Using the concept of internal colonisation, this paper aims to demonstrate how current disputes over wind power developments in traditional Saami mountain areas have reignited contestations between Saami people and the Swedish state. It traces the historical continuities in these contestations. It also analyses shifts in the discourses legitimising the state's nonrecognition of Saami rights to land. The paper explores three discursive frameworks that reflect these continuities and shifts. First, it traces contestations over the ownership of 'Crown' (ie, state) land and the paternalistic practices of the state. Second, it explores how a discourse of renewable energy is currently being mobilised to argue that Saami interests must necessarily give way to broader environmental concerns. Third, it analyses how long-standing colonial rationalities are rearticulated through market relations, as the state seeks to construct a pseudo planning market for wind power developments, which necessarily excludes Saami interests. These debates, and the ongoing resistances by Saami people to industrial encroachments on their traditional territories, highlight the fundamentally unresolved relations between the Saami and the non-Indigenous majority society in Sweden.


In this article we consider the Slavic perfective/imperfective opposition, a well-known example of viewpoint aspect which establishes a classificatory grammatical category by means of stem derivation. Although Slavic languages are not unique in having developed a classificatory aspect system, a survey of such systems shows that the Slavic perfective/imperfective opposition is a particularly rare subcase of such systems, first of all because it combines prefixing with suffixing patterns of derivation. We therefore explore the morphology involved, tracing its development from Proto-Indo-European into Early Slavic. The emergence of Slavic aspect is atypical for grammatical categories, and it deviates considerably from mainstream instances of grammaticalization in many respects. We show that there is a strong tendency (i) towards abandonment of highly lexically conditioned and versatile suffix choices in Proto-Indo-European and in Common Slavic, which led to fewer and more transparent suffixes, and (ii) towards concatenation, away from originally non-concatenative (fusional) schemata. Furthermore, we compare Slavic with some other Indo-European languages and inquire as to why in Europe no other Indo-European group beyond Slavic went so far as to productively exploit newly developed prefixes (or verb particles) merely for use as aspectual modifiers of stems and to combine them with a (partially inherited, partially remodelled) stock of suffixes to yield a classificatory aspect system. The Slavic system, thus, appears quite unique not only from a typological point of view, but also in diachronic-genealogical terms. Based on this background, amplified by some inner-Slavic biases in the productivity of patterns of stem derivation, we pose the provocative question as to whether the rise and consolidation of the stem-derivational perfective/imperfective opposition in Slavic was favoured by direct and indirect contacts with Uralic (Finno-Ugric) and Altaic (Turkic) populations at different periods since at least the time of the Great Migrations.


A man in his 70s presented with a 2-week history of a bullous eruption localized to the hands and feet. He denied having pruritus or spontaneous bleeding but reported discomfort from the pressure of intact bullae. His medical history was notable for diabetes mellitus and hypertension, which was well controlled with a stable regimen of lisinopril and atenolol for several years. He denied using any new medications or supplements or making recent dose adjustments in existing medications. There was no history of a prior bullous eruption. Physical examination revealed numerous small intact bullae and large erosions on the lateral feet, soles, and toes (Figure, A). The extent of the bullae led to difficulty with ambulation. There were also intact vesicles on the lateral palms along with erosions demonstrating evidence of previous bullae formation. There were no vesicular or bullous lesions on the trunk, arms, legs, or mucosal surfaces. Hematoxylin-eosin staining of a biopsy specimen obtained from a bulla on the foot was performed (Figure, B). A B


Extensive interspecific genetic introgression is often reported, and appraising its genomic impact can serve to determine whether it results from selection on specific loci or from demographic processes affecting the whole genome. The three species of hares present in the Iberian Peninsula harbour high frequencies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from Lepus timidus, an arctic/boreal species now extinct in the region. This could result from the invasive replacement of L. timidus by the temperate species during deglaciation but should then have left traces in the nuclear genome. We typed single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) discovered by sequencing 10 autosomal loci, two X‐linked and one Y‐linked in species‐wide samples of the four taxa. Based on lineage‐diagnostic SNPs, we detected no trace of L. timidus sex chromosomes in Iberia. From the frequencies of inferred haplotypes, autosomal introgression into L. granatensis appeared mostly sporadic but always widespread instead of restricted to the north as mtDNA. Autosomal introgression into Iberian L. europaeus, inhabiting the Pyrenean foothills, was hardly detectable, despite quasi‐fixation of L. timidus mtDNA. L. castroviejoi, endemic to the Cantabrian Mountains and fixed for L. timidus mtDNA, showed little traces of autosomal introgression. The absence of sex‐chromosome introgression presumably resulted from X‐linked hybrid male unfitness. The contrasting patterns between the autosomes and mtDNA could reflect general gender asymmetric processes such as frequency‐dependent female assortative mating, lower mtDNA migration and higher male dispersal, but adaptive mtDNA introgression cannot be dismissed. Additionally, we document reciprocal introgression between L. europaeus and both L. granatensis in Iberia and L. timidus outside Iberia.


The histone methyltransferase MLL1 has been linked to translocation-associated gene fusion in childhood leukemias and is an attractive drug target. High-throughput biochemical analysis of MLL1 methyltransferase activity requires the production of at least a trimeric complex of MLL1, RbBP5 and WDR5 to elicit robust activity. Production of trimeric and higher order MLL1 complexes in the quantities and reproducibility required for high-throughput screening presents a significant impediment to MLL1 drug discovery efforts. We present here a small molecule fluorescent ligand (FL-NAH, 6) that is able to bind to the S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) binding site of MLL1 in a manner independent of the associated complex members. We have used FL-NAH to develop a fluorescence polarization-based SAM displacement assay in a 384-well format targeting the MLL1 SET domain in the absence of associated complex members. FL-NAH competes with SAM and is displaced from the MLL1 SET domain by other SAM-binding site ligands with Kdisp values similar to the higher-order complexes, but is unaffected by the H3 peptide substrate. This assay enables screening for SAM-competitive MLL1 inhibitors without requiring the use of trimeric or higher order MLL1 complexes, significantly reducing screening time and cost.


Abstract The article discusses the conflict between lived religion and the state control of poor relief in a modernizing society by analysing the case of Emma Mäkinen's private orphanage. Emma Mäkinen's philanthropic work among neglected children was motivated by her Evangelical Revivalist conviction. Because of her trust in the transformative power of faith, she considered it appropriate to establish an orphanage next to a shelter for 'fallen' women. This decision led her onto a collision course with the State Inspector of Poor Relief and the general public, who did not share her religious views but emphasized the legislative and moral aspects vis-à-vis organizing social work. The conflict demonstrates, firstly, how the ancien régime and the traditional religious authority of the Evangelical Lutheran state church in particular was challenged by individual agency in voluntary associations such as the Evangelical Revivalist Free Mission. Secondly, the case of Emma Mäkinen's orphanage reflects how new kinds of boundaries were created by the encroaching of state control into the sphere of private philanthropy, followed by the strengthening role of scientific theories and nationalistic thinking in social work. Thirdly, the conflict opens up a view on border-crossings, thus emphasizing the undefined nature of a modernizing society.


The thesis is composed of two sections. The first provides a critical overview of the published work assembled in the second. This body of work is composed of journal articles, monographs, papers published in educated collections and research reports. Though these papers address a range of different subjects from street robbery, the culture of gun users to the study of urban street gangs, what unifies these papers is that they collectively help make sense of the violent street world occupied by young men, overwhelmingly from deprived backgrounds, who use weapons, collectively and individually, in street confrontations. In the critical analysis the term violent street world is defined and the body of published work which examines it is then contextualised; first, by a consideration of the external political and social forces that led to its production; second, by reference to the internal academic traditions in which and at times against which these papers were produced. Rather than approach the study of the street world by reference to the actors who inhabit it, the crimes they do or the weapons they use, the thesis makes a case for making the street world itself the object and focus of enquiry. The street world is then studied thematically in four chapters. The themes selected are: street crime in a historical context, the aetiology of street violence, the structure and organisation of the street world and the distinction between street representations and street realities. The analysis concludes with reflections on the key contributions the work assembled has made to our understanding of violent street worlds and their social analysis. The work is original in so far as it contests many current myths that have been proposed to explain street violence while producing more compelling explanations for it. These help explicate why the violence occurs, how and why it is changing, who is involved and why people engage in it.

Key words: Gang, street culture, guns, knives, weapons


Abstract. Colour vision of 60 diabetic patients (60 eyes) was studied after photocoagulation treatment in 1986–87. For the follow‐up study 5 years later in 1991–92, 32 of the patients were available. The ages of the patients in the follow‐up study varied from 28 to 64 years, the duration of diabetes from 19 to 35 years, the amount of laser spots from 200 to 3174, and the visual acuity from 0.4 to 1.0. As colour vision tests, the Standard Pseudoisochromatic Plates part 2, Lanthony Tritan Album, Farnsworth Panel D 15, and box III of the Farnsworth‐Munsell 100 hue test were used. Of the 32 eyes, 22 (68.8%) had the same results in the colour vision tests, 4 (12.5%) had better results, and 6 (18.8%) had worse results than 5 years earlier. Between Group 1 (colour vision the same or better than 5 years earlier, 26 eyes) and Group 2 (colour vision worse than earlier, 6 eyes) there was a significant difference in the age and in the level of the visual acuity of the patients. The changes in the lens, fundus or visual acuity during 5 years did not seem to have an effect in colour vision.


