Sometimes it is difficult to find the time to attend a language course that we are interested to learn. This is true especially for those who are working.
The objective of this new program is to allow everyone to choose the best time to study without having to follow a certain tight schedule. It could be in the morning, in the afternoon, at night, during weekdays or even on public holidays.
The novelty of this tool will allow one to study Italian language at a comfortable place of one's choice (home, office, car). What is required is only an internet connection. That's all.
This on line course is useful to anyone (kids, adults, old folks) who is interested to study the Italian language in a fun and easy way.
Although this new Italian program is totally free, it has the potential to be sold in the market.


Currently parallel robots are finding more and more acceptance in high-speed pick-and-place operations. As for all high-speed mechanisms, vibratory phenomena appear and deteriorate accuracy and dynamic performance at the terminal positions of the pick-and-place path. This paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of several pick-and-place trajectories in terms of vibration reduction. To address this problem, an elastodynamic model of a five bar mechanism is developed and its behaviour is simulated as it traverses each trajectory. Spectral analysis of the vibrations allows the quality of the vibration reduction to be quantified. The results show that the first and second natural frequencies of the system are excited. It is also shown that long cycle times with smooth motion profiles improve residual error norms, but are outperformed by their discontinuous counterparts when short cycle times are imposed.© 2012 ASME


Transplantation of pancreatic islets represents a clinical therapeutic option to preserve and/or restore β-cell function in patients with diabetes (1,2). The source of the islets is the patient's own pancreas (autologous, islet autotransplantation [IAT]) when the goal is preserving pancreatic endocrine function in pediatric and adult individuals undergoing total pancreatectomy due to pancreatitis (3,4) or trauma (5,6). Recently, IAT has been also proposed for enucleable benign (7) and malignant (8) pancreatic neoplasms. Transplantation of deceased-donor (allogeneic) islets is performed for patients with brittle type 1 diabetes and hypoglycemia unawareness as islet transplant alone (ITA) if nonuremic and as simultaneous islet–kidney (SIK) or sequential islet after kidney (IAK) transplantation procedures if uremic (end-stage renal disease) requiring kidney transplantation. Allogeneic islets can be part of cluster organ transplantation (Table 1). In recognition of the excellent metabolic control obtained after islet transplantation even when exogenous insulin treatment is required, reimbursement has been approved in several countries (e.g., Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Switzerland, U.K., Sweden, and the Nordic Network). In the U.S., only IAT is currently reimbursed, while biological licensure by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should be imminent after recent completion of the Clinical Islet Transplant Consortium registration trials (www.citisletstudy.org).

View this table:

TABLE 1
Indications for islet cell transplantation

Since the 1970s, islets have been embolized into the hepatic portal system by a minimally invasive technique consisting of transhepatic cannulation of the portal vein under ultrasound …


Purpose Often people with spinal cord injury (SCI) require help from their caregivers to carry out activities of daily living. Such assistance may affect caregiver quality of life (QoL). This study investigates the QoL and its associated risk factors among caregivers of people with SCI to find possible ways to increase their QoL. Material and Method. A convenience sample of 135 Iranian caregivers of people with SCI participated in a cross-sectional study from the Brain and Spinal Injury Repair Research Center of Tehran (BASIR), Iran, from June 2018 to October 2019. The World Health Organization's Quality of Life Questionnaire (WHOQoL-BREF), the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), the Caregiver Burden Scale (CBS), and a demographic questionnaire were administered. Hierarchical multiple linear regression analysis was then applied to identify risk factors associated with caregiver QoL. Results Moderate to highly significant negative correlations were observed between all domains of the WHOQoL scale and subscales of the CBS and the BDI-II. After controlling for demographic and clinical variables, depression, burden, and level of injury were found to predict caregiver QoL significantly. Furthermore, QoL was lower in caregivers of people with quadriplegia than paraplegia (p < 0.05). Conclusions The level of injury, self-perceived caregiver burden, and depression are associated with QoL for the caregivers of people with SCI. A holistic approach incorporating caregiver training, psychological interventions, and adequate support may enable better QoL for these caregivers.


Sorbonne Université, Collegium Musicæ, Paris, France Abstract The design of digital musical instruments, freed from the physical constraints of acoustics, is essentially driven by issues in ergonomics and representation related to the musical context. Moreover, the programmability of virtual instruments allows dynamic reconfigurations of mapping relationships between gestural interfaces and synthesis. In this respect, graphical interfaces stand on the edge between representation and control. Recently enhanced by the advent of multitouch, they allow all kind of tangible interactions. Their customization (behaviour, shape, colour, etc.) plays a crucial role, whether for the virtuosity of professional musicians, for the accessibility of people with disabilities or for particular contexts such as collective interaction on the same touch-screen. I will first raise a few aspects of visual ergonomics that inspired this research then present recent developments of dynamic, polyphonic and customizable touch-screen interfaces, based on the concept of "dynamic intermediate model" and an ad-hoc protocol for expressive control.


Lifetimes of the excited 2P2 (3P) 3p 4S3/2 level of a nitrogen atom corresponding to transitions to different lower states have been estimated by measuring the line intensity of a transition as a function of the delay time between the Q-switching of the laser and the gating of the window of the ICCD. This novel time resolved laser-induced breakdown spectroscopic technique is explained in the paper. The lifetimes of the upper level 2P2 (3P) 3p 4S3/2 corresponding to the three transitions to 2P2 (3P) 3s 4P1/2 (742.346 nm), 2P2 (3P) 3s 4P3/2 (744.27 nm) and 2P2 (3P) 3s 4P5/2 (746.851 nm) were measured by this technique. The corresponding average lifetimes (τ) of these transitions were 199 ns, 105 ns and 68 ns. These values compare pretty well with the calculated lifetimes of 203.8 ns, 96.7 ns and 59.2 ns for the above three transitions as reported by Hibbert et al. The plasma temperature (atomic excitation temperature) decay time was found to be 1133 ns. This novel technique of estimating the lifetime of an excited state of an atom/ion is yet another very useful application of LIBS as a versatile analytical tool.


Background: Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) affects 5-6% of children. There is growing evidence that DCD is associated with greater levels of internalising symptoms (i.e. depression and anxiety). This is the first systematic review and meta-analysis to explore the magnitude of this effect, the quality of the evidence, and potential moderators. Methods: A systematic search was conducted to identify studies reporting a comparison between individuals with DCD/probable DCD and typically developing (TD) individuals on measures of internalising symptoms. A pooled effect size (Hedges g) was calculated using random effects meta-analysis. Study quality, publication bias and potential moderators of the effect were explored. Results: Twenty studies, including a total of 23 subsamples, met the inclusion criteria, of which 22 subsamples were included in the meta-analysis (DCD: n=1123; TD: n=7346). A significant, moderate effect of DCD on internalising symptoms was found (g=0.61). This effect remained robust after accounting for publication bias and excluding lower quality studies. The effect was significantly larger in studies utilizing a cross-sectional design (vs. longitudinal), convenience sampling (vs. population screening) and a majority male sample. Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that individuals with DCD experience greater levels of internalising symptoms than their peers. This highlights the importance of routine screening for emotional difficulties in DCD, raising awareness of the condition in mental health services, and developing psychosocial interventions that extend beyond a focus on motor impairments. However, there is a need for higher quality, longitudinal studies to better understand the causal relationship between DCD and internalising symptoms.


The participation of the Palestinian Authority's (PA's) security agencies in the armed struggle against Israel in the second Palestinian uprising (2000–2005) is analyzed in this article as a response to the demand of Palestinian society, thus as a unique case of armed forces which, in the lack of political directive, became more attentive to public opinion. The article shows how Palestinian public discourse in the late 1990s–early 2000s, that was shaped by the Islamic movement of Hamas, portrayed the PA's security officials as traitors. Members of the PA security agencies (mainly Fatah members) sought to reposition themselves in the "national camp," and this motivated them to raise their weapons against Israeli targets. By doing so, they also removed the mental burden of turning their weapons against fellow Palestinians that was one of the major sources for their image as collaborators.


Previous linkage analysis of an Asian population proposed possible candidate genes for mandibular prognathism, such as Matrilin-1 (cartilage matrix protein). To investigate the association between the single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in Matrilin-1 and mandibular prognathism, we investigated three sequence variants (-158 T>C, 7987 G>A, 8572 C>T) in 164 mandibular prognathism patients and 132 control individuals with a normal occlusion. The results showed that the 8572 TT genotypes in Matrilin-1 showed increased risk of mandibular prognathism (OR = 9.28, 95% Cl = 1.19~197.57, P < 0.05), whereas the 7987 AA genotype showed a protective effect for mandibular prognathism (OR = 0.16, 95% Cl = 0.05~0.47, P < 0.05). Genotyping results showed that the Matrilin-1 polymorphism haplotype TGC (ht4; 158T, 7987G, and 8572C alleles) had a pronounced risk effect for mandibular prognathism compared with controls (OR = 5.16, 95% Cl = 2.03~13.93, P < 0.01). The results suggest that polymorphisms in Matrilin-1 could be used as a marker for genetic susceptibility to mandibular prognathism.


