This research undertaking suggests that the studio-based process of inventing original choreographic works can be seen, in certain frameworks, as a complex 'theoretical practice'. It sets out to render the decisions that I, as an artist, make in the process of inventing three choreographic works, 'Audience (1) Waltzers', 'Return Journey' and 'HaH', more transparent and self-reflexive, and simultaneously to enquire into the question of whether, and how, writing might serve to illuminate aspects of my overall choreographic and performance practice. The studio-based process of inventing these three works– with which the written strands necessarily engage – reflects my desire to explore questions about dance, choreography and performance as they emerge in my practice and with reference to the canon of western contemporary dance performance. In the mixed-mode heuristic framework underlying the present investigation the studio-based and text-based strands of inquiry are integrated in an extra-hierarchical mode, functioning thus interdependently as strands having equal epistemic value within that undertaking. That is, each is equivalent in terms of an ongoing enquiry into knowledge. The present undertaking examines and reflects on the ways that modes and methods of inquiry appropriated from the tradition of contemporary and post-modern dance performance, the Somatic practices of Authentic Movement and Body-Mind Centering, together with the Buddhist practice of Mindfulness Meditation, support my status as remaining 'present with' sensations, emotions and thoughts that arise and inflect the other-than-linguistic qualitative reasoning that underlies the decisions I make in the process of inventing 'signature' choreographic works – by which I mean works that are recognisably my own. Investigations into the relationship between one's 'self' and one's thoughts are extended by borrowing selectively from published research within the fields of Philosophy, Science, Cognitive Science and Psychology. The mixed-mode heuristic framework provides for the emergence of a relational space between the studio-based and text-based strands of research. In this space the subtle, layered and always evolving sub-strands of both are rendered more transparent, thereby providing for the questions and decision-making processes underlying the invention of 'Audience (1) Waltzers', 'Return Journey' and 'HaH' to surface and become more fully revealed: can I create choreographic structures that might provide for audiences to have an intimate experience of dance and performance? And how might these choreographies also provide for somatic experiences of dance, and the space within which it unfolds, to be shared by the dancer(s) and audience in performance? I propose to demonstrate that this project's original contributions to knowledge are located in (i) the design of the mixed-mode heuristic framework within which I examine and reflect on how writing, in a range of registers, might serve to illuminate the process of inventing original choreographic works (ii) the choreographic works 'Audience (1) Waltzers', 'Return Journey' and 'HaH' (iii) what can be identified as the category of 'somatically-revolving-empathy'


This paper presents a novel approach that recognizing heart rhythm with the combination of adaptive Hermite decomposition and support vector machines (SVM) classification. The novelty lies in two aspects. In the first aspect, for the goal of feature extraction, the orthogonal transformation based on Hermite basis functions is proposed to characterize the morphological features of ECG data. In the other aspect, as to the multi-class electrocardiogram (ECG) classification, the one-against-all strategy is applied to a cluster of binary SVMs. Finally, in terms of numerical experiments, the major types of heart rhythms in the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database are taken into account. The results confirm its reliability and accuracy of the proposed ECG interpreter.


Marine protists are major components of the oceanic microbiome that remain largely unrepresented in culture collections and genomic reference databases. The exploration of this uncharted protist diversity in oceanic communities relies essentially on studying genetic markers from the environment as taxonomic barcodes. Here we report that across 6 large scale spatio-temporal planktonic surveys, half of the genetic barcodes remain taxonomically unassigned at the genus level, preventing a fine ecological understanding for numerous protist lineages. Among them, parasitic Syndiniales (Dinoflagellata) appear as the least described protist group. We have developed a computational workflow, integrating diverse 18S rDNA gene metabarcoding datasets, in order to infer large-scale ecological patterns at 100% similarity of the genetic marker, overcoming the limitation of taxonomic assignment. From a spatial perspective, we identified 2 171 unassigned clusters exclusively shared between the Tropical/Subtropical Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea among all Syndiniales orders and 25 ubiquitous clusters shared within all the studied marine regions. From a temporal perspective, over 3 time-series, we highlighted 38 unassigned clusters that follow rhythmic patterns of recurrence and are the best indicators of parasite community's variation. These clusters withhold potential as ecosystem change indicators, mirroring their associated host community responses. Our results underline the importance of Syndiniales in structuring planktonic communities through space and time, raising questions regarding host-parasite association specificity and the trophic mode of persistent Syndiniales, while providing an innovative framework for prioritizing unassigned protist taxa for further description.


The clinical findings were compared with the results of morphological examination of the brain in 32 patients who had died in different periods after surgery for removal of neurinoma of the acoustic nerve. In all cases vessels supplying the brain stem were injured during removal of the tumor. In 5 cases all three groups of arteries of the pons varolii were injured, which led to the development of infarction of half of the pons. The short circumflex pons arteries and the anterior inferior cerebellar artery were injured in 18 patients, which caused the formation of an infarct in the lateral part of pons varolii. The distal segment of the anterior inferior cerebellar artery was injured in 9 patients, as a result of which a small focus of infarction formed in the dorsolateral parts of the pons.


So far, the numerical modeling of the nanostructures in metal films has considered perfect conductors, or used effective surface impedance boundary conditions. Here, we incorporate the Drude response of metals within a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, which allows for modeling the electromagnetic field propagation within the metal. Numerical modeling was performed for a specific 2D structure consisting of a slit surrounded by a periodic array of grooves in a thin gold film. By using the FDTD method with a realistic metal response, we can account for tunneling through the metal film, which was not shown with past models. The modeled structures were fabricated using focused-ion beam milling.


The construction of new C-C, C-N and C-O bonds by replacing hazardous and waste generating chemicals with alcohols as the greener and sustainable reagents is one of the emerging areas of research. In consequence, the borrowing hydrogen and acceptorless dehydrogenative coupling principles have received significant momentum to synthesize various alkylated molecules and N-heterocycles. In the tandem transformations and multi-component reactions, simple substrates are directly converted to new functionalities or complex molecular systems using a single reaction set-up. In this review, the progress of tandem transformation of nitro, nitrile and azide functionalities as well as multi-component reactions utilizing alcohols is summarised. These transformations lead to the atom-economical synthesis of a wide range of alkylated imines, amines, amides and N-heterocycles such as pyrrole, pyridine, pyrimidine, quinoxaline, etc.


This paper is concerned with the study on internal forces of structure by building model in ANSYS under unidirectional seismic wave, bi-directional seismic waves and two-way and reverse seismic wave. The results revealed that the moment effect of frame structure under bi-directional seismic waves and two-way and reverse seismic wave is bigger around 30% than it under unidirectional seismic wave. And the torque accretion multiple of irregular structure is bigger around 1 than the corresponding regular structure. Therefore, we should take into account the effect of multi-dimensional seismic and the torsional effect of the irregular structure in structure design.


Automatic emotion recognition is vital for building natural and engaging human-computer interaction systems. Combining information from multiple modalities typically improves emotion recognition performance. In previous work, features from different modalities have generally been fused at the same level with two types of fusion strategies: Feature-Level fusion, which concatenates feature sets before recognition; and Decision-Level fusion, which makes the final decision based on outputs of the unimodal models. However, different features may describe data at different time scales or have different levels of abstraction. Cognitive Science research also indicates that when perceiving emotions, humans use information from different modalities at different cognitive levels and time steps. Therefore, we propose a Hierarchical fusion strategy for multimodal emotion recognition, which incorporates global or more abstract features at higher levels of its knowledge-inspired structure. We build multimodal emotion recognition models combining state-of-the-art acoustic and lexical features to study the performance of the proposed Hierarchical fusion. Experiments on two emotion databases of spoken dialogue show that this fusion strategy consistently outperforms both Feature-Level and Decision-Level fusion. The multimodal emotion recognition models using the Hierarchical fusion strategy achieved state-of-the-art performance on recognizing emotions in both spontaneous and acted dialogue.


Substance use among adolescents is a complex problem and an ongoing concern. Literature has identified a critical need to understand the role that schools can play in preventing adolescent substance use. Adopting an ecological perspective, we used multigroup logistic regression to determine the influence of school support and school meaningful participation on substance use among male and female adolescents after controlling for ethnicity, home, peer, community, and internal factors. A random sample of students in 9th and 11th grade was selected for each substance use group (abstainer, user, and polyuser; 7,642 participants) from the California Healthy Kids Survey. Results suggest that for males, perceived school support was related to significantly lower odds of belonging to the polyuser group. For females, family and peer factors largely accounted for influences on substance use. Findings bring focus to alterable factors that school professionals can influence that are associated with adolescent substance use.


The niche is a necessary consideration when estimating habitable area and geographic range of a species. Modellers often examine the fundamental niche and the environmental requirements for plant species, ignoring interactions among species. In deserts, positive plant interactions are important drivers of biodiversity and structure communities through many mechanistic pathways including modifying environmental conditions. Thus, we tested the hypothesis that desert shrubs increase the geographical extent of some annual species because, through modifying the microclimate, they match the niche requirements of beneficiary species. We used the database of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility to construct MaxEnt species distribution models (SDM) with and without reported benefactor species within the Mojave Desert in California. We chose 20 annual species to be modeled including 10 species that had been previously reported in the literature as being facilitated (beneficiary) and 10 that had no record of being facilitated (unreported). Beneficiary annuals co-occurred significantly more with benefactor shrubs than the unreported annual species. The inclusion of shrubs into SDMs significantly improved model predictability and geographic range for all the beneficiary annual species, but not for the unreported annual species. Thus, positive interactions are species specific and it is possible to determine annual species dependency on benefactor shrubs at the regional scale. The co-occurrence of benefactor shrubs and annual species can be used as a proxy for facilitation and recent developments in SDM techniques encourage the inclusion of biotic interactions. Species distribution models should include estimates of facilitation because biotic interactions determine the niche of species and can have implications with a changing climate.


