331.71−001809.1, which was discovered by the SHELLQS program from imaging data of the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey. This source is one of five objects that show narrow (FWHM < 500 km s−1) and prominent (L Lyα > 1044 erg s−1) Lyα emission lines at absolute 1450 Å continuum magnitudes of M 1450 ∼ −22 mag. Its rest-frame Lyα equivalent width (EW) is 370 ± 30 Å. In the 2 hr Keck/MOSFIRE spectrum in Y band, the high-ionization C iv λλ1548,1550 doublet emission line was clearly detected with FWHM=120−20+20 km s−1 and a total rest-frame EW of 37−5+6 Å. We also report the detection of weak continuum emission, and the tentative detection of O iii] λλ1661,1666 in the 4 hr J-band spectrum. Judging from the UV magnitude, line widths, luminosities, and EWs of Lyα and C iv, we suggest that this source is a reionization-era analog of classical type-II AGNs, although there is a possibility that it represents a new population of AGN/galaxy composite objects in the early universe. We compare the properties of J1423−0018 to intermediate-redshift type-II AGNs and C iv emitters seen in z = 6–7 galaxy samples. Further observations of other metal emission lines in the rest-frame UV or optical, along with X-ray follow-up observations of the z = 6–7 narrow-line quasars, are needed for more robust diagnostics and to determine their nature.


DESCRIPTION: One of the most important cities in the Mediterranean, Ravenna still boasts a series of monuments that have been exceptionally well-preserved, and very often still have their original decorations, mosaics in particular. The great historian Arnaldo Momigliano was right when he said," When I want to understand Italian history, I catch a train and go to Ravenna." Indeed, with its capacity for selfpreservation, the city is an outstanding example of town planning. It is still burdened, however, by common places or stereotype-like formulae that have survived until today as the Byzantium of Italy. This is a common, simplified definition that does not grasp the uniqueness and grandeur of the extraordinary Roman city of Honorius and Galla Placidia that experienced an important Byzantine period after Theodoric. For years there has been a vertiginous multiplication of specialised studies, albeit lacking in works, that offered a general overview whilst effectively explaining its main features. A combination of scientific rigour and clarity, this publication outlines the history and town planning of the city from its distant Etruscan origins up to the battle that in 1512 changed its destiny once and for all, when it became part of the pontifical dominion. The whole series of the lavish buildings that were constructed in late ancient times and their decorations (San Giovanni Evangelista, Santa Croce, the Arian cathedral of Santo Spirito, San Apollinare Nuovo, San Vitale and San Francesco), is studied here from a critical, but updated profile and set in the historical context that generated it and in the complex urban situation, that was originally a perfect balance between land and water but then became increasingly precarious. Countless new facts emerged as did much material that was little known or is published here for the first time. With this in mind, there was also a unique opportunity: the possibility to carry out a totally new photograph campaign, which was made possible together with the author thanks to the collaboration of the Archaeological Superintendency of Emilia Romagna, the Superintendency for Architectural and Landscape Heritage of Ravenna, and the Cultural Heritage Office of the Archiepiscopal Curia. What emerged is a Ravenna that is in many ways new, or at least radically renewed, with many surprises for even the most expert scholars.


BACKGROUND
This authors team has been dealing with the Hodgkin disease problems since 1971. The MORHO study started at eight working places in 1978 according to unified diagnostic and medical protocol.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
370 patients were treated. The treatment consisted in the combination of radiation and chemotherapy COPP and since 1988 in alternance of COPP and ABVD. Therapy was modificated with accordance to clinical stages and patient's histological type and age. Treatment of the patients over 50 was reduced in decades of one chemotherapy cycle less.

RESULTS
Results from the clinical study are--patients with the stage IIA, IIB and IIIA survive 30 years in 59.29%, 57.86% and 60.72%. Patients diagnosed as stage IIIB survive after 30 years 36.78%, while patients in stages IVA and IVB survived 10 years 24.51% and 23.32% and 20 years 8.61% in stage IVB. Women survived longer than men. Histological types had no influence to the lenght of survival. The total number of relapses in the group was 55. There were 39 men and 16 women from that. 64% was in stage III and IV and in 73% mediastinal nodules were affected. 42% of relapses was till 1 year after the treatment. After the treatment 75 children were born to the patients from the group. 60 children from that were born to the women under treatment.