Network externality arises when the utility of a product depends not only on its attributes, but also on the number of consumers who purchase the same product. In this paper, we propose and analyze consumer choice models that endogenize such network externality. We first characterize the choice probabilities under such models and conduct studies on comparative statics. Then we investigate the assortment optimization problem under such choice models. Although the problem is generally NP-hard, we show that a new class of assortments, called quasi-revenue-ordered assortments, which consist of a revenue-ordered assortment plus at most one additional item, are optimal under mild conditions. We also propose an iterative estimation method to calibrate such choice models, for both uncensored and censored data cases. An empirical study on a mobile game dataset shows that our proposed model can provide better fits for the data, increase the prediction accuracy for consumer choices and potentially increase revenue.


Enhancing the performance of slow sand filter pre-treatment with alum (i.e. direct or contact filtration) has been proposed as an alternative to overcome limitations of conventional gravel (roughing) pre-filtration. Experimental results revealed high turbidity reduction efficiencies in alum-dosed pre-filtration. However, due to the alum coagulation, the nature of the particulates in the pre-treatment effluent changed and had a potential to shorten the downstream slow sand filter run lengths by approximately 50% under the conditions tested. Hence, depending on the effluent turbidity levels the effectiveness of the alum-dosed pre-treatment could be compromised, despite its high efficiency . Relatively low turbidity levels (<2 NTU) were needed to minimise excessive headloss development in alum-dosed filters. However, the necessary resources to achieve such process control may not be available in developing country contexts. Furthermore, full-scale field experiences indicated the limited effectiveness of alum dosing prior to slow sand filters and the difficulties in maintaining an adequate chemical dosing in under-resourced settings.


DFID is paying attention to undernutrition. This is due to the global lack of progress on the nutrition indicator in Millennium Development Goal 1, the urgency of the situation created by the food price spike of 2008–09 and an increasing understanding within DFID about our potential added value. This article outlines the changing response within DFID globally and in India and reflects on the triggers for the changes and how the changes can be sustained.


The paper presents the campus of the Lausanne Technical University (EPFL) in Ecublens and analyzes its form as an example of development of a superblock. History of EPFL goes back to 1853 and the school received independence in 1968. The decision to build a new campus out of city center, in Ecublens-Dorigny was made in the 60's. Described superblock includes both University and EPFL, carrying out different ways of building and urban composition. This paper writes about the history of the spatial development of EPFL superblock presenting it in the perspective of an internal, logic extension of function and form, the relationship at the interface boundary line of a superblock, external relations with neighboring areas and the development of relations with the city. This relationships are formed at the basis of the logic of the neighborhood and plans and in scale of spatial planning of the whole agglomeration of Lausanne (Lausanne-Morges agglomeration Plan – PALM from 2007).


Abstract We analyze the effect of the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), a universal free-lunch program, on elementary and middle school students' academic performance and attendance in the state of South Carolina. As part of the program, eligible schools can provide free lunches to all students, regardless of whether an individual student qualifies for free or reduced lunch. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we show that CEP leads to about 0.06 of a standard deviation increase in math test scores for elementary school students. We find smaller effects on reading scores and on middle school students. These effects also vary by student poverty, school poverty, and locality. In particular, we find students that were previously eligible for free lunches but not on other public assistance programs benefit the most from CEP. The results may suggest that the expansion of access to free lunch help improve students' academic outcomes.


Diversity and distribution of continental mollusc fauna in France: the Quaternary heritage. Studies of continental malacofauna for the reconstruction of Quaternary palaeoenvironments have developed considerably in France in recent decades. The creation of a database now makes it possible to provide synthesis of the evolution of the group distribution and diversity over the past 2.5 million years for the northern part of the territory. Over hundreds of thousands of years, climatic cyclicity (alternating glacial and interglacial phases) has proved to be a major factor in the distribution of continental molluscs. Many of the currently disjuncted areas or limited distributions are directly inherited from the effects of Quaternary climatic cyclicity. The comparison of temperate periods, which are the richest in specific diversity, shows a significant decrease in the number of species, particularly forest snails, since the Middle Pleistocene. During the last temperate phase, the Holocene, the multi-millennial impact of anthropization was recorded by malacological successions as early as 4500 BC. It was marked in the composition of the assemblages by the development of open environment species and a sharp decline in specific diversity. These characteristics, became dominant in valley bottom malacofauna from 1500 BC onwards. Besides, few expansions of species distribution areas, linked to the anthropization of landscapes, were detected before the industrial era.


Demand functions generated by operant conditioning techniques may be used to assess animal priorities (Dawkins 1990, Matthews & Ladewig 1994, Sherwin & Nicol 1997, Fraser & Matthews 1997, Matthews 1998) . The animal needs to perform a number of simple responses (e.g. bar-presses), to obtain one unit of a reinforcer (Lea 1978, Dawkins 1990, Matthews & Ladewig 1994). This reinforcer enables the animal to perform a certain behaviour. The relationship between the workload (traditionally set by a fixed ratio (FR) reinforcement schedule) and the amount obtained of the reinforcer is described by a curve with FR-value on the horizontal axis as the independent variable and the amount consumed as the dependent variable on the vertical axis (Hursh 1980) . The resulting slope of the demand function will then provide a measure for the demand of the reinforcer. If the animal is highly motivated to obtain the reinforcer the animal will work at an increasing rate as the workload increases and thus keep its intake close to constant. The slope of the demand function will be close to zero, which indicates a high demand for the reinforcer. The steeper the demand function, the less important the reinforcer (Lea 1978, Hursh 1984). The slope of the demand function is nearly always negative and it is not influenced by e.g. the weight of the animal (Hursh 1984, Ladewig 1997). The size of an animal will influence the intercept of the demand function, but not the slope of the demand function. Using this method it should be possible to measure quantitatively to which extent an animal is motivated to obtain a given reinforcer and to compare demands for different reinforcers among different animals. It is important to note that the demand function reflects the demand for the reinforcer. The demand depends on both the internal preferences of the animal but also on the decisions made by the animal of how much to obtain of the reinforcer considering the workload imposed on the animal and the availability of alternatives. Many factors influence the slope of the demand curve; some are varied by the experimenter (e.g. FR-values and test-time), some factors might depend on the animal's gender and genetics (e.g. sensory capacities and basic level of anxiety), and some are physiological factors influencing the motivational state (e.g. thirst, hunger, aggression, or phase in oestrous cycle). Furthermore, it is well known that, at least in rats, differences exist in performance in cognitive and operant tasks between different rat strains (Andrews et al. 1995). The purpose of this experiment was to determine if the method was able to detect differences in demand for water between two different strains. For the selection of the two strains of rats, three criteria were used. First, we wanted inbred strains in order to minimize the variation between rats in the two test groups. Second, in order to avoid any confounding influence of rats having difficulties in performing the operant response-task, we needed two strains, which were known to perform well in operant systems. Third, the strains should neither be transgenic nor spontaneous animal models of human disorders (Svendsen & Hau 1994). The two strains chosen were pigmented inbred Long Evans rats (LE/Mol) and albino inbred Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY/Mol).


The pervasive computing vision consists in realizing ubiquitous technologies to support the execution of people's everyday tasks by proactively providing appropriate information and services in a natural and transparent way based on the current context. Hence, a fundamental ingredient of pervasive computing is a mechanism to recognize the current high level context of users based on lower level context data provided, for instance, by body-worn and environmental sensors. Given the variability of encountered contextual conditions, the currently available data sources are highly dynamic; hence, context reasoning should continuously adapt to the change of available sources. In this paper we propose a technique to dynamically discover sources of context data, and to modularly integrate reasoners that use those data to infer higher level context information. Our proposal is corroborated by an implementation on mobile devices and sensors, and by an experimental evaluation showing its efficiency and effectiveness.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore whether innovation talent is predictive of business results. This question is important because companies exist to generate business results such as profitability and market expansion. To study this question, the authors conducted four phases of international research. They found that innovation talent is statistically predictive of business results. The Innovation Profiler ("the instrument") is a web-based assessment tool based on the research. It was designed to detect the full array of specific innovation skills in individuals, skills that correlate with real-world business results.

Design/methodology/approach
The research presented in this paper follows four phases: a qualitative phase followed by two correlational studies; and finally, a validation research phase. The researchers wanted to answer the questions: "Is innovation talent predictive of business results?" "Which dimensions of innovation talent are most predictive of business results?" The research compares the attitudes, value and beliefs of innovators (both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs) to the business results they achieved and compares innovators to the general population.

Findings
The research findings are that: innovation talent is highly correlated with positive business results. Innovators have significantly higher Innovation Profiler scores than the general population. Within the population of innovators, top scorers are associated with a larger number of positive business results than bottom scorers. Intrapreneurs, while sharing many characteristics with entrepreneurs, tend to score higher on innovation skills. The Innovation Profiler does not produce adverse selection bias with respect to gender or ethnicity.

Research limitations/implications
Most psychographic instruments are normative, including the Innovation Profiler; they rely on scaled responses that measure the extent to which individuals consider statements to apply to them personally. Normative instruments are faked more easily than ipsative (forced choice) measures, which ask people to choose from two to four answer options that are usually perceived as equally desirable. However, it has also been argued that the relative standing of respondents (i.e. their relative scores) in the samples is relatively unaffected by normative instruments.

Practical implications
This study provides significant statistical support for the validity of the Innovation Profiler as a predictor of innovation talent and of business results from innovation. The authors hope that by identifying the innovation characteristics that correlate with business outcomes, the authors have contributed to the field. Companies can use this knowledge to accelerate their organizational transformation.