In most of the organizations the human resource counselors, professionals and managers are concerned about the impact of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. However, many academic institutions have very little understanding of how job satisfaction affects employee's turnover, productivity and organization's performance. Therefore it is essential to understand the causes, symptoms and the effect it has. The main objective of the present paper is to study the job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment of faculty members in Technical and Management Institutes with reference to different institutes in Dar es Salaam region. For this purpose the data was collected through questionnaire under convenience random sampling of Management and Technical faculty members. The analysis has been done using different Statistical tools with the help of SPSS. The findings reveal and demonstrate that dissatisfaction does exist in the academic organizations/institutions, which eventually results to decrease of organizational commitment. Thus, the managers of various organizations should come up with various interventions to manage the dissatisfaction among the faculty members.


The stability of a system which alternates between stable and unstable configurations at random times may be investigated conveniently using Kronecker products. The system is stable with probability one if, and only if, all the eigenvalues of a specified matrix lie within the unit circle. If stability in the presence of a parameter adjustment is to be investigated, a root-locus plot of the eigenvalues is convenient.


Many enterprise networks require flexible dynamic group communications on the Internet. When we develop these systems on multicast communication framework, various types of security threats will occur. As a result, construction of secure group communication that protects users from intrusion and eavesdropping are very important matters. We propose an efficient key distribution method for a secure group communication over multicast communication framework. In this method, we use IP multicast mechanism to shorten rekeying time to minimize adverse effect on communication. In addition, we introduce a proxy mechanism for replies from group members to the group manager to reduce traffic generated by rekeying. We define a multicast communication network model and evaluate the proposed method by computations using the model. From results of the evaluation, the proposed method shortens the rekeying time and reduces concentration of traffic to the group management server in large systems.


Several studies show no significant difference in stock market performance between Republican and Democratic presidential administrations. While the authors confirm this finding for an index of large-capitalization stocks, they find that small-capitalization stocks perform Insignificantly better during Democratic administrations (an annual return difference of over 20%). The authors also present new evidence that the debt market performs significantly better during Republican administrations. In fact, on average, they find that real returns to debt during the 1929 through 1996 period have been negative.


DNA methylation is the main epigenetic modification in cancer. The pathological features of breast cancer follow a sequential progression from transition of a normal cell to benign proliferative hyperplasia, hyperplasia with atypia, in situ carcinoma and, eventually, to invasive and metastatic disease. Purpose: This study was designed to evaluate the changes in promoter CpG islands hypermethylation during breast cancer progression from pre-invasive lesions to invasive ductal carcinoma and different methylation patron with benign breast disease. Material and Methods: We performed analysis for the methylation status of 5 promoter CpG island (ESR1, E-Cad, APC, RARB and 14-3-3-σ promoters) in a group with women with normal breast tissue n=74; other group with epithelial atypia/ atypical ductal hyperplasia (n=20), ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS, n=14) and invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC, n=107). Results:Relative serum levels of methylated gene promoters ESR1 and 14-3-3-σ showed significant differences between IDC y normal breast tissue (were significantly higher in IDC than normal breast tissue) and between normal breast tissue and epithelial atypia/ atypical ductal hyperplasia/ ductal carcinoma in situ. There are no differences between IDC and epithelial atypia/ atypical ductal hyperplasia/ ductal carcinoma in situ when 14-3-3-σ and ESR1 mean values are compared. In fact, the present findings showed a frequent presence of methylated 14-3-3-σ in sera from women with breast benign disease, which could be considered the result of a proliferative alteration of epithelial and stromal components of the breast. Which may indicate presence of occult benign breast disease, although other possible sources of this DNA include normal tissues, which show higher methylation values with increasing age; which might undergo lysis during tumour growth; or premalignant lesion during tumour growth; or premalignant lesion. Conclusions: These findings showed that promoter CpG island methylation changed significantly in pre-invasive lesions, and breast cancer, suggesting that CpG island methylation of tumor-related genes is an early event in breast cancer progression. Citation Format: Joaquina Martinez-Galan, Juan Ramon Delgado, Rosario Del Moral, Blanca Torres-Torres. Promoter CpG island methylation during progression of atypical hyperplasia to breast cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research; 2012 Oct 16-19; Anaheim, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Prev Res 2012;5(11 Suppl):Abstract nr B09.


Background and Aims: Evidence-based management and evidence-based medicine plays an important role in providing health care services. This study describes the referral system has been set up in Tabriz's northwest. Methods: Following the appointment of the new director of the center Asadabadi, the data was analyzed, Interviews were conducted with physicians and employees and upstream managers, referral Committee was formed at the center. By the committee set up referral system was a priority. By reviewing the scientific literature and experiences from the different solutions proposed in the discussion group. Finally, communicate with health centers, staff training, to encourage doctors, as well as strategies and action items were chosen priority. Now, we passed the next few months and will evaluate its progress. Results: After reviewing the evidence and formulate action plan, we have attempted to identify peripheral units Then, six health centers with a population of about 500,000 people and a few regional and multi- city contract was signed. Hotline to prioritize queue and at reception to referral patients was assigned. By encouraging physicians to write feedback, We managed, the number of referral patients will increase from less than one percent (40 cases in month) to about 7 percent (1900 cases in month). Also, we were able to improve patient satisfaction from 50 percent to 80 percent. Conclusion: Set up a referral system with evidence-based approach in small area, to identify bottlenecks and interventions to expand it at a national level will be great help. The results of this study, firstly confirmed the feasibility of setting up a referral system. Secondly, the need to expand the vision and systemic action than ever before that was appeared. The center, with the launch of electronic queue system and other measures tries to increase the quantity and quality of the referral system but changing attitudes and structures at high levels in the control lever is vital to the success of the referral system.


Working bibliography for the faculty, lecturers and doctoral students in this seminar to build knowledge of, curiosity for and commitment to the Southeast Michigan region through critical reading and sustained dialogue.


It is necessary not only to perform laboratory tests for the correct diagnosis of children with precocious puberty, but also to monitor laboratory tests to ensure adequacy of therapy. Careful laboratory testing is a requisite in the differentiation of central from peripheral precocious puberty. It is also required to determine whether the patient who presents with early physical changes of pubertal development with peripheral precocious puberty has evidence of pubertal hormonal secretion. The most useful single test is gonadotropin-releasing hormone (gonadorelin) stimulation of luteinizing hormone release. The same stimulation test is also indicated to verify the adequacy of suppression of gonadotropin secretion among patients with central precocious puberty who are being treated with gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogue. It is necessary to know which gonadotropin assay is being used and the range of normal levels to correctly interpret the tests.


Proline is one of a kind. This amino acid exhibits a variety of unique functions in biological contexts, which continue to be discovered and developed. In addition to the reactivity of the primary functional groups, the trans–cis isomerization of the peptidyl–prolyl amide bond and its impact on the protein structure and function are of major interest. A variety of proline ring substitutions occur in nature, and more substitutions have been generated via chemical synthesis. Particularly promising is the 19F-labelling of proline, which offers a relatively new research application area. For example, it circumvents the lack of common NH-NMR reporters in peptidyl–prolyl fragments. Obtaining structural information from selectively fluorine-labelled peptides, proteins, and non-peptidic structures requires the analysis of the physicochemical features of the 19F-carrying proline analogues. To better understand and ultimately predict the potential perturbations (e.g., in protein stability and dynamics) introduced by fluorine labels, we conducted a comprehensive survey of the physicochemical effects of CF3 substitutions at each ring position by comparing the behavior of CF3-substituted residues with the CH3-substituted analogues. The parameters analyzed include the acid–base properties of the main chain functional groups, carbonyl-group interaction around the residue, and the thermodynamics and kinetics of trans–cis isomerization. The results reveal significant factors to consider with the use of CF3-substituted prolines in NMR labeling and other applications. Furthermore, lipophilicity measurements demonstrate that CF3-substituted proline shows comparable hydrophobicity to valine, suggesting the potential application of these residues for enhancing interactions at nonpolar interfaces.


Despite the many promises of cloud computing in science, its full potential is yet to be unlocked due to the lack of findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) data. To investigate the barriers and promises of FAIR data, we explore the Science Mesh, a federated mesh infrastructure enabling interoperability across research cloud service providers. As a starting point, the project will connect 300,000+ researchers from eight providers across Europe, Australia and beyond. Through our analysis of the Science Mesh, we frame FAIR data as a collective action problem permeating across two levels: researchers downstream and cloud service providers upstream. On one hand, the scientific community would be better off if researchers made their data FAIR, yet misaligned incentives hinder this. On the other hand, cloud providers are also not incentivized to pursue interoperability with other providers, despite its benefits to users. By addressing these two dilemmas towards FAIR data, the Science Mesh promises to unlock new ways of collaborating through frictionless sync and share, remote data analysis and collaborative applications.