CONCLUSION
The success of therapy of Hodgkin's disease according to protocol created by expert group of study MORHO is comparable with results of similar studies in the world. The most important contribution of this study was unification of treatment protocol in Czechoslovakia. This study changed the formerly paliative therapy to real curative treatment.


This paper presents a novel approach to autonomous navigation for small UAVs, with no extra sensor added to the conventional INS/GNSS setup. The proposed method significantly increases the accuracy and reliability of autonomous navigation, especially for small UAVs with low-cost IMUs. This improvement is of special interest in the case of GNSS outages, where inertial coasting drifts very quickly. In the proposed architecture, the VDM provides the estimate of position, velocity, and attitude, which is updated within a filter based on available observations, such as IMU data or when available, GNSS measurements. The filter is capable of estimating wind velocity and dynamic model parameters, in addition to navigation states and IMU sensor errors. Monte Carlo simulations reveal major improvements in navigation accuracy compared to conventional INS/GNSS systems during GNSS outages of 5 min. A discussion on the observability is also presented at the end. Copyright (C) 2016 Institute of Navigation.


In this paper we extend a formal framework presented in [6] to model reasoning across legal systems. In particular, we propose a logical system that encompasses the various interpretative interactions occurring between legal systems in the context of private international law. This is done by introducing meta-rules to reason with interpretive canons.


A perineuronal net (PNN) is a layer of lattice‐like matrix which enwraps the surface of the soma and dendrites, and in some cases the axon initial segments, in sub‐populations of neurons in the central nervous system (CNS). First reported by Camillo Golgimore than a century ago, the molecular structure and the potential role of this matrix have only been unraveled in the last few decades. PNNs are mainly composed of hyaluronan, chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans, link proteins, and tenascin R. The interactions between these molecules allow the formation of a stable pericellular complex surrounding synapses on the neuronal surface. PNNs appear late in development co‐incident with the closure of critical periods for plasticity. They play a direct role in the control of CNS plasticity, and their removal is one way in which plasticity can be re‐activated in the adult CNS. In this review, we examine the molecular components and formation of PNNs, their role in maturation andsynaptic plasticity after CNS injury, and the possible mechanisms of PNN action. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol 71: 1073‐1089, 2011


This work was planned to research the effects of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and/or vitamin E (VE) and sodium selenite (SS), which have antioxidant properties, administered to the liver tissue of male rats. For this purpose, histopathology, immunohistochemistry, antioxidant capacity, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT) dUTP nick-end labeling assay, liver function, and DNA structure tests were performed. The lipid profile was also evaluated in this study. Rats that were administered LPS were treated with VE and/or SS. The liver function tests and lipid profile parameters showed statistically significant changes and histological alterations in the LPS treated groups. The number of cells entering apoptosis was increased by LPS administration when compared to the control group. LPS treatment increased the DNA damage and decreased the ferric reducing antioxidant power and trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity values when compared to the control group. VE and/or SS provided protective effects against the examined parameters. These results indicated that we can assume that the treatment of VE and SS together may be more efficient than using them individually against LPS.


Irrelevant features and weakly relevant features may reduce the comprehensibility and accuracy of concepts induced by supervised learning algorithms. We formulate the search for a feature subset as an abstract search problem with probabilistic estimates. Searching a space using an evaluation function that is a random variable requires trading off accuracy of estimates for increased state exploration. We show how recent feature subset selection algorithms in the machine learning literature fit into this search problem as simple hill climbing approaches, and conduct a small experiment using a best-first search technique.