Social implications
This research, and the Innovation Profiler based on it, enable companies to see and measure innovation talent for the first time. This talent is not held by the few and the privileged. In fact, women score as high as men and non-whites score slightly higher than whites. Innovation talent, as measured by the Innovation Profiler, can be an equalizer in the workforce. Finally, we hope that this paper helps companies attract more innovators into their workforce and to recognize and use more of their valuable skills.

Originality/value
To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to ask. "Can we predict the business results from innovation based on who is involved?" After extensive review of the literature, the authors have not found any other study asking this question. This study is also novel for: including intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs; and for including samples across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. The study demonstrates a strong relationship between innovation talent and positive business results, with effect sizes that appear to exceed personality and other factors.


RESUME Background. The study of the parameters of optical coherence tomography with angiography (OCTA) broadens the understanding of the state of hemodynamics for the early detection of vascular disorders of the organ of vision in atherosclerosis (AS). Purpose. To study the parameters of OCTA with changes in the organ of vision against the background of AS. Material and methods. 26 patients (41 eyes) with changes in the organ of vision in AS. The age contingent of patients ranged from 32 to 78 years, the average age was 47.5 ± 2.0 g, of which 10 were women, 16 men. Depending on the damage to target organs, all patients were conditionally divided into 2 groups: group I (19 eyes) included patients without damage, and group II (22 eyes) consisted of patients with target organs damage. Results. The registration of OCTA in patients of group I, a decrease in the density of capillaries of the superficial vascular network was 15% and amounted to 45.21 ± 2.62% (p <0.05), of the deep vascular plexus by 19%, which amounted to 45.89 ± 2 , 71% (p <0.05). In the macular region, the area of the hypoperfused retina was 1.07 ± 0.14 mm2 (p <0.05). In the region of the optic nerve disc, areas of hypoperfusion were noted in the superficial layers in 7 eyes and in the deep layers in 4 eyes. Analysis of OCTA in patients of group II revealed a sharp decrease (by 48%) in the density of capillaries in both the superficial and deep vascular plexuses of the retina, which amounted to 33.91 ± 3.01% (p <0.05); 33.65 ± 2.89% (p <0.05), respectively. In the macular region, the area of the non-perfused retina was 2.19 ± 0.21 mm2 (p <0.05). In the area of the optic nerve disc, areas of nonperfusion were noted both in the surface layers and in the deep layers in 4 eyes. Conclusion. The use of OCTA allows to detect changes in hemoperfusion in all layers of the retina and optic nerve in the early stages of AS development, which will allow early diagnosis and monitoring of the disease.


Identified as an immediate-early transcript, the serum-inducible kinase Snk bears sequence homology with the polo-like kinases. Endogenous Snk was detected in early G(1) in NIH 3T3 cells, and nascent Snk showed a half-life of about 15 min. The kinase activity of endogenous Snk was detected in G(1). Substitution of Thr-236 with a glutamate residue increased Snk kinase activity by about 10-fold, whereas substitution of Lys-108 abolished its kinase activity. Disrupting the polo-box did not significantly change Snk kinase activity. A GFP-C-Snk fusion protein showed polo-box-dependent localization to the microtubule organizing center, and ectopic expression of Snk in COS-7 cells induced changes in cell morphology, depending on Snk kinase activity and the polo-box. The capacity of Snk to induce morphological changes was inhibited by the calcium- and integrin-binding protein CIB. CIB co-immunoprecipitated with Snk and inhibited the kinase activity of Snk, suggesting that CIB is a negative regulator for Snk kinase activity.


This is an optical opulence. This is an eye-popping book spectacle. Eyeglass designer Moss Lipow trawled eBay, auction houses, garage sales, and flea markets worldwide to amass glasses and photographs for his massive eyewear collection. This book, which traces eyewear's journey over the past millennium, features the best examples from Lipow's collection as well as models from other world class collections. Considering the wealth of examples included herein-such as prehistoric whalebone eye guards used by Eskimos, 13th century wooden rivet spectacles for Italian clergy, Medieval strap-on leather goggles, lorgnettes worn by 19th century dandies, pince-nez and monocles, early 20th century aviator sunglasses, and Godard's mod plastic frames-it's abundantly clear that eyewear has experienced a surprising and fascinating evolution; what was once a purely practical apparatus has grown into a multi-billion dollar global industry catering to both the visually impaired and the fashionably inclined. Accompanying the wealth of images in this wide-ranging volume are insightful texts informed by a wide variety of sources including ancient texts, old catalogues, vintage magazines, and out-of-print publications of every kind.


Over the last decades, investor-State disputes have drastically increased in number. Most of these disputes are resolved through arbitration. The increase of the arbitration proceedings in investor- State matters is due to the high number of bilateral investment treaties and free trade agreements ("IIAs") containing an arbitration clause which the dispute is based on. IIAs do not include only arbitration clauses: they also offer the parties other ways to settle their disputes through negotiation, conciliation and mediation. Research today suggests that conciliation and mediation have been rarely used in investor-State dispute resolution. The purpose of this article is to investigate the reasons why ADRs are still underused in the settlement of investor-State disputes, by analysing its pros and cons. The author will look into the current international legal instruments dealing with conciliation and meditation in investor-State disputes and will analyse the latest developments in the field. The article does not conclude that alternative dispute resolution methods should replace arbitration in investor-State matters: it rather suggests that, depending on the circumstances of the case, conciliation and mediation might be efficient mechanisms to settle disputes, alone or alongside arbitration procedures.


The La0.8Sr0.2MnO3 nanocubes have been synthesized by simple precipitation followed by hydrothermal process. The as-obtained nanocubes were characterized by SEM, TEM, EDS, XRD and ICP-AA. The SEM and TEM images clearly showed cube type morphology of reaction product. The XRD pattern gave evidence for the phase purity and high crystallinity of the La0.8Sr0.2MnO3 nanocubes. The ICP-AA analysis along with EDS confirms the stoichiometry of the product. Electrochemical activity for oxygen reduction reaction was carried out in 1 M KOH. The oxygen reduction current measured by cyclic voltametry showed six times higher value for nanocubes than that of bulk catalysts of same composition.


An understanding of the vertical structure of clouds is important for remote sensing of precipitation from space and for the parameterization of cloud microphysics in numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. The representation of cloud hydrometeor profiles in high-resolution NWP models has direct applications in inversion-type precipitation retrieval algorithms [e.g., the Goddard profiling (GPROF) algorithm used for retrieval of precipitation from passive microwave sensors] and in quantitative precipitation forecasting. This study seeks to understand how the vertical structure of hydrometeors (liquid and frozen water droplets in a cloud) produced by high-resolution NWP models with explicit microphysics, henceforth referred to as cloud-resolving models (CRMs), compares to observations. Although direct observations of 3D hydrometeor fields are not available, comparisons of modeled and observed radar echoes can provide some insight into the vertical structure of hydrometeors and, in turn, into the ability of CRMs to produce precipitation structures that are consistent with observations. Significant differences are revealed between the vertical structure of observed and modeled clouds of a severe midlatitude storm over Texas for which the surface precipitation is reasonably well captured. Possible reasons for this discrepancy are presented, and the need for future research is highlighted.


In Reply. — We appreciate Dr Benton's incisive letter, and we agree fully with his ultimate conclusion: Sandoz would like to rid itself of this controversy. But even more important, we would like to see clozapine reach more of the severely ill schizophrenics who have had no significant relief from crippling symptoms when treated with old-fashioned neuroleptic drugs. In recent months, we have done much to achieve both of those goals, while ensuring that the breakthrough of clozapine therapy remains available to the patients who so desperately need it, despite potentially fatal adverse reactions. In December, we announced our intention to separate the monitoring of clozapine from sales of the drug itself. On January 14, we announced a new wholesale pricing policy for clozapine tablets to make certain that physicians, providers, funders, and patients understand that separation. We are engaged in discussions with providers and funders on criteria to determine


The Great Moderation is often characterized by the decline in the variability of output and inflation from earlier periods. While a multitude of explanations for the Great Moderation exist, notable research has focused on the role of monetary policy. Specifically, early evidence suggested that the increased stability has been associated with monetary policy that responded much more strongly to rising inflation. Recent evidence casts doubt on this change in monetary policy. An alternative hypothesis is that the change in monetary policy was the result of a change in doctrine; specifically the rejection of the view that inflation was largely a cost-push phenomenon. As a result, this alternative hypothesis suggests that the change in monetary policy beginning in 1979 is reflected in the Federal Reserve's response to movements in nominal income rather than inflation as previously argued. I provide evidence for this hypothesis by estimating the parameters of a monetary policy rule in which policy adjusts to forecasts of nominal GDP for the pre- and post-Volcker eras. Finally, I embed the rule in two dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with gradual price adjustment to determine whether the overhaul of doctrine can explain the reduction in the volatility of inflation and the output gap.


Abstract. Urban shanty towns are communities that has contiguous old and dilapidated houses with more than 2000 square meters built-up area or more than 50 households. This study makes attempts to extract shanty towns in Nanning City using the product of Census and TripleSat satellite images. With 0.8-meter high-resolution remote sensing images, five texture characteristics (energy, contrast, maximum probability, and inverse difference moment) of shanty towns are trained and analyzed through GLCM. In this study, samples of shanty town are well classified with 98.2 % producer accuracy of unsupervised classification and 73.2 % supervised classification correctness. Low-rise and mid-rise residential blocks in Nanning City are classified into 4 different types by using k-means clustering and nearest neighbour classification respectively. This study initially establish texture feature descriptions of different types of residential areas, especially low-rise and mid-rise buildings, which would help city administrator evaluate residential blocks and reconstruction shanty towns.


A key advantage of acquiring multicomponent data using ocean-bottom sensors, whether using cables or nodes, is the ability to separate the wavefield into up- and downgoing parts. This opens up a host of attractive possibilities such as mirror imaging using the downgoing wave, attenuating receiver-side multiples using the upgoing wave only, or combining both up- and downgoing waves to completely remove the free-surface effect using up-down deconvolution. We focus here on the latter.


Reduced-form models of default that attribute a large fraction of credit spreads to compensation for credit-event risk typically preclude the most plausible economic justification for such risk to be priced, namely, a contemporaneous drop in the market portfolio. When this "contagion" channel is introduced within a general equilibrium framework for an economy comprising a large number of firms, credit-event risk premia have an upper bound of a few basis points, and are dwarfed by the contagion premium. We provide empirical evidence that indicates credit-event risk premia are less than 1 bp, but contagion risk premia are significant.


The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of impregnation time on physical and tensile properties of sugar palm (Arenga pinnata) fibres. The fibre was impregnated with phenol formaldehyde (PF) and unsaturated polyester (UP) with various impregnation times (0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 min) at constant impregnation pressure of 1000 mmHg, before it was released within 30 s. Significant improvement in physical properties was observed after being impregnated for 5 min especially for fibre impregnated with PF due to its low moisture content (MC) and water absorption (WA). However, no significant changes in specific gravity for both impregnated fibres were observed. Fibre impregnated with UP for 5 min shows notable improvement in tensile strength and better fibre toughness while the fibre impregnated with PF showed lower tensile strength and elongation at break and higher tensile modulus than un-impregnated fibre. Since the PF-impregnated fibre become brittle and results in lower fibre toughness as shown in the stress strain behavior, this causes for poor fibre properties. However, there was no significant difference (p≤0.05) between all impregnated fibres in physical and tensile properties after impregnation time was extended from 10 to 25 min. In general, by increasing time of impregnation did not give much effect in improving physical and tensile properties of fibres.


Due to its increasing size and growing regulatory momentum, the European Union is quickly becoming an alternative power center to the United States in the field of environmental policy. Within the past several years, there has consequently been an emerging and discernible trend of EU policy and law on the environmental laws and policy of United States. This piece explores the new European chemicals legislation on Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH) as one example of this "back impact." Because REACH will affect virtually all multinational corporations, its impacts will be global, including the United States. The article explores some of the public policy consequences of this new phenomenon, in which the U.S. is on the receiving end of regulatory policy crafted in Brussels.


Summary
1Recent evidence of the important role of emerging diseases in amphibian population declines makes it increasingly important to understand how environmental changes affect amphibian immune systems.
2Temperature-dependent immunity may be particularly important to amphibian disease dynamics, especially in temperate regions. Changes in temperature are expected to cause deviations away from optimal levels of immunity until the immune system can respond.
3To test whether temperature changes cause deviations from optimal immunity under natural conditions, we conducted a seasonal survey of adult Red-Spotted Newts and measured basal levels of several immunological variables.
4We then examined these findings in relation to: (1) the lag hypothesis, which predicts that changes in temperature-dependent immune parameters lag behind short-term temperature changes, and (2) the seasonal acclimation hypothesis, which predicts that immune cell production declines during long-term temperature decreases until amphibians can fully acclimate to winter conditions.
5Our results supported both hypotheses, showing a spring lag effect on lymphocyte levels and an even stronger seasonal acclimation effect on lymphocytes, neutrophils and eosinophils in the autumn. Our findings suggest that temperature variability causes increased susceptibility of amphibians to infection, and they have implications for the emergence of disease and the potential for climate change to exacerbate amphibian decline.


Extremely painful paresthesias and mild motor weakness of the hand were relieved by sectioning the deep head of the pronator teres muscle and the fibrous arch of the flexor digitorum superficialis, thereby freeing the median nerve and its anterior interosseous branch. The characteristic pinch deformity of the thumb and index fingers usually described in anterior interosseous-nerve syndrome was not present. A Tinel sign at the level of the pronator teres was present.


A positive-tone and aqueous-base-developable benzocyclobutene (BCB)-based dielectric material curable in air is described in this paper. The prepolymer is made from divinylsiloxane bisbenzocyclobutene (DVS-bisBCB) and BCB-acrylic acid. The formulation contains antioxidants that allow the prepolymer to cure in air and a diazonaphthaquinone to make it photosensitive. Patterned films have high resolution, and via openings are scum-free without a descum operation. Whether cured in nitrogen or in air, the prepolymer produces a film with optical, electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties desirable for many microelectronic applications, such as packaging applications and as a planarization or insulation layer in display applications


We present cosmological constraints from measurements of the gas mass fraction, $f_{gas}$, for massive, dynamically relaxed galaxy clusters. Our data set consists of Chandra observations of 40 such clusters, identified in a comprehensive search of the Chandra archive, as well as high-quality weak gravitational lensing data for a subset of these clusters. Incorporating a robust gravitational lensing calibration of the X-ray mass estimates, and restricting our measurements to the most self-similar and accurately measured regions of clusters, significantly reduces systematic uncertainties compared to previous work. Our data for the first time constrain the intrinsic scatter in $f_{gas}$, $(7.4\pm2.3)$% in a spherical shell at radii 0.8-1.2 $r_{2500}$, consistent with the expected variation in gas depletion and non-thermal pressure for relaxed clusters. From the lowest-redshift data in our sample we obtain a constraint on a combination of the Hubble parameter and cosmic baryon fraction, $h^{3/2}\Omega_b/\Omega_m=0.089\pm0.012$, that is insensitive to the nature of dark energy. Combined with standard priors on $h$ and $\Omega_b h^2$, this provides a tight constraint on the cosmic matter density, $\Omega_m=0.27\pm0.04$, which is similarly insensitive to dark energy. Using the entire cluster sample, extending to $z>1$, we obtain consistent results for $\Omega_m$ and interesting constraints on dark energy: $\Omega_\Lambda=0.65^{+0.17}_{-0.22}$ for non-flat $\Lambda$CDM models, and $w=-0.98\pm0.26$ for flat constant-$w$ models. Our results are both competitive and consistent with those from recent CMB, SNIa and BAO data. We present constraints on models of evolving dark energy from the combination of $f_{gas}$ data with these external data sets, and comment on the possibilities for improved $f_{gas}$ constraints using current and next-generation X-ray observatories and lensing data. (Abridged)


Catalog is a celestial databank which records various parameters, such as location, motion, magnitude, and spectral type. UCAC2 (The Second U.S. Naval Observatory CCD Astrograph Catalog) is a high density, highly accurate, astrometric catalog of 48,330,571 stars. Currently the UCAC2 catalog can only be accessed by an index of ascension and declination. To facilitate the efficient multi-dimensional access to UCAC2, this paper proposed the detailed design and implementation of the multi-indexed catalog database. The newly established index system can provide efficient access in multiple entrance to the catalog.


Abstract We tested the effectiveness of nest screens and habanero pepper powder as deterrents for reducing depredation of loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) nests on Sand Island, South Carolina, including nest-screening (1 × 1-m plastic or metal mesh secured over the nest; n  =  33), surface-treatment (15 ml of habanero pepper powder sprinkled on the surface of the sand; n  =  10), bottom-treatment (15 ml of habanero pepper powder sprinkled 3 cm above the top egg; n  =  10), and 10 control nests. Twenty-two of 66 nests were partially or completely depredated by coyotes (Canis latrans), and nest survival rates varied from a high of 80% for surface-treated, 75% for screened, 45% for bottom-treated, and 32% for control nests. We propose that early surface-treatment of nests with pepper powder may provide an effective and more efficient management alternative to using screens, which are more difficult and costly to install, for reducing nest depredation at sea turtle nests.


Advocacy has been one of the main fields of study in public relations and is established amongst the main functions of public relations. The strong need of non-governmental organizations for public support in order to reach their goals locates public relations and advocacy at a central position for these organizations. Social media, which have been introduced by the further development of Internet technology, especially Web 2.0, has had a significant impact upon public relations and advocacy activities of non-governmental organizations in particular. This development also led non-governmental organizations towards online advocacy campaigns that promote active participation of supporters with more cost effective methods that can easily become widespread. The aim of this study is to place the advocacy campaigns of non-governmental organizations into the context of public relations and to discuss how social media can be utilized in online advocacy through the case study of the Yemezler! (We do not buy it!) campaign by Greenpeace Mediterranean that has been significantly successful in a short period in Turkey. The Dragonfly Effect model developed by Aaker and Smith (2010) is employed as a framework in the analysis of the Yemezler! campaign.


A facile, atom-economic and environmentally-benign protocol for the synthesis of biologically important oxindole derivatives in high yields has been demonstrated by employing isatins as carbonyl compound surrogates in a Passerini reaction carried out under solvent-free conditions. Moreover, electron-deficient phenols can also be used as the acid component in this reaction. In addition, the synthetic utility of the present methodology was examined by the one-pot synthesis of oxindoles with a free –OH group at the benzylic position.


An analysis is presented of a referred series of 1411 basal cell carcinomas treated by surgical excision and plastic surgical repair in which 259 were recurrent after previous other treatments. Of the 1,411 BCCs treated there were 10 BCCs which recurred (0.7% recurrence rate). A further 10 BCCs were primarily re-excised because of inadequate clearance around the tumour found on histological examination. (0.7% primary re-excision). The cases recurrent after previous treatment did not behave badly in terms of subsequent recurrence as they were widely excised and carefully observed in the postoperative years. Surgery must aim to be curative. We clearly define the tumour margin using magnification and mark an adequate clearance of surrounding normal tissue. This is then excised in width and depth. Repair of the defect is carried out to restore the area to as near normal as possible. Surgical repair is able to bring new tissue into the area to further enable it to withstand the rigours of the climate and not leave behind a premalignant scarred area.


Background: Asthma patients show lower exercise tolerance. Objective: Assessment of functional capacity in children with asthma. Methods: Girls and boys from 6 to 17 years old were included in two groups: asthmatic patients and healthy subjects. PSPQ was applied and vital signs, peak expiratory flow and Modified Borg Dyspnea Scale were measured at the beginning and the end of 6MWD. Results: Participants included 58 subjects, including 32 asthmatic patients, and 55.2 % male subjects. Mean age: 10.6 years ± 3.1. Asthmatic group: mean distance covered in meters 456.04 ± 54.05, meters covered by gender 456.31 ± 48.73 male and 455.74 ± 61.29 female (p = 0.28). Control group: the mean was 468.28 ± 54.52 meters, meters covered by gender 465.98 ± 58.04 male, 471.44 ± 51.95 female (p = 0.35). The difference between asthmatic group and control group was 12.24 meters in favor of control group (p = 0.378). There was no association between body mass index (BMI) and distance covered (p = 0.53), but a Pearson correlation p = -0.445. In the male gender, CF was positively associated with self-perception in CAF variables: physical condition, physical attractiveness, strength (p = 0.04) and physical self-concept in general (p = 0.02). Conclusions: There was no significant difference in the distance covered between the two groups. The main impact factor was the body mass index with an inverse relation to the distance. Males had better physical self-perception, which is positively associated with CF.


As NATO contemplates the second wave of enlargement, many wonder what the Russian response might be. The experience of 1996-98 might suggest an optimistic scenario: the first wave was met with harsh words and threats, but the actual response was mild. Russia signed the Founding Act, largely on Western terms, and has entered a cooperative relationship with NATO. For Russia, historical memory reaches back further, and offers other precedents with less promising scenarios. The emergence of the Entente Cordiale, the Russo-French-British alliance against Germany in the late 19th century, is one such precedent. Patterns of behavior change slowly, rendering a century-old experience contemporary validity.


In the current and future apparel market, customer demands various products. The apparel plants have to face the ever-changing demands from product mixture and volume. Satisfying customer demands is an important strategic requirement. Failing to do so can result not only in lost profits caused by reduced sales, but also placing the manufacturers in danger of losing future market. So the plant must manufacture correctly and send the products to clients timely. Therefore, the time taken to manufacture high quality products is very important. Layout design is the method utilized on assigning the machine to a certain space. Facility layout includes product layout, process layout and cellular layout etc. The right facility layout can provide manufacturing flexibility and reduce manufacturing cost. In the general facility layout problem, the material flow and department relationship is a major optimization goal. This paper will discuss the manufacturing flexibility from facility layout and propose time as an additional requirement to the material flow and department relationship. This paper will also provide a layout model for flexible manufacturing in view of apparel manufacturing characteristics.


The midterm (2010) election in the U.S. presented a unique opportunity to study the online social media strategy of various political groups. Although candidates had previously leveraged social media, the prevalence of use during this election allows us to study a significant percentage of candidates and a novel glimpse into their networks and messaging. In combination, the networks and associated content reflect positioning of candidates both structurally and in framing in relation to other politicians. In our work, we study the use of Twitter by House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates during the midterm elections in the U.S. Our data includes almost 700 candidates and over 460k tweets that they produced in the 3.5 years leading to the elections. We utilize graph and text mining techniques to analyze differences between Democrats, Republicans and Tea Party candidates, and suggest a novel use of language modeling for estimating content cohesiveness. Our findings show significant differences in the usage patterns of social media, and suggest conservative candidates used this medium more effectively, conveying a coherent message and maintaining a dense graph of connections. Despite the lack of party leadership, we find Tea Party members display both structural and language‐based cohesiveness. Finally, we investigate the relation between network structure, content and election results by creating a proof‐of‐concept model that extends incumbency models to predict candidate victory.


A lattice symmetry, if being nonsymmorphic, is defined by combining a point group symmetry with a fractional lattice translation that cannot be removed by changing the lattice origin. Nonsymmorphic symmetry has a substantial influence on both the connectivity and topological properties of electronic band structures in solid-state quantum materials. In this article, we review how nonsymmorphic crystalline symmetries can drive and further protect the emergence of exotic fermionic quasiparticles, including Dirac, M\"obius and hourglass fermions, that manifest as the defining energy band signatures for a plethora of gapless or gapped topological phases of matter. We first provide a classification of energy band crossings in crystalline solids, with an emphasis on symmetry-enforced band crossings that feature a nonsymmorphic-symmetry origin. In particular, we will discuss four distinct classes of nonsymmorphic-symmetry-protected topological states as well as their signature fermionic modes: (1) a $Z_2$ topological nonsymmorphic crystalline insulator with two-dimensional surface Dirac fermions; (2) a Dirac semimetal with three dimensional bulk-state Dirac nodes pinned at certain high symmetry momenta; (3) a topological M\"obius insulator with massless surface modes that resemble the topological structure of a M\"obius twist (dubbed as M\"obius fermions); (4) a time-reversal-invariant version of M\"obius insulators with hourglass-shaped massless surface states (dubbed as hourglass fermions). The emergence of the above exotic topological matter perfectly demonstrates the crucial roles of both symmetry and topology in understanding the colorful world of quantum materials.


With the tremendous growth of cellular networks, energy consumption reduction has become a critical requirement. Recent research has focused on the base station as the main constituent that drains the highest percentage of energy consumption within cellular infrastructures. In LTE, the predominance of data traffic might result in significant volatility in traffic loads across evolved Node Bs at different times of the day. Within such context, re-dimensioning the number of active evolved Node Bs to match current average network traffic loads can contribute immensely in the reduction of projected LTE energy drainage. Accordingly, this paper introduces a re-dimensioning problem formulation which determines the adequate evolved Node Bs activity configuration in LTE networks that corresponds to a given traffic load with a desired quality of service constraint. The postulated formulation is then solved by genetic algorithm. Performance of the proposed network re-dimensioning scheme is evaluated under different traffic loads and the results are compared against those achieved by a recently proposed dynamic energy efficient distance - aware base station switch on/off scheme. Simulation results have shown that the proposed re-dimensioning solution has the potential for significant reduction in energy requirements (represented in the number of active evolved Node Bs) in comparison to the dynamic distance - aware approach reported in literature. Moreover, sub-optimality of the devised genetic algorithm solution is displayed by exhibiting attained results against the optimal solution computed through exhaustive search.


Oscar Wilde's reputation as a socialist often takes second place to his reputation as a playwright, poet, dandy and notorious wit. However, in 1891, the Dublin born writer, and arch-satirist of Victorian sensibilities, set out his ideas of socialism in his essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism . The essay affords the reader a glimpse into the political mind of this often caricatured Irish artist. As an aesthete and supreme individualist Wilde had an overarching artistic understanding of socialism. He was, on the whole, less interested in economic theory and dialectics than he was in the potential for individual realisation and the inherent beauty that underlies socialist philosophy. Wilde was concerned with the way in which the institution of private property obstructs the free development of the personality.


A cycle-resolved, phase Doppler anemometry (PDA) methodology is appraised for the collection and analysis of data from a gasoline fuel injector. A high-pressure swirl injector is utilized, spraying unleaded gasoline into air at ambient pressure and temperature. Results are presented in terms of Sauter mean diameter (SMD) of droplets, three components of velocity, and semiquantitative mass flow rate for the entire flow field.
Spray development is analyzed using time increments of between 0.25 ms and 1 ms over the first 12 ms after injection. High-speed photography confirms the validity of some of the global trends identified, including head vortex development, spray penetration, and needle bounce.
PDA measurements indicate that larger droplets are produced in the early stages of the injection. These populate the head and periphery of the spray cone, which becomes essentially hollow for a period between 0.75 and 2 ms. Smaller droplets in the center of the cone attain velocities in excess of 50 m/s, while those on the edge are entrained by the recirculating head vortex.
During the early injection period, the majority of the liquid mass resides within the "head" and an annular section of the spray, which indicates the hollow cone design. After 3 ms, the spray becomes more homogenous, with little mass flow rate variation across the cone identifiable after 4.5 ms.
The data are finally compared with a standard time-averaged correlation usually utilized for this type of injector. This emphasizes the need for continued effort on transient predictive spray modeling in future direct-injection (DI) gasoline investigations.