Using a law and economics model of competition law enforcement we try to answer the following questions: What characterizes the effectiveness of a competition law regime? How has competition law enforcement spread around the world? What factors limit the enforcement of competition law? And finally, what regimes for competition law and what are the pre-requisites for each one? Our econometric analysis confirms that democracy, the level of education and control of vested interests are the most important pre-requisites for a competition law regime, and its improvement is crucial for having a more effective regime. Quality of public administration and the regulatory system as well as of the judicial system and reduction of corruption are sub-factors that are central to enforcement.


This study aims to deepen and analyze the implementation and effectiveness of human resource management in the context of educational institutions in schools. This study uses a qualitative method with a descriptive approach. The data collection techniques used in this study are interviews and documentation. The validity of this research is also obtained through the source triangulation technique, which compares the information obtained by the author with the theory used. Informants in this study consisted of school principals, administrative heads, and teachers. Data analysis is carried out through data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion drawing. The results of the study show that the implementation of human resource management at SMPIT Al Hijrah 2 Deli Serdang has been carried out well, with a focus on four aspects; recruitment, training, compensation, and termination. The four main aspects studied by the author are in line with Schuler's theory and the opinions of the three informants studied. The results of this study are expected to contribute to the development of human resource management theory and practice, and provide useful guidance for educational institutions in improving the quality and effectiveness of human resource management.


Copositive Lyapunov functions are used along with dissipativity theory for stability analysis of uncertain linear positive systems. At the difference of standard results, linear supply-rates are employed for robustness and performance analysis and lead to L1- and L∞-gain characterizations. This naturally guides to the definition of Integral Linear Constraints (ILCs) for the characterization of input-output nonnegative uncertainties. It turns out that these integral linear constraints can be linked to the Laplace domain, in order to be tuned adequately, by exploiting the L1-norm and input/output signals properties. This dual viewpoint allows to prove that the static-gain of the uncertainties, only, is critical for stability. This fact provides a new explanation for the surprising stability properties of linear positive time-delay systems. The obtained stability and performance analysis conditions are expressed in terms of (robust) linear programming problems that are transformed into finite dimensional ones using the Handelman's Theorem. Several examples are provided for illustration.


Various automatic curriculum learning (ACL) methods have been proposed to improve the sample efficiency and final performance of deep reinforcement learning (DRL). They are designed to control how a DRL agent collects data, which is inspired by how humans gradually adapt their learning processes to their capabilities. For example, ACL can be used for subgoal generation, reward shaping, environment generation, or initial state generation. However, prior work only considers curriculum learning following one of the aforementioned predefined paradigms. It is unclear which of these paradigms are complementary, and how the combination of them can be learned from interactions with the environment. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a unified automatic curriculum learning framework to create multi-objective but coherent curricula that are generated by a set of parametric curriculum modules. Each curriculum module is instantiated as a neural network and is responsible for generating a particular curriculum. In order to coordinate those potentially conflicting modules in unified parameter space, we propose a multi-task hyper-net learning framework that uses a single hyper-net to parameterize all those curriculum modules. In addition to existing hand-designed curricula paradigms, we further design a flexible memory mechanism to learn an abstract curriculum, which may otherwise be difficult to design manually. We evaluate our method on a series of robotic manipulation tasks and demonstrate its superiority over other state-of-the-art ACL methods in terms of sample efficiency and final performance.


This essay offers a comparative and narratologically-informed close reading of four recent comic reportages from refugee camps around the world. The short accounts by Lucas Wild, Damien Glez, Reinhard Kleist, and Didier Kassaï showcase a diverse set of comics journalism with revealing similarities and differences. Focusing on the concepts of immediacy and mediatedness, I show how the reportages use the multimodal affordances of comics to elicit witnessing or metareflection effects, sometimes even summoning both in a single act of representation. In particular, I analyze intrusive vs. unobtrusive narrators and monstrators, respectively, as well as the function of portraits and interviews for the narratives. Although the four reportages contrast in the authors' inclination to more obvious vs. veiled mediation and the different liberties taken to dramatize second-hand knowledge, they all complicate dichotomies such as subjectivity / objectivity, journalism / art, and immersion / reflection as they waver between and blend narrative strategies. Thus, these works present various possibilities of how journalistically-legitimized comic art looks today.


The Index of Cognitive Activity (ICA) and its open-source alternative, the Index of Pupillary Activity (IPA), are pupillary-based indicators for cognitive workload and are independent of light changes. Both indicators were investigated regarding influences of cognitive demand, fatigue and inter-individual differences. In addition, the variability of pupil changes between both eyes (difference values) were compared with the usually calculated pupillary changes averaged over both eyes (mean values). Fifty-five participants performed a spatial thinking test, the R-Cube-Vis Test, with six distinct difficulty levels and a simple fixation task before and after the R-Cube-Vis Test. The distributions of the ICA and IPA were comparable. The ICA/IPA values were lower during the simple fixation tasks than during the cognitively demanding R-Cube-Vis Test. A fatigue effect was found only for the mean ICA values. The effects of both indicators were larger between difficulty levels of the test when inter-individual differences were controlled using z-standardization. The difference values seemed to control for fatigue and appeared to differentiate better between more demanding cognitive tasks than the mean values. The derived recommendations for the ICA/IPA values are beneficial to gain more insights in individual performance and behavior during, e.g., training and testing scenarios.


Abstract. Exploration of Martian surface and the crater deposition has recently attracted scientific community. We hypothesized the existence of momentous topographic features of different origin on the Martian surface. It was observed that Gale Crater has a thick sediment deposition mainly of fluvial and aeolian origin. This study has utilized spatially referenced topographic dataset Context Camera images acquired from Mars reconnaissance orbiter for exploring the geomorphic processes and topography of Gale Crater. A base map was prepared by mosaicking all imagesfor preparing geomorphologic map of the crater. Surface map of the topography of the Crater was prepared using Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) data. HiRISE images were used to examine the identified geomorphic features. Results revealed that the presence of both fluvial and aeolian processes and their respective associated landforms in the Crater. Depositional landforms such as alluvial fan, inverted channel and mound and erosional landform namely canyons were distinctly identified on the image. Yardangs produced by erosional and ripple and dunes formed by the depositional work of wind were also identified in the Crater. The fluvial channel, inverted channels and fan shaped deposits further signifies ongoing aqueous activity on the Gale Crater. Sinuous ridges are the common features present on the floor of Crater. Rock particles, sand and silt in the crater were found to have been transported and deposited by flowing water on its floor. Presence of different sedimentary structures and valley revealed ancient sedimentary deposition due to water action. Significant ejecta morphologies were also identified on Martian surface. Our study confirms the previous studies that presence of H2O sub surface volatiles. Concentrations of volatiles have produced double layer ejecta morphology. The concept and findings of this study will escalate knowledge about the surface features on Gale Crater. However, more coherent investigation is needed for modelling and understanding the processes and landforms of the crater. Context Camera (CTX) and High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) images have proved useful for geomorphic and topographic mapping of the Mars planet. The dataset used in this study can be accessed on Mars Orbital Data Explorer (https://ode.rsl.wustl.edu/mars/indexproductsearch.aspx).


Herein, the successful utilization of core shell poly-methyl methacrylate nanoparticles (CS-PMMA NPs) as a valuable support for organocatalyst immobilization in aqueous medium is presented along with an unprecedented direct current-based electrochemical method for processing a water colloid of the resulting nano-supported catalyst. The NP coagulation procedure relied on various electrocoagulation techniques and it was achieved through water electrolysis occurring in a dialysis membrane immersed in the colloid. Mass recoveries of up to 95% w/w were obtained for the NPs within 1 h of electrolysis. This was optimized at a constant current of 90 mA or a constant potential of 24 V. The disclosed NP separation procedure was effectively exploited in a continuous-flow reaction/separation/recycle sequence involving the tetraphenylporphyrin tetrasulfonate (TPPS) organo-photocatalyst immobilized on CS-PMMA NPs (NP2s). After an optimization study aimed at maximizing the chemical efficiency of the entire synthetic and purification process, the nano-supported catalyst NP2 (0.05 mol%) efficiently promoted the photoexcitation of triplet oxygen to singlet oxygen for the selective and environmentally benign sulfoxidation of a model sulfide in an aqueous medium.


This paper uses a conversation analysis (CA) approach to explore parent—child interaction (PCI) within Nigerian families. We illustrate how speech and language therapists (SLTs), by using CA, can tailor recommendations according to the interactional style of each individual family that are consonant with the family's cultural beliefs. Three parent—child dyads were video-taped playing and talking together in their home environments. The analysis uncovered a preference for instructional talk similar to that used in the classroom. Closer examination revealed that this was not inappropriate when considering the context of the activities and their perceived discourse role. Furthermore, this was not necessarily at the expense of responsivity or semantic contingency. The preference for instructional talk appeared to reflect deeply held cultural beliefs about the role of adults and children within the family and it is argued that the cultural paradigm is vitally important to consider when evaluating PCI. Given a potential risk that such young children may be vulnerable in terms of language difficulties, we offer an example of how PCI can be enhanced to encourage language development without disrupting the naturally occurring talk or the underlying purpose of the interaction.