Human rights law has redefined the concepts of sovereignty and citizenship. Just as transnationalization has weakened the hegemony of the political elites (corporate economic elites and domestic ruling classes) by strengthening citizenship claims of all persons, so, too, a globalized citizenship grounded on a human rights model will strengthen personhood by denationalizing states' claims on individuals' rights. The human rights narrative has been imagined, crafted and delivered by Northern/Western powers -- the hegemon -- however, for the human rights model to be of utility to the globalized citizen project, it must be reconstituted with an antisubordination agenda. It must include the voices of the marginalized -- both persons outside Western cultures and subordinated persons within Western cultures -- all women; racial, ethnic, religious, cultural and sexual minorities; the poor; and the differently abled. In sum, such a new vision of human rights refocuses the discourse and creates a globalized citizenship movement from below that embraces and empowers those currently in the periphery. This essay will use the reconstituted human rights paradigm to explore the relationship between sovereignty, security and personhood. Part II engages the human rights model by recognizing how it first effected a change in the concept of sovereignty and suggest a reconstitution to render the human rights system truly pluralistic. As reconceived, the human rights system provides a rich and complex foundation for a globalized citizenship model that promotes and respects personhood, well-being and human flourishing. Part III explores the tension between human rights and security, acknowledging three significant realities: (1) the normative reality that in times of danger the sovereign can suppress certain human rights to maximize security protections for its citizens and others within its territory; (2) the corollary legal and moral reality that even in times of danger the sovereign cannot derogate from certain fundamental human rights; and (3) the practical reality that the ability of the sovereign to act in breach of the nonderogable obligations may be unassailable if the actor is a powerful world actor. In this context, the essay addresses the uneasy legacy of Nuremberg and its more recent delineation of the bounds of sovereignty -- the addition of individual responsibility which means that states cannot escape accountability by doing indirectly (via individual actors) what they cannot do directly. Part IV moves toward a new conceptualization of limits on sovereignty: a proposed globalized citizenship model that draws from traditional citizenship theory, uses the human rights structure as its foundation and places limits on the power of entities, including states and transnational and multinational organizations, associations or groups, to act if the consequence is a violation of human rights norms. This new conceptualization is different from the previous conceptualizations of the limits of sovereignty because the affirmation emanates from the individual him/herself (and others similarly situated around the globe) who has suffered as a consequence of a breach of norms regardless of whether the norm violator is a state actor. Finally, Part V applies the developed model to the post-9/11 condition of the captives held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.


To better understand the role of affect in organizational task-related networks, we developed a theory of affective primacy that identifies cognitive and motivational mechanisms through which the affective value of a social relationship a feeling of positive affect from interactions with a colleague operates as an antecedent of perceived instrumental value a subjective evaluation of a relationship's contribution to accomplishing assigned tasks. We tested this theory with full-network data collected over three years from employees in a small functional-form organization, which we analyzed with a methodology drawing from the social relations model of interpersonal perception and Bayesian models for social network analysis. We found that, over time, the affective value of social relationships influences both perceptions of instrumental value and the formation of task-related ties through multiple paths not accounted for by either perceived instrumental value or formal-structural requirements. We also show that the emergence of task-related networks rests primarily on high-activation positive emotions, such as excitement a subjective state of feeling energized rather than positive emotions with lower levels of activation, such as pleasantness a subjective state of feeling gratified. We discuss implications of these findings for organizational theory and managerial practice.


Not only conventional computer system (i.e. Electric Medical Record, Physician Order entry, PACS), but also other medical equipment including ECG,US, EEG, X-ray and many others, are on-line now. Extensive use of computer network exacerbates complexity of programming computer network equipment. While healthcare service becomes more dependent on information technology, such complexity can result in network failure that interrupts health service. Recently, concept of Software Defined Network (SDN) has widely been accepted by network equipment supplier and production quality network equipment appeared in the market. SDN is a concept of programmable computer network fabric, in other words, network that can be dynamically reconfigured by downloading the settings from the controlling computer. We have introduced SDN in our hospital network to evaluate its utility and stability. After introduction of SDN, SDN segment turned out to be stable, and automatic rerouting avoiding failed route was far quicker than conventional technology. Our conclusion is SDN is highly valuable technology in healthcare, that is 24hr/365day mission critical business.


The predict+optimize problem combines machine learning and
 combinatorial optimization by predicting the problem coefficients first and then using these coefficients to solve the optimization problem.
 While this problem can be solved in two separate stages,
 recent research shows end to end models can achieve better results.
 This requires differentiating through a discrete combinatorial function.
 Models that use differentiable surrogates are prone to approximation errors, while existing exact models are limited to dynamic programming, or they do not generalize well with scarce data.
 In this work we propose a novel
 divide and conquer algorithm based on transition points to reason over exact optimization problems
 and predict
 the coefficients using the optimization loss. Moreover, our model is not limited to dynamic programming problems.
 We also introduce a greedy version, which achieves similar
 results with less computation.
 In comparison with other predict+optimize frameworks, we show our method outperforms existing exact frameworks and can reason over hard combinatorial problems better than surrogate methods.