I have recently completed the first part of a memoir upon the Silurian Trilobites of the Baltic provinces of Russia, containing a special geological introduction. This work is already in the hands of Silurian geologists. But as the subject of my memoir, and more particularly its geological introduction, may be of interest to British geologists in general, I will here endeavour to develop in English the most important results of my investigations, pointing out at the same time more especially some difficulties and controverted points in the parallelization of our Silurian strata with those of Scandinavia and the British Islands. There is no map accompanying my memoir; and the reader is therein requested to refer to the geological map of the Baltic provinces of Russia, published at Dorpat in 1878 by Prof. Grewingk. In this map the Silurian part was drawn by myself. The accompanying sketch (Pl. XXIII. fig. 1). will serve the purpose of the present paper.


Introduction Spontaneous live births (SLB) after in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment are not unusual, but reported SLB rates vary widely and little is known of their associated factors. Our objective was to examine the frequency of SLB and their associated factors among couples who had had IVF, successfully or unsuccessfully. Methods A retrospective cohort of couples was recruited in eight French IVF centers. The couples had begun IVF treatment in the participating centers between 2000 and 2002, and were followed-up by postal questionnaire between 2008 and 2010. Analysis was carried out on 2134 couples who were still together at the time of the postal survey. Separate analyses were conducted according to the outcome of medical treatment: live birth (n=1320) or no (n=814). Multivariate analysis that included socio-demographic and medical characteristics was conducted using logistic regression. Results The SLB rate was 17% among couples who had had a first live birth through medical treatment and 24% among couples who had unsuccessful treatment. In both groups, SLB was associated with younger age of the women, fewer IVF attempts and the origin of infertility. In couples who had not been successful with IVF, SLB was also associated with a shorter duration of infertility. Conclusion Even in a population which had had IVF because of a very low monthly probability of conception, SLB is still possible, especially among couples who did not succeed in having a child through fertility treatment. Occurrence of SLB was mainly related to a better initial fertility prognosis.


Detecting individual pedestrians in a crowd remains a challenging problem since the pedestrians often gather together and occlude each other in real-world scenarios. In this paper, we first explore how a state-of-the-art pedestrian detector is harmed by crowd occlusion via experimentation, providing insights into the crowd occlusion problem. Then, we propose a novel bounding box regression loss specifically designed for crowd scenes, termed repulsion loss. This loss is driven by two motivations: the attraction by target, and the repulsion by other surrounding objects. The repulsion term prevents the proposal from shifting to surrounding objects thus leading to more crowd-robust localization. Our detector trained by repulsion loss outperforms the state-of-the-art methods with a significant improvement in occlusion cases.


Objective To compare doctors' and nurses' communication with patients in primary care telephone triage consultations. Design Qualitative comparative study of content and form of questions in 51 telephone triage encounters between practitioners (general practitioners (GPs)=29; nurses=22) and patients requesting a same-day appointment in primary care. Audio-recordings of nurse-led calls were synchronised with video recordings of nurse's use of computer decision support software (CDSS) during triage. Setting 2 GP practices in Devon and Warwickshire, UK. Participants 4 GPs and 29 patients; and 4 nurses and 22 patients requesting a same-day face-to-face appointment with a GP. Main outcome measure Form and content of practitioner-initiated questions and patient responses during clinical assessment. Results A total of 484 question–response sequences were coded (160 GP; 324 N). Despite average call lengths being similar (GP=4 min, 37 s, (SD=1 min, 26 s); N=4 min, 39 s, (SD=2 min, 22 s)), GPs and nurses differed in the average number (GP=5.51, (SD=4.66); N=14.72, (SD=6.42)), content and form of questions asked. A higher frequency of questioning in nurse-led triage was found to be due to nurses' use of CDSS to guide telephone triage. 89% of nurse questions were oriented to asking patients about their reported symptoms or to wider-information gathering, compared to 54% of GP questions. 43% of GP questions involved eliciting patient concerns or expectations, and obtaining details of medical history, compared to 11% of nurse questions. Nurses using CDSS frequently delivered questions designed as declarative statements requesting confirmation and which typically preferred a 'no problem' response. In contrast, GPs asked a higher proportion of interrogative questions designed to request information. Conclusions Nurses and GPs emphasise different aspects of the clinical assessment process during telephone triage. These different styles of triage have implications for the type of information available following nurse-led or doctor-led triage, and for how patients experience triage.


A nationwide survey of 7,535 farmer cooperatives shows both large and small cooperatives -- locals, region.a1s, and interregiona1s -- in 24 States using industrial development (ID) bonds for long-term debt. financing to 'construct or expand grain elevators, pollution control facilities, feed mills. fertilizer plants, fluid milk plants, and warehouses. As of June 1979,.52 cooperatives had 130 projects financed with ID bonds totaling $265 million, with a median of $1 million per project. Although ID bonds originated in Mississippi in 1936, major co-op use of these tax-exempt bonds occurred after 1975, when 62 percent of all such co-op ID bond-financed projects originated.


Abstract Brand image which has recognition as a top brand image is one asset and one of the important considerations for students before determining the choice of college. Background research on the influence of top brand image on the decision of the Academy students in choosing BSI has get Top Brand Award for two years  in 2013 and 2014. The research purposes to prove the hypothesis of research there is a positive correlation between top brand image with the decision of students choosing BSI Academy. To find out how much influence BSI's top brand image on the decision of students chose the Academy of BSI, used statistical analysis is based on data obtained through questionnaires measured using Spearman Rank correlation and coefficient of determination. Based on the research that the respondents to BSI's top brand image is a good, which is indicated by a value of 3.70. And from the findings that the decision of the respondents chose the Academy BSI is good, which is indicated by a value of 3.44.Results of Spearman Rank correlation coefficient is rs = 1.000, indicating that there is a strong and direct relationship between these two variables, the results of the calculation of determination coefficient of 100%, meaning if BSI's top brand image both the number of students who choose academy BSI will be increase. Keywords : Brand Image, Top Brand, Students Decision .


Abstract This article draws on the Students Completing Schooling Project, conducted in Australia, which has developed an account of early school leaving though listening to how 209 young people made sense of their experiences of leaving school. In this study, we were keen to understand the way young people deliberate upon how schooling fits into their plans for living a life: for 'becoming somebody'. We propose understanding early school leaving as a tactical manoeuvre and part of the complex process of identity formation. Our interview material indicates that a powerful 'interactive trouble' contributes to the non-completion of school and involves underestimating the demands of private life, especially for those living in poverty.


The CONNECT European project that started in February 2009 aims at dropping the interoperability barrier faced by today's distributed systems. It does so by adopting a revolutionary approach to the seamless networking of digital systems, that is, synthesizing on the fly the connectors via which networked systems communicate.  CONNECT then investigates formal foundations for connectors together with associated automated support for learning, reasoning about and adapting the interaction behavior of networked systems.


Flexible electronics are increasingly finding commercial applications ranging from wearable activity tracking watches, rollable displays, foldable smartphones, and biometrics. There is an acceleration of effort in the research and development of additively printed electronics on flexible substrates. Aside from device flexibility, the usage of flexible electronics leads to weight and bulk miniaturization of the product leading to compact and sleek devices. In our previous works, we have successfully studied the effect of mechanical stresses on flexible batteries and their integration into the flexible format via battery lamination. However, in addition to the battery, the battery charging circuit is a key component that must be transferred from a rigid PCB to a flexible format. This study aims to employ electrically conductive ink to print a linear battery charging circuit on a flexible polyimide substrate using different additive printing technologies, namely, aerosol jet printing and direct ink writing (DIW). In aerosol jet printing, both the ultrasonic (AJU) and pneumatic atomization (AJP) technologies have been used for depositing ink, and their subsequent results have been compared. COTS have to be attached to the circuit using electronically conductive adhesives (ECA). The flexible charging circuit has been compared for the print platforms of aerosol-jet printing and direct-write during charging-discharge cycling of the circuit.


Systematic data from a multidisciplinary clinical assessment of a large series of females with Rett syndrome (RS; n=87) is presented. Participants' ages ranged from 2 years 1 month to 44 years 10 months. Areas assessed included oromotor skills, feeding problems, growth, breathing abnormalities, mobility, postural abnormalities and joint deformities, epilepsy, hand use and stereotypies, self‐care, and cognitive and communication skills. Many previously reported trends in the presentation of RS over time were confirmed, notably the increasingly poor growth and near pervasiveness of fixed joint deformities and scoliosis in adulthood. In contrast, there was a slight trend towards improved autonomic function in adulthood, whereas feeding difficulties increased into middle childhood and then reached a plateau. Improvements in mobility into adolescence were followed by a decline in those skills in adulthood. Levels of dependency were high, confirming findings from previous studies. Despite the presence of repetitive hand movements, a range of hand‐use skills was seen in individuals of all ages. Cognitive and communication skills were limited, but there was little evidence of deterioration of these abilities with age. These findings confirm that RS is not a degenerative condition and indicate that intervention and support to maintain and increase motor skills, daily living skills, and cognitive and communicative functioning are appropriate targets for individuals with RS.


Over the past few months, particle physics experiments have yielded a crop of events that seem to conflict with standard theory. Only one of these anomalies has been published so far; the others have been disseminated only at conferences or via pervasive rumor. But they are attracting extraordinary attention. Theorists, long starved for surprising new results, are hailing them as possible glimpses of the next great theory of particles and forces—in particular, a theory called supersymmetry, which could provide a unified explanation for all the quantum forces and for the range of particle masses. But some physicists caution that these anomalies might be no more than statistical fluctuations or experimental glitches.