An experimental investigation was carried out to study the effects of single and multiple vortex generators (VGs) on the mean velocity, turbulence levels, and surface temperature distributions in a square channel. The flow and heat transfer in the wake of VGs were characterized using particle image velocimetry (PIV) and infrared (IR) thermography. Measurements were performed in the wake regions of VGs, where the counter-rotating vortex pairs (CVPs) were dominant. Inclination angle and taper angle of VGs, spacing-to-width ratio (STW) and streamwise spacing between rows of VGs (S) were varied to understand the effects on flow and heat transfer characteristics. Results reveal a distinct impact of the VGs and layouts on the vortical flow and local convective heat transfer phenomena. The measurements clearly show that configuration parameters such as inclination angle, spacing-to-width ratio, streamwise spacing, and arrangement of multiple VGs are factors in the optimum heat transfer performance applicable to a wide range of systems.


In this paper we present a MAC protocol for distributed cognitive networks. Secondly users decide which data channel to sense according to current channel usage condition and the possible data transmission opportunities of all the data channels, and then access if the data channel is sensed idle, as a way to improve their data throughput by flexibly adjusting the sensing sequence. In addition, the hidden terminal problem and the channel reservation problem under the scenario of different channel availability to different Secondly users is solved by a three-way handshake on a control channel. Paralleled data transmissions by multi-communication pairs are enabled in our protocol. We then develop an analytical model to analyze the saturation throughput of the protocol, and then present the numerical results to demonstrate the throughput performance under different parameters of this protocol by simulation.


Decision-making is a key responsibility of all school administrators. While some single handedly take decisions, others consult with their subordinates before taking decisions, yet some others involve subordinates and they both take decisions collectively. This latter phenomenon has been aptly described as participative or collective decision making. One other major concern of educational administrators has been how to motivate, ensure a feeling of job satisfaction and engender high morale in their teachers and other subordinates. This is because it is assumed that motivated, satisfied teachers with high morale are likely to be more committed to their duties and also be more productive in their work. Decision making style can be used to bring about these much desired increased production related factors. The theoretical literature and research is replete with findings about teacher participation in decision-making and from which a number of propositions can be deduced.


This article proposes a new approach to health behavior change, the disconnected values (intervention) model (DVM). The DVM consists of predetermined cognitive-behavioral strategies for initiating and maintaining changes in health behavior, such as the implementation of an exercise program. The model consists of helping clients (a) examine the benefits, in contrast to the costs and long-term consequences, of the habit they most want to change; (b) identify their deepest values and beliefs (e.g., health, family, faith, integrity); (c) detect a "disconnect" between the negative habit and the identified values; and (d) conclude whether the disconnect is acceptable, given its costs and long-term consequences. The client's conclusion that the disconnect is unacceptable creates incentive and commitment for health behavior change. The theoretical foundations of the DVM are explained, and its specific application for exercise behavior change is described. Three outcome studies also are reported, as well as a brie...


# BMA calls for lower blood alcohollevel for drivers {#article-title-2}

The BMA and the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) are calling for the legal blood alcohol limit for driving to be reduced to 10.9 mmol/l (50mg/100ml) from the current level of 17.4 mmol/l (80mg/100ml). Research has shown that the risk of becoming involved in a traffic accident greatly increases at blood alcohol levels over 50mg/100ml and the two organisations want legislation to be introduced to reflect this evidence. Some other European countries have switched to the lower level; France is the latest country to do this. In a letter to the transport secretary, Sir George Young, the BMA and PACTS say that legislation needs to be enforced if it is to be effective and that they would support measures to enhance current levels of enforcement, in particular the introduction of random breath testing. The possibility of being tested randomly is considered more likely to act as a deterrent as there is a higher chance of drivers being caught.

# Number of GPs increases {#article-title-3}

The number of general practitioners in England and Wales increased by 0.7% from 30416 to 30615 during the past year, with women accounting for the majority of the increase. In April 1995, 29.9% of all general practitioners were women. The average patient list size fell to 1869, compared with 2059 in 1985. The number of general practitioner registrars decreased by 3.6% between April 1994 and April 1995 (from 1611 to 1503), but the number of women registrars increased by 1.6% so that more than half of all registrars …


Two field experiments were performed to examine the effects of inoculation of Azospirillum sp. RAM-7 and RAM-5 strains on maize Cargil909. The treatments involved inoculation with or without different levels of nitrogen (N) and control. Simple seed inoculation with Azospirillum sp. RAM-7 strain increased yields as compared to control, but the yield difference was not significant (p<0.05). The inoculation along with high level of N resulted significantly higher yields and increase in total N and total lipids contents of the seed in comparison to the control. Increase in the yield of maize with the application of inoculant over control was recorded at N 150 kg ha -1 The inoculation of Azospirillum sp. RAM-5 in maize Cargill-909 also increased yield as compared to the control, but the difference was not significant (p<0.05). The inoculation using Azospirillum sp. RAM-7 or RAM-5 strains reduced 40% of the amount of N fertilizer recommended for each experiment (p<0.05).


This paper presents an improved two-step parameter adjustment method for the construction of a reservoir operation function model, by using repeated principal component analysis (PCA) and a genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize parameters in conventional multiple regression models. The first step is to use repeated PCA, to exclude the co-linear parameters in a multiple regression expression reflecting relationships among possible impact factors of reservoir operation, so as to form an initial reservoir operation function model. The second step is to use a GA to optimize the model constructed in the first step, and to compare its effects with other regression methods. The results show that the proposed reservoir operation function model can produce better results, which correlate water volume for power generation, input discharge, water level, and ecological flow. Compared with established scheduling schemes, the optimized scheme increases the water volume for power generation by 1.06 × 109 m3/yr, and the optimized result generates an increase in economic benefits of 3.22 × 107 yuan/yr (i.e., 4.69 × 106 USD/yr).


Objective Increased treatment options and longer survival for lung cancer have generated increased interest in patient preferences. Previous studies of patient preferences in lung cancer have not fully explored preference heterogeneity. We demonstrate a method to explore preference heterogeneity in the willingness of patients with lung cancer and caregivers to trade progression-free survival (PFS) with side effects. Patients and Methods Patients and caregivers attending a national lung cancer meeting completed a discrete-choice experiment (DCE) designed through a collaboration with patients. Participants answered 13 choice tasks described across PFS, short-term side effects, and four long-term side effects. Side effects were coded as a one-level change in severity (none-mild, mild-moderate, or moderate-severe). A mixed logit model in willingness-to-pay space estimated preference heterogeneity in acceptable tradeoffs (time equivalents) between PFS and side effects. The study was reported following quality indicators from the United States Food and Drug Administration's patient preference guidance. Results A total of 87 patients and 24 caregivers participated in the DCE. Participants would trade 3.7 month PFS (95% CI (CI): 3.3–4.1) for less severe functional long-term treatment side effects, 2.3 months for less severe physical long-term effects (CI: 1.9–2.8) and cognitive long-term effects (CI: 1.8–2.8), 0.9 months (CI: 0.4–1.4) for less severe emotional long-term effects, and 1.8 months (CI: 1.4–2.3) for less severe short-term side effects. Most participants (90%) would accept treatment with more severe functional long-term effects for 8.4 additional month PFS. Conclusion Participants would trade PFS for changes in short-term side effects and long-term side effects, although preference heterogeneity existed. Lung cancer treatments that offer less PFS but also less severe side effects might be acceptable to some patients.


The aim of this thesis is to offer a parallel presentation of the sixteen verses of Micah 6, as they were handed to us in the Masoretic Text (MT), the Septuagint (LXX) and in the Targum.
The outline of this research comprises five chapters. The first chapter offers a detailed account of the history of research on the Book of Micah. The account highlights problems connected with the person of the prophet Micah, the dating of his book, division, solutions to textual problems and influential commentaries.
The MT is the subject discussed in chapter two, which is divided in five parts. Prior to the actual textual analysis, (1) the history of the textual-linguistic method is described starting with H. Weinrich's basic assumptions followed by A. Niccacci's presentation of this method. The thesis continues with the exposition of (2) the textual critical analysis, the (3) the syntactical commentary (using the textual-linguistic method). The last two parts engage in (4) an analysis of the poetic devices and a (5) commentary of the MT text as a whole.
The third chapter is dedicated to the Septuagint as an equally important witness for the transmission of the Bible. The short excursus on the research history of the Septuagint is followed by a detailed textual analysis of the major Greek manuscripts. The rest of the chapter will concentrate on presenting differences between the MT and LXX and determining what the text is saying in the Greek form. The Aramaic Targum witness of Micah 6 is the concern of the next chapter which starts with an exposition of the Biblical Aramaic verbal system according to the textual-linguistic method. The presentation proceeds with its application to the proposed text. The last part of this chapter concerns the main differences between the MT and Targum in Micah 6 introduced by a general account of the Targum as translation.
The last chapter offers an outline of the most interesting findings of this research along with general conclusion about the textual-linguistic method.


Chondrodysplasia punctata (CDP) is a heterogenous group of skeletal dysplasias characterized by aberrant bone mineralization, manifesting radiologically as epiphyseal stippling. Among this group, brachytelephalangic dysplasia, a benign form of CDP (CDPX1), is probably under-reported. It is an X-linked recessive disorder and is characterized by a flat nasal tip, short columella and maxillary hypoplasia, involvement of terminal phalanges, and stippled chondrodystrophy. This paper presents a clinical series of 13 patients with brachytelephalangic dysplasia. These patients enrolled during 2002–2006 were re-evaluated and their dysmorphic features were compiled in a predesigned proforma. Skeletal survey, karyotype, cardiac evaluation, and ophthalmic evaluation were planned for all the cases. Out of 13 patients, 10 were males and three were females. All patients had flat facies, a depressed nasal bridge, a hypoplastic nose, a short philtrum, notched alae nasi, brachydactyly, and hypoplastic terminal phalanges. In addition, congenital heart disease, optic nerve hypoplasia, and developmental delay were found in a few patients. Radiography showed hypoplastic terminal phalanges, delayed bone age (1/13), epiphyseal stippling in carpal (3/13) and tarsal bones (2/13), sacral bone (1/13), and bullet-shaped lumbar vertebra (1/13). Cranial neuroimaging, thyroid profile, and karyotype carried out in a few were normal. The present paper discusses various clinical features and associated abnormalities in patients with brachytelephalangic dysplasia (CDPX1) to further delineate the phenotype. The presence of a similar phenotype in females suggests the possibility of another locus or manifestation of disease in heterozygous females. Arylsulfatase E gene analysis would further help in establishing the genotype–phenotype correlation.


flexmix provides infrastructure for flexible fitting of finite mixture models in R using the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm or one of its variants. The functionality of the package was enhanced. Now concomitant variable models as well as varying and constant parameters for the component specific generalized linear regression models can be fitted. The application of the package is demonstrated on several examples, the implementation described and examples given to illustrate how new drivers for the component specific models and the concomitant variable models can be defined.


: The physical exam is constituted inside in an important stage of the evaluation process to the child, through which the nurse enriches the information obtained during the interview and it bases the nursing care. At the present time, by means of the nurses growing interest in applying the nursing process in whole its stages, the physical exam has been occupying prominence place, for allowing the nurses to know the its customers' needs, in what says respect to its physical and physiologic aspects, allowing the identification of the nursing diagnoses, besides serving as resource for evaluation effective of the nursing interventions. This study, of bibliographical character, objectified to elaborate a guide for accomplishment of the physical exam in the child, to be used by nurses, during the evaluation process to the child. In him we presented the physical exam in a systematic way, using the sequence cephalic-flow, presenting the possible normal and abnormal discoveries to the we examine the child.


Rice blast caused by Magnaporthe grisea, frequently affects rice in the world. This research is intended to screen biological control agents for controlling M. grisea, referencing the study biological control agents testing approaches, since biological control is an environmentally friendly plant disease controlling approach. 710 bacterial isolates were discovered from rice tissues, of which hopeful biological control scores were discovered referencing their abilities in antagonism inhibition and secreting extracellular hydrolytic enzyme. Biological control discovery against M. grisea were experimented on 35 bacterial strains with hopeful biological control characteristic examining through amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis (ARDRA) and BOX analysis on isolates with high assessment scores. Five biological control agents (BCAs) with protection efficacy of more than 40% in greenhouse and field experiment were discovered. Pantoea ananatis HS-8 and Bacillus cereus DL-7 performed well in greenhouse experiment, and field test respectively. In general, correlation coefficient is 0.95 between assessment scores of 35 experimented BCAs and correlation coefficient between antagonism test and biological control efficacy show 0.72 against M. grisea. Biological control efficacies results in greenhouse and field experiments showed positive correlation with assessment scores, proposing that the BCAs evaluating and screening method set-up is reference for screening BCAs for controlling M. grisea.


By Patti Waldmeir in Shanghai and Jamil Anderlini in Beijing Beijing has underlined its concern that an economic slowdown could lead to social unrest in China, with the country's security chief urging local officials to do more to prepare for the "negative effects of the market economy". Zhou Yongkang, a member of the politburo, told provincial officials that they needed to find better methods of "social management" – a euphemism which can include everything from better internet censorship and strategic policing of violent unrest, to a better social safety net. "It is an urgent task for us to think how to establish a social management system with Chinese characteristics to suit our socialist market economy," he told a seminar on "social management innovation". "Especially when facing the negative effects of the market economy, we still have not formed a complete mechanism for social management," he said. Mr Zhou also urged officials to limit spending on wasteful "vanity" projects that trigger public anger. His comments are the clearest sign yet that Beijing is worried that the global economic crisis could lead to serious domestic social unrest. Mr Zhou's remarks, published by the state-run Xinhua news agency on Saturday, came at the end of a week which saw evidence of a slowdown in Chinese manufacturing , an easing in credit policy to avert a sharper slowdown, and two outbreaks of violence. Recent months have seen a rise in unrest – apparently linked to economic grievances, including workers' fears about the economic dislocation caused by Beijing's long-term plan to move away from low-value manufacturing to more creative and innovative industries. Workers in Shanghai clashed last week with police at a Singaporean consumer electronics supplier during a strike over mass job losses due to a company relocation, the US-based group China Labor Watch said. Tension spilt over in the central Chinese city of Xian on Friday, with Xinhua reporting hundreds of people overturning police and government cars after officers took more than two hours to arrive at a scene where a girl had been killed by a building truck. Ordinary citizens often complain that the government does too little to protect them from safety risks like dangerous driving by such trucks. More than 10,000 workers in Shenzhen and Dongguan, two leading export centres in southern China, went on strike last month to protest against cuts in overtime – which they rely on to supplement meagre basic pay. The ruling Communist party relies on rapid economic growth as its main source of legitimacy and Chinese leaders assume that if the economy slows too much it will be unable to contain the resulting social unrest. Many analysts believe double-digit inflation and an economic slowdown were important contributors to the 1989 Tiananmen Square upheaval and resulting massacre. In the midst of the 2008 global financial crisis the government identified 8 per cent gross domestic product growth as the level necessary to avoid political chaos and mobilised the entire state sector in a successful effort to "protect 8". Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/61673902-1e6e-11e1-bae4-00144feabdc0.html


Background Older migrant patients with cancer face many language- and culture-related barriers to patient participation during medical consultations. To bridge these barriers, an eHealth tool called Health Communicator was developed in the Netherlands. Essentially used as a digital translator that can collect medical history information from patients, the Health Communicator did not include an oncological module so far, despite the fact that the prevalence of Dutch migrant patients with cancer is rising. Objective This study aims to systematically develop, implement, and conduct a pilot evaluation of an oncological module that can be integrated into the Health Communicator to stimulate patient participation among older Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch patients with cancer. Methods The Spiral Technology Action Research model, which incorporates 5 cycles that engage key stakeholders in intervention development, was used as a framework. The listen phase consisted of a needs assessment. The plan phase consisted of developing the content of the oncological module, namely the question prompt lists (QPLs) and scripts for patient education videos. On the basis of pretests in the do phase, 6 audiovisual QPLs on patient rights, treatment, psychosocial support, lifestyle and access to health care services, patient preferences, and clinical trials were created. Additionally, 5 patient education videos were created about patient rights, psychosocial support, clinical trials, and patient-professional communication. In the study phase, the oncological module was pilot-tested among 27 older Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch patients with cancer during their consultations. In the act phase, the oncological model was disseminated to practice. Results The patient rights QPL was chosen most often during the pilot testing in the study phase. Patients and health care professionals perceived the QPLs as easy to understand and useful. There was a negative correlation between the tool's ease of use and patient age. Patients reported that using the module impacted the consultations positively and thought they were more active compared with previous consultations. Health care professionals also found patients to be more active than usual. Health care professionals asked significantly more questions than patients during consultations. Patients requested to see the patients' rights video most often. Patients rated the videos as easy to understand, useful, and informative. Most of the patients wanted to use the tool in the future. Conclusions Older migrant patients with cancer, survivors, and health care professionals found the oncological module to be a useful tool and have shown intentions to incorporate it into future consultation sessions. Both QPLs and videos were evaluated positively, the latter indicating that the use of narratives to inform older, low-literate migrant patients with cancer about health-related topics in their mother tongue is a viable approach to increase the effectiveness of health care communication with this target group.


Objective. Locoregional recurrence (LRR) is one of the leading causes of treatment failure in head and neck (H&N) cancer. Accurately predicting LRR after radiotherapy is essential to achieving better treatment outcomes for patients with H&N cancer through developing personalized treatment strategies. We aim to develop an end-to-end multi-modality and multi-view feature extension method (MMFE) to predict LRR in H&N cancer. Approach. Deep learning (DL) has been widely used for building prediction models and has achieved great success. Nevertheless, 2D-based DL models inherently fail to utilize the contextual information from adjacent slices, while complicated 3D models have a substantially larger number of parameters, which require more training samples, memory and computing resources. In the proposed MMFE scheme, through the multi-view feature expansion and projection dimension reduction operations, we are able to reduce the model complexity while preserving volumetric information. Additionally, we designed a multi-modality convolutional neural network that can be trained in an end-to-end manner and can jointly optimize the use of deep features of CT, PET and clinical data to improve the model's prediction ability. Main results. The dataset included 206 eligible patients, of which, 49 had LRR while 157 did not. The proposed MMFE method obtained a higher AUC value than the other four methods. The best prediction result was achieved when using all three modalities, which yielded an AUC value of 0.81. Significance. Comparison experiments demonstrated the superior performance of the MMFE as compared to other 2D/3D-DL-based methods. By combining CT, PET and clinical features, the MMFE could potentially identify H&N cancer patients at high risk for LRR such that personalized treatment strategy can be developed accordingly.


A numerical-impulse-response technique for studying the propagation and diffraction of finite-width beams in planar phase gratings is described. It can account for both symmetric and asymmetric diffractions. The grating-length-to-beam-width ratio is shown to govern the extent of beam-profile distortion and selectivity sidelobe suppression. Trade-offs between diffraction efficiency and beam profile have also been demonstrated. Theoretical results have been verified by experimental observations in a planar waveguide geometry of diffracted beams that change from a single diffraction peak to multiple peaks as the grating-length-to-beam-width ratio increases.


Polysulfide (PS) rubbers have been widely used as high performance sealants to line or seal aircraft fuel tanks. However, safety concerns arise when electrostatic charges are built up due to the motion of flammable fuels. In this report, electrically conductive sealants were designed in order to dissipate these hazardous charges. Silver fillers with various sizes and surface coatings were incorporated into a polysulfide matrix to make conductive sealants. The low electrical conductivity of the sealants led to the assumption that unique filler-resin interactions occurred at their interfaces. To verify this assumption, various characterization methods were employed to investigate the chemical, thermal, morphological, electrical, and mechanical properties of the sealants. In addition, carbon fillers and other room temperature-cured polymer resins were used for comparative study. The systematic analysis revealed that the formation of coordination compounds at silver/PS interfaces could block electron conduction pathways between fillers. Based on the chemical understanding, post cure thermal annealing was utilized to break the coordinated bonds and restore high conductivity (>106 S m-1) of the sealants. Conductivity change as a function of annealing temperature and time was also explored to optimize processing conditions.


Therapeutic options for the fatal neurodegenerative disorder ALS are urgently needed. Trials rely on blunt outcome measures such as survival because of a lack of objective markers of disease activity and progression. The C9orf72 hexanucleotide repeat expansion (HRE) is associated with 10% of all cases of ALS, bringing the near-future prospect of oligonucleotide therapeutic trials. The development of biomarkers will reduce trial duration and cost by providing more sensitive measures of disease-slowing and/or evidence of target engagement. ALS is consistently associated with cortical hyperexcitability (CE), based on transcranial magnetic paired stimulation (TMS) to induce short-interval cortical inhibition (SICI). This project builds on the potential shown by non-invasive neuroimaging to provide biomarkers in ALS. We develop functional neuroimaging biomarkers that reflect the phenomenon of CE, including markers of pre-symptomatic pathology. Affected ALS patients carrying the C9orf72 HRE and a group of asymptomatic carriers are studied using a combined functional MRI (FMRI and MRS) and neurophysiological (MEG) readout. This study offers novel non-invasive biomarkers based on a consistent neurophysiological mechanism in ALS to advance therapeutic development


Inspired from human perception and common text documents characteristics based on readability constraints,
an Arabic text line segmentation approach is proposed using seam carving. Taking the gray scale of the image
as input data, this technique offers better results at extracting handwritten text lines without the need for the
binary representation of the document image. In addition to its fast processing time, its versatility permits to
process a multitude of document types, especially documents presenting low text-to-background contrast such
as degraded historical manuscripts or complex writing styles like cursive handwriting. Even if our focus in this
paper was on Arabic text segmentation, this method is language independent. Tests on a public database of 123
handwritten Arabic documents showed a line detection rate of 97.5% for a matching score of 90%.


The recent installation of a new floor pan assembly line, the first of its kind in Europe at Nissan's Sunderland plant, has effectively removed the need for framing jigs on initial spot welding operations. Core to the line's effectiveness is the use of three Fanuc robots with intelligent control and integrated 3D laser vision systems. Each robot is a Fanuc R2000iA, a six axes 200 kg load capacity arm, fitted with a Fanuc V500iA 3DL vision system to locate the panel position. The robots enable the production of variants without lengthy tool change times. Variants are programmed into the robots and the NC tooling controllers, making conventional tooling and fixtures unnecessary.


I would like to introduce this issue by telling a story. Sometime back in 1997, I wrote a paper on a new idea for improving the response times of http requests at a Web server. The idea was to schedule the HTTP requests so as to favor requests for small files, in accordance with the well-known scheduling policy Shortest Remaining Processing Time (SRPT). The paper was rejected, for many reasons, but the review that stuck in my mind was the one that said, "Why is this person writing about scheduling? Scheduling is dead." According to this reviewer, everything that would ever be known about scheduling was already described in the beautiful Theory of Scheduling book, written in 1967, by Conway, Maxwell, and Miller.


Quinoa is a grain that has seen a rapid consumption boom in recent years. Chile has also followed this trend through quinoa consumption associated with a healthy diet and environmental care. The correlation between quinoa crops and farming sustainability lays mainly in the actions and expertise of the agents involved in the decision-making process, who depend on the available experience and knowledge. Multicriteria decision analysis is a set of support techniques in the decision-making process. It consists of directing multiple opinions and assessment criteria, in specific actions, validated by an interest group. This study is based on the definition and weighting of the criteria that influence the sustainability of quinoa as a crop in contrast with the wheat as the most important crop in the rainfed area, taking into account the opinions of farmers and other parties involved. The findings are the weighting of the criteria of the following variables: contribution to family income, ease of sales, positive impact on the environment, production cost savings, knowledge of the crop, and government support. The model helped to create a quantitative basis for the sustainability potential of quinoa as a booming crop and as an alternative for the traditional wheat crop in farming.


These recent legislative changes should assist physicians in implementing appropriate health care decisions by patients and their families. The Natural Death Act amendments authorize the withholding and withdrawal of life-sustaining procedures from patients with incurable or irreversible conditions if death will result within a relatively short time without use of such procedures. The amendments are effective Sept 1, 1989, and apply to directives executed on or after that date. The durable power of attorney bill, effective June 14, 1989, provides a comprehensive method for allowing decision making by a surrogate. Education of the public and advance planning by principals are needed for it to be effective. Because HB 2098 requires advance execution of the power of attorney, in all likelihood most decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining procedures from patients with a terminal condition will continue to be made using the procedures set forth in the Natural Death Act.


Hypertension is a common disorder affecting a large heterogeneous patient population. Despite improved understanding of its pathophysiology and availability of effective treatment strategies, hypertension remains a major, potentially modifiable, risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Aldosterone, the principal human mineralocorticoid, is increasingly recognised as playing a significant role in cardiovascular morbidity and its role in hypertension has recently been re-evaluated with studies that suggest that increased aldosterone concentration (as defined by an elevated aldosterone to renin ratio - ARR) is a key phenotype in up to 15 per cent of hypertensive subjects. We have previously reported that polymorphisms of the gene (C to T conversion at position -344 and intron conversion (1C) in intron 2) encoding aldosterone synthase (CYP11B2) are associated with hypertension, particularly in individuals with a high ARR. In normotensives, the T and 1C alleles associate with raised basal and ACTH-stimulated levels of the 11-deoxysteroids, deoxycorticosterone and 11-deoxycortisol which are substrates for the enzyme 11beta-hydroxylase, encoded by the adjacent and homologous gene CYP11B1. This has led to speculation that the T and 1C alleles of CYP11B2 are in linkage disequilibrium (LD) with functional variants in CYP11B1 resulting in reduced efficiency of this enzyme. In order to maintain cortisol production, positive feedback to the pituitary leads to a subtle but more pronounced adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) drive to the adrenal cortex and enhanced synthetic capacity of the zona glomerulosa resulting in increased production of aldosterone and suppression of renin. Thus in such individuals, there should be recognisable, genotype dependent, changes in the pattern of adrenal steroid production as well as alteration in the cortisol/ACTH relationship. These data are also consistent with a contribution of ACTH to the production of aldosterone (in - 344T & CYP11B1 -1888T/ -1858G) leading to the eventual phenotype of hypertension with aldosterone excess. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.).


Effects of Glyteer (GL, 5%) on Type I-Type IV allergic reactions were investigated by its topical application to rats and mice, and the effects were compared with those of betamethasone 17-valerate (BV, 0.12%), indomethacin (ID, 1%), and bufexamac (BM, 5%), which were all prepared with the same ointment base. Type I: GL showed inhibitory effects on the 48 hr homologous passive cutaneous anaphylaxis (PCA) in rats. The inhibitory activity of GL on the PCA had the same potency as that of BV (0.12%). GL also inhibited the degranulation of mast cells induced by PCA. Type II: GL did not exert an inhibitory effect on the reversed cutaneous anaphylaxis (RCA) in rats, but BM, ID and BV had an inhibitory activity on the RCA. Type III: BV markedly inhibited the direct passive Arthus reaction in rats. On the other hand, GL, BM and ID had not an inhibitory activity on it. Type IV: GL (0.2, 1 and 5%) showed a concentration-dependent inhibition on the delayed-type hypersensitivity response induced by oxazolone in mice, and the activity was stronger than those of ID and BM. From these results, it is suggested that GL applied externally possesses a potent effect as an anti-allergic drug on Type I and Type IV allergic reactions.