The study investigated entrepreneurship Education as a viable tool in enhancing Post Basic Education in Awka Education Zone in Anambra State. Descriptive survey design was adopter for the study. The population of the study is 11,726 which comprised the male and female students at Post Basic Level, the male are 4,070 and the female are 6,656 all are senior students in various schools in Awka Education Zone. Disproportionate stratified sampling technique was adopted for selecting 262 respondents, 186 males and 76 females. Two research questions and one hypothesis guided the study. Questionnaire containing 16 items were the instrument for data collection. The instrument were validated by three experts, two from Educational Management and Planning, one from measurement and evaluation, all from Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University: The validated instrument were trial-tested using 20 respondents which comprised 15 females and 5 male senior student at Enugu state which is outside the study area. Cronbach Alpha technique was used for its determination of the internal consistency of the instrument which gave the reliability coefficient value of 0.76 and 0.81 and overall reliability value of 0.91 was obtained. Mean and standard deviation were used in analyzing the data. The major findings of the study was revealed that government should fund entrepreneurship education, teachers should utilized the available instructional materials given to them, the school management should from time to time invite resource persons to sensitize both the teachers and students on entrepreneurship and the school management should endeavour to organize in-house seminar, workshop and symposia in order to ensure the students acquire skills for self-reliance. Base on the findings, it was recommended among others that government in Anambra state should fund entrepreneurship in all and sundry, there should be in-house vocational training by the school management, employment of qualified teachers and field trip as an activity method should be implemented.


A droplet bouncing on a liquid bath can self-propel due to its interaction with the waves it generates. The resulting "walker" is a dynamical association where, at a macroscopic scale, a particle (the droplet) is driven by a pilot-wave field. A specificity of this system is that the wave field itself results from the superposition of the waves generated at the points of space recently visited by the particle. It thus contains a memory of the past trajectory of the particle. Here, we investigate the response of this object to forces orthogonal to its motion. We find that the resulting closed orbits present a spontaneous quantization. This is observed only when the memory of the system is long enough for the particle to interact with the wave sources distributed along the whole orbit. An additional force then limits the possible orbits to a discrete set. The wave-sustained path memory is thus demonstrated to generate a quantization of angular momentum. Because a quantum-like uncertainty was also observed recently in these systems, the nonlocality generated by path memory opens new perspectives.


Purpose: Lower extremity amputation (LEA) is associated with a high risk of postoperative mortality. The effect of type of anesthesia on postoperative mortality has been studied in various surgeries. However, data for guiding the selection of optimal anesthesia for LEA are limited. This study aimed to determine the effect of anesthesia type on perioperative outcomes in patients with diabetes and/or peripheral vascular disease undergoing LEA. Patients and methods: We reviewed the medical records of patients who underwent LEA at our center between September 2007 and August 2017, who were grouped according to use of general anesthesia (GA) or regional anesthesia (RA). Primary outcomes were 30-day and 90-day mortality. Secondary outcomes were postoperative morbidity, intraoperative events, postoperative intensive care unit admission, and postoperative length of stay. Propensity score-matched cohort design was used to control for potentially confounding factors, including patient demographics, comorbidities, medications, and type of surgery. Results: Five hundred and nineteen patients (75% male, mean age 65 years) were identi fi ed to have received GA ( n =227) or RA ( n =292) for above-knee amputation (1.5%), below-knee amputation (16%), or more minor amputation (82.5%). Before propensity score matching, there was an association of GA with coronary artery disease (44% [GA] vs 34.5% [RA], p=0.028), peripheral arterial disease (73.1% vs 60.2%, p=0.002), and preoperative treatment with aspirin and clopidogrel (68.7% vs 55.1%, p=0.001; 63% vs 41.8%, p<0.001, respectively). Propensity score matching produced a cohort of 342 patients equally divided between GA and RA. There was no signi fi cant between-group difference in 30-day (3.5% vs 2.9%, p=0.737) or 90-day (6.4% vs 4.6%, p=0.474) mortality or postoperative morbidity. However, postoperative ICU admission (14.6% vs 7%, p=0.032), intraoperative hypotension (61.4% vs 14.6%, p<0.001), and vasopressor use (52% vs 14%, p<0.001) were more common with GA than with RA. Conclusion: Type of anesthesia did not signi fi cantly affect mortality or morbidity after LEA. However, intraoperative hypotension, vasopressor use, and postoperative ICU admission rates were lower with RA. amputation; anesthesia; RA, regional anesthesia.


Self-determination Theory (SDT) presents critical constructs and processes for understanding and improving human learning and development. Though actively utilized as a theoretical framework for K-12 and adult training research, it has been virtually ignored in TA professional development design and research. Self-determination and the process of internalization present tremendous potential not only for informing individual TA learning and skill development, but also for addressing the contextual and organizational issues that present historic challenges to effective TA development programs. It presents this potential because it frames an integrative model for understanding both internal and external factors to explain human action, which informs a systemic perspective on TA development and practice. While we can draw principles for the value of SDT for TA development from other contexts, direct and intentional research is needed on a host of issues related to SDT in TA professional development. This chapter examines the research done in SDT on which TA development can draw productively, and generates questions and directions for explicit research on TAs that can further build knowledge development for scholars and practitioners.Why Self-determination Theory for TA Professional Development?Self-determination theory (SDT) presents critical frameworks for understanding and improving human learning and development (Deci, 1995). However, it has been sadly underused in TA professional development design and research. There is much that we can import from the body of research in SDT, but there is also much more room for research that would demonstrate its direct and appropriate application in TA professional development. This chapter will synthesize findings in SDT from other contexts, and the small amount that exists with TAs, to inform research in the field and frame some directions for TA research using SDT.Over the past decade, there has been a long overdue shift to treating TA roles as an essential component of graduate students' professional development, rather than merely an aside that earns money for the real education in the major discipline (Edmond, 2010). While some doctoral students may not imagine teaching as a key component of their long-term professional agenda, many do end up teaching more than they planned (Sandi-Urena, Cooper & Gatlin, 2011). Particularly with limited and shrinking TA funds, many graduate students end up teaching in other institutions, such as community colleges, while they pursue graduate degrees (Eddy, 2005; Gibson-Harman, Rodriguez & Haworth, 2002). They need to be adequately prepared for the demands of the job, and many currently are not well-prepared (McGoldrick, Hoyt & Colander, 2010). These realities have fostered a body of work that includes supporting teacher identity development as integral to the career trajectory (Hardre & Chen, 2006; Sandi-Urena et al, 2011). To the extent that TAs fill instructional roles in undergraduate courses, their teaching expertise has direct and indirect effects on the quality of foundational undergraduate instruction (Fox & Hackerman, 2003). Socializing them to take that role seriously will have a critical impact on the quality of undergraduate education (Gaff & Lambert, 1996).Historically, much of TA professional development has focused primarily on either content delivery or classroom management (Seymour, 2005), to the exclusion of factors such as grounding in learning theory and metacognitive reflection. Assuming that they are teaching basic courses in their majors or closely related disciplines (which is most often true), TAs already possess advanced content knowledge. What they lack is learning theory and principles, which explain why and how people learn, as well as instructional design as a framework to put that knowledge into practice (Hardre, 2005). Even for those who do not pursue careers in academe, this combination of strategic knowledge, which includes communication, complex problem-solving, and evaluation, can enhance professional performance in nearly any context (McGoldrick et al, 2010). …


SYNOPSIS: This paper examines whether mandatory IFRS adoption at the country level lowers U.S. investors' propensity to overweight domestic stocks in their common stock portfolios (generally referred to as home bias). We find that, on average, U.S. home bias decreases for countries that mandate IFRS adoption, after controlling for country-fixed effects. We also find that the reduction in the U.S. home bias after the mandatory adoption of IFRS is greater for countries with larger differences between IFRS and their domestic accounting standards, for countries with a stricter rule of law and a common law legal origin, and in countries with greater incentives to report high-quality financial information. Overall, our results indicate that a common set of global accounting standards matters for portfolio holdings of U.S. investors and that U.S. investors regard the enforcement of standards to be a key factor in making investments outside the U.S. Data Availability: Data are publicly available.


This thesis assesses the ability of a range of novel thermo-analytical techniques to determine the spatial distribution of components across the surface of pharmaceutical mini-tablets. Such information is of use in formulation development, as the surface is the point at which a solid dosage form comes into contact with the environment, and where drug stability and excipient functionality are critical. Mini-tablets provide a good model system for surface characterisation, as they have much higher surface area to volume ratios than conventionally sized tablets.
Five excipients and two drugs, as powders and after compaction, were individually characterised by the following techniques: scanning electron microscopy (SEM), variable temperature infrared spectroscopy (VT-IR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), atomic force microscopy (AFM), micro-thermal analysis (micro-TA), nano-thermal analysis (nano-TA) and transition temperature microscopy (TTM). Compacts of mixed systems were tested using AFM, micro-TA, nano-TA and TTM, building up the complexity to 4-component systems for excipient-only mixtures and 5-component systems
for drug-loaded mixtures. Micro-TA, nano-TA and TTM were able to detect each component in all of the multi-component compacts, but AFM could not differentiate between them in complex systems. The study was then repeated on realistic mini-tablet formulations, confirming these initial results. Additionally, Raman microspectroscopy was performed on the mini-tablets as a corroborative technique, this method being based on a different physical phenomenon.
In conclusion, the thermal probe techniques (micro-TA, nano-TA and TTM) were shown to be sufficiently discriminating to allow the spatial mapping of components across the surface of realistic mini-tablet formulations. Hence, these techniques could be used alongside spectroscopic techniques in the analysis of complex surfaces. However, some serious issues with the automated analysis and data display functions in the TTM software were identified, which could lead to misinterpretation of the results. Potential corrective measures were suggested to alleviate these concerns and improve experimental reliability.