In Parkinson's disease oxidative stress and calcium-induced excitotoxicity have been considered important mechanisms leading to cell death for decades, but the factors that make some neurons vulnerable to neurodegeneration while others remain resistant are not fully understood. Studies of the disorder in animal models suggest that the voltage-gated calcium channel subtype CaV1.3 has a role in making neurons susceptible to neurodegeneration and support earlier work in post-mortem human brain that suggested loss of calcium buffering capacity in neurons correlated with areas of neuronal loss in the substantia nigra of parkinsonian brain. This study examined expression of CaV1 subtypes and the calcium-binding proteins calbindin, calmodulin and calreticulin in areas vulnerable and resistant to neurodegeneration in Parkinson's disease, in brain from neurologically normal individuals and patients with Parkinson's disease. In control brain the expression of a specific CaV1 subtype or distribution of each calcium-binding protein did not associate with those regions prone to neurodegeneration in Parkinson's disease. Whereas, alterations in the amount of both CaV1 subtypes and the calcium-binding proteins were found throughout the brain in Parkinson's disease. Some changes reflected the cell loss seen in Parkinson's disease, whereas others represented altered levels of cellular expression, which as they occurred in the absence of cell loss could not be explained as solely compensatory to the neurodegeneration. The finding of increased CaV1.3 subtype expression in the cerebral cortex of early stage Parkinson's disease, before the appearance of pathological changes, supports the view that disturbed calcium homeostasis is an early feature of Parkinson's disease and not just a compensatory consequence to the neurodegenerative process. This interpretation is supported further by the finding that the ratio of CaV1 subtypes differed throughout the brain in patients with Parkinson's disease compared with control subjects, in favour of an increased use of CaV1.3, which would add to the metabolic burden for cells that rely on this CaV1 subtype for electrical activity and could therefore render specific neuronal populations more vulnerable to neurodegeneration.


The creep strain recovery in steels is a material phenomenon of the time-dependent recovery of creep strain after unloading. Effects of the recovery has been commonly neglected or considered insignificant when designing steel components or structures. However, a different mechanism of the structural creep strain recovery, which affects the lifetime of the component, can be identified by nonlinear finite element analyses. The aim of this paper is to analyse this structural creep strain recovery mechanism, which can take place under the cyclic thermal and uniaxial tensile loads, and its impact on the structural integrity. It is identified that the mechanism can occur within a peak dwell due to dwell stress relaxations of thermally induced stresses for a certain type of cyclic thermal and mechanical load condition. Further analyses and discussions are provided to investigate the root cause of the mechanism. Various tensile load conditions with a dwell at the peak thermal load are analysed to define factors influencing the structural creep recovery mechanism, and to investigate how the mechanism affects the lifetime of the component. Practical problems and appropriate methods for estimating creep-fatigue damage associated with the mechanism are discussed. From the investigations, it is concluded that the structural creep recovery mechanism during the peak dwell may significantly increases the plastic strain during unloading phase, leading to a creep ratchetting behaviour of the structure.


Abstract This study establishes the stylized facts on household balance sheets in South Korea and empirically investigates their macroeconomic implications based on the concept of 'wealthy hand-to-mouth (HtM)' households that hold little liquid wealth with owning large amount of illiquid assets. Using a household-level panel data for the period of 2000–2014, we find that (1) there are neither deleveraging of household debts nor a sharp decline in house price even during the financial crisis, (2) run-up in household debt in 2000s is led by high-income group, (3) regardless of net worth level, wealth is highly concentrated on illiquid assets such as housing and real estate, (4) the share of wealthy HtM households is very high compared to the cases of other advanced countries. We estimate the marginal propensity to consume out of a transitory shock and find that the consumption response of HtM households is larger compared to the non-credit-constrained group, posing a threat to macroeconomic stability. Using discrete choice models with fixed effects, we also find that a household that acquire more real estate assets is more likely to become wealthy HtM when its income is relatively lower or its indebtedness is relatively higher. We discuss the characteristics of HtM households and the role of macroprudential policy.


The creation of the planet Earth together with the flora and fauna culminates with the process of creating man in the image of God. But that image man defiled with sin. This has resulted in the separation of creation from the Creator and the creation of various crises, including ecological crises. Accordingly, the topic of ecology is increasingly relevant in our time, and many representatives of the Protestant and Evangelical Christian Churches throughout history have spoken about the importance of ecology. In our time, that topic was discussed 2010. at the Third Lausanne Congress for the Evangelization of the World in Cape Town. Since the congress gathered a large number of representatives of evangelical churches around the world, the position presented in the form of a document is also a view of ecology from the prism of evangelical Christianity.
Since the love of God, among other things, is expressed in the love of God's creation, this article first analyzes the relationship between theology and ecology. After that, the discussion is about how the biblical record of creation should inform and shape the relationship of evangelical Christians toward the Earth. The third part of the article deals with the issue of "ecological footprint" at the world level but also looks at where is Croatia in all this. The fourth part of the article brings an overview of ecology from the prism of Protestant and evangelical churches, while the fifth part discusses the challenges of today and offers two directions: one is materialistic-humanistic, and the other is Protestant-evangelical. The article concludes that Christians as children of God are called to do the will of the Heavenly Father and to be the example and light in today's egocentric world. Ecological crises are directly correlated with the crisis of morality, but equally, all activities carried out to preserve the environment without changing human nature and consequently his habits, achieve only short-term results without fundamental changes. Only by changing man himself and his repentance can he become responsible in his ethical approach to the environment that surrounds him


The rigid MPI programming model and batch scheduling dominate high-performance computing. While clouds brought new levels of elasticity into the world of computing, supercomputers still suffer from low resource utilization rates. To enhance supercomputing clusters with the benefits of serverless computing, a modern cloud programming paradigm for pay-as-you-go execution of stateless functions, we present rFaaS, the first RDMA-aware Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) platform. With hot invocations and decentralized function placement, we overcome the major performance limitations of FaaS systems and provide low-latency remote invocations in multi-tenant environments. We evaluate the new serverless system through a series of microbenchmarks and show that remote functions execute with negligible performance overheads. We demonstrate how serverless computing can bring elastic resource management into MPI-based high-performance applications. Overall, our results show that MPI applications can benefit from modern cloud programming paradigms to guarantee high performance at lower resource costs.


This study examined the effects of integrated feedback on students' writing achievement. Then, it further investigated the attitude of student towards the implementation of integrated feedback on writing. Twenty students from one class were used as a sample group (intact group) to participate in this study. So the convenience sampling was used to select the participants. Research instruments consisted of integrated feedback model, pretest and posttest, and semi-structure interview questions. The participants did the pretest at the first week of the study. Later on, they were required to write four paragraph writing tasks and all of them were assessed and given feedback. Then they were required to do posttest on week 14. The following week was reserved for in-depth interview. The writing achievement of students was analyzed by Wilcox-Signed Rank Test. Week 15 was reserved for interviewing and the results were analyzed by content analysis. The results demonstrated that students improved their writing after they cooperated with the integrated feedback approach. Interviewing results revealed that they had positive attitude towards implementing integrated feedback in improving their writing skill.


BiFeO3, BiFe0.9Ti0.1O3 and BiFe0.9Ti0.05O3 ceramics were prepared by solid state reactions and were compared in electrical and dielectric properties. The resistivity of BiFe0.9Ti0.05O3 was 1.3×1012 Ω cm, which was about two and a half orders of magnitude higher than that of BiFeO3. and three times higher than that of BiFe0.9Ti0.1O3. The dielectric loss of BiFe0.9Ti0.05O3 was 0.1 and 0.02 at 100Hz and 1MHz, respectively. These phenomena can be explained base on the decrease of oxygen vacancies VO•• and defect complexes between the ferrum vacancies VFe and oxygen vacancies VO•• in the ceramics.


This paper presents a recent shake table experiment on two three-story steel frame structures with controllable damage. The performance and accuracy of SnowFort, a wireless infrastructure monitoring system, were tested. By analyzing the data, we show that this new system achieves the same accuracy as the wired sensing units. In addition, a structural damage detection algorithm based on Continuous Wavelet Transform was validated based on the experimental data. doi: 10.12783/SHM2015/143


Micronutrient malnutrition cannot be eradicated, but the elimination and control of iron, vitamin A and iodine deficiencies and their health-related consequences as public health problems are currently the targets of global programmes. Remarkable progress is occurring in the control of goitre and xerophthalmia, but iron-deficiency anaemia (IDA) has been less responsive to prevention and control efforts. Subclinical consequences of micronutrient deficiencies, i.e. "hidden hunger", include compromised immune functions that increase the risk of morbidity and mortality, impaired cognitive development and growth, and reduced reproductive and work capacity and performance. The implications are obvious for human health and national and global economic and social development. Mixes of affordable interventions are available which, when appropriately adapted to resource availability and context, are proven to be effective. These include both food-based interventions, particularly fortification programmes, such as salt iodization, and use of concentrated micronutrient supplements. A mix of accompanying programmes for infection control, community participation, including education, communication and information exchange, and private sector involvement are lessons learned for overcoming deterrents and sustaining progress towards elimination.