Windows 2000 Active Directory is a notably authoritative and engaging guide to the Microsoft Active Directory (AD) for any administrator or developer making the move to the new Windows and this powerful directory standard. Articulate and technically astute, the author comes across as a trusted advisor, providing an expert's view of designing the layout of your company's Active Directory schema. In realistic terms, he shows you how AD can coexist with Unix directories. The book not only provides a collection of screen shots (though there are hands-on tutorials for specific tasks) but also a nicely in-depth tour of what Internet directories are and what advantages Active Directory offers. Case studies on sample domains and organization units (OUs) for sample companies, including a model global corporation, will help you cope with the design of even the most complex directories. Hints for limiting "domains" and favoring the more flexible "organizational units" (OUs) will also help you think in Windows 2000 terms. Later sections of the book delve into Active Directory Services Interface (ASDI) scripting using Windows Script Host (WSH), Visual Basic, and even ASPs for browser-based administration. The tips and sample scripts for a variety of common administrative tasks, such as adding new users, changing passwords, and the like, assume very little programming background. This focus on the practical side of administration rounds out an extremely useful and technically savvy guide to Windows 2000 that can definitely simplify the life of any administrator, manager, or developer upgrading to the latest Windows. --Richard Dragan


Heavy Quarks will be abundantly produced in Heavy Ion Collisions at LHC energies. Both, the production of open heavy flavoured mesons and quarkonia will probe the strongly interacting medium created in these reactions. In particular, the ALICE detector will be able to measure heavy flavour production down to low transverse momentum, combining leptonic and hadronic channels, covering a large rapidity range |η| < 0.9 and −4 < η < −2.5. In this talk we will present the main physics motivations for the study of heavy flavour production at LHC energies and some examples of physics analyses developed by the heavy flavour working group of ALICE.


Sectoral crediting mechanisms such as sectoral no-lose targets have been proposed as a way to provide incentives for emission reductions in developing countries as part of an international climate agreement, and scale up carbon trading from the project-level Clean Development Mechanism to the sectoral level. Countries would generate tradable emission credits (offsets) for reducing emissions in a sector below an agreed crediting baseline. I show that large uncertainties in the regulator's predictions of the counterfactual business-as-usual baseline are likely to render sectoral no-lose targets an extremely unattractive mechanism in practice, at least for the transportation case study presented here. Given these uncertainties, the regulator faces a tradeoff between efficiency (setting generous crediting baselines to encourage more countries to opt in) and limiting transfer payments for non-additional offsets (which are generated if the crediting baseline is set above business-as-usual). I show that the first-best outcome is attainable through setting a generous crediting baseline. However, this comes at the cost of either increased environmental damage (if developed country targets are not adjusted to account for non-additional offsets), or transfers from developed to developing countries that are likely to be too high to be politically feasible (if developed country targets are made more stringent in recognition that many offsets are nonadditional). A more stringent crediting baseline still generates a large proportion of non-additional offsets, but renders sectoral no-lose targets virtually irrelevant as few countries opt in.


In this research we have studied the use of machine learning techniques in detecting network
intrusions. Most research in the field has used the very outdated dataset (KDDCup99) which
consists of a set handcrafted features. In our research we present models that work well on both
the older dataset and on newer datasets such as ISCX2014 and ISCX2012. We also present
methods for extracting features from these datasets. Another issue we found with most research in
this field is that they do not study the effect of surges in regular network traffic and how that might
affect the model. We put our model to test in 10x traffic and show its effectiveness under these
conditions. We also study how semi-supervised models can be used in training NIDS models
without directly showing them labeled data.


Reproductive modes in salamanders (Amphibia, Caudata) are highly diverse. Viviparity, for instance, implies the retention of the developing embryos inside the females until the end of the gestation, at which point they deliver fully developed terrestrial juveniles. From an ecological point of view, the evolution of viviparity is highly significant, since it implies the semi-independence of water for an amphibian. Nevertheless, viviparity is not very common among salamander. It has independently evolved only in a few species, all included within the family Salamandridae. Furthermore, the characteristics of viviparous strategies are different among species, although they all share some commonalities. The detailed study of these particular and common features in a phylogenetic context will reveal the genetic, physiological, developmental, morphological and historic factors that have triggered the evolution of this peculiar mode of reproduction in only one lineage among all the species of salamanders.

Key Concepts:

Viviparity entails the complete development of the progeny within the mother's genital tract, together with the maternal provisioning of nutrients to the embryos.

Since development occurs within the females, viviparity in amphibians implies that the aquatic phase of the standard amphibian life cycle is obviated in viviparous species.

Viviparity has independently evolved only in a few species of salamanders.

Keywords:

development;
embryology;
evolution;
larvae;
life history;
metamorphosis;
phylogeny;
reproduction


This paper presents a new subspace modeling and selection approach for noisy speech recognition. In subspace modeling, we develop factor analysis (FA) for representing noisy speech. FA is a data generation model where the common factors are extracted with factor loading matrix and specific factors. We bridge the connection of FA to signal subspace (SS) approach. Interestingly, FA partitions noisy speech space into a principal subspace containing speech and noise and a minor subspace containing residual speech and residual noise. To estimate clean speech, we minimize the energies of speech distortion in principal subspace as well as minor subspace. More importantly, in subspace selection, we explore optimal subspace partition via solving hypothesis test problems. We test the equivalence of eigenvalues in minor subspace so as to determine subspace dimension. To fulfill FA spirit, we further examine the hypothesis of uncorrelated residual speech. Optimal solutions are realized through likelihood ratio test with the approximated chi-square distributions as test statistics. Subspace partition is performed according to the confidence towards rejecting null hypotheses. In the experiments on Aurora2 database, FA outperforms SS in subspace modeling. New selection algorithms effectively determine subspace dimension for noisy speech recognition.


Global increase in land cover change and deforestation bring about fragmentation of a high proportion of native vegetation areas. Microclimate is among the first modified factors after vegetation loss, effects of such disturbances are critical for species performance. However, both secondary succession and seasonality provoke further modifications in abiotic environment after disturbances. Although microclimate patterns during succession are well studied for several ecosystems, they are practically unknown for low thorn forests. In Northern Mexico, this is an endangered ecosystem characterized by harboring a high percentage of endemics. Measurement of microclimatic factors is crucial for understanding possible consequences of post-disturbance time on species inhabiting this ecosystem. This work aimed to assess seasonal variation of microclimatic patterns in a succession gradient of four categories (conserved areas, 31, 17 and four years of succession). The study area was delimited using Landsat satellite images (1973, 1986, 2000, 2005, and 2013) in a fragment of low thorn forest in Northeastern Mexico. For microclimate characterization we studied wind speed, temperature, relative humidity, heat index, dew point, and evapotranspiration. Variables were measured monthly on eight plots, in each of the four successional categories, during two different seasons: wet (May through October 2016) and dry season (November 2016 through April 2017). A multivariate discriminant function analysis showed that microclimate differs among successional stages. In the wet season, early succession areas were characterized by higher values of heat index and wind speed, contrary to conserved areas. In the dry season, successional differences were attributed to wind speed and relative humidity. Moreover, microclimate differences between categories and importance of variables measured were both higher only during the dry season. Our results show that seasonality influences greatly microclimatic patterns during secondary succession. In addition, each one of the successional categories exhibited unique microclimatic conditions. Remarkably, four, 17, and even 31 years succession categories differed from conserved areas. This work provides evidence on the great relevance of seasonality and microclimate for studying secondary succession. It is suggested to take both factors into consideration when implementing conservation programs concerning endangered habitats such as low thorn forests. As an ecosystem poorly studied, microclimate characterization provided herein, shall help to a better understanding and management of these areas.


Remote sensing techniques that provide synoptic and repetitive observations over large geographic areas have become increasingly important in studying the role of agriculture in global carbon cycles. However, it is still challenging to model crop yields based on remotely sensed data due to the variation in radiation use efficiency (RUE) across crop types and the effects of spatial heterogeneity. In this paper, we propose a production efficiency model-based method to estimate corn and soybean yields with MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data by explicitly handling the following two issues: (1) field-measured RUE values for corn and soybean are applied to relatively pure pixels instead of the biome-wide RUE value prescribed in the MODIS vegetation productivity product (MOD17); and (2) contributions to productivity from vegetation other than crops in mixed pixels are deducted at the level of MODIS resolution. Our estimated yields statistically correlate with the national survey data for rainfed counties in the Midwestern US with low errors for both corn (R2 = 0.77; RMSE = 0.89 MT/ha) and soybeans (R2 = 0.66; RMSE = 0.38 MT/ha). Because the proposed algorithm does not require any retrospective analysis that constructs empirical relationships between the reported yields and remotely sensed data, it could monitor crop yields over large areas.


"Some of this actually happened." So states the epigraph that opens David O. Russell's late 1970s period piece, American Hustle (2013). My attraction to this frank yet winking statement is that it might be the most honest claim any historian can make. As a media scholar who has attempted to train himself as a historian, I am often skeptical of reading fictions as historical evidence. Yet as a 1970s enthusiast born mid-decade (the week The Rocky Horror Picture Show [1975] opened in the U.S., to be historically precise), I am interested in thinking through investments in moments that one almost lived through but doesn't actually remember: a past just before one's own experience that seems familiar or resonant.1 Is this just a curious form of nostalgia or a self-reflexively honest mode of historical consciousness? In this, perhaps, films can be more helpful as theory-explanatory lenses for how we make sense of the past now-than as a way to access the past itself.Todd Haynes's 1970s queer, glam-rock musical fantasia Velvet Goldmine opens with a more audacious epigraph: "Although what you are about to see is a work of fiction, it should nevertheless be played at maximum volume" (1998). This proclamation of fiction is itself a coy reference to the back cover of David Bowie's album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which includes the instructions, "To be played at maximum volume" ( 1972). Velvet Goldmine invents a glittery and disorienting fantasy version of the past that is rigorously researched, yet it always exceeds the facts and screws with the details. This film very literally enacts a practice of queer historiography, if we understand queer to not only mean nonnormative or nonlinear (i.e., nonstraight) but also fabulous in both its stylishness and its deployment of fantasy and self-invention for a community so long denied recognition in the so-called real world.Velvet Goldmine is as nonchronological as memory and as temporally nonlinear as the search for historical evidence; indeed, the research process is rarely linear or teleological, and what makes an impression as historically important or meaningful is subjective. At key moments, the film is temporally disorienting and also fabulously blurs what was, what was performed, and what was imagined.2 Velvet Goldmine approaches the concept of a subcultural queer golden age as always already self-mythologizing and understands that any understanding of the past is always speculative and therefore a fusion of fact and fabulation.3 We might remember that in such seminal and fascinating key films of the late 1980s and early 1990s new queer cinema-including Looking for Langston (1989), The Making of Monsters ( 1991 ), Orlando (1992), Swoon (1992), and later The Watermelon Woman (1996)-perverting history was a recurring device for radically imagining the world otherwise or for offering queer countervisions of the past. Queer cinema, contemporaneous with the emergence of queer theory-and arguably intertwined with its formation-presented a project of retrospeculation, of seeing a different historical narrative that was not bound to separations of fact and fiction or between past and present.4Fantasy, of course, existed in queer and feminist texts of the 1970s- probably most prominently in gay male pornography and lesbian feminist science fiction. But there was also a radical impulse to manifest a queer and feminist actuality in the then-present rather than merely speculate. Even The Rocky Horror Picture Show urges us to be literal in our empowerment: "Don't dream it. Be it" (1975).A refusal to speculate was what most struck me upon recently encountering Chris Hegedus's and D. A. Pennebaker's 1979 documentary Town Bloody Hall, which represents a 1971 panel discussion on feminism featuring Germaine Greer (author of The Female Eunuch), Jill Johnston (author of Lesbian Nation), Jacqueline Ceballos (former president of the National Organization for Women), Diana Trilling (literary critic), and moderator Norman Mailer (male writer). …


1.1.1 Any new road, road improvement or traffic management
scheme could affect pedestrian journeys in its locality or
elsewhere. Some journeys may be affected directly, with
severance caused where the new road or road improvement cuts
across a pedestrian route, others may be affected indirectly with
a new road causing changes in traffic levels elsewhere. To
enable effects on pedestrians to be given proper weight when
decisions are taken, techniques are required that forecast the
effects of the scheme on the number and quality of pedestrian
journeys. This is particularly true in urban areas, since
effects on pedestrians may be one of the main benefits or
disbenefits of measures to relieve urban traffic.

(Continues..)


Localization of access points has become an important research problem due to the wide range of applications it addresses such as dismantling critical security threats caused by rogue access points or optimizing wireless coverage of access points within a service area. Existing proposed solutions have mostly relied on theoretical hypotheses or computer simulation to demonstrate the efficiency of their methods. The techniques that rely on estimating the distance using samples of the received signal strength usually assume prior knowledge of the signal propagation characteristics of the indoor environment in hand and tend to take a relatively large number of uniformly distributed random samples. This paper presents an efficient and practical collaborative approach to detect the location of an access point in an indoor environment without any prior knowledge of the environment. The proposed approach comprises a swarm of wirelessly connected mobile robots that collaboratively and autonomously collect a relatively small number of non-uniformly distributed random samples of the access point's received signal strength. These samples are used to efficiently and accurately estimate the location of the access point. The experimental testing verified that the proposed approach can identify the location of the access point in an accurate and efficient manner.


To complement the recent interviews conducted by Octavian Manea, we reached out to the defense analysts experts at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. In the first interview of this series, Dr. John Arquilla described how he felt that French Encounters with Irregular Warfare in the 19th Century can inform COIN in our time. This rebuttal comes from Dr. Douglas Porch, a historian in the National Security Affairs (NSA) department. This department specializes in the study of international relations, security policy, and regional studies. NSA is unique because it brings together outstanding faculty, students from the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, National Guard and various civilian agencies, and scores of international officers from dozens of countries for the sole purpose of preparing tomorrow's military and civilian leaders for emerging security challenges. Notable alumni from the NSA department include LTG William H. Caldwell.


CircGR is a multi-touch non-symbolic gesture recognition algorithm, which utilizes circular statistic measures to implement linearithmic (O(n log n)) template-based matching. CircGR provides a solution to gesture designers, which allows for building complex multi-touch gestures with high-confidence accuracy. We demonstrated the algorithm and described a user study with 60 subjects and over 12,000 gestures collected for an original gesture set of 36. The accuracy is over 99% with the Matthews correlation coefficient of 0.95. In addition, early gesture detection was successful in CircGR as well.


The following dissertation examines the tunability of two types of proof-of-concept devices centering around post-fabrication modification of the infrared optical response. The first device, created through the hybridization of the metamaterials and the phase-transition oxide vanadium dioxide (VO2), is probed using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. We demonstrate that, through application of voltage pulses to this initially uniform device, a gradient in the optical properties can be obtained. This macroscopic control mechanism enables persistent modification of the device, though the hysteretic nature of the VO2 insulator to metal transition (IMT), on spatial scales on the order of a few wavelengths of the probing light. In addition to effects from current-induced heating, we show that the optical response can also be modified through the use of an ionic gel to oxidize or reduce the vanadium ions in VO2, thereby driving its IMT. These measurements also demonstrate the potential for metamaterials as a means of probing metal-to-insulator transitions, allowing for enhanced optical probing of changes in VO2 properties due to electric fields from the ion gel. The second device we explored is a graphene based device used for examining the modification of graphene's plasmonic response in conjunction with the ferroelectric high-κ dielectric lead zirconium titanate (PZT) employed as a gate dielectric. By using PZT, the carrier concentration, and therefore the optical properties of graphene, can be heavily modified with small back-gate voltages. Additionally, the use of a ferroelectric dielectric enables a form of memory in the device where transient voltage application leads to persistent changes in graphene properties. Examination of this device using scanning near-field optical microscopy allows us to determine the usefulness of similar devices in future plasmonic device.


Business improvement districts (BIDs) collect assessments and invest in local service provisions and activities, such as place promotion, street cleaning, and public safety. Such activities can help reduce crime and youth violence by increasing informal social control, reducing signs of disorder and blight, improving order maintenance, and enriching job opportunities. This report examines BIDs' impact on crime and youth violence in Los Angeles.


This thesis is based on seven studies. The aims of these studies were to investigate a series of consecutive patients with orofacial and general sensations and complaints of discomfort, which the patients assumed to be caused by galvanic currents created by metallic dental fillings and restorations, as well as contact allergy to both metallic and non-metallic substances in dental materials. Studies I and II described the patients' symptoms and complaints, as well as the clinical findings of many odontological and medical examinations. A widely varying symptom panorama and numerous clinical findings, both oral and general, have been found which could not be explained by a single etiological factor. A combination of many factors, such as general health problems, side effects of medication, psychosocial problems, including stressful life events and complications due to the chronicity of the pain formed the background to the oral and general complaints of these patients. The salivary and microbiological conditions and patch test results were presented in studies III and IV. The saliva flow rate, pH and cariogenic bacteria level as well as contact allergy to metallic and non-metallic substances known as allergens, were not significantly different, but buffer capacity and saliva conductance did differ. A laboratory investigation of the corrosion behaviour of dental amalgams and gold alloys in natural saliva and saline solutions was performed (Study V) and the corrosion state of dental amalgam fillings and constructions was examined (Study VI). Special laboratory and clinical methods and apparatus were constructed and used. No differences between electrode potentials of the amalgam fillings and constructions in patients with and without orofacial discomfort complaints were measured. Study VII presented an analysis of the outcome of the treatments applied. The treatment was based on each patient's symptoms and signs and probable diagnosis. Besides conventional dental, stomatognathic and medical treatment, metallic constructions were removed in 54% of the patients. The initial treatment result was favourable in 80% but recurrences were frequent. It was concluded that these patients need a careful oral examination and dental treatment of observed local pathosis and defects of dental constructions, but removal of metallic fillings and constructions should be avoided when not indicated. Many of these patients require medical consultation and treatment, and collaboration between dentist and the physician is recommended.


Publish or Perish. This old adage illustrates the importance of scientific communication; essential to research, it also represents a strategic sector for each country's competitiveness. An often-neglected topic, scientific communication is of vital importance, with new information technologies accelerating and profoundly changing how knowledge is disseminated. The necessity of optimally disseminating experts' findings has also become crucial to researchers, institutes and universities alike, which has prompted the recent advent of Impact Factors for the evaluation and financing of research, the goal being for scientific knowledge to be equally distributed to a very broad audience, especially to the media, entrepreneurs and sociopolitical players. This handbook presents the "golden rules" for publishing scientific articles. In order to do away with major recurring errors, the author explains how to easily structure an article and offers support for the typical mistakes made by most scientists, tips on how to make the style more academic of more general to fit your intended readership and, in the book's closing section, suggests new publishing techniques of the Internet age such as the micro-article, which allows researchers to focus their findings into a single innovative point. The major principles presented can be applied to a broad range of documents such as theses, industry reports, publicity texts, letters of intent, CVs/resumes, blogs and press releases, as all of these documents involve presenting information on advances, discoveries, innovations, or changes to our previous knowledge.


This article draws attention to the faulty design elements at the front-door of children's local authority services, arguing that current attempts to increase safety, through the formalization of organizational procedures and their enactment by IT systems, may have had the contrary effect. We argue that the analysis of errors in organizational settings should focus on immanent systemic weaknesses, particularly the 'latent conditions' for error that generally increase the risk of failure. Reporting the findings from a two-year ESRC-funded ethnographic study, and examining the local adaptations of practice arising in the performance context of the 'modernized' front-door of children's services, we draw attention to the short-cuts that the current configuration of the initial assessment system appears to necessitate, given the immutable timescales and excessive audit requirements. New modes of governance can clearly play a central role in error management, but the design of an effective system needs to be based on the needs of users and on a thorough understanding of their working practices.


Background: Health information technology (IT) solutions can aid healthcare reform efforts, but without proper information management, these efforts are futile. In this study, we used Kuwait as an example of a high per-capita gross domestic product country that faces information management challenges to draw insights that can be generalised to other developed countries. Objective: (i) to uncover the status quo of information management practices in public hospitals and (ii) to offer recommendations to improve them. Method: This study analysed qualitative and quantitative accreditation-related data pertaining to the compliance with the information management standard at all secondary care public hospitals over two accreditation cycles. Results: Overall, public hospitals had made positive progress in their compliance with the information management standard. However, issues still existed with (i) developing and implementing an information management plan, (ii) involving the appropriate stakeholders in selecting health IT solutions and (iii) access to the Internet by staff and patients. Conclusion: Evidence underscored the importance of proper information management driven by clear centralised strategic plans. Implications: With the rapid adoption of digital health systems, the role of health information management leaders should not be undervalued. Embracing health IT solutions with strong information management practices can aid healthcare reform efforts.


Properties: Vinyl ether, CH(2):CH(2):O:CH(2):CH(2), a volatile liquid. Lipoidsoluble but highly inflammable.Toxicity.-Has little effect on liver function; overdoses produce respiratory paralysis, but not cardiac paralysis.Indications.-Replaces ethyl chloride for short operations, and can be added to gas and oxygen instead of ether or chloroform. Is a safe and portable anæsthetic for the general practitioner.Administration.-Open method convenient, but not very satisfactory, a closed method produces better anæsthesia. Special inhaler described and illustrated.Vinyl ether is obtainable in ampoules of 3 c.c., a sufficient quantity for the average case.Induction is rapid; signs of anæsthesia described. Patient's colour remains excellent.Apparatus required when vinyl ether is to be added to gas-and-oxygen.


Carrier aggregation and multi-flow transmission are among the most important features of HSPA+. While the former allows users to be served simultaneously by several carriers in the same sector, the latter enables adjacent sectors to simultaneously schedule different data streams to the same user in their overlapping region. In this paper, we investigate the inter-operation of these two features. We evaluate the flow-level performance using a method based on network simulation coupled with Markov chain analysis. Results in single-carrier mode show an improvement in throughput at low load and an efficient load balancing across sectors at high load. In multi-carrier mode, we show that coordination is no more recommended since it does not achieve any throughput gain over the classical multi-carrier system. This is due to the actual status of the standard that limits the number of carriers that can be used for the multi-flow transmission to two. However, if this restriction is released in the standard, our results show that multi-flow transmission would bring significant gains.


One of the most important aspects in the metrology of radiation fields is the problem of the measurement of dose profiles in regions where the dose gradient is large. In such zones, the 'detector size effect' may produce experimental measurements that do not correspond to reality. Mathematically it can be proved, under some general assumptions of spatial linearity, that the disturbance induced in the measurement by the effect of the finite size of the detector is equal to the convolution of the real profile with a representative kernel of the detector. In this work the exact relation between the measured profile and the real profile is shown, through the analytical resolution of the integral equation for a general type of profile fitting function using Gaussian convolution kernels.


Judicial ethics largely prohibits judges from engaging in political activities, including endorsing or opposing candidates for public office. These restrictions on judicial politicking, intended to preserve both the reality and the appearance of judicial integrity, independence, and impartiality, have been in place for decades. Although the Code of Conduct for United States Judges does not apply to the Supreme Court, Supreme Court Justices have long followed the norm that they do not take sides, at least publicly, in partisan political elections. And while elected state judges have some leeway to engage in limited political activities associated with their own candidacy, the Justices of the United States Supreme Court have consistently remained on the sidelines in contested partisan elections.
That is why the events of July 2016 were so surprising. With the 2016 presidential election less than four months away, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg shocked everyone when she bluntly spoke out against the Republican presidential nominee, and the ultimate winner of the election, Donald Trump. On multiple occasions, she expressed her disdain for Trump in no uncertain terms, calling Trump a "faker," criticizing Trump's failure to release his tax returns, and even joking that her husband would have suggested moving to New Zealand if Trump were to be elected president. Given the ethical rules and the long-standing norms of judicial behavior, these were jarring statements from a sitting Supreme Court Justice.
Immediately, there was a near-unanimous outcry against the propriety of Ginsburg's comments, ultimately leading her to apologize. The chorus of critics included both conservative and reliably leftist pundits, media commentators, legal academics, numerous politicians, and Donald Trump himself. It was not just conservatives who rebuked her statements. Despite her near-mythical status in progressive circles, among the critics were some of Justice Ginsburg's biggest supporters. In an election that saw little bipartisan agreement on almost anything, nearly everyone seemed to agree that Justice Ginsburg's statements violated ethical rules and norms.
This Article examines whether Ginsburg's many critics were right. I suggest that the norms may be built on a shaky foundation and grounded in long-abandoned myths about the judicial role and judicial decision-making. The traditional restraints on Supreme Court Justices expressing their own strongly-held political views does not further, or at least does not significantly further, any of the important goals generally served by the ethics codes. While Justice Ginsburg's comments, and comments like hers, may change the way the people view the Court and its Justices, their mere utterance causes little damage to the reputation and standing of the federal judiciary generally, or the Supreme Court in particular. In addition, stifling judicial speech disserves the American people by misleading them about judges and judging and concealing potentially important heuristic information from the electorate.


: Loxapine succinate was compared to chlorpromazine in a 12-week double-blind study of 50 hospitalized chronic schizophrenic patients. Statistical analyses of BPRS scores showed significant improvemement for several items and factors in both groups of patients. Both drugs significantly decreased severity of illness on the CGI scale. On the NOSIE scale, "manifest psychosis" was improved significantly with chlorpromazine and "global severity" with loxapine succinate. There were no significant treatment differences in BPRS, CGI, or Nosie items or factors or in the reduction of overall psychopathology. The side effects associated with the study drugs differed little with respect to incidence, number, severity, and type. The most frequently reported symptoms in both groups were behavioral, extrapyramidal, and sedative. Analyses of vital signs and clinical laboratory data revealed no evidence of serious untoward effects.


The hard X-ray band (10 - 100 keV) has been only observed so far by collimated and coded aperture mask instruments, with a sensitivity and an angular resolution lower than two orders of magnitude as respects the current X-ray focusing telescopes operating below 10 - 15 keV.
The technological advance in X-ray mirrors and detection systems is now able to extend the X-ray focusing technique to the hard X-ray domain, filling the gap in terms of observational performances and providing a totally new deep view on some of the most energetic phenomena of the Universe.
In order to reach a sensitivity of 1 muCrab in the 10 - 40 keV energy range, a great care in the background minimization is required, a common issue for all the hard X-ray focusing telescopes.
In the present PhD thesis, a comprehensive analysis of the space radiation environment, the payload design and the resulting prompt X-ray background level is presented, with the aim of driving the feasibility study of the shielding system and assessing the scientific requirements of the future hard X-ray missions.
A Geant4 based multi-mission background simulator, BoGEMMS, is developed to be applied to any high energy mission for which the shielding and instruments performances are required. It allows to interactively create a virtual model of the telescope and expose it to the space radiation environment, tracking the particles along their path and filtering the simulated background counts as a real observation in space.
Its flexibility is exploited to evaluate the background spectra of the Simbol-X and NHXM mission, as well as the soft proton scattering by the X-ray optics and the selection of the best shielding configuration.
Altough the Simbol-X and NHXM missions are the case studies of the background analysis, the obtained results can be generalized to any future hard X-ray telescope. For this reason, a simplified, ideal payload model is also used to select the major sources of background in LEO.
All the results are original contributions to the assessment studies of the cited missions, as part of the background groups activities.


Superior mesenteric artery syndrome (SMAS) has been proposed as a rare cause of proximal bowel obstruction resulting from compression of the third portion of the duodenum secondary to narrowing of the space between the aorta and superior mesenteric artery. The main risk factors associated with SMAS are significant weight loss, corrective spinal surgery and congenital or acquired anatomic abnormalities. Its association with acute pancreatitis has been reported in very few cases. We present a critical review of this topic, with the report of a patient allegedly diagnosed of SMAS and acute pancreatitis.


The concept of 'flipping the classroom' is relatively recent, although elements of it have been around for many years. It is generally accepted that the 'flipped classroom model' consists of replacing direct instruction, or lectures, with video-clips to be watched at home, and the use of face-to-face class time for engaging students in active learning activities. This development was brought about by the enhanced and easy access to video technologies. This model was initially adopted for use in secondary education, but is now increasingly considered by teachers in higher education. However, there is both confusion and scepticism about what this concept is, and whether there are any benefits of adopting this. In this exploratory study, the main focus was on seeking to identify what staff in three institutions of higher education in New Zealand considered to be the reasons for adopting and/or for not adopting, or challenges in adopting, this model. In this article, we will report on the findings from the survey aspect of this mixed methods study. The findings suggested that amongst the respondents there were three distinct groups, 1) those who saw no value adopting a flipped classroom model, considered there was nothing wrong with lectures, and that students would unwilling to engage in a flipped model; 2) those who considered that active learning was the main idea behind the flipped model, and that this was an old idea in a new guise; and 3) those who had or would like to implement the model, but had encountered or were anticipating some issues. The findings also suggested a range of understandings of what the 'flipped classroom' means. This highlighted the importance to clarify in any research project and reporting exactly what is meant by 'flipped classrooms' in order to avoid conceptual confusion.


Numerous studies across disciplines on how western media portray Muslims have been conducted in different geopolitical and cultural contexts. However, we still lack research into media constructions of Muslims from a particular country, including Indonesia, which is the most populous Muslim nation. This study aims to analyse the linguistic representation of Indonesian Muslims and Islam in two corpora of American newspapers published in two different five-year periods (2002-2006 and 2012-2016) by using corpus-assisted discourse analysis framework. Keyword, collocation and concordance analyses were employed to reveal dominant discourses of Indonesian Muslims. It was also enriched by critical discourse studies' commitment to analysing social and political contexts. Some of the findings corroborate and reinforce the results of previous studies on media depictions of Muslims in general, in that the dominant discourses around Islam and Muslims are related to terrorism, fundamentalism, conflict and violence. However, this study also brings forward additional information, including a shift in the discourse. Dominant discourses around Indonesian Muslims in the American newspapers have witnessed a slight change over the 15 year-period from terrorism and extremism to radicalism only. What might be highlighted is that there are extremely few positive media portrayals of either Muslims in general or Indonesian Muslims.


Background
The early life microbiome contributes to immune development. Antibiotics during pregnancy alter the microbiome and may influence disease risks in the offspring. We investigated the relationship between maternal antibiotic exposure before and during pregnancy, and risk of childhood hospitalization with infection.

Methods
We used population-based Danish national databases for pregnancies between 1995 and 2009. Infants were followed from birth until their first infection-related hospitalization, death, 14th birthday, emigration or end-2009. Exposure was maternal antibiotics prescribed before and during pregnancy. Outcome was infection-related hospitalization.

Results
141 359 (18%) mothers had at least one antibiotic prescription during pregnancy, 230 886 (29.4% of those with complete data) in the 18 months before pregnancy. Of 776 657 live-born singletons, 443 546 infection-related hospitalizations occurred in 222 524 (28.6%) children. Pregnancy antibiotic exposure was associated with increased risk of childhood infection-related hospitalization [hazard ratio (HR) 1.18, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.17-1.19]. In mothers prescribed antibiotics only during pregnancy whose child did not receive pre-hospitalization antibiotics, this association was present only in those born vaginally. Higher risks of infection-related hospitalization occurred when pregnancy antibiotic prescriptions were closer to birth and in mothers receiving more pregnancy antibiotics. Children born to mothers exposed to antibiotics before (but not during) pregnancy also had increased risk of infection-related hospitalization (HR 1.10, 95% CI 1.07-1.12).

Conclusions
Antibiotic exposure before or during pregnancy was associated with increased risk of childhood hospitalized infections. Alteration of the maternally derived microbiome and shared heritable and environmental determinants are possible contributory mechanisms.


This paper reports an investigation into how the prompt may influence the discourse of group oral tests. The group oral test, in which three or four participants are rated on their ability to discuss a prompt, is a format for assessing the spoken ability of language learners. In this study, 141 Japanese university students were videoed in 41 group orals of three or four test-takers. Although the four different prompts written for the test were supposed to be of equal difficulty, they were found to be substantially different in the type and number of questions that comprised them. Analysis of the transcribed interactions revealed significant differences in turns taken, syntactic complexity and fluency of the interactions they elicited. A qualitative examination revealed that the two prompts that elicited longer, more complex turns did so by encouraging test-takers to explain their family circumstances or speculate about their future. Prompts with more factual content elicited shorter, less complex turns and the prompt that test-takers responded to with the least fluency required the test-takers to talk about a more personal subject. The implications for rating and creating prompts are discussed, and the need to tailor them to the purpose of the test.


We examine whether the German system of codetermination affects output, industrial employment, and R&D when firm asymmetry relies on different governance structures due to codetermination. Under a decision-making process shaped by utilitarian management, an intermediate degree of codetermination enables the codetermined firm to produce more output, hire more labor, and undertake more R&D activities, but this is not ensured for any degree of codetermination. This contrasts with situations where codetermination goes forward through bargaining between shareholders and workers, where the codetermined firm is able to produce more output, hiring more labor, and undertaking more R&D investments.


Abstract. This paper investigates the potential of a Wasserstein generative adversarial network to produce realistic weather situations when trained from the climate of a general circulation model (GCM). To do so, a convolutional neural network architecture is proposed for the generator and trained on a synthetic climate database, computed using a simple three dimensional climate model: PLASIM. The generator transforms a "latent space", defined by a 64-dimensional Gaussian distribution, into spatially defined anomalies on the same output grid as PLASIM. The analysis of the statistics in the leading empirical orthogonal functions shows that the generator is able to reproduce many aspects of the multivariate distribution of the synthetic climate. Moreover, generated states reproduce the leading geostrophic balance present in the atmosphere. The ability to represent the climate state in a compact, dense and potentially nonlinear latent space opens new perspectives in the analysis and handling of the climate. This contribution discusses the exploration of the extremes close to a given state and how to connect two realistic weather situations with this approach.


The project, conceptual design of the fusion-fission hybrid energy reactors (FFHER) and related verifying experiments, was started in the framework of the National Magnetic Confinement Fusion Science Program of China in May 2010.Based on the current or slightly extrapolated ITER fusion science and technology and the well developed fission technology, fusion-driven sub-critical systems design was performed. We put forward the main concept of FFHER blanket with uranium alloy as fuel and water as coolant. The uranium can be natural uranium, LWR spent fuel or depleted uranium. FFHER can increase the utilization rate of uranium in a comparatively simple way to sustain the development of nuclear energy. We study the interaction among the fusion neutron and fuel to achieve larger energy multiplication and tritium sustainable, verify the creditability of physical design by the integral neutron experiments. With the combination research of this program and the following thermal hydraulic design, alloy fuel manufacture and nuclear fuel cycle programs provide the science and technology foundation for the future development of FFHER in China.


Summary Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been used in various fields and disciplines to summarize and analyse spatial patterns and distributions, for the purpose of understanding how geographic and non-geographic entities interact with each other over space and time. Although honey bees are directly related to and influenced by their local environment, few studies have incorporated honey bee data into GIS for the purposes of gauging these spatial relationships. This paper will briefly discuss some of the types of spatial analyses and GIS methods that have been used for bees, and also, how some methodologies developed in the non-Apis bee domain could be applied to honey bee research. With this paper, we aim to stimulate spatial thinking processes and thus the future use of GIS analyses to better understand the relationships between environmental characteristics and honey bee health and abundance. We will introduce the framework and some important basic concepts of GIS, as well as provide detailed instructions for becoming familiar and comfortable in using the GIS softwares ArcGIS and Quantum GIS (QGIS) (a commercial and free GIS package) for the basics of geospatial research.


Mastication analysis can provide an objective basis for studying and diagnosing jaw musculoskeletal disorders. Therefore, the use and development of devices for quantitatively measuring and analyzing jaw movement have become very popular in the consulting room. This paper proposes a simple to be used jaw tracking prototype by using the new miniaturized wireless Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) named WB-4. The WB-4 EVTU primarily contains a mother board, a Bluetooth module and a Li-Polymer battery. The mother board is provided with a microcontroller and 9-axis inertial sensors (miniaturized MEMS accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer) to measure the jaw motion. The data transmission between WB-4 and PC is based on the Bluetooth module to realize the wireless communication. The IMU's extremely reduced weight and size allows it to be easily attached to mandible during normal mastication tests without physical restriction to the subjects. Three pilot experiments for mastication analysis of chewing gum were elaborated. A group of 9 healthy subjects kindly participated in the experiment. The preliminary results show that WB-4 IMU can efficiently evaluate the jaw movement and mastication pattern of different subjects, which could provide quantitative information to the doctors for the diagnosing and clinical treatment of different jaw diseases.


AlNi and Ni2Si based ohmic contacts to p-type 4H-SiC have been produced using low energy ion implantation, a Ti contact layer, and sequential anneals. Low resistivities were promoted by degenerately (>1020 cm-3) doping the surface region of 4H-SiC epilayers via Al+ implantation. High acceptor activation and improved surface morphology was achieved by capping the samples with pyrolized photoresist and using a two-step anneal sequence in argon. Ti/AlNi/W and Ti/Ni2Si/W stacks of varying Ti and/or binary layer thickness were compared at varying anneal temperatures. AlNi based samples reliably and repeatedly achieved specific contact resistivities as low as 5.5 x10-5 ohm-cm2 after annealing at temperatures of 700-1000°C. For the Ni2Si samples, resistivities as low 4.5x10-4 ohm-cm2 were reached after annealing between 750 and 1100°C. Similarly, a set of Ti/AlNi/Au samples, with or without Ge as an additional contact layer, were prepared via the same procedures. In this case, specific contact resistivities as low as 5.0 x10-4 ohm-cm2 were achieved after annealing the Ti/AlNi/Au samples between 600 and 700°C for 30 minutes in a dynamic argon atmosphere or under high vacuum. The lowest resistivities were realized using thicker (~ 40 nm) Ti layers. I-V analysis revealed superior linear characteristics for the AlNi system, which also exhibited a more stable microstructure after anneal. SIMS and RBS were used to analyze the stability of the stacks subsequent to thermal treatment. AFM analysis demonstrated the superiority of photoresist capping over alternatives in minimizing surface roughness. Linear ohmic behavior after significantly reduced anneal temperature is the main observation of the present study.


Background: Tumor resistance to chemotherapy is a major challenge in cancer therapeutics today. 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) is one of the most commonly used cancer therapeutic agents. The Forkhead box transcription factor M1 (FOXM1) has been shown to play vital roles in cell cycle progression, apoptosis, and cell survival. FOXM1 is over expressed in many types of cancers, including colorectal carcinoma and has been implicated in drug resistance in breast cancer. Thymidylate synthase (TS) enzyme is an important precursor in DNA synthesis. The mechanism of action of 5-FU has been associated with TS. High TS expression levels in tumors are generally related to 5-FU resistance. In this study we investigated the role of FOXM1 in 5-FU resistance and the therapeutic potential of the FOXM1 inhibitor thiostrepton (a thiazole antibiotic) in combination with 5-FU in colorectal cancer. We further analyzed the relation between TS and FOXM1 gene expressions in colorectal cancer. Methods and Results: HCT116, DLD1, and HT29 cells were treated with 5-FU to detect the protein, mRNA expression of FOXM1 and TS. This resulted in a decrease in TS and FOXM1 expression in p53 wild type HCT116 cells but not in p53 mutant DLD1 or HT29. We also observed that FOXM1 expression was significantly correlated with TS expression by thiostrepton treatment. The IC50 of 5-FU was determined by SRB assay and was found to be 0.92ug/mL, 0.45ug/mL and 2.8ug/mL, while thiostrepton IC50 was found to be 0.60uM, 1.07uM, and 3.54uM, in HCT116, DLD1, and HT29 cells respectively. Combination of 5-FU and thiostrepton showed synergistic effect in all 3 colorectal cancer cells. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) was performed in HCT116 and DLD1 cells to determine if FOXM1 binds to the TS promoter region (0 - 2000bp upstream of the TS transcription start site). Three negative primers were designed further to 2000bp upstream region. ChIP data revealed enrichment for FOXM1 at the TS promoter (0 - 1500 bp upstream) and no enrichment observed in the negative control. Inhibition of FOXM1 by thiostrepton led to a decrease in enrichment in the TS promoter region. These results confirmed the role of FOXM1 in TS regulation. Chip Sequencing (ChIP-seq) was then performed to study further FOXM1 targets and binding sites of FOXM1 to other well-known 5-FU targets such as thymidine phosphorylase (TP) and thymidine kinase 1 (TK1). The FOXM1 specific ChIP-seq libraries and corresponding input controls were sequenced on the Illumina Hi Seq 2000. ChIP-seq confirmed that FOXM1 significantly binds to both these factors. FOXM1 binding to cell cycle regulatory genes E2F1, E2F2 and E2F3 was also shown in both cell lines. Conclusion: FOXM1 plays a critical role in 5-FU drug resistance by regulating 5-FU target genes such as TS, TK1. Inhibition of FOXM1 acts synergistically with 5-FU in colorectal cancer and warrants further investigation as a new treatment strategy. Citation Format: Vidhya Varghese, Luca Magnani, Narumi Harada, Francesco A. Mauri, Eric W. Lam, Laura M. Kenny. Forkhead box transciption factor M1 (FOXM1) plays a critical role in colorectal cancer resistance by regulating thymidylate synthase (TS). [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-220. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-LB-220


Background and Issues
 Management of acute strokes in our rural facility involved the attending physician telephoning for consultation with a neurologist to determine treatment and/or transfer options since we did not have 24/7 neurology coverage. Based on chart review over a period of 6 months, the turn-around time from ED physician call to neurologist returning the call was approximately 22 minutes. However, the neurologist must make a recommendation based on the relation of the ED physician information without visualization of the patient. Prior to the implementation of the teleneurology program our data collection spanned from April 1, 2009-September 30, 2009. There were 60 patients who had a diagnosis of stroke presenting to our ED. Of those 60 patients: 2 hemorrhagic, 38 ischemic and 30 TIA. Of those 60 patients, 20 had neurology consult, 40 did not, and 3 of the 60 received tPA. 6 had a NIH scale documented and 10 had a Glasgow Coma Scale documented (5 of 10 also had the NIH scale).

 Purpose
 The telemedicine program at our facility was initiated to offer all patients presenting to the ED with stroke symptoms to timely and effective treatment. The technology would allow the neurologist to view the patient information, CT reports, speak to and visualize the patient, formalizing the consult and treatment responsibility for the patient in a very short amount of time.

 Methods
 Our facility uses the telemedicine program Specialist on Call (SOC). Patients presenting with stroke-like symptoms are all candidates for use of teleneurology consultation. The ED physician consults the SOC neurologist with a guaranteed call back time of 15 minutes. After consult, the neurologist makes recommendation to the ED physician. The patient is either admitted to our facility or transferred to our sister hospital where the Stroke Center is located. The SOC neurologist would also determine tPA administration.

 Results
 Since implementation of the teleneurology program May 16, 2011 there have been 25 patients diagnosed with stroke, 14 were SOC cases, none recommended to receive tPA. ED physician call to specialist consult time has decreased to 15 minutes or less. We have also seen a decrease in transfers.

 Conclusions
 Implementation of the teleneurology program at our rural hospital as provided our community access to 24/7 neurological consultation. Patients/families that have been involved with the SOC program expressed great satisfaction the program.


The maturing large neurons of the rat red nucleus in animals ranging in age from 1 to 21 days of postnatal life were studied ultrastructurally. Days 1--6 were characterized by rapid morphologic maturation occurring concomitantly with the onset of synaptogenesis. Morphogenesis was confined to the soma, while the first synaptic contacts were also formed in relationship to the soma. Days 6--9 demonstrated continued somal morphogenesis exemplified by cytoplasmic expansion and by the conspicuous presence of perisomatic and growth cone processes. Proximal dendritic morphogenesis was initiated, and synaptogenesis became complex with synaptic sites occurring in relation to the neuronal soma, the perisomatic processes and proximal dendrites. Days 9--15 were characterized by the completion of somal and proximal dendritic morphogenesis and by a massive degree of synaptogenic activity. During this interval, the soma lost perisomatic and growth cone processes, while somatic spines appeared. By the end of this period the neuronal soma and the proximal dendrites appeared mature in terms of both morphology and synaptic input. Complete neuronal maturation was ultimately attained by day 21 of postnatal life.


Long-term fluctuating light (FL) conditions are very common in natural environments. The physiological and biochemical mechanisms for acclimation to FL differ between species. However, most of the current conclusions regarding acclimation to FL were made based on studies in algae or Arabidopsis thaliana. It is still unclear how rice (Oryza sativa L.) integrate multiple physiological changes to acclimate to long-term FL. In this study, we found that rice growth was repressed under long-term FL. By systematically measuring phenotypes and physiological parameters, we revealed that: 1) under short-term FL photosystem I (PSI) was inhibited, while after 1-7 days of long-term FL, both PSI and PSII were inhibited. Higher acceptor-side limitation in electron transport and higher overall non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) explained the lower efficiencies of PSI and PSII, respectively. 2) An increase in pH differences across the thylakoid membrane and a decrease in thylakoid proton conductivity revealed a reduction of ATP synthase activity. 3) Using electron microscopy, we showed a decrease in membrane stacking and stomatal opening after 7 days of FL treatment. Taken together, our results show that electron flow, ATP synthase activity and NPQ regulation are the major processes determining the growth performance of rice under long-term FL conditions. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.