A technique for intraoperative segmental preparation of the large bowel, using 10% povidone iodine, was evaluated in 25 patients undergoing elective colon resection. Qualitative and quantitative bacteriology was obtained from the normal bowel content and from segments of colon treated with povidone iodine or normal saline. Forty-five of 50 segments treated with povidone iodine demonstrated no growth, whereas the segments injected with normal saline maintained bacterial counts of 3.5 x 10(8) colony forming units per milliliter. There were no septic complications in this group of patients and the levels of triiodothyroninc and thyroxin remained unchanged despite a substantial absorption of iodine, as demonstrated by protein-bound iodine determinations. Intraoperative segmental preparation of the colon with 10% povidone iodine is a simple technique that may be useful in the enhancement of other methods of bowel preparation by further reducing the endogenous bacterial inoculum at the time of transection of the colon.


Recessions are known to be particularly damaging to young workers' employment outcomes. I find that during recessions the hiring rate falls faster for young workers than for more-experienced workers. I show this cannot be explained by the composition of jobs or workers' labour supply decisions, and I conclude that firms preferentially hire experienced workers during periods of high unemployment. I develop a new model of cyclical upgrading that relaxes the classic assumptions of exogenous firm size and rigid wages. I show this model predicts larger log wage decreases during recessions for young workers than for experienced workers, a prediction that is supported by the data. I conclude that policy makers should consider extending unemployment insurance coverage during recessions to new labour market entrants.


This paper concerns the problem of finding persistent items in distributed datasets, which has many applications such as port scanning and intrusion detection. To the best of our knowledge, there is no existing solution for finding persistent items in distributed datasets. In this paper, we propose DISPERSE, a probabilistic algorithm that can find persistent items in distributed datasets without collecting all the datasets. Our basic idea is that each monitor compresses each item ID in its dataset in a lossy fashion, sends the set of lossily compressed item IDs to the server, then the server recovers the IDs of the persistent items. We design the lossy compression so that given one lossily compressed item ID, the server cannot recover the item ID, but when the number of lossily compressed versions of the same item ID exceeds a threshold, which means that such items are persistent ones, the server can recover the item ID with a high probability. This threshold is exactly the threshold in the definition of persistent items. We implemented DISPERSE and evaluated its performance. In comparison with the straightforward solution, DISPERSE achieves a compression ratio of 26.5% with FNR=3.5% and FPR=0. In comparison with a developed Bloom filter based scheme and the adapted kBF and IBF schemes, our scheme can achieve 7.9, 5.7, and 6.6 times performance gains, respectively, in terms of compression ratio.


The concepts of the laser-plasma based accelerator and injector are discussed here. The recent tests done at LOA as well as design studies of high-quality GeV electron beam production with low energy spread (1%) are presented. These laser-produced particle beams have a number of interesting properties and could lend themselves to applications in many fields, including medicine (radiotherapy), chemistry (radiolysis), and accelerator physics. They could be used as a source for the production of $\ensuremath{\gamma}$ ray beams for nondestructive material inspection by radiography, or for future compact X-free electron laser machines.


Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) is expanding worldwide. Although it seems to be a purely respiratory disease, occasional reports of lesions in other organs have been published. We report here an asymptomatic child Covid-19 patient with the main symptom of abdominal pain distension and without any respiratory symptoms. A 14-year-old male patient with main complaints of fever, malaise, anorexia, and severe abdominal pain was admitted to a hospital in Mashhad, Iran. Laparotomy revealed distension of the small intestine and an adhesive ileo-caecal band that had produced ileum herniation without free fluid in the abdomen. Chest X-ray and high-resolution computed tomography of the lungs showed bilateral, diffuse, peripheral dense areas of ground-glass appearance. A nasopharyngeal swab for Covid-19 diagnosis, ordered due to lymphopenia together with these diffuse lung infiltrations, showed a positive result. This led to drug treatment with lopinavir/ritonavir, hydroxychloroquine, ribavirin/oseltamivir and meropenem. The patient was febrile and developed tachycardia on the third day accompanied with a respiratory rate of 44/min. At this point, tracheal intubation was done but the patient died after 3 hours due to cardiac arrest. The case report brings forth the hypothesis that the gastrointestinal manifestation may be untypical symptoms of Covid-19 infection, and highlights the importance for the diagnosis to be based on combined laboratory-based data and scanning imagery.


Image captchas have recently become very popular and are widely deployed across the Internet to defend against abusive programs. However, the ever-advancing capabilities of computer vision have gradually diminished the security of image captchas and made them vulnerable to attack. In this paper, we first classify the currently popular image captchas into three categories: selection-based captchas, slide-based captchas, and click-based captchas. Second, we propose simple yet powerful attack frameworks against each of these categories of image captchas. Third, we systematically evaluate our attack frameworks against 10 popular real-world image captchas, including captchas from tencent.com, google.com, and 12306.cn. Fourth, we compare our attacks against nine online image recognition services and against human labors from eight underground captcha-solving services. Our evaluation results show that (1) each of the popular image captchas that we study is vulnerable to our attacks; (2) our attacks yield the highest captcha-breaking success rate compared with state-of-the-art methods in almost all scenarios; and (3) our attacks achieve almost as high a success rate as human labor while being much faster. Based on our evaluation, we identify some design flaws in these popular schemes, along with some best practices and design principles for more secure captchas. We also examine the underground market for captcha-solving services, identifying 152 such services. We then seek to measure this underground market with data from these services. Our findings shed light on understanding the scale, impact, and commercial landscape of the underground market for captcha solving.


The block single-crystals of taurine were obtained, and its structure was determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The single-crystal X-ray analysis of taurine reveals that the crystal belongs monoclinic, space group P2(1)/c with a = 0.52824(10) nm, b = 1.1647(8) nm, c = 0.79236(13) nm, ß = 94.0850(10). The magnesium complex with taurine has been synthesized in ethanol. The antibacterial assay of the Mg (II) complex was measureed using a modified version of the 2-fold serial dilution method. The results show that the complex shows considerable antibacterial activity against escherichia coli, bacillus subtilis and staphylococcus white.


In order to prepare now for the future of Scottish tourism VisitScotland, the national tourism organisation responsible for marketing Scotland as a tourism destination, undertook a scenario planning exercise in order to make sense and bring structure to futures thinking. Two scenarios were created which painted a picture of Scotland's political economy and the implications for tourism. The Weekend Getaway was a £7.6 billion tourism industry that saw revenues grow at a rate of 4.4. percent per annum. In this scenario Scottish tourism was vibrant and competitive. Whereas the Yesterday's Destination scenario saw Scottish tourism only grow at 1 percent per annum resulting in a £5.1 billion industry. Here Scottish tourism was a second choice destination and a second class experience. The implications of the scenarios highlight the importance of creating a strategic conversation about the future of tourism in which VisitScotland was able to create a shared language of futures thinking based upon a vision, which stated that tourism should be Scotland's First and Everlasting Industry. Underpinning this vision was an ambition to increase tourism revenues by 50 percent by 2015. This vision enabled VisitScotland to identify a number of short term and tactical decisions predominantly driven by marketing strategies. Long term and strategic decisions focused on structural change and creating a tourism economy.


The discovery of heavy-chain-only antibodies (HCAbs) in camelids and sharks led to the rise of a new research field in which single-domain antibodies are used for various applications. Single-domain antibodies are the antigen-binding fragments derived from HCAbs showing several beneficial properties (e.g., small size, specificity, stability under extreme conditions, cost-effective production, and ease of engineering). Importantly, they are stable in reducing cytoplasmic environment, which allows their use as an intrabody to target a wide range of intracellular targets. In this chapter, we discuss both the therapeutic potential of camelid single-domain antibodies (nanobodies) and their use as a research tool with the main focus on its intracellular employment. Targeting intracellular proteins using nanobodies as a therapeutic per se is, up to now, limited due to its incapacity to traverse the cellular membrane. They can however serve as a stepping stone to small compound development, since they directly target a resident, endogenous protein, similar to how a conventional drug acts. In addition, nanobodies are highly adaptable tools and possess interesting properties for more fundamental research objectives like the elucidation of protein function, the tracking and visualization of endogenous proteins in an in vivo setting, and the assessment of protein-protein interactions.


Seagrass meadows are regularly used by fish as resident, transient, or nursery habitat. However, there is a long-standing debate on how spatial variability of seagrass fish assemblages is determined. We examined the influence of seagrass structural complexity, physical water conditions, and proximity of neighboring shallow-water habitats on tropical fish assemblage composition in a shallow seagrass-dominated embayment at Zanzibar Island in the western Indian Ocean. Sampling of fish assemblages was carried out in seagrass meadows dominated by Enhalus acoroides or Thalas- sia hemprichii (3 localities each), 1 mixed meadow, and 1 unvegetated area. Overall, the density and biomass of fish were dominated by juvenile and subadult herbivores, either stationary seagrass resi- dents or fish associated with coral reef and seagrass habitats. In terms of number of fish species, the majority were either carnivorous or omnivorous, and mainly coral-seagrass-associated. Multiple regression analysis indicated that canopy height was the foremost predictor for density, biomass, and species richness of juvenile fish, whereas adult and subadult fish densities were predicted by water depth. Moreover, distance-based correlation analyses revealed that fish assemblage structure was significantly correlated with the distance to neighboring mangrove and coral-reef habitats, shoot density, and (although weaker) canopy height. Based on these findings, attributes of seagrass struc- ture and the location of a seagrass habitat within the seascape context appear to be important deter- minants of spatial patterns and variability of seagrass fish assemblages. This kind of information is important for spatial coastal management and for the selection of marine protected areas.