Background: Excessive weight gain during pregnancy is associated with short-term obstetric outcomes (gestational diabetes, pregnancy-induced hypertension, increased risk of cesarean delivery, preterm labor, increased postpartum weight retention) and short-term neonatal outcomes (macrosomic or large-for-gestational-age infants) but few adequately powered randomized controlled trials have evaluated the efficacy of a controlled exercise program during pregnancy in order to prevent that.
Objective: This study examines whether a controlled exercise program during pregnancy could decrease the proportion of women who exceed the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommendations for gestational weight gains and, therefore, the consequences arising from that, and increase the proportion of women who return to pregravid weights by 6 months post-partum compared to those that just attend to standard care and receive general counseling.
Methods and study design: This study is a randomized, controlled, open-label clinical trial. A sample of 338 pregnant women will enter into the study through a non-probabilistic consecutive recruitment. Participants will be pregnant, normal-weight, overweight and obese women whose age will be between 18 and 40 years. Participants will be randomly assigned within the IOM weight category (normal-weight, overweight or obese) to standard care (n=169) or to the controlled exercise program (n=169) to prevent excessive gestational weight gain. The intervention includes 2 weekly sessions: one on land (gym hall) and one as an aquatic based activity (small pool tank). Apart from that, women can go for a fast walking on flat surface during 30 minutes the rest of the week that will have to be documented to the research team. The women's weight will be measured at the 6th month after delivery


The article presents the results of study of association of risk of development and clinical course of cardiomyopathies with polymorphic variants of genes ACE, GSTM1, IL8 and IL10. The purpose of research was to find out molecular genetic markers of risk of development and clinical course of various types of cardiomyopathies. The analysis used the DNA samples extracted from lymphocytes of peripheral venous blood of patients with cardiomyopathies (N = 89) and control group (N = 426). The standard analysis techniques of polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism were applied to detect polymorphic loci of genes candidates. It is established that genotype of DD-polymorphic locus of I/DgeneACE is a marker of development of ischemic cardiomyopathy. The allele D is a marker of development of increased rate of manifestation of extra-systoles, growth of inter-ventricular septum and reduction of fraction of discharge in patients with cardiomyopathies.


Enterprise risk management (ERM) has gradually become a celebrated risk management practice by corporations in the U.S. and worldwide. However, evidence on the value of ERM was mostly from U.S. insurers and other financial institutions. We provide some of the first evidence for the value of ERM for nonfinancial firms and in the international markets, in the meanwhile arguably mitigating a number of sample-related biases commonly seen in this type of studies. Using a unique sample of listed Chinese nonfinancial State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) that were stipulated to implement ERM by a set of regulatory guidelines in 2006, we show that ERM significantly increases firm value. This result is robust after accounting for China's unique institutional background and differences in firm characteristics between the ERM and the non-ERM firms. Our analysis using a sample of all listed Chinese nonfinancial firms provides similar results albeit slightly weaker effects.


Low-income populations are at increased risk for experiencing negative hurricane exposures and food insecurity. However, little is known regarding how pre-hurricane food insecurity experiences are related to youth hurricane exposure. This study examined the types of hurricane disaster exposures low-income, ethnic minority adolescents experienced during Hurricane Harvey and examined the association between food insecurity and hurricane exposure. Low-income adolescents (n = 185) were recruited from a Houston-area school district. Two days before the hurricane, food insecurity was assessed. Adolescents with at least one affirmative answer on the 9-item USDA Child Food Security Survey Module were classified as food insecure. Adolescents self-reported hurricane exposure three weeks post-hurricane using both the National Child Traumatic Stress Network Hurricane and Assessment Referral Tool and Survey of Hurricane Katrina Evacuees. Affirmative answers to lacking access to food, water, or medicine, being rescued, home damage, and displacement were each given a score of one and summed to create an overall hurricane exposure score. A covariate-adjusted linear regression model regressed overall hurricane exposure onto food insecurity. Separate covariate-adjusted logistic regression models were performed where each individual hurricane exposure was regressed onto food insecurity. Prior to the hurricane, 46% of adolescents experienced food insecurity and 43% experienced hurricane exposure. Prehurricane food insecurity (p = 0.004) and being foreign born (p = 0.033) were associated with increased hurricane exposure. Adolescents who experienced food insecurity had 132% higher odds of lacking access to fresh water (p = 0.047) and 105% higher odds of lacking access to food (p = 0.034) during the hurricane. Food insecurity and immigrant status appear to be at-risk indicators for hurricane exposure. Schools serving underserved adolescents could consider assessing food security and immigration status as part of disaster preparedness programs.


Many international and national authorities recommend that cardiovascular risk assess- ment using multivariate risk scores be used to identify individuals at high risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). This approach is likely to assure that resources in developing countries are allocated to those who need it most. However, not many developing countries have implemented this approach and different countries have varying progresses in adopting the concept. While many developing countries solely described estimated cardiovascular risk by applying existing CVD risk scores to their population's cross-sectional data, a number of countries have validated and recalibrated existing risk scores and only a few have developed new risk scores specific to their populations. To enhance the adop - tion of such a policy in developing countries, new CVD risk prediction charts for low- and medium-resource settings were developed and endorsed by the WHO and International Society of Hypertension. However, a number of issues need to be addressed, including development of population-specific risk scores, recalibration of available risk scores and uncertainty over cost-effectiveness of CVD risk assessment in developing countries. Although this high risk approach might represent an effective and practical strategy for developing countries, a complementary population-based approach is also needed to maximize benefits for CVD prevention.


In migrating production workloads to cloud, enterprises often face the daunting task of evolving monolithic applications toward a microservice architecture. At IBM, we developed a tool called Mono2Micro to assist with this challenging task. Mono2Micro performs spatio-temporal decomposition, leveraging well-defined business use cases and runtime call relations to create functionally cohesive partitioning of application classes. Our preliminary evaluation of Mono2Micro showed promising results. How well does Mono2Micro perform against other decomposition techniques, and how do practitioners perceive the tool? This paper describes the technical foundations of Mono2Micro and presents results to answer these two questions. To answer the first question, we evaluated Mono2Micro against four existing techniques on a set of open-source and proprietary Java applications and using different metrics to assess the quality of decomposition and tool's efficiency. Our results show that Mono2Micro significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in specific metrics well-defined for the problem domain. To answer the second question, we conducted a survey of twenty-one practitioners in various industry roles who have used Mono2Micro. This study highlights several benefits of the tool, interesting practitioner perceptions, and scope for further improvements. Overall, these results show that Mono2Micro can provide a valuable aid to practitioners in creating functionally cohesive and explainable microservice decompositions.


Abstract Two phenomenological models, namely the compressible Ising model and Landau model, have been used to analyze the specific heat and the dielectric constant data, respectively for the pure and Nd3+ doped LaBGeO5 (LBG) crystals. The critical exponent of the specific heat was extracted in both ferroelectric and paraelectric phases of the crystals studied here within the temperature intervals of The extracted values of the critical exponent were then used to predict some thermodynamic quantities such as the enthalpy, entropy, and the Gibbs free energy. Regarding the analysis of dielectric constant data within the framework of the Landau theory, the observed values of the birefringence were associated with the order parameter below the transition temperature Tc. The Landau coefficients and were determined. Our results indicate a second-order phase transition mechanism.


The JET experimental campaign has focused on studies in support of the ITER physics basis. An overview of the results obtained is given both for the reference ITER scenario, the ELMy H-mode, and for advanced scenarios which in JET are based on Internal Transport Barriers. JET studies for the ELMy H-mode have been instrumental for the definition of ITER-FEAT. Positive elongation and current scaling in the ITER scaling law have been confirmed, but the observed density scaling fits better a two term (core and edge) model. Significant progress in neo-classical tearing mode limits has been made showing that ITER operation seems to be optimised. Effective helium pumping and divertor enrichment is found to be well within ITER requirements. Target asymmetries and Hisotope retention are well simulated by modelling codes taking into account drift flows in the scrape-off plasmas. Striking improvements in fuelling effectiveness have been found with the new high field pellet launch facility. Good progress has been made on scenarios for achieving good confinement at high densities, both with RI modes and with high field side pellets. Significant development of advanced scenarios in view of their application to ITER has been achieved. Integrated advanced scenarios are in good progress with edge pressure control (impurity radiation). An access domain has been explored showing in particular that the power threshold increases with magnetic field but can be significantly reduced when Lower Hybrid current drive is used to produce target plasma with negative shear. The role of ion pressure peaking on MHD has been well documented. Lack of sufficient additional heating power and interaction with the septum at high beta prevents assessment of beta limits (steady plasmas achieved with βN up to 2.6). Plasmas with non-inductive current (INI/Ip=60%), well aligned with plasma current, high beta and good confinement have also been obtained.


Hickle, Mark D. Ph.D., Purdue University, December 2016. Synthesis, Design, and Fabrication Techniques for Reconfigurable Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Filters. Major Professor: Dimitrios Peroulis. As wireless communication becomes increasingly ubiquitous, the need for radio receivers which can dynamically adjust to their operating environment grows more urgent. In order to realize reconfigurable receivers, tunable RF front-end components are needed. This dissertation focuses on the theory, design, and implementation of reconfigurable microwave and millimeter-wave filters for use in such receivers. First, a theoretical framework is developed for absorptive bandstop filters, a new class of bandstop filters which overcomes some of the limitations of traditional tunable bandstop filters caused by the use of lossy tunable resonators. This theory is used in conjunction with silicon-micromachining fabrication technology to realize the first ever tunable bandstop filter at W-Band frequencies, as well as a state-of-the-art Ka-band tunable bandstop filter. The problem of bandwidth variation in tunable filters is then addressed. Widelytunable filters often suffer from variations in bandwidth, excluding them from many applications which require constant bandwidth. A new method for reducing the bandwidth variation of filters using low-loss evanescent-mode cavity resonators is presented, and this technique is used to realize up to 90% reduction of bandwidth variation in octave-tunable bandstop filters. Lastly, a new differential coupling structure for evanescent-mode cavity resonators is developed, enabling the design of fully-balanced and balanced-to-unbalanced (balun) filters. An octave-tunable 3-pole bandpass balun filter using this coupling structure is presented. The balun filter has excellent amplitude and phase balance, resulting in common-mode rejection of greater than 40 dB across its octave tuning range.