Ge:Ga blocked-impurity-band (BIB) detectors with long wavelength thresholds greater than 190 _in and peak quantum efficiencies of 4%, at an operating temperature of 1.8K, have been fabricated. These proof of concept devices consist of a high purity germanium blocking layer epitaxially grown on a Ga-doped Ge substrate. This demonstration of BIB behavior in germanium enables the development of far infrared detector arrays similar to the current silicon-based devices. Present efforts are focussed on improving the chemical vapor deposition process used to create the blocking layer and on the lithographic processing required to produce monolithic detector arrays in germanium. Approaches to test the impurity levels in both the blocking and active layers are considered.


The thesis is an investigation into the performance of Permanent Magnet Assisted Synchronous reluctance Machines (PMA SynRM) employing rare earth-free/less permanent magnets for electric vehicle traction applications. The design optimisation methodology is based on the performance of the traction machine over specific driving cycles instead of conventionally adopted practices relying on optimisations at a specific operating condition. Albeit, requirements such as the maximum torque, maximum speed and cooling are taken into consideration. Therefore, a method for the selection of a finite number of energy-representative operating points characterising a given driving cycle is proposed. The technique can predict the energy loss over a driving cycle with high accuracy (i.e., error <6%), while only employing less than 5% of the total operating points of a driving cycle. This forms the basis upon which energy efficiency optimisation is undertaken.
A rare-earth-less PMA SynRM employing bonded NdFeB permanent magnets is designed and manually optimised, using an engineer-in-the-loop approach, to meet the specification of a personal mobility electric vehicle. All the multi-physical aspects of the design, i.e., electromagnetic, thermal, and mechanical are considered in an iterative process with the target of maximising the system's (i.e., machine and drive) energy efficiency over the NEDC, while meeting the specified torque-speed operating range. Energy efficiency higher than 94% is achieved for the traction machine operating over the NEDC. Special attention is also given to the reduction of the electromagnetic torque ripple through the introduction of special features in the rotor laminations and the step skewing of the rotor. A computationally efficient modelling technique for the estimation of the effect of skew on the torque ripple and the performance of the machine is proposed and validated using 2.5D multi-slice Finite Element Analysis (FEA).
Special consideration is given to the effects of the finite length of the machine, especially when step skewing is adopted. It is observed that the axial flux leakage at the boundaries between the skewed slices can significantly affect the torque ripple and hence the accuracy of the 2.5D multi-slice approach. Therefore, it is recommended that for PMA SynRM full 3D FEA may be required in order to accurately predict the effects of skew on torque ripple. Furthermore, attention is also given to the effects of laser cutting on the magnetic properties of steel laminations and a method, which enables the assessment of these effects on the performance of the machine is proposed. It is shown that a substantial proportion of the discrepancy between the measured and predicted results can be attributed to these effects.
A multi-physics approach employing an algorithmic optimisation method is proposed. The technique employs sophisticated optimisation algorithms for efficient design space exploration combined with computationally efficient multi-physics models, thus considerably minimising the number of required FEA runs to reach the optimal designs. The method simultaneously takes into consideration of the main geometrical and topologic parameters of the PMA SynRM, as well as different permanent magnet materials properties. It is employed for the design optimisation of PMA SynRMs aiming to maximise energy efficiency against the NEDC, while meeting the specification requirements of the above-mentioned personal mobility EV. The resultant optimal designs are comprehensively compared against a set of indicative performance markers pertaining to EV traction. When compared to the manual optimisation method energy efficiency improvement in the region of 0.5% over a driving cycle is achieved.


The interaction of the probe diS-C3-(5) with dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) liposomes has been studied using fluorescence and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The partition coefficients (K) of the probe for the lipid and the aqueous phase (in terms of molar part units) were (1.20 +/- 0.4) X 10(6) at 45 degrees C and (0.50 +/- 0.07) X 10(6) at 23 and 36 degrees C. In terms of volume concentration units, these values correspond to Kp = (2.88 +/- 0.10) X 10(4) and Kp = (1.20 +/- 0.17) X 10(4), respectively. DSC thermograms were practically identical both for large unilamellar and multilamellar liposomes. The main transition peak remained practically unchanged over the entire range of the probe concentrations used. The pretransition could be observed up to maximal probe concentrations applied and it widened and shifted from 35.4 degrees C in pure DPPC to approximately 32 degrees C at a probe/lipid ratio of 0.027. These results suggest that in both quasicrystalline and liquid crystalline lipid bilayers the probe molecules are included in "defects" between structurally ordered microregions (microdomains or clusters). The dependence of the fluorescence response on the transmembrane potential in a suspension of unilamellar DPPC vesicles suggest that the equilibrium thermodynamic model is valid for liquid crystalline bilayers.