The purpose of this study was to evaluate synthetic calcium phosphates and animal bones using Raman spectroscopy and explore the possibility of its application in characterizing newly formed bone around implants. Synthetic calcium phosphates (monobasic calcium phosphate, dibasic calcium phosphate, tribasic calcium phosphate, fiber apatite, hydroxyapatite and carbonate hydroxyapatite) and animal bones (from pig, cow, rabbit with and without implants) were analyzed in this study. Slight differences in the Raman bands among the 7 types of synthetic calcium phosphate were observed. Furthermore, a 3 cm-1 difference was noted in the bands of the main PO4 3- in rabbit's bone formed around the implant, compared to the existing bone, suggesting a difference in the molecular structure between the existing and newly formed bones.


In the present work, sensing of ethanol on the ZnO thin films doped with Fe (5-50%) have been investigated. Nature of the sensing species in the nanosize Fe-doped ZnO (FeZnO) thin films has also been studied by in situ extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectroscopy. By XRD, it is found that ZnO and ZnFe2O4 are the main compounds in the ZnO-Fe thin films. The thin film containing 5% of Fe has a high sensitivity (Rair/Rethanol>80) when sensing of ethanol at 300 K. On the contrary, the thin films with Fe fractions of 20-50% have a very low sensitivity to ethanol (Rair/Rethanol<15). In the presence of ethanol, the EXAFS spectra show that the bond distances of Zn-O and Fe-O in the thin films are 1.90 and 1.98 Å, respectively and restored to 1.91 and 1.97 Å in the absence of ethanol.


Purpose: Identification of the term efficiency on the basis of the literature on the subject and description of the author's concept of leadership efficiency. Design/Methodology/Approach: Despite the constant interest in the issues of efficiency, the literature on the subject does not provide a clear answer to the emerging doubts regarding the essence of efficiency and the possibility of its maximization. Efficiency is an ambiguous and variously interpreted concept. The article reviews the literature on the conceptual framework of efficiency with an emphasis on leadership efficiency. Then, an original concept of leadership efficiency was proposed, the basis of which is value for the client. The proposed concept was developed using the deductive method, i.e. inferring from what is general about what is special. Findings: An original concept of leadership efficiency. Practical Implications: Ability to choose the leadership cap. On an assessment or self-assessment basis, it allows leadership to be placed at an effective level. Originality/value: It can be a kind of a signpost for orientation as to the direction of actions aimed at improving the efficiency of leadership.


Executive Functions (EFs) development is critically affected by stress and trauma, as well as the socioeconomic context in which children grow up (Welsh, Nix, Blair, Bierman, & Nelson, 2010, Journal of Educational Psychology, 102, 43-53). Research in this field is surprisingly lacking in relation to war contexts. This study represents a first attempt at addressing this topic by evaluating EFs in Yazidi children. The Yazidi community is an ethnic and religious minority living in Iraq. From August 2014 onwards, the Yazidi community has been the target of several atrocities perpetrated by ISIS and described as genocide by the international community at large. The University of Trieste, thanks to a program financed by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, developed a study aimed at (a) evaluating hot and cool EFs in children living in a war context and (b) developing a specific training method to enhance hot and cool EFs in Yazidi children of preschool age (N = 53). Data related to this group of children were compared with a sample of typically developing Italian children randomly assigned to either an EFs training group (N = 55) or a passive control group (N = 51). Results indicate different baselines in EFs in Yazidi and Italian samples and a significant effect of the program on both trained groups, especially in tasks measuring hot EFs. Data are discussed in terms of hot and cool EFs in children growing in adverse environments, as well as the evaluation of educational and developmental opportunities to prevent children who survived genocide from becoming a 'lost generation'. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/7t_08TbxR_8.


This paper proposes two improved interleaved modular multiplication algorithms based on Barrett and Montgomery modular reduction. The algorithms are simple and especially suitable for hardware implementations. Four large sets of moduli for which the proposed methods apply are given and analyzed from a security point of view. By considering state-of-the-art attacks on public-key cryptosystems, we show that the proposed sets are safe to use, in practice, for both elliptic curve cryptography and RSA cryptosystems. We propose a hardware architecture for the modular multiplier that is based on our methods. The results show that concerning the speed, our proposed architecture outperforms the modular multiplier based on standard modular multiplication by more than 50 percent. Additionally, our design consumes less area compared to the standard solutions.


Deep metrics have been shown effective as similarity measures in multi-modal image registration; however, the metrics are currently constructed from aligned image pairs in the training data. In this paper, we propose a strategy for learning such metrics from roughly aligned training data. Symmetrizing the data corrects bias in the metric that results from misalignment in the data (at the expense of increased variance), while random perturbations to the data, i.e. dithering, ensures that the metric has a single mode, and is amenable to registration by optimization. Evaluation is performed on the task of registration on separate unseen test image pairs. The results demonstrate the feasibility of learning a useful deep metric from substantially misaligned training data, in some cases, the results are significantly better than from Mutual Information. Data augmentation via dithering is, therefore, an effective strategy for discharging the need for well-aligned training data; this brings deep learning based registration from the realm of supervised to semi-supervised machine learning.


In a multicenter phase III trial, 267 patients with nonbulky metastatic colorectal cancer who had failed first-line 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) therapy were randomized to receive second-line treatment with either the new topoisomerase agent, irinotecan (Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, Antony, France), or a high-dose infusional 5-FU regimen. Patients treated with irinotecan survived significantly longer than those treated with infusional 5-FU. The 1-year survival rate was 45% for patients receiving irinotecan compared with 32% for patients receiving 5-FU. There also was a significant difference in median progression-free survival (4.2 months v 2.9 months; P = .03) favoring irinotecan. Irinotecan administered at a dose of 350 mg/m2 every 3 weeks was associated with manageable toxicities (the main toxicities were neutropenia and diarrhea). The incidence of these adverse events and of vomiting was higher with irinotecan than with the comparator regimens of infusional 5-FU. However, the incidence of grade 3-4 asthenia was the same in the two treatment arms and mucositis and cutaneous adverse events were more common with 5-FU. Overall, mean global quality of life scores were similar in the two arms of the study throughout the period of treatment and follow-up, demonstrating that the more effective disease control achieved by irinotecan at least maintains quality of life. Indeed, deterioration in quality of life (defined as >50% decrease from baseline score) occurred significantly later in irinotecan-treated patients. In light of these data, irinotecan should be considered the reference treatment for patients with 5-FU-refractory advanced colorectal cancer.


The intercalated cell masses (ITCs) of the amygdala are clusters of GABAergic interneurons that surround the basolateral complex of the amygdala. ITCs have been increasingly implicated in the acquisition and extinction of conditioned fear responses, but the underlying cellular mechanisms remain unexplored. Here, we report that repetitive stimulation of lateral amygdala (LA) afferents with a modified theta burst stimulation (TBS) protocol and induces long-term potentiation (LTP) of excitatory synapses onto medial paracapsular ITC (Imp) neurons. This TBS-induced LTP is; (1) induced and expressed post-synaptically, (2) involves a rise in post-synaptic Ca2+ and the activation of NR2B-containing N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs), (3) dependent on calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II and cAMP-dependent protein kinase activation, and (4) associated with increased exocytotic delivery of α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid receptors (AMPARs) to the post-synaptic membrane. Remarkably, auditory fear conditioning led to a persistent increase in AMPAR/NMDAR ratio of glutamatergic synaptic currents and occluded TBS-induced LTP at LA-Imp synapses. Furthermore, extinction training rescued the effect of fear conditioning on AMPAR/NMDAR ratio and LTP induction. These results show that a prominent form of LTP can be elicited at LA-Imp synapses and suggest that this synaptic plasticity may contribute to the expression of fear conditioning.


&NA; Because of consumers' preferences and also due to changes in production systems, the importance of pure breeds has increased again. There are a lot of differences among breeds which have been studied extensively, however, the differences during the incubation period are not yet fully known. Therefore, the present study was conducted to evaluate the composition of the egg parts, absorption of nutrients, and development of embryos from different genotypes. A total of 354 fresh hatching eggs were obtained from one hybrid (Lohman White, LW) and two pure breeds (Denizli and Gerze). Hatching eggs from each genotype were examined on the day of setting for egg analysis and then at the beginning of the embryonic d 19 (E19) and embryonic d 21 (E21) for egg, embryo, jejunum, and tibia analysis. On d 21 of incubation, the healthy chicks were removed and weighed. Egg weight, shell thickness, percentages of albumen, and some parameters of albumen composition (dry matter, water, ash, protein, energy, Na, Ca, K, and Mg) were higher in fresh eggs obtained from LW hens. Furthermore, the relative yolk sac and embryo weight, some yolk parameters (dry matter, water, protein, fat, and energy) and some shell parameters (dry matter, ash, Na, Ca, and K) were also higher in eggs obtained from LW hens during incubation. However, tibia deformation and villus width were lower in LW embryos than the other genotypes. Relative chick weights were 68.9, 72.0, and 68.0% in LW, Denizli, and Gerze genotypes, respectively. During incubation, differences in all examined parameters were significant except thickness and weight of shell, tibia deformation, and crypt depth. Yolk sac weight, some yolk composition parameters, K level in the shell, Cu level in the tibia, and villus height were also affected by genotype and period interaction. Based on these results, LW was found advantageous in terms of egg composition, however, regarding villus development and tibia deformation in embryos during incubation, pure breeds showed better results.