Surveys were conducted at the International Cacao Genebank, Trinidad to investigate the damage done to cacao pods by the Neotropical Red Squirrel (Sciurus granatensis). The ratio of ripe cacao pods to the number of pods with signs of squirrel attack was determined. The rodents were found to attack the pod on its abaxial surface, by nibbling oval holes through the pod wall to extract the beans and feed on the pulp. The majority of damaged pods was located in areas of the fields where ripe pods were densely distributed. The total number of ripe pods bore a significant correlation to the number attacked by squirrels (P<0.0001). Correlations between the percentage of squirrel attack and ripe pod hardness, and pod length as an indicator of size, respectively were not significant. There was no relationship between the percentage of pod damage due to squirrel attack and the genetic grouping of the surveyed accessions, and pod wall colour, respectively.


I am delighted to have an opportunity to respond to Harold Hongju Koh's excellent Childress Lecture of October 3, 2001, at the Saint Louis University School of Law. It has been my great pleasure to know Harold since we were young lawyers in the 1970's, and most especially during the 1996-97 academic year when we were together on the Law Faculty at Oxford. Now, as always,my first and soundest instinct is to associate myself fully with Harold. I embrace his commitment to human rights at home and abroad, and applaud his dream for the globalization of freedom. Great American lawyers like Harold have been concerned with what we now know as international law even before 1789, the momentous year that marked not only the entry into force of the U.S. Constitution, George Washington's first administration, the French Revolution and, perhaps a little less dramatically, the denomination and delineation of international law, a new term created by the fertile imagination of that Oxford graduate and utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham. Harold's commitment to a globalization of freedom belongs, I believe, to a very important part of our international law tradition that I sometimes call American universalism, though it might also be more controversially denoted naturalism. Whatever the nomenclature, this tradition notably includes the nineteenth century American advocates of an international court David Low Dodge, Noah Worcester, William Ladd and Elihu Burritt whose efforts saw fruition in Woodrow Wilson's World Court. Lately, thumbing through James Brown Scott's 1922 Cases on International Law, it struck me that the preface to this influential casebook might not only serve as a useful illustration of what I mean by the American universalist tradition in international law, but also highlight Harold's own commitment to high principle. The preface to Scott's Cases looks back on the style and substance of the first century and a half of America's acquaintance with international law, looks forward to developments that took place in the American perception and practice of international law in the next tumultuous eight decades and, of course, reflects the sentiments of an influential member of the American legal profession in the early 1920's, a time when we were recuperating from the military, political, economic and legal exhaustions of World War I and the Peace of Versailles. What shines forth from the preface to Scott's Cases is a commitment to international law as a form of fundamental law. Scott sees it as universal justice, common to all civilized nations that can be molded but not destroyed by the particular practices of states. Scott's commitment to international law as fundamental justice ties his work to the great nineteenth century American universalist tradition of international law, distinguishes it from the sterile positivism and strident policy science that came to characterize so much of American international law thinking in the middle and later twentieth century, and links it to the emerging recommitment of modern American lawyers like Harold Hongju Koh to international law as a universal law, rather than as a mere politics of preference or a shallow reckoning of state consent. Let me proceed by illuminating two basic presumptions about international law that are shared by Harold and Scott and, I think, by other American universalists. First, is a belief that international law is real law because it is practiced as such by judges and lawyers, making international law just as real as municipal law. Second, is a belief that international law is, at its foundation, the same for all peoples; that there are elements of a universal civilization shared by all humanity no matter what their discrete histories or societies.


In this work, we consider a distributed beam coordination problem, where a collection of arrays are interconnected by a certain topology. The beamformers employ an adaptive diffusion strategy to compute the beamforming weight vectors by relying solely on cooperation with their local neighbors. We analyze the mean-square-error (MSE) performance of the proposed strategy, including its transient and steady-state behavior. Simulation results support the findings that the MSE performance improves uniformly across the network relative to non-cooperative designs.


Volume 1: Circumscriptions: Classic Essays On Husserl's Phenomenology Volume 2: The Cutting Edge: Phenomenological Method, Philosophical Logic, Ontology and Philosophy of Science


To lure potential customers to buy a holiday away from home, most marketers incorporate certain semantic and pragmatic features into their promotional material: words and images are chosen with utmost care. The present study is conducted in order to reveal these semantic and pragmatic features and equally, to show how they highlight the concept of "magic". This research is based on responses from six different interviews in which the interviewees had to describe twelve key words and key phrases taken from twelve tourism advertisements, in and out of context. Secondary material further consists of publications dealing with the areas of linguistics, advertising and tourism. The conclusion of this research will reveal that the impact of tourism advertisements depends on agreement between various semantic and pragmatic elements rather than implementation of individual semantic and pragmatic features per se. In other words, all the semantic and pragmatic elements (linguistic and non-linguistic content) have to reinforce one another, acknowledging common ground and meeting the reader's pre-existing assumptions. Hence, for an advertisement to avoid ambiguity it has to be relevance-governed, delivering just what is necessary to ensure that the reader is able to decode the message: that one should leave the ordinary and travel to a temporary, yet seemingly magical holiday destination.


Irrigated alfalfa production is gaining interest because of the growing number of dairies in the semi-arid U.S. Central Great Plains and its longstanding superior profitability compared to other alternative crops grown in the region. Irrigation requirements for alfalfa are great because of alfalfa's long growing season, so it is important that irrigation be utilized efficiently in this region where water is pumped from the declining Ogallala aquifer. A three-year yield study (2005-2007) was conducted at the Kansas State University Northwest Research-Extension Center in Colby, Kansas, to evaluate production of subsurface drip irrigated alfalfa on a deep productive silt loam soil. Three irrigation levels (randomized complete block design of three replications) designed to replace 70%, 85%, or 100% of the calculated crop evapotranspiration minus precipitation were compared in terms of alfalfa yield, irrigation amount, plant-available soil water, crop water use, and crop water productivity. Alfalfa yield was also evaluated at three perpendicular horizontal distances from the 1.5 m spaced driplines (0, 0.38, and 0.76 m). Annual alfalfa yields were unaffected by irrigation level, averaging 20.8 Mg ha-1 while irrigation amounts averaged 396, 484, and 586 mm for the 70%, 80%, and 100% ET irrigation levels, respectively. Seasonal crop water use was significantly greater with increased irrigation, but only by an average difference of 137 mm among irrigation levels as compared to the 190 mm difference in irrigation amount. Crop water productivity was significantly greater with decreased levels of irrigation, with values of 23.5, 22.0, and 20.4 kg ha-1 mm-1 for the 70%, 85%, and 100% ET irrigation levels, respectively. No significant differences existed in alfalfa yield with respect to horizontal perpendicular distance from the dripline with the exception of the 0.76 m distance, which yielded less in the drier and warmer year 2006. Large and significant decreases in alfalfa yield and crop water productivity occurred with successive harvests, with the first harvest having 272% and 196% of the fifth harvest yield and crop water productivity, respectively. Plant-available soil water decreased as the season progressed for all irrigation levels, but to a much greater extent for the 70% ET level, averaging at the time of the fifth seasonal harvest only 41% and 54% of the soil water for the 85% and 100% ET irrigation levels, respectively. These large seasonal decreases in soil water for the 70% ET irrigation level would be anticipated to be of even greater concern in extended multiple-year drought periods. This fact coupled with the 102 mm reduction in seasonal irrigation amount for the 85% ET irrigation level compared to the 100% ET irrigation level leads to a recommendation of scheduling replacement of 85% of the ET minus precipitation when subsurface drip irrigating alfalfa in the Central Great Plains. This study was conducted in a region with deep silt loam soils where approximately 60% of the average annual precipitation occurs during the summer months. Additionally, 125 mm of fall irrigation was applied during the dormant fall season to reduce root intrusion and rodent damage. These combined facts need to be considered when applying the results of this study to other regions and when using different irrigation management strategies.


Current systems are very often based on large-scale, unpredictable and unreliable infrastructures. However, users of these systems increasingly require services with timeliness properties. This creates a difficult-to-solve contradiction with regard to the adequate time model: should it be synchronous, or asynchronous? In this paper, we propose an architectural construct and programming model which address this problem. We assume the existence of a component that is capable of executing timely functions, however asynchronous the rest of the system may be. We call this component the "timely computing base", and it can be used by the other components to execute a set of simple but crucial time-related services. We also show how to use it to build dependable and timely applications exhibiting varying degrees of timeliness assurance, under several synchrony models.


Specific cellular components including products of phosphatidylinositol (PI) metabolism play an important role as signaling molecules in stomatal responses to environmental signals. In this study, pharmacological inhibitors of a set of cellular components, including PI4-kinase (PI4K) and PI3K, were used to investigate stomatal closure in response to CO2, darkness, and abscisic acid (ABA). Treatment with PAO, a specific inhibitor of PI4K, specifically inhibited the stomatal response to CO2 compared with that to darkness and ABA. In contrast, treatment with LY294002, a PI3K-specific inhibitor, specifically inhibited the stomatal response to darkness compared with that to CO2 and ABA. The specific inhibitory effects of PAO and LY294002 were also observed as changes in the spatial density of dot-like structures labeled by green fluorescent protein-tagged PATROL1, a protein that controls stomatal aperture possibly via regulation of H+-ATPase amount in guard cell plasma membranes. Our results suggest an important role for PI4K and PI3K in the CO2 and darkness signal transduction pathways, respectively, that mediate PATROL1 dynamics.