This work is an assessment of changes in magnetic properties of magnetic nanoparticles in various biological environments. To mimic variations in biological conditions, we have evaluated magnetic performance of Synomag® nanoparticles in two experiments: the effect of viscosity by varying the ratio of glycerol/water mixture and the effect of immobilization after blocking the Brownian relaxation by freeze-drying (to mimic uptake in macrophages). The magnetic response was measured with the Superparamagnetic quantifier. Synomag® exhibits a slight decrease (7.9%) of magnetic response under increased viscosity from η1=0.95 to η6=259.71 mPa.s, and a dramatic magnetic signal drop (78.2%) after freeze-drying. Synomag® nanoparticles are less sensitive to viscosity due  to an additional  relaxation mechanism of disordered spins within the nanoflowers. However, the magnetic performance has been reduced due to the blocking of Brownian relaxation after immobilization.

Int. J. Mag. Part. Imag. 6(2), Suppl. 1, 2020, Article ID: 2009022, DOI: 10.18416/IJMPI.2020.2009022


In this paper, we present the design of a robust deep neural network based speech enhancement (DNNSE) solution for joint noise reduction and dereverberation under real-world acoustic conditions. This makes our proposed solution suitable for smart-speaker products that encounter a wide variety of acoustic challenges during their real-world deployment. We provide a systematic introduction to the acoustic challenges involved in real-world products and perform a detailed analysis to compare DNNSE models using metrics such as short-time objective intelligibility (STOI), scale-invariant signal-to-distortion-ratio (SI-SDR), and generalizability to unseen acoustic conditions. We then develop a robust DNNSE solution along with a robust training procedure that are well suited for the acoustic challenges specified in the paper. Through detailed analysis, we demonstrate that our DNNSE solution performs and generalizes better than a baseline solution that is 5x-6x times larger.


BOOK UBLE. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THINKING. By Irving Elgnr MUler, l'h. D., MUwaukee State Normal school. xew York: The ~[acmman Company. Cloth. 303 pp. Price, $1.25. ' Professor MJ1ler says the theme of hls lJook .had Its orlgtu In the fact that he was once a teacher of mathematics In a New England academy. In mathematics t be tenc ber who would succeed Is forced to get Into very close touch wltb the actual mentsl processes involved In tblnklng as It goes on In specillc concrete eases It was tbe clinical Interest In the thinking process, sharpened .and furtber developed by the teaching of mathematics, wldch led 'hlm ultimately to specialize In the' stUdy of psychology and logic. The dominant point of view for the dtscusalon of thluklng Is biological; but It Is blological In the broad sense. Life Is not thought of as reduced to Its lowest physical terms, but as Iucfuslve of everythlng that makes life worth IIvlug. The concrete life of tbe Indlvldual Includes all that Is of value In the -eoruplex life of tbe hlgbly evolved, socialized, and clvlI1zed human being. "'hUe the movement of thought Is -domlunntly psychologtcal, tbe book Is written from a strong pedagogical bias. Tbe book Is wholesome In spirit, helpful In the practical side, and tends to develop, power In tbe teacher as well as the student. COE'S SCHOOT, READERS. By Fanny E. ooe, teacher ot English In the Boston Normal sehcol. Th[rd Grude Reader, 28! pages; price, 40 cents. Fourth Grade Header, 300 pages, price, 50 cents. New York. Cincinnati. and Chicago: American Book Company. Cloth. With illustrations. The.e are exceedingly beautiful readers. Typogra. ph~', Illustrations, paper, and binding are attractive. "I'he selections are well class[lled. In the Third Reader there are twenty-one poems, four myths, three on cblvalr~', four folk tales, four modern fa[ry tales, Il\"e on anhnal life, nine on cblld life, four on adventure, ten historical, four on humor. In the Fourth Reader there are twenty-two poems, one myth, two chivalrous, two folk lore. lIve fairy tales, four animal life, nlne,chlld life, 1I\'C adventure, three historical, two humorous. The rna terlal Is mostly uew to school readers, is fresh and attracttve In thought and l1lustrstlon. The books appeal to the teacher us well as to the pupil. The selections ore ot llterary value, the teaching sound and Wholesome, with Ideals high and yet compelling. The books art! admirably suited for supplementary use In connecnon with any standard series of readers. E:\'GJ.ISH FOR I··OREIGNERS. By Sara n. O'Brien. Boston, Xew York, and Chicago: Houghton Mlmln Company: Cloth. Illustrated. Price, 50 cents. Here Is a book absolutely and greatly needed, and the wonder Is that' no publisher has earlier brought out III elegant form 11 buok of this nature. :\[ost of the e\"enlng schools and all "steamer classes" in large cities nero it. Here Is thc simple and universally reeognlzed Introductorv work In English for foreigners. and It Is In most at-


Employee assistance programs (MPs) represent a relatively new fringe benefit for workers; the number of these programs has been steadily increasing in worksites of all sizes. Despite this surge in the growth of EAPs, few studies have estimated their costs or benefits. To guide future economic evaluation studies of EAPs, we have developed a methodology that has four components: a process description to understand the structure, operating environment, and goals of the EAP; a cost analysis to comprehensively identify and estimate the full range of EAP costs; an outcomes analysis to rigorously estimate the effectiveness of the EAP for groups of employees and the overall impact of the EAP on employee performance and workplace productivity; and an economic evaluation to estimate cost-effectiveness ratios, dollar benefits, and net benefits of the EAP. Our methodology is based on standard economic theory, but we present the evaluation strategy in a nontechnical way so that it can be used by employers and other researchers to estimate the costs and benefits of EAPs.


Encapsulation of drugs in nanoparticles could facilitate the accumulation of drugs in the tumor leading to less side effects and improved efficacy of the drug compared to conventional non-specific treatment interventions. When developing nanoparticles for drug delivery, aspects such as their interactions with and mechanism for delivery of drugs to the cells are important to investigate. The aim of this work was to determine which mechanisms were responsible for the cellular uptake of the hydrophobic model drug nile red from polymeric nanoparticles in vitro. Various experiments were conducted were prostatic adenocarcinoma cells were incubated with nanoparticles with encapsulated nile red, or with nile red alone. The cellular uptake and intracellular distribution of nile red was evaluated by flow cytometry and confocal laser scanning microscopy. The polymeric nanoparticles were found to mediate a higher intracellular level and a more rapid uptake of encapsulated model drug compared to when the model drug was administered by itself. The mechanism for delivery of the encapsulated model drug was by contact mediated transfer to cytosol rather than endocytosis of nanoparticles or release of payload to medium followed by diffusion into cells, even though the nanoparticles could release some nile red into medium without cells. This could also be exploited for hydrophobic anticancer drugs to improve cancer therapy and therefore potentially have large clinical relevance. Such a contact mediated mechanism of delivery directly to cytosol could enable effective delivery of anticancer drugs directly to the intracellular molecular drug targets. Further experiments could be conducted to examine the properties of the particles and their behavior more in detail, and determine if the particles are taken up in cells or not. To be applied in vivo, the nanoparticles must be tailored to not release their payload during circulation, but after accumulation at the target site. Much research is required to develop suitable carriers for drug delivery, and the nanoparticles must be carefully optimized to the desired properties. Even though the way to go from research to clinical use of nanoparticles in medicine is long, the use of multifunctional nanoparticles for biomedical applications in cancer seems to hold great potential for diagnosis and targeted treatment.


The theory of mentalizing and epistemic trust introduced by Peter Fonagy and colleagues at the Anna Freud Centre has been an important perspective on mental health and illness. This book is the first comprehensive account and evaluation of this perspective. The book explores 20 primary concepts that organize the contributions of Fonagy and colleagues: adaptation, aggression, the alien self, culture, disorganized attachment, epistemic trust, hypermentalizing, reflective function, the p-factor, pretend mode, the primary unconscious, psychic equivalence, mental illness, mentalizing, mentalization-based therapy, non-mentalizing, the self, sexuality, the social environment, and teleological mode. The biographical and social context of the development of these ideas is examined. The book also specifies the current strengths and limitations of the theory of mentalizing and epistemic trust, with attention to the implications for both clinicians and researchers.


An efficient and reliable pressurization system for an oxidizer and fuel of a liquid propellant rocket is critical for a successful launch. A liquid helium pressurization system employing a heater can reduce its mass, and be made simpler and more reliable than conventional pressurization systems. The key issue to minimize the total mass of the system is the optimization of the size of the liquid helium tank. In this paper, we describe a method to determine the optimal size of a liquid helium tank, and present one set of results under a given set of requirements. In this pressurization system, the heater design is represented by the heater efficiency. To estimate the heater efficiency, the convection heat transfer coefficient should be known beforehand. The guideline how to estimate this convection heat transfer coefficient based on the preliminary experimental data is also presented in this paper.


Measuring word relatedness is an important ingredient of many NLP applications. Several datasets have been developed in order to evaluate such measures. The main drawback of existing datasets is the focus on single words, although natural language contains a large proportion of multiword terms. We propose the new TR9856 dataset which focuses on multi-word terms and is significantly larger than existing datasets. The new dataset includes many real world terms such as acronyms and named entities, and further handles term ambiguity by providing topical context for all term pairs. We report baseline results for common relatedness methods over the new data, and exploit its magnitude to demonstrate that a combination of these methods outperforms each individual method.


Most existing point cloud upsampling methods have roughly three steps: feature extraction, feature expansion and 3D coordinate prediction. However, they usually suffer from two critical issues: (1) fixed upsampling rate after one-time training, since the feature expansion unit is customized for each upsampling rate; (2) outliers or shrinkage artifact caused by the difficulty of precisely predicting 3D coordinates or residuals of upsampled points. To adress them, we propose a new framework for accurate point cloud upsampling that supports arbitrary upsampling rates. Our method first interpolates the low-res point cloud according to a given upsampling rate. And then refine the positions of the interpolated points with an iterative optimization process, guided by a trained model estimating the difference between the current point cloud and the high-res target. Extensive quantitative and qualitative results on benchmarks and downstream tasks demonstrate that our method achieves the state-of-the-art accuracy and efficiency.


In recent works, utilizing a deep network trained on meta-training set serves as a strong baseline in few-shot learning. In this paper, we move forward to refine novel-class features by finetuning a trained deep network. Finetuning is designed to focus on reducing biases in novel-class feature distributions, which we define as two aspects: class-agnostic and class-specific biases. Class-agnostic bias is defined as the distribution shifting introduced by domain difference, which we propose Distribution Calibration Module(DCM) to reduce. DCM owes good property of eliminating domain difference and fast feature adaptation during optimization. Class-specific bias is defined as the biased estimation using a few samples in novel classes, which we propose Selected Sampling(SS) to reduce. Without inferring the actual class distribution, SS is designed by running sampling using proposal distributions around support-set samples. By powering finetuning with DCM and SS, we achieve state-of-the-art results on Meta-Dataset with consistent performance boosts over ten datasets from different domains. We believe our simple yet effective method demonstrates its possibility to be applied on practical few-shot applications.


Despite its growing popularity, evidence that volunteering enhances civic values and social cohesion among different communities remains limited in developing countries. This study presents novel evidence from Lebanon on the impact of offering a volunteering program that consisted of inter-community volunteering activities and soft skills training on self-reported social cohesion values in the short term. The results show that youth who were selected to participate in the program were more likely to report higher tolerance values as well as a stronger sense of belonging to the Lebanese community roughly one year after the completion of activities. The results show that selection into the program had no impact on improving volunteers' soft skills that were thought to contribute to social cohesion. This finding implies that the mechanism for improved social cohesion values most likely came from the program's innovative feature, which required 20 percent of selected youth to come from communities outside where the area where the project was implemented. Selection into the program had no impact on other secondary measures, namely, employability and employment outcomes. The results should be interpreted with caution, given study design limitations that relate to the nonrandom assignment of youth into the treatment and comparison groups, as well as the presence of nonrandom attrition between the two tracked time periods.


This study examines how upper secondary school teachers in Vasterbotten and Osterbotten plan to teach about the Finnish War 1808-09. The study includes written interviews with nine teachers in Vasterbotten and eight teachers in Osterbotten, who have answered questions concerning school policy documents, content and didactic methods. The purpose has been to examine whether there is a difference in historical culture in how the war is treated in the two regions. Historical culture is here meant within the prospective history lesson, where the pupils encounter history within certain boundaries.The result of the interview study shows that there are differences in structure concerning the school policy documents, but that these differences on the whole are compensated by the widespread interest in the Finnish War by the teachers in both regions. The differences in historical culture can be found within the construction of the content when it comes to the aftermaths of the war as well as the purpose of the teaching. A distinct common feature is that the perspective on local history has a strong position in education.Concerning the didactic methods there are differences working with source criticism as well as the forms of examination. Everything included, structurally, there are two different historical cultures. However, if we take into account the answers given by the teachers it is more reasonable to look at it as two nuances of one historical culture.Key words: Historical culture, history didactics, the Finnish War 1808-09, upper secondary school, Vasterbotten and Osterbotten.


The Blue, the Gray, and the Green is one of only a handful of books to apply an environmental history approach to the Civil War. This book explores how nature--disease, climate, flora and fauna, and other factors--affected the war and also how the war shaped Americans' perceptions, understanding, and use of nature. The contributors use a wide range of approaches that serve as a valuable template for future environmental histories of the conflict. In his introduction, Brian Allen Drake describes the sparse body of environmental history literature related to the Civil War and lays out a blueprint for the theoretical basis of each essay. Kenneth W. Noe emphasizes climate and its effects on agricultural output and the battlefield; Timothy Silver explores the role of disease among troops and animals; Megan Kate Nelson examines aridity and Union defeat in 1861 New Mexico; Kathryn Shively Meier investigates soldiers' responses to disease in the Peninsula Campaign; Aaron Sachs, John C. Inscoe, and Lisa M. Brady examine philosophical and ideological perspectives on nature before, during, and after the war; Drew Swanson discusses the war's role in production and landscape change in piedmont tobacco country; Mart A. Stewart muses on the importance of environmental knowledge and experience for soldiers, civilians, and slaves; Timothy Johnson elucidates the ecological underpinnings of debt peonage during Reconstruction; finally, Paul S. Sutter speculates on the future of Civil War environmental studies. The Blue, the Gray, and the Green provides a provocative environmental commentary that enriches our understanding of the Civil War.


A basic ingredient analysis of flora and geographic elements of plant genera and families in Daqi Mountain Nature Reserve was conducted through the field survey and specimen collection, based on the system investigation of plant flora, and an R/T ratio comparison between the flora in Daqi Mountain and adjacent mountain floras was made. Plant taxonomy identification indicates that spermatophytes in the nature reserve comprises 1035 species of 534 genera, falling in 140families, of which 10 gymnosperm species of 8 genera fall in 5 families, while 1025 angiosperm species of 526 genera in 135 families. The analysis of flora demonstrates that the region harbors 15 flora distribution types, with high complexity, paleo-flora origin, distinct trait of temperate zone, abundant ingredient of tropical zone, and close connection with the flora of East China.


We explore whether the expectation of debt forgiveness discourages developing countries from attaining sustainable fiscal independence through improving their tax effort. While the international financial community advises poor countries to improve revenue mobilization, the same international community routinely bail-out poor countries that fail to meet their loan repayment obligations. The act of bailing-out creates an expectation about receiving debt forgiveness time and again in the future. The key prediction of our theoretical framework is that in the presence of debt forgiveness, countries' tax efforts will decline and more so the higher the intensity of the bailouts. We test this using data for 66 countries from 1989 to 2008. We find that debt forgiveness is significant in lowering tax effort. In addressing potential endogeneity issues we also find that the international financial community has been more forgiving to countries that exert lower tax effort. The results are robust to various specifications.


The article by Balk et al 1 published in this issue tells us that pediatricians view residency training programs as more harmful to pregnant women and their babies than other jobs women may hold. Pediatricians are not stupid! They know, as does just about everyone else, that a residency is characterized by long hours, most of which are spent on one's feet, irregular meals and erratic sleep schedules, frank sleep deprivation, high stress levels related to having the awesome responsibility for the very lives of patients, forced separation from loved ones and personal support systems, and a mind-and-body-numbing, unending fatigue engendered by all of the above. Conventional wisdom holds that such conditions can place an undue burden on the pregnant resident. And there is objective evidence that this is so. For the most part, pregnant residents work at an unmodified pace and suffer not only fatigue but often hostility from