Introduction Up to 30% of Achilles tendinopathy presents in non-active individuals [Rolf 1997] and an association between adiposity and tendinopathy has been highlighted [Gaida 2009a]. Inactivity and adiposity are both associated with unfavourable serum lipid parameters. Individuals with Achilles tendinopathy have a dyslipidaemic profile [Gaida 2009b] and the extreme cholesterol levels seen in familial hypercholesterolaemia are associated with a 6-fold increased lifetime prevalence of Achilles tendon pain (47% versus 7%) [Beeharry, 2006]. It is unknown whether an association exists between lipid parameters and tendon structure in the general population. Methods Serum lipids and Achilles tendon structure were measured in healthy participants. Lipid parameters included total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and triglycerides (TG). Glucose (GLU) was also measured. Ultrasound tissue characterisation (UTC) was used to quantify Achilles tendon structure; echo-types I (green) and II (blue) were used for analysis. Height, weight and waist circumference were measured. Physical activity level and history of Achilles tendon pain were recorded via questionnaire. Results The 67 participants recruited included 42 men and 25 women (Table 1). The physical activity level was 113 ± 442 min/week. Sixteen participants (24%) reported a history of Achilles tendon pain. Abstract 105 Table 1 Participant demographics Age (years) Height (cm) Weight (kg) Waist (cm) Mean 42.2 176.2 88.7 96.1 SD 13.2 8.0 18.5 14.9 Abstract 105 Table 2 Metabolic parameters TC HDL LDL TG GLU Mean 4.81 1.18 2.97 1.63 5.42 SD 0.87 0.36 0.71 0.90 0.79 There were no statistically significant correlations between echo-types I/II and any of the lipid measures (Table 3, Figure 1). Abstract 105 Table 3 Spearman's Correlation Coefficients between echo-types I/II and metabolic parameters TC HDL LDL TG GLU Spearman's .07 .22 -.43 -.06 .22 p value .57 .08 .74 .62 .08 Abstract 105 Figure 1 Scatter plot of echo-types I/II v TC Discussion This study did not show an association between cholesterol and tendon structure. While there was significant variability in the UTC measured tendon structure, the lipid results were relatively homogenous. For example, TC results were clustered between 4.0 and 6.0 mmol/L, suggesting that a vast majority of the participants are fundamentally "normal". Thus, cholesterol at this level is not correlated with altered tendon structure. References Beeharry et al. Ann Rheum Dis, 2006;65(3):312–5 Gaida et al . Arthritis Rheum, 2009a;27;61(6):840–9 Gaida et al . Med Sci Sports Exerc, 2009b; 31;41(6):1194–7 Rolf et al. Foot Ankle Int. 1997;18(9):565–9


CONTEXT
Microalbuminuria (albuminuria 30-300 mg per 24-hour urine collection) is a well-known risk marker for arterial thromboembolism. It is assumed that microalbuminuria reflects generalized endothelial dysfunction. Hence, microalbuminuria may also predispose for venous thromboembolism (VTE).

OBJECTIVE
To assess whether microalbuminuria is associated with VTE.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
Prevention of Renal and Vascular End-stage Disease (PREVEND) study, an ongoing community-based prospective cohort study initiated in 1997. All inhabitants of Groningen, The Netherlands, aged 28 through 75 years (n = 85,421) were sent a postal questionnaire and a vial to collect a first morning urine sample for measurement of urinary albumin concentration. Of those who responded (40,856), a cohort (8592 participants) including more participants with higher levels of urinary albumin concentration completed screening at an outpatient clinic. Screening data were collected on urinary albumin excretion (UAE) and risk factors for cardiovascular and renal disease.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE
Symptomatic and objectively verified VTE (ie, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, or both) between study initiation and June 1, 2007.

RESULTS
Of 8574 evaluable participants (mean [SD] age, 49 [13] years; 50% men), 129 experienced VTE during a mean (SD) follow-up period of 8.6 (1.8) years, corresponding to overall annual incidence of 0.14% (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.11%-0.19%). Annual incidences were 0.12%, 0.20%, 0.40%, and 0.56% in participants with UAE of less than 15 (n = 6013), 15-29 (n = 1283), 30-300 (n = 1144), and greater than 300 (n = 134) mg per 24-hour urine collection, respectively (P for trend <.001). When adjusted for age, cancer, use of oral contraceptives, and atherosclerosis risk factors, hazard ratios associated with UAE levels of 15-29, 30-300, and greater than 300 mg/24 h were 1.40 (95% CI, 0.86-2.35), 2.20 (95% CI, 1.44-3.36), and 2.82 (95% CI, 1.21-6.61), respectively, compared with participants with UAE of less than 15 mg/24 h (global P = .001). Adjusted hazard ratio for microalbuminuria vs normoalbuminuria (UAE <30 mg/24 h) was 2.00 (95% CI, 1.34-2.98; P < .001). Microalbuminuria-related number needed to harm was 388 per year.

CONCLUSION
Microalbuminuria is independently associated with an increased risk for VTE.


Government solution in order to increase farmers' income doesn't run well. It can be seen from the decrease of harvest in years. From this problem, Agriculture Department gives the solution. One of it is making farmer club which called "Tani Subur Makmur". The function is to handle
farmers' problems and their obstacles. The aim of this research is to know the farmers club in increasing Agriculture Department program. To know their obstacles, the writer chooses Langon Village as the place of her
research.
This research is survey which used qualitative approach. It is also used descriptive qualitative method. The writer has two data source. There are primer and secondary data. Data gathering that used by the writer was descriptive qualitative technique which describe the real condition of
Langon Farmer. There are many function of farmers club in creasing Agriculture Department which became the thesis result. First, the decrease of agriculture cost so that the farmer can decrease the payment of production process. Second, as the instructor in running the program, and the third is as mediator and facilitator between farmer and agriculture department in handling the program. Therefore,
they can get and do the entire program well. While the difficulties that faced by the farmer are: less capital, less monitoring from the Agriculture Department, less knowledge of agriculture, and less motivation.


Antimicrobial activity of root extracts of Cochlospermum planchoni against some pathogenic bacteria and fungi were investigated using the filter paper disc diffusion method. Phytochemical studies revealed the presence saponins, tannins, glycosides and aikaloid as phytochemicals. Methanol extracts (40 mg/ml) exhibited the highest activity (16 - 30 mm zone diameter of inhibition, MIC and MBC values 2.5 - 22.5 mg/ml) against the test organisms. Chloroform extracts demonstrated the least activity. The activity of the extracts increased with increase in temperature (4 - 100ºC) and increasing acidity (pH 2.5 - 6), but alkaline pH (pH 10) neither enhanced nor depreciated the activity of the extracts. The plant can be used to source newer antibiotic substances and can be used for the treatment of typhoid fever, dysentery, urinary tract and wound infections and mycotic infections.


"Charge engineering" of semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs) through so-called electronic impurity doping is a long-standing challenge in colloidal chemistry and holds promise for ground-breaking advancements in many optoelectronic, photonic, and spin-based nanotechnologies. To date, our knowledge is limited to a few paradigmatic studies on a small number of model compounds and doping conditions, with important electronic dopants still unexplored in nanoscale systems. Equally importantly, fine-tuning of charge engineered NCs is hampered by the statistical limitations of traditional approaches. The resulting intrinsic doping inhomogeneity restricts fundamental studies to statistically averaged behaviors and complicates the realization of advanced device concepts based on their advantageous functionalities. Here we aim to address these issues by realizing the first example of II-VI NCs electronically doped with an exact number of heterovalent gold atoms, a known p-type acceptor impurity in bulk chalcogenides. Single-dopant accuracy across entire NC ensembles is obtained through a novel non-injection synthesis employing ligand-exchanged gold clusters as "quantized" dopant sources to seed the nucleation of CdSe NCs in organic media. Structural, spectroscopic, and magneto-optical investigations trace a comprehensive picture of the physical processes resulting from the exact doping level of the NCs. Gold atoms, doped here for the first time into II-VI NCs, are found to incorporate as nonmagnetic Au+ species activating intense size-tunable intragap photoluminescence and artificially offsetting the hole occupancy of valence band states. Fundamentally, the transient conversion of Au+ to paramagnetic Au2+ (5d9 configuration) under optical excitation results in strong photoinduced magnetism and diluted magnetic semiconductor behavior revealing the contribution of individual paramagnetic impurities to the macroscopic magnetism of the NCs. Altogether, our results demonstrate a new chemical approach toward NCs with physical functionalities tailored to the single impurity level and offer a versatile platform for future investigations and device exploitation of individual and collective impurity processes in quantum confined structures.


Background Adolescents are digital natives, with the majority now owning their own smartphones and having internet access. Although the internet and smartphone applications (apps) can provide mental health support, little is known about how young adolescents use digital technology for mental health purposes. There are many digital health resources available for young people, but the assumption that they will be open to use them has been largely untested. Aims We aimed to explore how adolescents with and without raised symptoms of anxiety, depression and problematic eating use the internet on smartphones/tablets and mental health apps. Method The Bristol Online Survey tool was used to deliver an online survey to 775 girls aged 11–16 years, attending a state-funded secondary school in the south-west of England. The survey was completed in class during the winter term of 2017. Results A total of 98.7 and 97.4% used the internet and apps, respectively, although only 6% had used any mental health apps. Of those with raised mental health symptoms, 15–17% used or were using a mental health app, with 48.5% reporting that they would not use a mental health app. Conclusions Young female adolescents are avid users of the internet and apps but are not using digital technology for mental health purposes. Addressing concerns about digital technology are necessary to maximise the effect it can have on child and adolescent mental health. Declaration of interest None.


Australian organizations supporting people seeking asylum face a challenging sociopolitical and communications environment. A dominant political narrative labels people seeking asylum as illegal arrivals, making it difficult to communicate humanizing alternatives capable of appealing to hearts and minds. This communication environment also limits the ability of advocacy organizations to raise community support. This research, involving a campaign delivered by an Australian advocacy organization, investigates how stakeholders make sense of human advocacy narrative. The campaign narrative focused on mobilizing activism for people seeking asylum, but in-depth interviews with participants revealed a wide range of emotional and cognitive responses. Findings result in a typology of three distinct audience types, offering insight into how and why different stakeholders respond to, and act on, the advocacy narratives designed to influence them. This research demonstrates how organizations can use communication to strengthen their appeal on emotive human advocacy issues, characterized by competing narratives.


We use a unique survey of the EU labor force to investigate the relationship between occupational licensing and the gender wage gap. We find that the gender wage gap is canceled for licensed self-employed workers. However, this closure of the gender wage gap is not mirrored by significant changes in the gender gap in hours worked. Our results are robust using decomposition methods, quantile regressions, different datasets, and selection correction.


One of the main issues of the device technology on metal-dielectric (MD) substrates is poor adhesion of thin metallic films, which are used for interconnections in electrical circuits. Films are formed by vacuum deposition on a porous dielectric layer of substrates. The presence of pores sufficiently complicates the cleaning of the substrate surface, which significantly decreases the adhesion of the film deposited on it. Technology of metal films with high adhesion, fabricated by ion-plasma method is proposed in this work. Films were deposited on MD substrates produced by electrochemical oxidation of aluminum alloys. The main operations of the technology are the following. Removal of residual electrolyte after the oxidation is carried out by rinsing of substrates initially under running hot water, and then in deionized water, followed by drying in a flow of heated nitrogen. Annealing of substrates under the pressure of 10−3 Pa and temperature of 550–570 K for 20 min is carried on in the vacuum chamber before the deposition of metal films. Copper is used as the main material of the interconnection films. Adhesion sublayer is fabricated on the basis of chromium or vanadium, which have high enthalpy of the oxide formation. Measurements showed that the copper films with the thickness of 1.5 μm, deposited on the vanadium sublayer with the thickness of 0.12 μm, which is comparable with the roughness of oxide layer, have adhesion of 25 N/mm at the temperature of 520 K. Investigation of adhesion was carried on by the method of direct tear off with the error of up to 10%.


Further education (FE) has traditionally been a rather unspectacular activity. Lacking the visibility of schools or the prestige of universities, for the vast majority of its existence FE has had a relatively low profile on the margins of English education. Over recent years this situation has altered significantly and further education has undergone profound change. This paper argues that a combination of related factors – neo‐liberalism, globalisation, and dominant discourses of the knowledge economy – has acted in synergy to transform FE into a highly performative and marketised sector. Against this backdrop, further education has been assigned a particular role based upon certain narrow and instrumental understandings of skill, employment and economic competitiveness. The paper argues that, although it has always been predominantly working class in nature, FE is now, more than ever, positioned firmly at the lower end of the institutional hierarchy in the highly class‐stratified terrain of English education.


An artificial neural network (ANN) is presented to predict the workability of self compacting concrete (SCC) containing slump, slump flow and V-test. A data set of a laboratory work, in which a total of 23 concretes were produced, was utilized in the ANNs study. ANN model is constructed, trained and tested using these data. The data used in the ANN model are arranged in a format of six input parameters that cover the cement, fly ash, blast furnace slag, super plasticizer, sand ratio and water/binder, three output parameters which are slump, slump flow and V-test of SCC. ANN-1, ANN-2 and ANN-3 models which containing 15 ,11 and 5 neurons in the hidden layers, respectively are found to predict workability of concrete well within the ranges of the input parameters considered. The three models are tested by comparing to the results to actual measured data. The results showed that ANN-2 is the best suitable for predicting the workability of SCC using concrete ingredients as input parameters.


New interim guidance from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) emphasizes the need for standard screening and monitoring of infants with possible congenital Zika virus infection plus hearing screening and specific testing and evaluation in three clinical scenarios. Plus: Are at-risk women commonly tested for rectal gonorrhea, chlamydia? Also: According to a study, ovarian cancer may originate in fallopian tubes.


Kela-2 Gas Field is the main supply for the West-East Gas Pipeline which runs across China with length of 4000 kilometers. Natural gas from Kela-2 contains CO2 /H2 S sour components and 10% condensation water, which makes the medium present very strong corrosivity. In avoidance of corrosion failure, DSS SAF2205 line pipes were introduced to transmit the gas from the Gas Field to gathering center and processing factory. The DSS pipeline is totally about 13km and it is the first time DSS pipes were used largely amount in oil and gas pipeline around the world. As it is known, DSS SAF2205 pipes and traditional linepipes X65 were welded together between the gathering lines and mainline. Properties of welding joints, especially corrosion resistance, are very important for the safety of the pipeline. In this paper, the dissimilar metal joints were welded by Metal Inertia Gas Welding (MIG) with ER2209 electrodes to study and optimize welding procedure. Optical microscope, scanning electronic microscope and energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) were employed to observe microstructure and analysis alloy elements distribution in the jointing zone between the dissimilar steels. Along the dissimilar joint, the microstructure changes from duplex characteristic combination of Ferrite and Austenite to that with Ferrite and a few Pearlite or MA. Smooth and notch tensile test and low temperature impact tests were also used to investigate mechanical properties of the dissimilar joints. Corrosion resistance of dissimilar metal joints were tested and analyzed. Weld metal produced with ER2209 presents excellent resistance to general corrosion in 1M NaCl solution. It is found that the ER2209 electrode is more suitable for producing the dissimilar weld joint according to this job.© 2008 ASME


In the profoundly changing and dynamic world of contemporary audiovisual media, what has remained surprisingly unaffected is regulation. In the European Union, the new Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMS), proposed by the European Commission on 13 December 2005, should allegedly rectify this situation. Amending the existing Television without Frontiers Directive, it should offer a "fresh approach" and meet the challenge of appropriately regulating media in a complex environment. It is meant to achieve a balance between the free circulation of TV broadcast and new audiovisual media and the preservation of values of cultural identity and diversity, while respecting the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality inherent to the European Community (EC). This paper examines whether and how the changes envisaged to the EC audiovisual media regime might influence cultural diversity in Europe. It addresses subseqently the question of whether the new AVMS properly safeguards the balance between competition and the public interest in this regard, or whether cultural diversity remains a mere political banner.Acknowledgements: The present study emerged from my work for the project "eDiversity: The Legal Protection of Cultural Diversity in a Digital Networked Environment," part of the Swiss National Centre for Competence in Research (NCCR): Trade Regulation. This article would not have been possible without the previous work done by Christoph Beat Graber and his valuable comments. Further thanks go to Miriam Sahlfeld for critical feedback on earlier drafts and Susan Kaplan for improving the language. Any errors of fact or interpretation are my own.


Background: Two types of popular scleral tunnel sutures in the manual small incision cataract surgery (MSICS) are horizontal and X-pattern sutures. Surgically induced corneal astigmatism (SIA) is a useful indicator of the suturing effect. Aims: To compare SIA between horizontal and X-pattern sutures in the scleral tunnel incisions for MSICS. Design: Prospective, nonrandomized comparative trial. Materials and Methods: After superior scleral tunnel incision and capsulorhexis, the nucleus was prolapsed into the anterior chamber and delivered. The wound was sutured with either horizontal or X-pattern suture. The simulated keratometry values were derived from the corneal topography preoperatively and 1.5 and 3 months postoperatively. Statistical Analysis: The SIA was calculated by Cartesian coordinates based analysis. Results: Sixty-four patients (32 patients in each group) were included in the study. In the horizontal suture group, the SIA centroid values at 1.5 and 3 months after the surgery were 0.87 × 1° and 1.11 × 180°, respectively, showing induction of against-the-rule astigmatism. In the X-pattern suture group, the SIA centroid values at 1.5 and 3 months after the surgery were 0.61 × 97° and 0.66 × 92°, respectively, showing induction of mild with-the-rule astigmatism. The difference between the amount of SIA at 1.5 and 3 months after surgery was small. Conclusion: In the MSICS, the X-pattern sutures were preferred to the horizontal sutures in the patients without significant preoperative steepening in line with the central meridian of the incision. In the cases with significant preoperative steepening, sutureless surgery or horizontal sutures were preferred. Corneal astigmatism in the patients undergoing MSICS was stable at 1.5 months after the surgery.


Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are composed of tiny wireless nodes that collect and process data. These networks can be composed of hundreds of nodes and be deployed in large and hazardous monitoring areas. WSN presents several hadware, software and communication constraints and a limited energy budget. Thus, one of the most challenging tasks in this technology is the achievement of a trade-off between Quality of Service and energy consumption. Most of the wireless standards are not able to deal with these large scale challenges. Therefore, when these WSN are deployed on large monitoring areas, they must be organized and divided into clusters in order to cover the monitoring area. Thus, it is necessary to develop approaches that organize the network and minimize lost messages rate. This way, community detection approaches could be an interesting alternative to organize and improve WSNs performance. In this paper, a community detection approach for cluster formation in large scale WSN is presented. Our approach was able to decrease lost messages rate when compared with a random cluster-head deployment approach.


Prior to the legalization and regulation [5] of abortion [6] and contraception [7] in the late twentieth century, women could not readily access safe birth control [8] , abortion [6] , and other reproductive health options at clinics and doctor's offices. Thus, women sought out alternative means to control their reproduction that were often illegal, unreliable, and unsafe, often because they were provided by untrained reproductive health care providers. The untrained providers who performed unregulated reproductive health services during the 1800s through the mid 1900s were often referred to as "female physicians," despite not having any formal medical background. Those providers filled a demand to serve women who were not able to tend to unwanted pregnancies and other reproductive issues on their own, but their role in the history of women's health has not been well understood. I have investigated the following questions: (1) How have women sought alternative non-medical approaches to managing reproduction, and (2) what historical patterns and situations can we see showing that non-medically trained people were active in the reproductive lives of women throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in the US? To study this, I have engaged in historical review methods to trace the evolution [9] of reproductive health care providers and educators. Specifically, I have examined historically active people, organizations, and events that involved women seeking alternative care and how the state of women's health care affected women's medical outcome. Through my investigation, I found a large number and variety of non-medical providers and approaches to women's reproductive health solutions due to an unmet need for reproductive healthcare and restrictive laws. Women obtained concocted birth control [8] pills, illegal abortions, home-brewed menopause relief treatments, and learned how to give self cervical examinations from non-medical providers. In response to the rigidity of the male dominated medical field, non-medical forces intervened and women's healthcare evolved beyond the traditional male physician's office into supportive healthcare groups like Planned Parenthood. My findings are relevant in the ongoing political debates surrounding issues like contraception [7] and abortion [6] access. By demonstrating the struggle for sound standard of care for non-medical reproductive health care providers during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, this project emphasizes what the standards of reproductive health care for abortion [6] and contraception [7] might be like if the organizations that made them so readily available, like Planned Parenthood, were defunded or criminalized in our modern setting. By demonstrating the struggle for sound standard of care for non-medical reproductive health care providers during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, this project emphasizes what the standards of reproductive health care for abortion and contraception might be like if the organizations that made them so readily available, like Planned Parenthood, were defunded or criminalized in our modern setting.


Understanding environment dynamics is necessary for robots to act safely and optimally in the world. In realistic scenarios, dynamics are non-stationary and the causal variables such as environment parameters cannot necessarily be precisely measured or inferred, even during training. We propose Implicit Identification for Dynamics Adaptation (IIDA), a simple method to allow predictive models to adapt to changing environment dynamics. IIDA assumes no access to the true variations in the world and instead implicitly infers properties of the environment from a small amount of contextual data. We demonstrate IIDA's ability to perform well in unseen environments through a suite of simulated experiments on MuJoCo environments and a real robot dynamic sliding task. In general, IIDA significantly reduces model error and results in higher task performance over commonly used methods. Our code, video of the method, and latest paper is available here https://bennevans.github.io/icra-iida/


Dispersal comprises a complex life-history syndrome that influences the demographic dynamics of especially those species that live in fragmented landscapes, the structure of which may in turn be expected to impose selection on dispersal. We have constructed an individual-based evolutionary sexual model of dispersal for species occurring as metapopulations in habitat patch networks. The model assumes correlated random walk dispersal with edge-mediated behaviour (habitat selection) and spatially correlated stochastic local dynamics. The model is parametrized with extensive data for the Glanville fritillary butterfly. Based on empirical results for a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the phosphoglucose isomerase (Pgi) gene, we assume that dispersal rate in the landscape matrix, fecundity and survival are affected by a locus with two alleles, A and C, individuals with the C allele being more mobile. The model was successfully tested with two independent empirical datasets on spatial variation in Pgi allele frequency. First, at the level of local populations, the frequency of the C allele is the highest in newly established isolated populations and the lowest in old isolated populations. Second, at the level of sub-networks with dissimilar numbers and connectivities of patches, the frequency of C increases with decreasing network size and hence with decreasing average metapopulation size. The frequency of C is the highest in landscapes where local extinction risk is high and where there are abundant opportunities to establish new populations. Our results indicate that the strength of the coupling of the ecological and evolutionary dynamics depends on the spatial scale and is asymmetric, demographic dynamics having a greater immediate impact on genetic dynamics than vice versa.


Changes in mean sea (MSL) level recorded relative to tide gauge benchmarks (TGBM) are corrupted by vertical land movements. Accurate estimates of changes in absolute sea level, require these MSL records to be corrected for ground level changes at tide gauge sites. For more than a decade, the Global Positioning System (GPS) has been used to determine positions of TGBMs and to monitor their position changes, i.e. station velocities, over time in the International Terrestrial Reference System (ITRS). This was initially carried out by episodic GPS campaigns and later on by continuous GPS (CGPS) or a combination of both.

Highly accurate realizations of the ITRS, satellite orbits and models for the mitigation of systematic effects currently enable the determination of station positions using GPS at the centimetre or even millimetre level. It is however argued that accurate long--term estimates of changes in the vertical component at the 1mm/yr level cannot be achieved, making intercomparisons between GPS estimates and other techniques necessary.

Daily processing and analysis of continuous GPS networks requires automated procedures. The modifications and improvements to the existing procedures at the IESSG are described. The newly developed tools include the monitoring and quality control of daily archived GPS observations and of processing results. A special focus is on the coordinate time series analysis and methodologies used to obtain the best possible estimates of vertical station velocities and associated uncertainties.

The coordinate time series of 21 CGPS stations in the UK and France are analysed. Eight of these stations are co-located with tide gauges. The effects of two processing strategies and two realizations of the ITRS on the coordinate time series are investigated. Filtered coordinate time series are obtained by application of a regional filtering technique. Station velocity estimates are obtained by fitting a model including a linear and annual term, and offsets to the unfiltered and filtered coordinate time series. Realistic uncertainties for these velocities are obtained from the application of two empirical methods which account for coloured noise in the coordinate time series. Results from these are compared to the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE), which allows for more rigorous and accurate, simultaneous estimation of the model parameters and their uncertainties. Strategies for coordinate time series analysis on a daily or monthly, and annual or bi-annual basis are defined.

At two CGPS stations the dual-CGPS station concept is tested and compared to the single baseline analysis and the application of an adaptive filter. An empirical method to obtain coordinate time series specific filter parameters is described. This investigation shows that reliable relative vertical station velocity estimates can be obtained after much shorter observation spans than absolute vertical station velocity estimates. The availability of dual-CGPS station pairs allows a simplified processing strategy and a multitude of coordinate time series analysis methods, all contributing to a better understanding of the variations in the positions of CGPS stations.

Vertical station velocity estimates for the unfiltered and filtered coordinate time series and different analysis strategies are compared for 17 of the CGPS stations and show disagreements of up to 2mm/yr. At the eight CGPS stations co-located with or close to tide gauges alternative estimates of vertical land/crustal movements from absolute gravimetry, geological information and glacial isostatic adjustment models are compared to the GPS estimates, and it is suggested that the latter are systematically offset. An alignment procedure is demonstrated, correcting the vertical station velocity estimates of all 17 CGPS stations for this offset. The correlation of the geology-aligned vertical station velocity estimates and the MSL records from eight tide gauges suggests changes in absolute sea level of approximately +1mm/yr around the UK.


Influenza viruses are a significant cause of respiratory infections, causing 3-5 million clinical infections and 250-500 thousand deaths per year. Infections caused by the influenza virus induce a host immune response at the non-specific and specific level (defined as natural and acquired), which leads to limitation of virus replication. Moreover the elements of immunological memory are induced so that they can protect against subsequent infection by the influenza virus. However, there is still no effective way for the total elimination of this virus, and the only effective method to combat this pathogen appears to be vaccination, which through immune system activation greatly limits its spread. The present paper presents the immune reaction at different levels in response to the influenza virus after entering the body and the mechanisms of the influenza virus for avoiding reactions of the immune system, which correspond to its high variability at the molecular level. Moreover, in this paper we describe various methods of stimulating the organism's immune systems with different generations of vaccines and their effectiveness in the fight against this pathogen.


Depth of body 8 3/4 times in total length without caudal fin, length of head 5 3/16 times. Head 1 1/3 times as long as broad, granulated on the whole upperside; occipital process angular, pointed, as long as broad; frontal fontanelle nearly 3 times as long as broad, his fore edge in the same vertical line as the hindborder of the eyes; occipital fontanelle twice as long as broad, the upper half on the occipital process; eye 3 times in length of snout, 7 times in interorbital width, which equals nearly 1/2 length of head and 1 1/7 width, of mouthopening; band of praemaxillary teeth 5 times as long as broad, band of vomerine teeth smaller, 8 times as long as broad, both ends of the band of mandibular teeth suddenly much smaller, the bands of teeth curved, all the teeth conical little curved; gillrakers 11 on anterior arch; nasal barbel about 1/3 length of head; maxillary barbel 10/13 length of head, reaching a little beyond base of pectoral; outer mandibular nearly 2/3, inner mandibular 2/5 length of head. Dorsal fin 74 rays, its distance from occipital process 3/7 length of head, its distance from caudal fin 1 1/2 diameter of eye; anal fin 58 rays, nearly Clarias nigeriae n. sp. 1/3 diameter of eye separated from caudal fin; pectoral fin 1/2 length of head, the spine half the length of the fin, and rough on both sides; ventral fin 3/7 length of head, reaching analfin, and 1 2/3 times as distant from base of caudal as from end of snout; caudal fin 5/8 length of head. Dark brown, lighter on the underside. Length 372 mm. Clarias nigeriae is most related to Clarias poensis Blgr., from which


Dialogue systems and conversational agents are becoming increasingly popular in modern society. We conceptualized one such conversational agent, Microsoft's "Ruuh" with the promise to be able to talk to its users on any subject they choose. Building an open-ended conversational agent like Ruuh at onset seems like a daunting task, since the agent needs to think beyond the utilitarian notion of merely generating "relevant" responses and meet a wider range of user social needs, like expressing happiness when user's favourite sports team wins, sharing a cute comment on showing the pictures of the user's pet and so on. The agent also needs to detect and respond to abusive language, sensitive topics and trolling behaviour of the users. Many of these problems pose significant research challenges as well as product design limitations as one needs to circumnavigate the technical limitations to create an acceptable user experience. However, as the product reaches the real users the true test begins, and one realizes the challenges and opportunities that lie in the vast domain of conversations. With over 2.5 million real-world users till date who have generated over 300 million user conversations with Ruuh, there is a plethora of learning, insights and opportunities that we will talk about in this paper.


A procedure for the [Cp*CoIII]-catalyzed, 1,2,3-triazole directed C–H amidation of arenes, using dioxazolone as an efficient amidating reagent, has been developed. This reaction provides a step- and atom-economical protocol for C–N bond formation, releasing carbon dioxide as a single byproduct. Yet a variety of functional groups are well tolerated, obtaining the desired products in moderate to excellent yields.


In this article we discuss several metrics of coherence defined using centering theory and investigate the usefulness of such metrics for information ordering in automatic text generation. We estimate empirically which is the most promising metric and how useful this metric is using a general methodology applied on several corpora. Our main result is that the simplest metric (which relies exclusively on NOCB transitions) sets a robust baseline that cannot be outperformed by other metrics which make use of additional centering-based features. This baseline can be used for the development of both text-to-text and concept-to-text generation systems.


. The paper presents a configurable method of static data race detection that is trying to keep a balance between resource consumption and a number of false alarms. The method is based on well known Lockset approach. It uses simplified memory model to be fast enough. At the same time it includes advanced techniques aimed to achieve acceptable false alarms rate. The key techniques are thread analysis and predicate abstraction based refinement. The method was implemented in CPALockator tool built on top of CPAchecker framework. The tool was evaluated on Linux kernel modules and it has detected several actual data races, which were approved by developers and were fixed in upstream Linux kernel.


The service literature is replete with theoretical and practical paradigms to improve service quality and advance goals of service providers as well as their customers. Often taken for granted is the assumption that organizations and their actors are interested in the well-being of those they serve as a way to bolster corporate images and engender long-term customer loyalty. While service failures are expected to happen, most successful firms seek to recover from these occurrences to maintain good relationships with their customers. However, is it possible for an organization to operate in a culture of antiservice? To address this question, we conducted an 18-month ethnographic investigation with men incarcerated in a maximum security prison using the participatory action research methodology. Findings discuss various facets and consequences of service failure that quickly become normal functioning in this institution. Descriptive themes and their interpretations follow and reveal that such treatment occurs because the men are viewed as less than fully human noncustomers who require strict control of need fulfillment. They react in a variety of ways that impact their ability to cope with this paucity of services. Recommendations for public service providers are presented along with implications for the larger service field.


Deep burns lead to scarring and contractures for which there is little or no published data on treatment costs. The purpose of this study was to fill this gap by analysing treatment costs for burn sequelae. To do this, German-DRG for in-patient treatment was collected from the Burn Centre Lower Saxony. DRG-related T95.-coding served as a tool for burn-associated sequelae. Data on scar occurrence, plastic-reconstructive surgery and sick leave were collected by a questionnaire. The findings showed that 44.6% patients reported post-burn scarring and 31% needed surgical intervention. The expected risk for readmission was significantly higher (p=0.0002) with scars compared to without. Significantly higher costs for pressure garments were noted for scarred patients (p=0.04). No differences were found for ointments, silicone dressings or pain medication. Treatment costs for patients with scars were 5.6 times higher compared with no scar assessed by G-DRG. No differences were stated subsuming multiple readmissions for post-burn treatment per individual. Significantly higher costs (p=0.03) were noted for patients with burn sequelae other than scars with regard to individual readmissions. It has been revealed that treatment of scars causes higher costs than for other burn sequelae because of multiple surgical interventions. To reduce post-burn scarring and costs, specialized burn centres provide optimal and state-of-the-art treatment. As well as this, more emphasis should be laid on promoting research for the development of novel anti-scarring therapies.


It is always uncertain if a new assistance system enhances traffic safety or not: empirical studies indicate that driving style may deteriorate when the driver experiences the increased safety margin created by an advanced driver assistance system. To minimize this negative effect on driving style, we redesigned a night vision system so that it appeared differently to the driver: we let the system's head-up display be turned off during operation, to be lit up only when the system detected an obstacle (e.g., a pedestrian or animal) on the road ahead. This presentation style was compared in a simulator study to the traditional solution of constantly lit-up display. The results indicate that drivers reacted more reliably (showed less variance in reaction times) using the new system, which implies that the lighting up of the IR-display constituted an effective warning. Also, drivers to a greater extent drove at normal (slower) speeds when using the re-designed system. More generally, systems offering discontinuous support (i.e. only in critical situations) may have less of a negative effect on driving style, as their presence is not felt as vividly by the driver


Technological advances are dramatically advancing translational research in Epilepsy. Neurophysiology, imaging, and metadata are now recorded digitally in most centers, enabling quantitative analysis. Basic and translational research opportunities to use these data are exploding, but academic and funding cultures prevent this potential from being realized. Research on epileptogenic networks, antiepileptic devices, and biomarkers could progress rapidly if collaborative efforts to digest this "big neuro data" could be organized. Higher temporal and spatial resolution data are driving the need for novel multidimensional visualization and analysis tools. Crowd-sourced science, the same that drives innovation in computer science, could easily be mobilized for these tasks, were it not for competition for funding, attribution, and lack of standard data formats and platforms. As these efforts mature, there is a great opportunity to advance Epilepsy research through data sharing and increase collaboration between the international research community.


Realizing the potential of online or virtual communities to facilitate teacher professional development requires educators to change their current perceptions of professional development. This calls for educators to develop new images of ongoing opportunities for professional development, based on their needs within an online community of learners and their recognition that communities may include individuals from local regions and from around the world who share mutual interests and goals. The realization of online learning communities to facilitate teacher professional development is a matter of carefully and deliberatively designing dynamic learning environments that foster a learning culture. This requires a pedagogical framework that nurtures the establishment of relationships, intimacy, and trust, where people engage in shared learning experiences mediated through technology. Designing an online learning environment that fosters the development of a learning community is not about adding technology on to current professional development practices. Rather, it is about designing, building, and supporting a structure and a process that are purposeful and fluid in nature and in meeting the personal ongoing professional development needs of teachers. ********** The complexities and demands of this young century have acted as catalysts, fuelling the expansion of network technologies and network-based learning. Information and communication technologies (ICT) and digital networks have altered both learning environments and the diverse roles of people within them. Anytime, anywhere and just-in-time concepts are part of this world. In this new world, greater possibilities and greater opportunities are available for people to work collaboratively in bridging distance and time as they come to together around emerging issues and projects. Further, the expectations of a knowledge era have placed teachers "under significant pressure to create new and different learning environments for their students if they are to realize the potential of a knowledge society, environments that they themselves have not experienced" (Friesen & Clifford, 2003, p. 2). As agents of change in the educational system, teachers need to have the necessary knowledge and skill sets to educate all students to meet increased expectations and performance standards and to be credible competitors in a global economy. Identified shortcomings in conventional professional development models have sparked a shift toward community-based models for the purpose of providing the ongoing support teachers need to have as they educate students. Further, with advances in ICT and ICT infrastructures in schools, online environments can be created and used in a meaningful way to support teachers' professional practice and routines. These online environments can be designed to nurture the development of online learning communities to facilitate teacher professional development and are a new trend in education. Educational stakeholders who are designing and facilitating these types of environments are exploring new frontiers and are learning as they go. Developing and sustaining online learning communities to facilitate teacher professional development calls for three important changes. First, there must be a reform of current perceptions of teacher professional development. Second, envisioning new images of professional development using online communities requires ongoing opportunities for professional growth and development based on the needs of teachers within a community of learners. Third, communities may include individuals from the local school region and/or from around the world, who share mutual interests and goals. For online communities to evolve to support teacher professional development, it is critical for key educational stakeholders to consider how communities can be interwoven throughout teachers' professional practices and routines, the curriculum, the institution and globally within professional organizations and professional thinking. …


In order to curb the trend toward global warming, many technical, operational, and policy options have been proposed to help reduce the emissions from international shipping—the carrier for 80% of the world's trade. However, these options might not only reduce emissions from shipping activities, but could also have a ripple effect on the whole supply chain of traded goods, as well as on those serving shipping activities. These effects could have both positive and negative impacts, not only on emission reduction, but also on world trade, economic efficiency, and the local environment. While most studies have examined the feasibility of the various options and their potential contribution to emission reduction, their secondary impacts have not been studied. However, failing to take them into account could very well obstruct the implementation of the options. Through a review of existing studies, this article aims to identify and explain some of these previously unexamined secondary effects that are associated with emission reduction in international shipping, point out the problems that will arise if they are ignored, and provide a basis for further detailed research in this area.


cerned with the subsequent propagation and eventual size of the clot,2 and smoking could then be of considerable relevance. These possibilities can really be satisfactorily explored only by using data on both smoking and oral contraceptive practice in studies which include fatal and non-fatal events. Two prospective studies' 4 may further clarify these points. Meanwhile there is already some evidence5 that enhancement of fibrinolytic activity prevents recurrent episodes. Professor Lawson and his colleagues do not say how many of the women with thromboembolism had had previous episodes, nor whether any of the controls may have had such episodes (prior to their admission for some other reason). If, where venous thrombosis is concerned, those with a probable cause for their disease fare better, once that cause is removed, than patients whose condition has no such removable causes the data presented could underestimate the effect of smoking. Finally, there must be some reservations about a study drawing conclusions on haemostatic mechanisms in which no direct studies of these mechanisms were carried out. We agree that if there is a balance between coagulation and fibrinolytic activity which is disturbed by smoking it is more likely to be of aetiological significance in myocardial infarction, where the epidemiological picture is one of apparent synergism between the effects of smoking and oral contraceptive usage, and it was for this reason that we discussed our original findings in terms of myocardial infarction' and not venous thromboembolism. It is certainly the case that smoking is not associated with death from venous thrombosis in men,8 and other findings9 in women indicate the same for non-fatal events. For reasons we have already given, however, it would be valuable to have simultaneous data on fatal and non-fatal events where information on smoking and oral contraceptive use was also available. It would be a pity if the study by Professor Lawson and his colleagues was accepted as general evidence against the possibility of a balance between coagulation and fibrinolysis which could be disturbed by influences such as oral contraceptives and smoking. This hypothesis is supported by our own' and other"' findings and if further substantiated could have implications for preventing thrombosis. T W MEADE R CHAKRABARTI


Two major challenges in the transformerless photovoltaic (PV) inverters are the presence of common-mode leakage currents, and as in most single-phase converters the need for reliable and compact double-line-frequency power decoupling. In the proposed doubly grounded inverter topology with innovative active-power-decoupling approach, both of these issues are simultaneously addressed. The topology allows the PV negative terminal to be directly connected to the neutral, thereby eliminating the capacitive-coupled common-mode ground currents. The decoupling capacitance requirement is minimized by a dynamically variable dc-link with large voltage swing, allowing an all-film-capacitor implementation. Furthermore, the use of wide bandgap devices enables the converter operation at higher switching frequency, resulting in smaller magnetic components. The topology uses only four switches and potentially enables a high power density solution. The operating principles, design and optimization, and control methods are explained in detail, and compared with other transformer-less, active-decoupling topologies. A 3 kVA, 100/75 kHz single-phase hardware prototype at 400 V dc nominal input and 240 V ac output with a wide range of power factor has been developed using SiC MOSFETs with only 45 μF/1100 V dc-link capacitance. Extensive experimental results from the prototype are presented to validate the concept, design, and superior performance of the proposed topology.


Two SDCS systems which were deployed in early 1975 remained in operation at their original sites. These sites are at Houlton, Maine, and Red Lake, Ontario. The Houlton site uses a Model 36000 borehole seismometer system and the Red Lake Site uses standard SDCS (surface) instrumentation. Three SDCS systems remained in operation at the Nevada Test Site (NTS). These systems record short-period data only on both analog and digital recorders. The site at Oak Spring Butte was operational throughout the period. Two systems located in Pahute Mesa (NT-NV and NT2NV) were relocated to the Yucca Flat area of NTS in order to collect data in the immediate vicinity of known signal anomalies. Single short-period vertical component sites were also added as outriggers in order to complement data from each of the NTS systems. During May and June, three additional SDCS units were placed in operation at sites near the detonation points of events off the NTS. The sites are in remote areas and record short-period data on analog tape only. These units are to collect data to complement the NTS data being used in present magnitude anomaly studies. The sites are Faultless, Nevada (near the FAULTLESS event); Tatum Dome, Mississippimore » (near the SALMON event); and Gasbuggy, New Mexico (near the GASBUGGY event).« less


Primary omental cysts are rare intra-abdominal pathology, which are difficult to diagnose preoperatively; as such a high index of suspicion is required for accurate preoperative diagnosis. We present a case of primary omental cyst in an eight-year-old girl who presented with huge abdominal distension mimicking ascites. She was operated and cyst was extirpated completely. Histological examination revealed an omental cyst with endothelial lining and haemorrhagic fluid inside. Patient was followed up for a period of one year and had no post operative complication or recurrence of the disease. This case is reported to emphasise the inclusion of huge omental cyst in the differential diagnosis of ascites especially in the paediatric age group.


Aptamers are short DNA or RNA oligonucleotides that specifically and efficiently bind to a target molecule. Since the publication of the first reports in 1990 describing the selection of aptamers, this technology aroused great interest, and it was considered as a powerful strategy for the identification of molecular tools for a wide range of applications. It has been perhaps in recent years when the aptamers' technology has gained the recognition from the international community of its great potential for developing specific therapeutic and diagnostic tools. Among the variety of targets against which aptamers have been obtained, targeting viral RNA genomes have attracted much interest. In this context it is framed the work carried out by our research group. In this talk I briefly summarized the successful application of this technology to the selection of efficient RNA aptamers against highly conserved structural RNA domains within the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and the hepatitis C virus (HCV) genomes. We have described the selection of a 16 nt-long RNA aptamer targeting the polyA domain of the HIV-1 genome that reduces the viral particles production higher than 85% in a viral infection model in cell culture. Similarly we have isolated a collection of RNA aptamers targeting the essential CRE (cis-replication element) of the HCV genome, which yields viral replication inhibition rates higher than 90-95% in a cell culture replication system.


Although many studies have investigated the requirement for CD4+ T cell help for CD8+ T cell responses to acute viral infections that are fully resolved, less is known about the role of CD4+ T cells in maintaining ongoing CD8+ T cell responses to persistently infecting viruses. Using mouse polyoma virus (PyV), we asked whether CD4+ T cell help is required to maintain antiviral CD8+ T cell and humoral responses during acute and persistent phases of infection. Though fully intact during acute infection, the PyV-specific CD8+ T cell response declined numerically during persistent infection in MHC class II-deficient mice, leaving a small antiviral CD8+ T cell population that was maintained long term. These unhelped PyV-specific CD8+ T cells were functionally unimpaired; they retained the potential for robust expansion and cytokine production in response to Ag rechallenge. In addition, although a strong antiviral IgG response was initially elicited by MHC class II-deficient mice, these Ab titers fell, and long-lived PyV-specific Ab-secreting cells were not detected in the bone marrow. Finally, using a minimally myeloablative mixed bone marrow chimerism approach, we demonstrate that recruitment and/or maintenance of new virus-specific CD8+ T cells during persistent infection is impaired in the absence of MHC class II-restricted T cells. In summary, these studies show that CD4+ T cells differentially affect CD8+ T cell responses over the course of a persistent virus infection.


A recent workshop brought together a range of stakeholders with an interest in identifying best practice for community engagement and communication; they included industry and governance representatives from different sectors, as well as academics from a range of disciplines with social research interests, and representatives of several industries/ companies with specific links to salmon aquaculture. The group identified a range of issues with respect to community engagement and prioritised strategies to improve future engagement.

Community understanding of salmon farming is influenced through many mechanisms. Publicity has been shown to have a major influence on perceptions of salmon farming in the northern hemisphere. The messages and expectations generated by this publicity are frequently used to judge the performance of the industry in the southern hemisphere. People with an understanding of the industry in Australia and New Zealand know that there is a lot of misinformation in the media and that many of the issues affecting the broader industry do not translate to the southern hemisphere. Consequently a key focus of the workshop was to ascertain community perceptions of salmon farming in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), identify common trans-Tasman values, and determine any key points of distinction from these other growing regions.

The group considered a range of existing perception/ opinion/ attitude research and case studies in relation to seafood in the ANZ region with a view to identifying the current context of the industry. Through reflection on previous experience in other sectors the group identified many cases where the value of community support was underestimated. Perceptions of seafood production (farming and wild capture), and resultant purchasing and political behaviour, tend to be strongly associated with the community's prevailing cultural and social values. Even the normal planning and regulatory frameworks can also unintentionally create conflict; recent experience in New Zealand saw the regulatory process force stakeholders to legal proceedings without space to engage with the community. In hindsight, with a clearer analysis of the risks, prior engagement may have resulted in a very different outcome for the industry and community. Consequently, appropriate analysis of community perception issues (identifying both what those perceptions might be and just who is the community concerned) is critical to understanding how those perceptions might impact farming, both operationally and strategically. The presentation will summarise the key findings but the main take home messages were that there is a clear need to include community engagement (and the potential for negative impact) in future planning and business risk assessments and that both industry and regulators need to continually seek to improve approaches for engagement.


Bispectra were computed to detect phase coupling in the cortical and hippocampal EEG of the rat during various vigilance states. For EEGs recorded from the hippocampus, significant phase coupling was obtained during rapid-eye-movement sleep between the frequency components (6-8 Hz) associated with theta rhythm. The results indicate that the bispectral analysis of the EEG can reveal extra information not obtainable from the power spectrum and may provide insight regarding the formation of the EEG within different brain structures during various vigilance states.<<ETX>>