Glaucoma describes a group of potentially blinding ocular disorders, afflicting c. 60 million people worldwide. Of these, c. 8 million are bilaterally blind, estimated to increase to 11 million by 2020. The central event in glaucoma is slow and irreversible damage of retinal ganglion cells, responsible for carrying visual information from the retina to the brain (Figure 1). Intraocular pressure (IOP) is a risk factor for glaucoma1–4, and significant, sustained IOP reduction is unequivocally beneficial in the clinical management of glaucoma patients2, 3, 5. Unfortunately, we do not understand how elevated IOP leads to the loss of retinal ganglion cells.Copyright © 2012 by ASME


It is quite possible that no piece of music has ever generated the conversation and debate as 4'33." Written in 1952, this three-movement piece, in which the performer makes no audible sounds, opened up a brand new debate over what elements constitute music. Many musicians, disgusted at the lack of sound, have dismissed Cage's landmark piece as a joke, something Cage himself was fearful of. It is assumed that a piece like 4'33" is a mindless stunt designed to bring attention to a composer while undermining the Western music tradition. Instead of advancing musical ideas, 4'33" has taken away all musical ideas—it has been stripped completely of sound. The question of whether or not 4'33" can be considered music will always be debated. However, that question should not be the focal point of the piece. Instead, the listener should focus on what Cage was trying to do. 4'33" was not an attempt to write a landmark piece on the scale of Bach, Mozart or Beethoven. Instead, Cage's aim was to cause his audience to focus—not on the music flowing from the stage, but on the sounds around them.


When subjected to stress, plants produce reac- tive oxygen species (ROS) as a part of the defense res- ponse. The oxidative response is also used to degrade organic pollutants. Hairy roots of Helianthus annuus (sunflower) are shown to oxidize oxytetracycline (OTC) through the action of the ROS released to the nutrient medium by the hairy root cultures. Methyl jasmonate (MeJA) elicits ROS formation in the hairy root cultures. The activities of the antioxidant enzymes, ascorbate peroxidase (APX), catalase (CAT), and guaiacol perox- idase (GPX), are reported for hairy root cultures treated with increasing concentrations of MeJA. A bioassay using Enterococcus hirae as the test microorganism demon- strates the root-catalyzed oxidation process results in conversion of OTC into product(s) devoid of antibiotic activity. Direct evidence for putative ROS oxidation of OTC is obtained by mass spectrometry (MS) and HPLC/MS showing first quinone formation followed possibly by ring cleavage, which disrupts UV absorption and destroys


To develop and pilot a tool that assesses the infrastructure and policy workplace environment characteristics that may influence employee healthy eating and physical activity behaviours. A checklist was developed with reference to prior tools and piloted at eight worksites. Piloting of the tool demonstrated that it was generally feasible to use, took 1-2 hours to complete and appeared sensitive to differences between workplace environment characteristics. Refinement of the tool occurred after piloting. The final 21-item checklist contains sub-scores capturing policy, infrastructure, healthy eating and physical activity characteristics. This new checklist overcomes some limitations of pre-existing tools as it explicitly considers policy and is short, inexpensive and can be used by workplaces for self-assessment and by health promotion professionals in evaluation studies or as an intervention tool.


Five patients with early clinically occult squamous cell carcinoma of the bronchus were reviewed with respect to previous sputum cytological examinations and clinical investigations. In one patient, selective bronchial washings demonstrated the site of the tumour and the patient was successfully operated. In the remaining four patients the interval between cytological diagnosis and radiological, bronchoscopical and/or histological demonstration of the tumour varied between 2 months and 9 years. It seems possible that the duration of bronchogenic carcinoma in situ may be of similar magnitude as that of carcinoma in situ of the cervix (10-15 years). The considerably higher frequency of early stromal invasion after semi-serial sectioning of carcinoma in situ of the bronchus compared with carcinoma in situ of the cervix is emphasized. The results stress that a diagnostic delay of several years is not acceptable, as the possibility of successful treatment will be greatly diminished in such cases.


. A baseline electroless deposition processes for Cu on CNTs has been developed. This process results in the formation of copper particles of few tens of nanometres. Using this process in a CNT loaded solution it is possible to obtain a homogeneous distribution of CNTs and Cu, even for volume fraction of CNTs as high as 17 v%. By the application of wet chemical processing it is possible to penetrate the natural felt-like structure of the CNTs and to fill the gaps with copper particles. Variations of the baseline deposition process have been established, allowing adding small amount of nickel on the CNT prior to the copper deposition to strengthen the interfacial bonding between matrix and CNTs. Hot pressing of the highly CNT loaded metal matrix composites has been developed; it allows producing bulk material that can be handled. The microstructure of these materials has been investigated and samples have been machined for further testing, i.e. mechanical characterization and thermo-physical properties.


Excerpt] Retraining and upgrading the skills of incumbent workers and providing training to new labor force entrants, dislocated workers, and unemployed persons can help increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the workforce. Funding for occupational training comes from many sources — the federal government, state and local governments, private employers, philanthropic foundations, and individual workers themselves. This report examines occupational training to present a preliminary picture of the total spending on job training in the United States.


The critical discourse analysis (CDA) is now a major tool for analyzing the news articles and reports. This paper uses CDA to analyze the news articles and reports concerning the Diaoyu/Senkaku issues. It aims to help English language teachers using CDA to create and improve the critical language awareness of students, and how discourse results from the social structure and power relations that serves different power groups. Through the analysis of articles of Diaoyu/ Senkaku issues from Chinese newspaper the People's Daily and Japanese newspaper the Japan Times, it is clear that these two newspapers, which have two different political backgrounds, share some obvious similarities in terms of formatting. However, the differences are of much more significant as reflected in the construction of the texts and the lexical choices, modality and process types used in expressing the different views. In English language teaching, using authentic materials, such as newspaper articles and reports, makes the skill of CDA important as a teaching tool as it may help the English language learners to create and improve their language awareness and the ideology embedded in the texts.


Working memory allows for continual updating and maintenance of information for cognitive and behavioural guidance. It provides continuity of experience and is integral to complex and adaptive human functioning. This study investigated performance on a selection of computer-based neuropsychological tests of working memory in a sample of 105 South African adults. The central aim was to examine whether demographic and computer performance variables affected performance on the computer-administered tests. Another key research question was whether commonly used tests of working memory measured domain-specific components of working memory, or tapped into domain-free executive attention. In particular, the study examined the nBack Test, which had been used extensively in international research but was not sufficiently validated in the literature. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to investigate the validity of this test. The study found that the ability to manipulate a computer mouse affected performance particularly on the timed computerised tests, and that computer ability was also related to prior experience using a computer, confidence using a computer, gender and home language. Computer mouse ability was subsequently partialed out of the analysis as a covariate. No significant main effects of computer experience, confidence, gender or home language were found when computer mouse ability was removed from the analysis. This suggested that the demographic differences in performance found on the tests may have been informed by experience and confidence using a computer rather than reflect true differences in performance between the groups. Once computer mouse ability had been partialed from the results the 2-Back condition of the n-Back Test correlated significantly with the backward condition of the Digit Span Test, the forward condition of the Spatial Span Test, and part B of the Trail Making Test around the use of complex executive attention, which provided some evidence for the n -Back Test as a measure of the executive component of working memory. However, the n-Back Test did not load onto the same factor as these tests, but it appeared that the n-Back and Digit Span Tests factored around the type of executive resource demanded by each test.


Paclitaxel (PT)-induced neurotoxicity is a significant problem associated with successful treatment of cancers. Insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) is a neurotrophic factor and plays an important role in promoting axonal growth from dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons. Whether IGF-1 has protective effects on neurite growth, cell viability, neuronal apoptosis and neuronal phenotypes in DRG neurons with PT-induced neurotoxicity is still unclear. In this study, primary cultured rat DRG neurons were used to assess the effects of IGF-1 on DRG neurons with PT-induced neurotoxicity. The results showed that PT exposure caused neurite retraction in a dose-dependent manner. PT exposure caused a decrease of cell viability and an increase in the ratio of apoptotic cells which could be reversed by IGF-1. The percentage of calcitonin gene-related peptide immunoreactive (CGRP-IR) neurons and neurofilament (NF)-200-IR neurons, mRNA, and protein levels of CGRP and NF-200 decreased significantly after treatment with PT. IGF-1 administration had protective effects on CGRP-IR neurons, but not on NF-200-IR neurons. Either extracellular signal-regulated protein kinase (ERK1/2) inhibitor PD98059 or phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3 K) inhibitor LY294002 blocked the effect of IGF-1. The results imply that IGF-1 may attenuate apoptosis to improve neuronal cell viability and promote neurite growth of DRG neurons with PT-induced neurotoxicity. Moreover, these results support an important neuroprotective role of exogenous IGF-1 on distinct subpopulations of DRG neurons which is responsible for skin sensation. The effects of IGF-1 might be through ERK1/2 or PI3 K/Akt signaling pathways. These findings provide experimental evidence for IGF-1 administration to alleviate neurotoxicity of distinct subpopulations of DRG neurons induced by PT.


Statins may exhibit significant renoprotective effects beyond their lipid-lowering capacity. Herein, the authors review data from human and animal models of renal disease as well as from studies in cultured renal cells with regard to extralipid renoprotective properties of statins. Statins may exert lipid-independent benefits against renal injury in experimental states of chronic or acute renal function impairment. These include diabetic and hypertensive glomerulosclerosis, autoimmune glomerulonephritis, ischemia/reperfusion-induced renal damage, and unilateral ureteral obstructive nephropathy. Also, statins, by reducing the synthesis of mevalonate products, inhibit the activation of Rho and Ras guanosine triphosphatases that may influence various signaling pathways involving renal inflammatory, fibrogenic, proliferative, and cell-death responses. Therefore, statins exert anti-inflammatory actions in renal tissue, prevent renal scarring, and diminish mesangial or other kidney cell-type proliferation while promoting mesangial cell apoptosis. Renal antioxidant effects with consequent endothelial function regulation of renal vasculature following statin treatment may also account for pleiotropic protection against renal injury.


BACKGROUND
The aim of this study was to compare the ability of the systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP), pulse pressure (PP), fraction PP (PPF) and mean arterial pressure (MAP) to predict progression to diabetes in non-diabetic first-degree relatives (FDRs) of patients with type 2 diabetes.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
A total of 701 non-diabetic FDRs aged 20-70 in 2003 to 2005 were followed through to 2008 for the occurrence of type 2 diabetes mellitus. At baseline and through follow-ups, participants underwent a standard 75 g 2-h oral glucose tolerance test. Prediction of progression to type 2 diabetes was assessed using area under the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves based upon measurement of PP, MAP, PPF, systolic and diastolic BP.

RESULTS
Diabetes developed in 72 participants (10.3%) during the follow-up period. The incidence of type 2 diabetes was 3.4 per 100 person years in men and 4.9 in women. Systolic and diastolic BP and MAP were related to diabetes, but PP and PPF were not. Systolic and diastolic BP and MAP have similar associations with incident diabetes. Areas under the ROC curves were 0.582 for systolic, 0.589 for diastolic, 0.589 for MAP, 0.520 for PP, and 0.468 for PPF.

CONCLUSION
These results indicate that systolic and diastolic BP are as strong as MAP in predicting progression to diabetes. Increased BP may help identify FDRs of patients with type 2 diabetes at high risk for diabetes who are candidates for BP control.


This stimulating case-study volume addresses key issues in organizational behaviour organizational change and human resource management in a range of European organizations. Its consistent emphasis is organizational change in a shifting, 'internationalizing' world and sensitivity to the impact of different cultures on the problems as they are defined, as well as on their solutions. The carefully selected cases capture realistic breadth and complexity, including firm location of 'OB' and 'HRM' themes in the context of the broader market and other issues facing the organizations concerned. The themes covered include: managing growth and 'Europeanization'; managing decline and crisis; transforming cultures; organization design; leadership, autonomy and control; and organizational learning and change.


BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE
An inability or decreased ability of spermatozoa to bind to the zona pellucida (ZP), an extracellular glycoproteinaceous matrix surrounding egg, is one of the plausible causes of idiopathic infertility. It will be clinically useful to distinguish this condition from other causes of infertility. An assay system, investigating binding of human sperm with ZP glycoprotein may prove useful in this regard. We attempted to develop a simple assay system to analyse the binding of capacitated human spermatozoa to human zona pellucida glycoprotein-3 (ZP3) using baculovirus-expressed recombinant human ZP3 coated beads.

METHODS
Recombinant baculovirus-expressed ZP3 was purified, labelled with biotin and coated on streptavidin sepharose beads. An in vitro assay system was optimized to study binding of capacitated human sperm to ZP3 coated beads.

RESULTS
A higher percentage of baculovirus-expressed recombinant human ZP3 coated beads showed significant (P<0.05) binding of capacitated human sperm as compared to beads coated with fetuin. An inhibition in the binding of sperm to ZP3 coated beads was observed in presence of cold recombinant human ZP3. Further, prior incubation of ZP3 coated beads with monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) against ZP3 but not against ZP2 resulted in the decrease in number of sperm bound to bead.

INTERPRETATION & CONCLUSION
An in vitro assay system to study the binding of human sperm to ZP3- primary sperm receptor was established, which may be useful to determine the functional competence of spermatozoa.


Dossier develops a reflection on the relationship between research, design and knowledge transfer, starting by the contributions that emerged in the conference in Rome on 19th of June on the theme "Experimenting design. Teaching and Scientific Research in Architecture Schools". The design phase is seen as specialized, experimental and innovative activity. In this context design has a high study value, and represents a consistent commitment of civil as well as ethical, because of the important socio-economic consequences. Dossier contains interviews with Presidents of several Scientific Societies who animat- ed the conference. Today Universities and Scientific Societies may constitute relevant subjects for the promotion of design research, starting from the specific competencies expressed in several fields, ranging from the experimentation to the product, design, and process innovation, and to the technology and knowledge transfer.


Unexpectedly severe winter weather, which is arguably exogenous to firm and bank fundamentals, represents a significant cash flow shock for bank-borrowing firms. Firms respond to these shocks by drawing on and increasing the size of their credit lines. Banks charge borrowers for this liquidity via increased interest rates and less borrower-friendly loan provisions. Credit line adjustments occur within one calendar quarter of the shock and persist for at least nine months. Overall, we provide evidence that bank credit lines are an important tool for managing the non-fundamental component of cash flow volatility, especially for solvent small bank borrowers.


: The authors analyse many-year data concerning the epizootological study of seven landscape-geographical regions of the Eastern Transcaucasus differing by natural conditions and the enzootic intensity. Quantitative assessment of natural nidality determined by the level (norm) of many-year indices calculated for the years of 1955--1974 are presented for each region. Flea vectors were more numerous in localities of stable enzootic manifestation; also the numbers of Meriones erythrourus (carrier rodent) was more stable than in the regions of temporary occurrence of the causative agent and those free of plague. Many-year level of the flea (X. conformis) abundance index equal to one served as the threshold value determining the territory enzooticity.


In this book Warren Fahey celebrates Australia's legacy of protest songs, lampoons, anthems and anecdotes from a hundred years of conflict between Parliament and the people, capital and labour. From the Father of Federation, Henry Parkes, to the Depression hero big Jack Lang, 'Pig Iron' Bob Menzies, Arthur ('Two Wongs don't make a White') Calwell, Job Bjelke-Petersen and Pauline Hanson, Alan Bond and Christopher Skase, Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard, the great and the eccentric are immortalised in rousing, and often scurrilous, verse. Here are tales of union warfare and political splits, strikes and blacklegs, judges and felons, racial conflict, anti-war marches, conservation, abortion and anti-uranium protests; and the eternal story of rural struggle, of the swaggie, the drover's wife and the 'broken-down squatter'. The songs are headed by a brief account of their context, recalling for the reader the long struggles for power and survival that has made up history.


Recent single-molecule studies have recognized talin as a mechanosensitive hub in focal adhesion, where its function is strongly regulated by mechanical force. For instance, at low force (below 5 pN), folded talin binds RIAM for integrin activation; whereas at high force (above 5 pN), it unfolds to activate vinculin binding for focal adhesion stabilization. Being a cytoplasmic protein, talin might interact with several cytosolic chaperones: however, the role of chaperones in talin mechanics is unknown.To address this question, we investigated the force response of a mechanically stable talin domain with a set of well-known holdase (DnaJ, DnaK, Hsp70, and Hsp40) and foldase (DnaKJE, DsbA) chaperones, using single-molecule magnetic tweezers. Our findings demonstrate that chaperone could affect adhesion proteins stability by changing their folding mechanics; while holdase chaperones reduce their unfolding force to ~6 pN, foldase chaperones shift it up to ~15 pN. Since talin is mechanically synced within 2 pN force ranges, these changes are significant in cellular condition. Furthermore, we determined the fundamental mechanism of this altered mechanical stability, where chaperones directly reshape their energy landscape: unfoldase chaperone (DnaK) decreases the unfolding barrier height from 26.8 to 21.7 kBT, while foldase chaperone (DsbA) increases it to 33.5 kBT. We reconciled our observations with eukaryotic Hsp70 and Hsp40 chaperones and observed their similar function of decreasing the talin unfolding barrier to 23.1 kBT. The quantitative mapping of this chaperone-induced talin folding landscape directly illustrates that chaperones perturb the adhesion protein stability under physiological force, thereby influencing their force-dependent interactions and adhesion dynamics.


Measurements, measurement techniques Theoretical and applied analyses of the structure of the tyre and its surface contact Tyre modelling for different kinds of working conditions Determination of model parameters, range of application of parameters and models Evaluation and verification of tyre models Applied interfacing of tyre models and multi-body-system (MBS) software Applications of tyre models in vehicle dynamics emphasizing the tyre Tyre design features and their consequences for the tyre behaviour Simulation of tyre misuse or damage Tyre behaviour and modelling for special conditions, e.g., aqua-planing, temperature changes, wear


Big data ethics involves adherence to the concepts of right and wrong behavior regarding data, especially personal data. Big Data ethics focuses on structured or unstructured data collectors and disseminators. Big data ethics is supported, at EU level, by extensive documentation, which seeks to find concrete solutions to maximize the value of big data without sacrificing fundamental human rights. The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) supports the right to privacy and the right to the protection of personal data in the respect of human dignity.


A notable reorganization of the waterfowl communities apparently took place across Eurasia during the middle to early late Miocene, when primitive and extinct anatid taxa (e.g. Mionetta) were replaced by more derived forms, including extant genera. However, little is known about the diversity of Eurasian waterfowl and their palaeobiogeography during this critical interval. In particular, larger ducks of the middle Miocene are represented by poorly known taxa including 'Anas' sansaniensis from western and central Europe and Chenoanas deserti from Western Mongolia. We report new geographically widespread specimens referred to Chenoanas from Mongolia, eastern Siberia, and China that include a new species, Chenoanas asiatica sp. nov., and allow for recognition of the European 'Anas' sansaniensis as a member of Chenoanas. We describe the oldest remains of Chenoanas sansaniensis from eastern Siberia, which supports a westward dispersal or range expansion of this group of ducks during the Miocene, comparable to the previously established biogeographical affinities of many Eurasian mammals. These data also support a growing body of evidence that avian faunas of Siberia were similar to European ones during the Middle Miocene Climatic Optimum. Our data indicate a wide Eurasian distribution (more than 8000 km) and a greater diversity within the genus Chenoanas during the late early to middle Miocene. The phylogenetic analysis of Chenoanas suggests that it may be a primitive member of Anatini, and thus does not belong to the basal radiation of extinct relatives of stiff‐tailed ducks (Oxyura and its relatives). Species of Chenoanas were probably not specialized divers.


This paper presents three technical elements that we have developed to improve the accuracy of the visual target tracking for single-sol approach-and-instrument placement in future Mars rover missions. An accurate, straightforward method of rover mast calibration is achieved by using a total station, a camera calibration target, and four prism targets mounted on the rover. The method was applied to Rocky8 rover mast calibration and yielded a 1.1-pixel rms residual error. Camera pointing requires inverse kinematic solutions for mast pan and tilt angles such that the target image appears right a t the center of the camera image. Two issues were raised. Mast camera frames a re in general not parallel to the masthead base frame. Further, the optical axis of the camera model in general does not pass through the center of the image. Despite these issues, we managed to derive non-iterative closed-form exact solutions, which were verified with Matlab routines. Actual camera pointing experiments aver 50 random target image paints yielded less than 1.3-pixel rms pointing error. Finally, a purely geometric method for camera handoff using stereo views of the target has been developed. Experimental test runs show less than 2.5 pixels error on high-resolution Navcam for Pancam-to-Navcam handoff, and less than 4 pixels error on lower-resolution Hazcam for Navcam-to-Hazcam handoff. Index Terms rover mast calibration, camera pointing, camera handoff, visual target tracking, target approach.


One of the most crucial decisions to make for parents of children with Autism in Ghana (just like for others in
 most bilingual and multilingual environments) is what language(s) to use with their children. This study was conducted to first
 investigate the state of Autism in Ghana and then to unravel the language choices that parents make for their children and the
 factors that influence the choices they make. Through interviews, the use of observation and questionnaires, members of Autism
 Action Ghana, a support group for parents with children on the spectrum, were studied as a Community of Practice, as well as using
 Bourdieu's concept of Cultural Capital. Data analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively revealed that Autism Spectrum Disorder
 (ASD) is still a generally unknown and misconceived condition that receives no major government attention, so that parents are
 left with finding very expensive and limited support for their children on their own. 77% of the 35 respondents use only English
 with their children because of the advice they receive from therapists, in addition to the fact that all therapies available are
 in English, the fear of further delaying speech in their non-verbal children should they use more than one language, and the
 belief that English has more currency and will take their children further in life as compared to their indigenous languages,
 among others. One of the implications of the choice of English is that the children will eventually become functionally
 monolingual in a multilingual country and thus will be left with no choice when it comes to language.


In 1988, the California state legislature passed the California Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act (STEP), which allowed courts to "enhance" the sentences of offenders who have been proven to "promote, further, or assist in any criminal conduct by gang members." It bundled together criminality, policing, and incarceration in ways that drew upon the fears of the black/latino Others that were imminent in panics surrounding the "crack epidemic" and inner-city crime. Jumping to April 2016, the Salvadoran government has passed strikingly similar legislation, which centers on reclassifying gang-associated crimes as terroristic; in essence under their new laws gang affiliation is a terrorist. This, too, has been enacted in the midst of panic about gang violence and low-level warfare between gangs and the Salvadoran state. The adoption of US-style anti-gang approaches by the Salvadoran government is not new. In 2003, the right-wing government passed mano dura ["iron fist"] policies that sought to address increases in gang associate crime with zero-tolerance, tough-on-crime measures. Law enforcement received expanded leeway to target and arrest gang members, especially those from Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) and Barrio 18. Despite the lack of sustained reductions in violent crime, the mano dura policies have remained and will only be exacerbated by the new legislation.


In the wider context of growing digitalisation in South Asia, this article examines the impacts of a public–private–people partnership (4Ps) information and communication technology (ICT) initiative of the Bangladesh government, administered through local governmental offices, the Union Information Service Centre (UISC). Scrutinising the operation of six UISCs in rural communities across Bangladesh, the study researches the potential of ICTs to influence existing asymmetrical power relations and empower local people. Asking to what extent ICTs enable more people to actively participate in their communities and what the implications for empowerment are, it is found that top-down ICT intervention by itself cannot bring substantial change for people at the bottom of the social pyramid. Asymmetrical power relations continue to deprive marginalised groups from receiving the claimed benefits of ICT facilities. The study suggests the need for a more critical, practice-focused understanding of relationships between ICTs and rural empowerment, while also highlighting the changing modalities of connecting states and their citizens in postmodern South Asia.


with my medical occupations to be able to cultivate their company. I should certainly be unable to satisfy Minerva's curiosity about their physical ills. I never met Bertie Russell or Carrington; Lytton Strachey I knew only slightly, though he was kind to me. My closest involvement was with Virginia Stephen. I was living from October 1913 to July 1914 in a room at the top of the Stephen's house in Brunswick Square and came back one night to be told that Virginia had just been found unconscious in her room apparently suffering from a deliberate overdose of drugs. The story is well known from Leonard Woolf's autobiography-the headlong rush back to Barts to get a stomach tube and funnel and the time spent that night washing out her stomach with Sir Henry Head kneeling by my side. We were in time and she recovered. This took place before she had written any of her novels and I am pleased to think that I had a hand in making possible the production of this brilliant literary achievement. GEOFFREY KEYNES


William Blake's influence on modern culture is undeniable. Blake—in contrast, for example, to P. B. Shelley, Wordsworth, or Byron—has a huge presence in literature, art, and music. Striking parallels and historical evidence for connections between Blake and his modern audiences have been identified and discussed, determining why he matters. From the discussions of synergies in the intellectual and emotional climates of his time and our own arise two questions, which this special issue on Blake's reception in Europe endeavors to address: One, what of Blake (person, poetry, and art) bridges the gulf of time, appears universal, or seems directly relevant? Two, what happens to Blake if works (texts and images) are separated and taken up by audiences that ostensibly have little in common, apart from a shared residual Christian position or other—esoteric or secular—values originating in Western culture? The latter, which is about ownership, leads to a further question: If there are too many idiosyncratic interpretations of Blake, does the real Blake get lost?


On the eve of the twenty-first century both the world economy and economics as a social science face important challenges, that call for paradigmatic changes, maybe even for new paradigms. First following the global financial and economic crisis of 2008-9 and more recently due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we can observe different types of active state interventions and growing state involvement to revive economic growth and development throughout the world. This has led to a renewed interest in the analysis of the role of the state in economic development in general, and to a renaissance of the developmental state (DS) approach and development regime (DR) theories in particular. The article aims to critically review and synthetize most recent literature on developmental states and regimes. Based on the theoretical and practical experiences of developmental states over more than a half century and taking into account the new challenges of the twenty-first century we critically engage with the related literature and aim to structure common thinking (and debates) regarding the role of state in development. While we argue that the new paradigm for DS has not broken through yet in literature, we present some cornerstones around which consensus seems to emerge.


It has long been suspected that trends in global marine biodiversity calibrated for the Phanerozoic may be affected by sampling problems. However, this possibility has not been evaluated definitively, and raw diversity trends are generally accepted at face value in macroevolutionary investigations. Here, we analyze a global-scale sample of fossil occurrences that allows us to determine directly the effects of sample size on the calibration of what is generally thought to be among the most significant global biodiversity increases in the history of life: the Ordovician Radiation. Utilizing a composite database that includes trilobites, brachiopods, and three classes of molluscs, we conduct rarefaction analyses to demonstrate that the diversification trajectory for the Radiation was considerably different than suggested by raw diversity time-series. Our analyses suggest that a substantial portion of the increase recognized in raw diversity depictions for the last three Ordovician epochs (the Llandeilian, Caradocian, and Ashgillian) is a consequence of increased sample size of the preserved and catalogued fossil record. We also use biometric data for a global sample of Ordovician trilobites, along with methods of measuring morphological diversity that are not biased by sample size, to show that morphological diversification in this major clade had leveled off by the Llanvirnian. The discordance between raw diversity depictions and more robust taxonomic and morphological diversity metrics suggests that sampling effects may strongly influence our perception of biodiversity trends throughout the Phanerozoic.


A distributed autonomous approach to adaptive system design is investigated through the Cooperative Behavior Acquisition Problem (CBAP) by a homogeneous autonomous robot group. A task is supposed to be given only to the group of robots, for the purpose of putting the main interest on how to design on-line specialization mechanisms, which should be autonomous and adaptive. The robot group dealt by this paper is comprised of same autonomous robots connected by a triangular board. Reinforcement learning (RL) is adopted for a basic framework of the robot's decision-making mechanism, so that quick online learning can be expected. However, since RL in a simple form is not effective in developing a stable cooperative behavior in a multi-agent environment, a novel decision-making mechanism is designed using two RL units, of which the first RL unit is for predicting its partners' next states, and the other is for generating an action of its own. Several empirical experiments for three connected robots are conducted on a computer in order to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanisms.