Under stress, cells need to optimize the activity of a wide range of gene products during the response phases: shock, adaptation, and recovery. This requires coordination of several levels of regulation, including turnover and translation efficiencies of mRNAs. Mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase pathways are implicated in many aspects of the environmental stress response, including initiation of transcription, translation efficiency, and mRNA turnover. In this study, we analyze mRNA turnover rates and mRNA steady-state levels at different time points following mild hyperosmotic shock in Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells. The regulation of mRNA stability is transient and affects most genes for which there is a change in transcript level. These changes precede and prepare for the changes in steady-state levels, both regarding the initial increase and the later decline of stress-induced mRNAs. The inverse is true for stress-repressed genes, which become stabilized during hyperosmotic stress in preparation of an increase as the cells recover. The MAP kinase Hog1 affects both steady-state levels and stability of stress-responsive transcripts, whereas the Hog1-activated kinase Rck2 influences steady-state levels without a major effect on stability. Regulation of mRNA stability is a wide-spread, but not universal, effect on stress-responsive transcripts during transient hyperosmotic stress. By destabilizing stress-induced mRNAs when their steady-state levels have reached a maximum, the cell prepares for the subsequent recovery phase when these transcripts are to return to normal levels. Conversely, stabilization of stress-repressed mRNAs permits their rapid accumulation in the recovery phase. Our results show that mRNA turnover is coordinated with transcriptional induction.


Homogenous nanostructuration of molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) films for follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) sensing was achieved by using optimized colloidal crystals as a hard mold. Introduction of heating step after assembling colloidal crystals of silica beads promoted their adhesion. Thus precise assembling of beads was not disturbed during further multistep of surface imprinting, and crack free hexagonal packing was maintained. SEM imaging confirmed hexagonal packing of silica colloidal crys-tals as well as homogenous nanostructurization in MIP films. FSH immobilization over silica beads and later its derivatization with electroactive functional monomers was confirmed by XPS analysis. The nanostructured molecular recognition films prepared in this way were combined with an electrochemical transducer in order to design a capacitive impedimetry (CI) based chemosensing system. It was tested for the determination of FSH in the range from 0.1 fM to 100 pM in 10 mM MES buffer (pH = 4.2). The detection limit of the chemosensor was 0.1 fM showing a high selectivity with respect to common protein interferences as well as other protein hormones of the gonadotropin family.


OBJECTIVE
This study aimed to estimate the cost-effectiveness of esketamine, a novel intranasally dosed antidepressant, for patients in the United States with treatment-resistant depression.

METHODS
A decision-analytic model parameterized with efficacy data from phase 3 randomized trials of esketamine was used to simulate the effects of treatment with esketamine versus oral antidepressants over a 5-year horizon, from both societal and health care sector perspectives. Outcomes included remission and response of depression, quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), costs, and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) for esketamine. Value-based prices were calculated, defined as the per-dose price at which esketamine would become cost-effective given cost-effectiveness thresholds of $50,000/QALY, $100,000/QALY, and $150,000/QALY. Uncertainty in these outcomes was assessed with probabilistic sensitivity analyses. Key model parameters included the efficacy of esketamine versus oral antidepressants (relative risk of 1.39 for remission; 1.32 for response) and the monthly cost of esketamine ($5,572 for month 1; $1,699-$2,244 thereafter).

RESULTS
Over 5 years, esketamine was projected to increase time in remission from 25.3% to 31.1% of life-years, resulting in a gain of 0.07 QALYs. Esketamine increased societal costs by $16,617 and health care sector costs by $16,995. Base case ICERs were $237,111/QALY (societal) and $242,496/QALY (health care sector). Probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed a greater than 95% likelihood that esketamine's ICER would be above $150,000/QALY. At a cost-effectiveness threshold of $150,000/QALY, esketamine's value-based price was approximately $140/dose (versus a current price of $240/dose).

CONCLUSIONS
Esketamine is unlikely to be cost-effective for management of treatment-resistant depression in the United States unless its price falls by more than 40%.


Deep infection is one of the most devastating complications in total hip replacement. This dreaded complication is presented in considerable detail with special emphasis on prevention, diagnosis, and various methods of surgical and antibiotic treatment. Basic fundamentals of antibiotic therapy are reviewed. In addition, guidelines are given for the indications of surgical intervention, the type and staging of operative procedures, with detailed techniques of the various operative procedures used to treat the infected total hip implant patient.


The first phase of Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) research project 0-4577, "Further Development of NDT Devices to Identify Segregation in HMAC," focused on evaluating non-nuclear density gauges for measuring hot-mix asphalt (HMA) density on paving projects and is documented in Report 0-4577-1. This report documents the second phase of that project. In this phase, researchers refined infrared methods for detecting segregation on paving projects, verified previously recommended limits on surface dielectric variations for different TxDOT paving mixtures, and developed new ground-penetrating radar (GPR) tools to more rapidly investigate the uniformity of a new overlay. To refine infrared methodology, the research team created an infrared sensor bar that gets pushed behind the paver. Data collection and processing software allow personnel to inspect and identify suspected segregated areas in real time. To verify the previously recommended limits on surface dielectric variations, the research team used GPR to inspect completed overlays for segregation on six TxDOT paving projects. Results matched well with the previously recommended guidelines. On projects using coarse-graded mixes, locations with surface dielectrics that are not within ± 0.8 of the mean dielectric value should be investigated for segregation. On projects using dense-graded mixes, locations with surface dielectrics that are not within ± 0.4 of the mean dielectric value should be investigated for segregation. A new software package, RadSeg, allows personnel to more rapidly analyze GPR data for segregation. A newly developed three-channel GPR system allows personnel to collect data over both wheel paths and the centerline in one pass for rapid assessment of the uniformity of a project.


Rapid sequential computed tomography of the brain after the bolus injection of contrast material provides invaluable information as to the characteristic blood flow of intracranial lesions in a noninvasive manner. Plotted dynamic curves permit accurate diagnosis of particularly difficult cases of infarcts and neoplasms. Dynamic computed tomographic (CT) scanning has become a part of the CT work-up for infarcts, which has allowed their earlier demonstration, detected as areas of hypoperfusion not clearly evident on an initial conventional CT study. Quantitative assessment of vasogenic edema and hypoperfusion are helpful in establishing the diagnosis of infarction and neoplasia. Orbital and parasellar neoplasms can be distinguished accurately from vascular lesions. Dynamic CT studies complemented conventional film screen arteriography in the evaluation of three cases of intracavernous internal carotid artery aneurysm, defining thrombus formation and wall thickness and thus influencing the therapeutic approach. In addition, this modality is useful in differentiating jugular fossa neoplasm from vascular malformation. This review elaborates on the technique involved in dynamic CT scanning and the subsequent results.


Synopsis The suggestion is advanced that north-south trending faults and Carboniferous synclinal troughs, as well as a crustal inhomogeneity in central Scotland, were formed in response to a stress field in which the direction of relative tension was oriented east and west relative to the present pole. These structures are considered to be higher homologues of three major extension failures (geofractures) at the base of the Upper Crust which are separated by distances of 45 and 55 km. In Ireland (like Scotland, situated close to the continental margin) north-south geofractures have previously been postulated to explain the distribution of major ore deposits (Russell 1968, 1969). Sparse stratigraphical evidence points to a late Tournaisian or Viséan age for the initiation of the postulated geofractures. They are considered to constitute the earliest evidence for the stress field that eventually caused lithosphere separation at Rockall Trough. This separation is inferred to have taken place at the end of Carboniferous times.


On 4 July 2019, the Ridgecrest earthquake sequence began with a series of foreshocks including an Mw 6.4 event near Searles Valley, California. This was then followed 34 hr later by an Mw 7.1 mainshock located just 15 km to the north, with the earthquake sequence resulting in a complex array of intersecting faults. This earthquake sequence poses several interesting questions including, did the stress changes induced by the Mw 6.4 foreshock trigger the Mw 7.1 mainshock and what possible mechanism(s) could explain the occurrence of widespread secondary faulting surrounding both surface ruptures? However, most of the geodetic data (such as Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar, light detection and ranging, and optical satellite imagery) were acquired after both events had occurred making it difficult to discern which surface fractures happened when and their possible triggering mechanism. Here, we provide a dataset composed of high-resolution optical imagery, pixel-value difference maps, .kmz fracturing mapping, and horizontal deformation maps derived from subpixel image correlation, which can uniquely separate the surface fracturing and deformation between the foreshock and mainshock events that can help answer these questions. Separate imaging of the events is made possible by the daily acquisition of optical imagery by the Planet Labs cubesat constellation, which acquired data between the two earthquakes, in the morning of 4 and 5 July, at 11.13 a.m. and 05.12 p.m. PST, respectively, with the images acquired just 40 min after the foreshock and 56 min before the mainshock, respectively. Analysis from this optical imagery reveals the location of surface faulting that allows us to map their spatial extent and determine their timing. These data which we provide here can help guide and validate field survey observations to help understand which faults ruptured when, and constrain slip inversion models for more accurate estimates of stress changes induced by the foreshock imposed on the surrounding faults.


Fertilizer micro-dosing is a precision fertilizer application technique with the potential to improve agricultural productivity and livelihoods in the semi- arid-tropics. Despite more than two decades of disseminating the technology in Niger, micro-dosing adoption rates remain low with evidence of dis-adoption. Since fertilizer is a risk increasing technology, this paper estimates the effects of risk attitudes on fertilizer use and the practice of micro-dosing. We use different methods to elicit measures of risk aversion and supplement those with measures of aversion to ambiguity and loss. We find that incentivized measures of risk attitudes have better predictive power than general measures based on hypothetical survey questions. Among the risk attitudes explored, risk aversion tends to matter in the decision to use fertilizer and in the choice of an application technique when fertilizer is used. This indicates that ex post programs like insurance could promote the use of fertilizer and fertilizer micro-dosing among risk averse farmers.


Fan, ST, Choi, TK, Lai, ECS and Wong, J. (1989) Prediction of severity of acute pancreatitis: an alternative approach. Gut; 30, 1591-1595 Admission laboratory data of 203 patients suffering from acute pancreatitis were analysed to search for a simpler method of prediction of severity than the traditional multifactor prognostic scoring system. By discriminant analysis, admission serum urea and plasma glucose were identified to be factors with independent significance in predicting severity. If the presence of either factor higher than the cutoff point (urea > 7.4 mmoi/l, glucose > 11.0 mmol/l) was considered as an indication of severe disease, then the sensitivity of this method was 75.0%, specificity 80.3% and the accuracy 79.3%. The predictive ability of this method was comparable with the Glasgow multifactor scoring system when the latter was also used to grade severity of our patients. It has the advantage, however, of simplicity and the ability of predicting severity at the time of admission.


The present comparative revise intends on providing qualitatively the mineral and vitamins by atomic absorption spectroscopy and high performance liquid chromatography respectively in total tissues of three Potamidid snails distinctively T. telescopium, C. obtusa and C. cingulata of Tekkali Creek, Srikakulam District, Andhra Pradesh. Fallouts illustrate that, elevated amounts of Iron, calcium and anticipated Phosphorous levels were existential in C. cingulata. C. obtusa had towering amount of magnesium, a lesser amount of sodium was observed in T. telescopium. Fairly accurate amounts of chlorine were observed in C. cingulata and C. obtusa. Lofty amount of penultimate macro element potassium perceived in C. obtusa. Last of all minerals, zinc concentration was far above the ground in C. cingulata. HPLC analysis of three Potamidid snail test samples showed the presence of high-flying concentrated vitamins. Elevated amount of vitamin A was observed in C. obtusa. Whereas C. cingulata had high amount of Vitamin E. Amongst B complex vitamins, B1 vitamin concentration is more in C. obtusa. C. cingulata had towering vitamin B2. T. telescopium had sky-scraping amount of vitamin B6 , finally vitamin B12 concentration was lofty in C. obtusa. These findings demonstrate that the consumption of these tested bivalve snails, appends top worth-added essences.


Background & Aims
To improve prognosis in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the molecular mechanisms of tumor thrombus formation and metastasis must be clarified. The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and cancer stem cells (CSCs) play crucial roles in tumor invasion and metastasis. This study aimed to reveal the clinical significance of the expression of the functional CSC marker, CD13, and investigate the correlation between CD13 expression and two EMT markers, E-cadherin and vimentin.

Methods
We acquired clinical samples from 86 patients with HCC that underwent radical liver resections. We performed immunohistochemistry to evaluate CD13, E-cadherin and vimentin expression. We investigated the relationships among protein expression levels, clinicopathological factors and prognosis.

Results
Based on CD13 expression, patients were categorized into CD13high (n = 30, 34.9%) and CD13low (n = 56, 65.1%) groups. The mean tumor size was significantly larger in the CD13high group than in the CD13low group (P = 0.049). Compared with the CD13low group, the CD13high group showed significantly earlier recurrences and shorter survival times. In the multivariate analysis, CD13high was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival (hazard ratio, 1.98; P = 0.044). The disease-free survival time was shorter in the vimentin-positive group than that in the vimentin-negative group (P = 0.014). In an analysis of the relationship between CD13 and EMT, there was no significant correlation between CD13 and EMT markers.

Conclusions
Our findings suggested that CD13 enrichment was correlated with early recurrences, and poor prognosis in patients with HCC and that vimentin was associated with early recurrences. CD13 represents a potential therapeutic target for HCC, because CSC regulation and EMT suppression are essential in cancer therapy.


Accurate identification of cell nuclei and their tracking using three dimensional (3D) microscopic images is a demanding task in many biological studies. Manual identification of nuclei centroids from images is an error-prone task, sometimes impossible to accomplish due to low contrast and the presence of noise. Nonetheless, only a few methods are available for 3D bioimaging applications, which sharply contrast with 2D analysis, where many methods already exist. In addition, most methods essentially adopt segmentation for which a reliable solution is still unknown, especially for 3D bio-images having juxtaposed cells. In this work, we propose a new method that can directly extract nuclei centroids from fluorescence microscopy images. This method involves three steps: (i) Pre-processing, (ii) Local enhancement, and (iii) Centroid extraction. The first step includes two variations: first variation (Variant-1) uses the whole 3D pre-processed image, whereas the second one (Variant-2) modifies the preprocessed image to the candidate regions or the candidate hybrid image for further processing. At the second step, a multiscale cube filtering is employed in order to locally enhance the pre-processed image. Centroid extraction in the third step consists of three stages. In Stage-1, we compute a local characteristic ratio at every voxel and extract local maxima regions as candidate centroids using a ratio threshold. Stage-2 processing removes spurious centroids from Stage-1 results by analyzing shapes of intensity profiles from the enhanced image. An iterative procedure based on the nearest neighborhood principle is then proposed to combine if there are fragmented nuclei. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses on a set of 100 images of 3D mouse embryo are performed. Investigations reveal a promising achievement of the technique presented in terms of average sensitivity and precision (i.e., 88.04% and 91.30% for Variant-1; 86.19% and 95.00% for Variant-2), when compared with an existing method (86.06% and 90.11%), originally developed for analyzing C. elegans images.


Grounded in literature review and an ethnographic study, this article examines contemporary Brazilian domestic life. Relations among women (employers and maids) and between women and men are analyzed with a focus on the home as a space in which gender, race, and class inequalities are constantly reproduced. The article argues that what happens in domestic life is constitutive of wider social divisions and that the domestic is a universe integral to the national social context. A case in point is the connection between the widespread use of paid domestic labor and the naturalization of black women as subservient, complementing the pairing of whiteness and class entitlement. Another case is the buffering role of maids in the development of gender conflicts in well-off homes, thus blurring gender hierarchies at a broader scale. Locating the domestic within the recent discussion on global domestic labor, the article compares particularities of Brazilian domestic life to those elsewhere.


A new robotic system for Search And Rescue (SAR) operations based on the automatic wristband placement on the victims' arm, which may provide identification, beaconing and remote sensor readings for continuous health monitoring. This paper focuses on the development of the automatic target localization and the device placement using an unmanned aerial manipulator. The automatic wrist detection and localization system uses an RGB-D camera and a convolutional neural network based on the region faster method (Faster R-CNN). A lightweight parallel delta manipulator with a large workspace has been built, and a new design of a wristband in the form of a passive detachable gripper, is presented, which, under contact, automatically attaches to the human, while disengages from the manipulator. A new trajectory planning method has been used to minimize the torques caused by the external forces during contact, which cause attitude perturbations. Experiments have been done to evaluate the machine learning method for detection and location, and for the assessment of the performance of the trajectory planning method. The results show how the VGG-16 neural network provides a detection accuracy of 67.99%. Moreover, simulation experiments have been done to show that the new trajectories minimize the perturbations to the aerial platform.


2 Abstract: Due to the current restrictions and differences between iOS and Android platforms, to have an application deployed on both platforms requires it to be developed twice. Hence this doubles the effort and time needed for development of the application. The mobile applications are used more than the calls. People use the applications as per their need. There are various mobile operating systems like Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows, etc. Each operating system has its own specialization. The applications defer from one operating system to the other. So the customer needs to use more than one mobile operating system to fulfill their requirements. We'll be developing a mobile application for Multiplatform Operating Systems which will reduce the code development time and energy to half.


The mapping of cellular architecture into mobile ad hoc network (MANET) leads to the design of Linked Cluster Architecture (LCA), where every cluster has a head node associated with zero or more member nodes. In order to achieve a faster cluster setup, we consider mobility of nodes as the deciding parameter for selecting the heads and their associated members. A node having the lowest mobility among its neighbors becomes the cluster head. Selection of low mobile nodes as the cluster heads ensures better cluster stability. A new energy consumption model has been considered for the cluster heads that takes into account the network traffic, density of cluster members and the transmission power utilized to communicate the member nodes.


The primary goals of this project for JTO and ONR (Grant N00014-07-1-1060) were to further develop Extinction Imagers for use in the ocean environment, and to extend the capabilities into the Short Wave IR (SWIR). Extinction Imaging is a method for determining the effective extinction coefficient over an extended path using a sensor at one end of the path. It uses calibrated imagers to acquire the relative radiance of a dark target near the other the end of the path and the horizon sky in the direction of the dark target. It is completely passive and thus covert, and the hardware is robust and relatively inexpensive. It uses rigorous equations, which determine the extinction coefficient from the measured apparent contrast of the radiance of the dark target with respect to the horizon sky. The project was very successful. We found that the ocean surface could readily be used as a dark target in red and SWIR wavelengths. Both the red and the SWIR measurement results were excellent for daytime. Comparisons with standard instruments, as well as uncertainty analysis, indicated that extinction imagers provide better measurements of the atmospheric extinction losses over extended paths than other methods of which we are aware. Our secondary goals were to address the night regime, and to address slanted paths above the horizontal. Regarding night, we found that the visible sensor acquired excellent data, but the ocean surface was not a good dark target in our wavelengths. Recommendations on the handling of night are given in the report. Regarding the lines of sight above the horizon, we developed a slant path algorithm that determines beam transmittance. It performed very well. Recommendations are made regarding integration of these techniques for military applications.


The text is aimed at final-year undergraduate students or those at the graduate level doing econometrics for the first time. It is an introductory course in the theory and practice of classical and modern econometric methods. A proper study of the material will allow the reader to understand the scope and limitations of classical and modern econometric techniques; read, write and properly interpret articles and reports of an applied econometric nature; and be in a position to build upon the elements of econometric theory and practice introduced in the book. Although some basic knowledge of matrix algebra and elementary statistical theory will be assumed, much of it is covered in the text. All the main theoretical concepts are illustrated with the use of econometric software, mainly Eveiws.


Runoff during intense rainstorms plays a major role in generating debris flows in many alpine areas and burned steeplands. Yet compared to debris flow initiation from shallow landslides, the mechanics by which runoff generates a debris flow are less understood. To better understand debris flow initiation by surface water runoff, we monitored flow stage and rainfall associated with debris flows in the headwaters of two small catchments: a bedrock‐dominated alpine basin in central Colorado (0.06 km2) and a recently burned area in southern California (0.01 km2). We also obtained video footage of debris flow initiation and flow dynamics from three cameras at the Colorado site. Stage observations at both sites display distinct patterns in debris flow surge characteristics relative to rainfall intensity (I). We observe small, quasiperiodic surges at low I; large, quasiperiodic surges at intermediate I; and a single large surge followed by small‐amplitude fluctuations about a more steady high flow at high I. Video observations of surge formation lead us to the hypothesis that these flow patterns are controlled by upstream variations in channel slope, in which low‐gradient sections act as "sediment capacitors," temporarily storing incoming bed load transported by water flow and periodically releasing the accumulated sediment as a debris flow surge. To explore this hypothesis, we develop a simple one‐dimensional morphodynamic model of a sediment capacitor that consists of a system of coupled equations for water flow, bed load transport, slope stability, and mass flow. This model reproduces the essential patterns in surge magnitude and frequency with rainfall intensity observed at the two field sites and provides a new framework for predicting the runoff threshold for debris flow initiation in a burned or alpine setting.


In this article we review recent social psychological contributions to the metacognitive movement. It is argued that social psychologists have long contributed to the study of "thinking about thinking," even though their work has not yet been recognized as metacognitive. The present "expansionist" survey suggests that the domain of social metacognition should include (a) beliefs about one's own mental states and processes as well as beliefs about those of other people, (b) momentary sensations as well as enduring folk theories, and (c) descriptive beliefs about how the mind works and normative beliefs about how it ought to work. The contents and origins of metacognition are inherently social; at the same time, metacognitions are comprised of cognitive elements and are governed by the principles and laws applicable to human thinking in general. Accordingly, whereas metacognitions about self-knowledge may be derived from different informational sources than metacognitions about other people, the processes whereby different types of metacognitions are formed, activated, and applied are essentially the same. Focusing on the social nature of metacognition and the profound relevance of cultural expectations on cognitive performance makes clear the benefits of systematically exploring the cognitive-social interface in reference to metacognitive phenomena.


One of the key actions identified by the Water Framework Directive (WFD; 2000/60/EC) is to develop ecological assessment tools and carry out a European intercalibration (IC) exercise. The aim of the Intercalibration is to ensure that the values assigned by each Member State to the good ecological class boundaries are consistent with the Directive's generic description of these boundaries and comparable to the boundaries proposed by other MS. In total, 83 lake assessment methods were submitted for the 2nd phase of the WFD intercalibration (2008-2012) and 62 intercalibrated and included in the EC Decision on Intercalibration (EC 2013). The intercalibration was carried out in the 13 Lake Geographical Intercalibration Groups according to the ecoregion and biological quality element. In this report we describe how the intercalibration exercise has been carried out in the Mediterranean Lake Phytoplankton group.


A series of hydroxybenzoic acid derivatives have shown inhibitory activity against carbonic anhydrase (CA). X-ray crystallography shows that these molecules inhibit not by binding the active site metal ion but by strong hydrogen bonding to the metal-bound water nucleophile. The binding mode observed for these molecules is distinct when compared to other non-metal-binding CA inhibitors.


AIMS AND BACKGROUND
Malignant mesothelioma is a fatal cancer of increasing incidence in north-eastern Italy. Together with asbestos, the polyomavirus SV40 was hypothesized to contribute to the onset of malignant mesothelioma. To investigate the putative role of SV40 in the individual susceptibility to asbestos-induced malignant mesothelioma, we conducted a molecular epidemiological study on a series of malignant mesothelioma patients from an area in north-eastern Italy hyperendemic for malignant pleural mesothelioma.

METHODS AND STUDY DESIGN
We collected 63 mesothelioma samples from incidence cases of patients diagnosed with malignant pleural mesothelioma in the period 2009-2010. DNA was extracted from patients' tissue biopsies using the BioRobot EZ1 Qiagen workstation. SV40 sequence detection and quantification was performed by specific real time PCR. The 74.6% of the 63 enrolled patients had a history of asbestos exposure. The epithelioid histotype was more prevalent in males (64.0%) and the mixed in females (61.5%) who showed significantly higher cancer co-morbidity (46.1% vs 12%, P = 0.005). SV40 was detected in 22% of MM tumors, with a low viral load. In SV40-positive patients, a threefold increased risk of asbestos exposure was observed, more evident in females (OR 4.32) than in males (OR 1.20).

CONCLUSIONS
Our findings indicate that a high prevalence of SV40 was present in malignant mesothelioma incident cases from an area hyperendemic for malignant mesothelioma in north-eastern Italy. Although asbestos is considered the main risk factor in malignant mesothelioma onset, a role for SV40 could be hypothesized.


Gadgets enthrall and delight. We are surrounded by the outcome of centuries of invention and associated refinements of machines enabling our lives. Many of these rely in their formation on prior technology and knowledge. It is this prior knowledge that provides a stepping point and foundation for design and realisation of a gadget. This paper reports the long-standing 'gizmo' module that has been run on multiple occasions and in various formats each year at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art. The module provides a foundation in mechatronics, coding and machine design to serve as building blocks for students' self-generated ideas and prototypes for their gizmos. Exposure to a wide range of sample parts, coding sessions, practical build and integration of circuits and actuators has been found, in combination with a focus on key machine design concepts, a culture of adventure and the freedom from the constraints of a prescriptive brief, to result in meaningful and accelerated learning for undergraduate and postgraduate students of diverse backgrounds. The module's characteristics include a culture of adventure and ambitious builds, intensive activity, serendipity and celebration of failure and success.


The key element of the in-process surface roughness monitoring system is the decision-making model, which is utilized to analyze the input factors and then to generate a proper output. The success of the in-process monitoring system depends on the accuracy of the decision-making model. To increase the accuracy and reliability of model, it is important to reduce the variation of the inputs. To achieve this objective, an integration of regression and neural network was developed as a decision-making model in this research. In this integrated model, the regression model was applied as a filter to sort the input variables into groups. Furthermore, the grouped data was implemented to train and to generate different neural networks models to reduce the affection of input variation and increase the accuracy of the monitoring system. The input variables was first filtered by the threshold of regression model, and then analyzed by different neural networks model based on the filtered result. Finally, to evaluate the performance of the integrated model, the regression neural network and traditional neural networks were both developed for surface roughness monitoring system in an end milling operation to compare the accuracy of systems.


Medical image compression is becoming increasingly important with the emergence of telemedicine applications. The need for data compression is crucial for storage and transmission purposes since the medical images are inherently voluminous, much more bulky than the usual images sent over the internet. One of the popular compression techniques to use wavelets. Wavelets complement the shortcomings of JPEG and are better matched to the human visual system (HVS) characteristics.

Currently, quite a number of wavelet filters for images compression are being suggested by different authors, with different results for different images at different compression ratios. In medical images, different modalities have different image characteristics (noise, texture, intensity profile, sharpness, etc). Hence, in this thesis, we tested thirteen different wavelet filters for a large number of images(383 images) from different modalities (CT, MRI, X-ray and ultrasound) at eight different compression ratios. The objectives are to recommend one particular optimal wavelet filter per modality and per compression ratio and / or to recommend one optimal wavelet filter for all medical images. This analysis is termed "modality-oriented medical image compression".

A medical image consists of different regions such as backgrounds, regions of interest (ROI)and contextual information. Each of these regions has different texture, dynamic range and noise. In the second phase, we tested different wavelets for different regions in a medical image, with the aim to find an optimal wavelets per region. This second analysis is termed "region-oriented medical image compression".

Observations showed that it is possible to recommend a particular wavelet filter for each imaging modality at each range of compression ratios. However, the use of specific filters per modality and compression ratio gives only marginal benefit compared to using one optimal wavelet, namely the Antonini ( or Daubechies 9/7 wavelet) for all medical images, except for ultrasound images. Hence, the Antonini filter can be recommended as the optimal wavelet filter for all medical images, irrespective of modality and compression ratio.

In the case of region-oriented medical image compression, no pattern could be observed in the choice of optimum wavelet. This indicates that it is impossible to select a wavelet on the basis of specific image characteristics. Furthermore, the global performance decreases by choosing the best wavelet for each region compared to using one wavelet filter for the whole image. This apparently due to the classical border phenomena at the border of the tiles. Hence, the recommendation to avoid region-oriented compression when compression performance is the main criterion.


Background: Double burden of malnutrition (DBM) is the co-existence of overweight/obesity and undernutrition. Rising prevalence rates of childhood overweight/obesity in Nigeria have been reported, whilst undernutrition continues to be prevalent. This study aimed to estimate the prevalence and distribution of underweight, stunting, thinness, overweight/obesity, and DBM among school-aged children and adolescents in two Nigerian States. Methods: This was a community-based cross-sectional study carried out in Osun and Gombe States. A total of 1,200 children aged 6 – 19 years were recruited using multi-stage sampling technique. Weight, height and data on demographic, socio-economic, household/family characteristics of the children were collected using structured interviewer administered questionnaires. Nutritional status was calculated using the WHO 2007 reference values using BMI-for-age (thinness, overweight/obesity), height-for-age (stunting) and weight-for-age (underweight). DBM was described at the population and individual levels. Results: The mean age of the respondents was 11.6 ± 3.8 years. The overall prevalence rate of stunting was 34.9%, underweight was 13.5%, thinness was 10.3% and overweight/obese was 11.4% and 4.0% had individual level DBM, which typifies the DBM at individual and population levels. These rates differed significantly across demographic, socio-economic and household/family characteristics (p < 0.05). Gombe State, which is in the Northern part of Nigeria, had significantly higher burden of stunted, underweight and thin children than Osun State, while Osun State, in the Southern part of Nigeria, had a significantly higher burden of overweight/obesity. Conclusions: The study found evidence of DBM both at population and individual levels. The overall prevalence rates of stunting, underweight, thinness and overweight/obesity in this study were high, and they differed significantly across the demographic, socio-economic and household/family characteristics. There is the need for government and all other stakeholders to design nutritional educational programmes that will target both under- and over-nutrition among older children in the different contexts.


As an ecosystem in geological history, palaeocommunity has the essence of thermodynamics. This paper introduces the concept of entropy into the study of the evolution of palaeo-community, and proposes four parameters to represent the structure feature of palaeo-community. This theory is used to calculate the evolution mode of branchipod community of Maokou formation in Liziya area, Huaying Moumtain, Sichuan.


In order to fulfill the true promise of decentralized, selforganizing intelligence, a major design problem has to be overcome. Designing the individual-level rules of behavior and interaction that will produce a desired collective pattern in a group of human or non-human agents is difficult because the group's aggregate-level behavior may not be easy to predict or infer from the individuals' rules. While the forward mapping from micro-rules to macro-behavior in self-organizing systems can be reconstructed using computational modeling techniques such as agent-based modeling, the inverse problem of finding micro-rules that produce interesting macro-behavior poses significant challenges, all the more as what constitutes "interesting" macro-behavior may not be known ahead of time. An exploratory design method is described in this paper. It relies on interactive evolution. We show how it can be used to discover new, "interesting" patterns of collective behavior when one does not know in advance what the system is capable of doing, a generic situation in the design of collective intelligent systems.


The purpose of this study is to examine gender bias in sports media from the perspective of the sports columnist. The research analyzed 1,082 sports columns written by ten columnists (five male, five female) at newspapers across the United States. The columns were scrutinized to determine if the column subject was male or female. Results found that 84.4% of the sports columns were written about male athletes or men's sports compared to only 9% devoted to female athletes and women's sports. The research also found that female sports columnists write about female sports 12.7% of the time, while male sports columns only dedicate 6% of their columns to female athletes or women's sports. Newspapers with a larger circulation were more likely to have sports columns about female sports than were newspapers with smaller readerships. Six of the columnists were then interviewed to get their opinions on gender issues in sports journalism.


To THE EDITOR: St John's wort (Hypericum perforatum) has a long association with humans and animals. In humans, it is used as complementary therapy topically for healing wounds and systemically for psychogenic states. However, it is a proclaimed noxious weed in most of Australia; ingestion by grazing stock (sheep, cattle, horses and goats) leads to "wort dermatitis" (hypericism), with blisters, local oedema and conjunctivitis in the "pink" skin of light-coloured animals.' The known photosensitisers in St John's wort are hypericin and its isomer, pseudohypericin." These substances lower the threshold of light sensitivity in all people, but, because of their lack of melanin, fairskinned individuals are more at risk than dark-skinned individuals. The absorption peaks of hypericin are in both the ultraviolet (wavelength, 330nm) and visible regions of the spectrum (wavelengths, 550 nm and 580nm). I report three patients with phototoxic reactions after using St John's wort. Patient 1: A 52-year-old woman presented with an erythematobullous dermatosis which had developed after sun exposure on two successive days (Box). The rash was confined to sun-exposed sites and had begun 20 hours after sun exposure. The woman had a history of cutaneous lupus erythematosus managed with hydroxychloroquine and corticosteroid cream. She had used St John's wort oil topically and orally three times daily for the previous two weeks because of "tired, aching arm muscles". Serological tests and immunofluorescence microscopy were negative for


Ni-BaCe0.9Y0.1O3-δ mixed protonic-electronic conductor can be used to separate hydrogen from syngas. Considering that water exists in syngas, it is necessary to evaluate the effect of moisture on chemical stability and hydrogen permeability of the cermet. In this paper, hydrogen permeation rates of Ni- BaCe0.9Y0.1O3-δ (40:60 in volume ratio) in different water partial pressures were measured at intermediate temperatures (600-750°C). It is found that hydrogen permeation rate of the cermet is highest at an appropriate water partial pressure. Samples after experiment were analyzed by XRD, ICP and pH value measurement, in which Ba(OH)2 and doped CeO2 were found. The reaction of water with samples resulting in insulating Ba(OH)2 and doped CeO2 is contributed to the decrease of hydrogen permeation in excessive water partial pressure.


Post-training quantization (PTQ) has been gaining popularity for the deployment of deep neural networks on resource-limited devices since unlike quantization-aware training, neither a full training dataset nor end-to-end training is required at all. As PTQ schemes based on reconstructing each layer or block output turn out to be effective to enhance quantized model performance, recent works have developed algorithms to devise and learn a new weight-rounding scheme so as to better reconstruct each layer or block output. In this work, we propose a simple yet effective new weight-rounding mechanism for PTQ, coined FlexRound, based on element-wise division instead of typical element-wise addition such that FlexRound enables jointly learning a common quantization grid size as well as a different scale for each pre-trained weight. Thanks to the reciprocal rule of derivatives induced by element-wise division, FlexRound is inherently able to exploit pre-trained weights when updating their corresponding scales, and thus, flexibly quantize pre-trained weights depending on their magnitudes. We empirically validate the efficacy of FlexRound on a wide range of models and tasks. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first to carry out comprehensive experiments on not only image classification and natural language understanding but also natural language generation, assuming a per-tensor uniform PTQ setting. Moreover, we demonstrate, for the first time, that large language models can be efficiently quantized, with only a negligible impact on performance compared to half-precision baselines, achieved by reconstructing the output in a block-by-block manner.


Cultural Studies and Cultural Value is a major critique of the important new discipline of cultural studies. Cultural studies has generally organized itself around the opposition of high to low culture, reversing the traditional hierarchy of value, but leaving intact the polarity and the direct correlation of culture and class. Through detailed readings of the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Stuart Hall, and Ernesto Laclau, John Frow challenges this key assumption. He argues that the field of culture now has multiple centres and multiple domains of value and that these are irreducible to a single scale. Intellectuals play the crucial role in the mediation of the cultural field; their possession of cultural capital endows intellectuals with specific class interests which are distinct from those of the classes of groups for whom they claim to speak. Cultural Studies and Cultural Value seeks a revitalized and 'poststructuralist' account of social class, a basis from which cultural studies can effect a much-needed reorientation.


Previous observations by others have shown that Na deprivation augments and Na loading attenuates the inhibitory effect of exogenous adenosine on renin secretion in vivo. The purpose of the present experiments was to test the hypothesis that Na deprivation and Na loading alter the sensitivity of the adenosine receptors (A1 subclass) that mediate the inhibitory effect. The rat renal cortical slice preparation was used. Na loading decreased and Na deprivation increased tissue renin content and the basal renin secretory rate; these two variables were directly related (r = 0.84, P less than 0.00005). N6-cyclohexyladenosine (CHA), an adenosine analogue that selectively activates the A1 subclass of adenosine receptors in the nanomolar to micromolar concentration range inhibited renin secretion over the same range of concentrations (nM-microM) and to approximately the same maximal extent (to 50% of the mean basal secretory rate) in cortical slices taken from Na-loaded, control, and Na-deprived rats. These results demonstrate that changes in the intrinsic sensitivity of adenosine receptors do not explain dietary Na-induced changes in the in vivo renin secretory response to exogenous adenosine.


The cigarette industry in Indonesia has evolved from a traditional industry to be one of the important manufacturing sectors in terms of value added, employment and government revenue. On the other hand, aside from increasing social welfare, the government also has a moral responsibility particularly for raising public awareness of their health. Draft of Government Regulation regarding tobacco based-product as an addictive substance expressly prohibits the advertising, promotion and sponsorship of products containing tobacco. In the industry of mild class cigarette, the level of competition gets tighter where many cigarette companies conduct their integrated marketing communication activities in creative ways. This research is aimed at determining the effect of Integrated Marketing Communication variables on Brand Image of mild class cigarette companies in Bandung region. This research type is descriptive and verification research. The method used is survey descriptive method i.e collecting data on the research object by taking a sample of the population. Questionnaires are used as the principal means of collecting data. The positive coefficient shows that there is a positive relationship between the integrated marketing communications with brand image. As t count > t table (7.748> 1.965), H0 is rejected. Thus, it is found that there is a significant influence of integrated marketing communications on brand image.


A numerical model is presented for the single-phase fluid flow inside a sugar mill evaporator vessel. The model incorporates the effect of temperature and sugar concentration on the fluid properties. The model is a quarter wedge of the evaporator where the vertical heating tubes III the calandria section are modelled through a momentum source term in three directions. Although the use of the momentum source term in the calandria section did not result in fluid flow being completely restricted to the vertical direction, the predictions show reasonable agreement when compared with measurements taken from the actual vessel. The model presented here is capable of predicting trends in the fluid flow behaviour for processing conditions normally experienced in the final vessel of a multiple-effect evaporator set. The predictions show that the design of the juice distribution system at the inlet to the vessel has a major influence on the flow field in the remainder of the vessel. A large amount of mixing was found to occur at the inlet resulting in the calandria region being exposed to juice with properties close to the outlet stream, which is detrimental to performance.


In order to obtain competitiveness in the field of industrial manufacturing, a reduction in the development period for the batch machining of products is required. It is essential to analyze the stress distribution and deformations of machining system which is used for manufacturing the aspheric lens using FEM software ANSYS. Finite element simulations have been performed in order to study the influence of machining system which was developed in this study on structures. It is very important to understand the structural behavior of machining system. This research investigated the static analysis and dynamic analysis of machining system for aspheric lens to predict the damage due to loading.


Bakuchiol is extracted from Psoralea corylifolia, a member of the Leguminosae family, has been used in Indian Ayurvedic and Chinese traditional medicine, and it possesses an anticancer effect. The primary aim of the present study was to identify the molecular mechanisms underlying the anticancer effect of bakuchiol monoterpenes. Bakuchiol treatment significantly inhibited NUGC3 human gastric cancer cell viability in a concentration dependent manner. In addition, bakuchiol significantly increased the apoptotic cell population in the sub‑G1 phase, and Annexin‑V‑fluorescein isothiocyanate/propidium iodide double staining confirmed the increase in apoptosis. Nuclear fragmentation and the formation of apoptotic organelles were promoted in bakuchiol‑treated NUGC3 cells. Western blotting results indicated that bakuchiol treatment significantly decreased procaspase‑3,6,8,9 and poly (ADP‑ribose) polymerase (PARP) expression levels, increased cleaved caspase‑3 and cleaved PARP expression levels, and increased the B cell lymphoma‑2 associated X, apoptosis regulator:B cell lymphoma‑extra large ratio. Bakuchiol‑treated NUGC3 cells demonstrated significantly reduced phosphorylated (p‑) protein kinase B (AKT) protein expression levels and elevated p‑extracellular signal related kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2), p‑c‑Jun N‑terminal kinase (JNK) and p‑p38. Bakuchiol‑induced cell death was mitochondrial dependent, through modulation of phosphoinositide 3‑kinase/AKT and mitogen‑activated protein kinase signaling pathways. These findings demonstrated that bakuchiol possesses potential for treating human gastric cancer.


Background: People with arthritic disease are advised to participate in gentle exercise on a regular basis, and pursue long-term medication regimes. Alternative therapies are also used by people with arthritis, and may sometimes be recommended by rheumatologists and other medical personnel. Alternative therapies may be divided into two types: active therapies, in which the patient takes a driving role, and passive therapies, in which the therapy cannot proceed unless driven by a therapist. Objective: To review the effectiveness of manual therapy in improving the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of people with two common arthritis conditions: Osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Discussion: Massage, and other passive (practitioner-driven) manual therapies, have been anecdotally reported to improve health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in people with arthritis. Many manual therapists consult with patients who have arthritic diseases, receive referrals from rheumatologists, and consider the arthritic diseases to be within their field of practise. Although there is empirical evidence that manual therapy with some types of arthritis is beneficial, the level of effectiveness however is under-researched. Medical authorities are reluctant to endorse manual therapies for arthritis due to a lack of scientific evidence demonstrating efficacy, safety, and cost effectiveness.


We analyze the correlation between farm productivity and market participation using comparable household data from Tanzania, Vietnam and Guatemala. Each farm's input use and output levels provide a within-sample measure of relative productivity, which we relate to that household's level of participation in local markets using a wide range of agricultural, demographic and infrastructural variables as controls and as instruments in two-stage regressions. Results indicate that, controlling for differences in market access and the underlying determinants of market participation, households with higher productivity have greater participation in agricultural markets. In contrast, households with greater rates of market participation do not consistently demonstrate higher levels of relative productivity. This result holds only in Vietnam and Guatemala, however. In the Tanzania sample we find no significant correlation in either direction. Combining household surveys in this way offers a promising approach to testing the robustness of key hypotheses across countries and over time.


Clinical and bacteriological examinations performed in 138 patients with chronic renal failure (CRF) have found in the majority of late-stage examinees endogenic chronic colitis (ECC). This should be taken into consideration when prescribing repeat enteroclysis for correction of some uremia symptoms. Etiologically, ECC may be due to intestinal dysbacteriosis.


In order to improve the short stride athletes' technical action and increase competition results, this research first establishes the optimal take-off angle model of hurdles according to the gravity acceleration, resistance coefficient and other factors.And according to the top three achievements of the 1980-2012 period nine Olympic Gamesmen's 110meters hurdles, it uses gray prediction model to forecast the top three achievements of the next-two Olympic 110-meter hurdles. The results show that the top three achievements of the 2016 Olympic 110 meters hurdles are respectively 12.82 seconds, 13.03 seconds and 13.07 seconds; achievements in 2020 are 12.79 seconds, 13.02 seconds and 13.03 seconds; the achievement of Olympic Games overall is increasing year by year. The research result is conductive to hurdler achievement's improvement, and provides certain scientific basis for its day-to-day training.


The participation of emergency physicians guarantees the quality of a modern emergency medical service (EMS). Within the scope of cost savings in health-care system, it is questioned whether emergency medical services in the future can be managed without emergency physicians. Deficits of structure and qualitaty of the emergency physician service are raised objections. Recent studies have shown that preclinical care carried out by an emergency physician assure better results. An ongoing improvement in the quality of care should be achieved by the introduction of the new professional training for physicians "emergency medicine". In a direct comparison of two emergency medical services, one with emergency physicians, one only with paramedics it could be demonstrated that the integration of emergency physicians will increase the rate of patients, whose vital status could be improved by more than 20 %. The rate of patients discharged from hospital after cardiopulmonal resuscitation is 3 fold higher than in a rescue service without emergency physicians. However this improvement of quality of care by physicians is linked to higher financial charges. Another aspect supporting the obligatory employment of emergency physicians in Germany is the jurisdiction guaranteeing the right of the patient to receive advanced medical treatment only by (emergency) physicians.


Jakob von Uexküll's (1864-1944) account of Umwelt has been proposed as a mediating concept to bridge the gap between ecological psychology's realism about environmental information and enactivism's emphasis on the organism's active role in constructing the meaningful world it inhabits. If successful, this move would constitute a significant step towards establishing a single ecological-enactive framework for cognitive science. However, Uexküll's thought itself contains different perspectives that are in tension with each other, and the concept of Umwelt is developed in representationalist terms that conflict with the commitments of both enactivism and ecological psychology. One central issue shared by all these approaches is the problem of how a living being experiences its environment. In this paper, we will look at Uexküll's reception in French philosophy and highlight the different ways in which the concept of Umwelt functions in the work of Georges Canguilhem, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Gilles Deleuze. This analysis helps clarify different aspects of Uexküll's thought and the deeper philosophical implications of importing his concepts into embodied cognitive science. This paper is part of a recent trend in which enactivism engages with continental philosophy in a way that both deepens and transcends the traditional links to phenomenology, including most recently the thought of Georg W. F. Hegel and Gilbert Simondon. However, no more than a brief outline and introduction to the potentials and challenges of this complex conceptual intersection can be given here. Our hope is that it serves to make more explicit the philosophical issues that are at stake for cognitive science in the question of experienced environments, while charting a useful course for future research.


Progressive X-linked muscular dystrophy represents the most commonly inherited
neuromuscular disorder in humans. Although the primary abnormality lies with the loss
of dystrophin and reduction of its associated glycoprotein complex, secondary
alterations in metabolic pathways, cellular signalling and ion homeostasis regulation
cause fibre degeneration leading to severe muscle weakness. Skeletal muscle
deteriorates to the extent that sufferers are wheelchair bound by early adulthood and
severe diaphragm degeneration can lead to respiratory failure. Therapy in this area has
lengthened life-span but at a more advanced stage of the disease, most Duchenne
muscular dystrophy patients suffer cardiomyopathic complications.
The purpose of this study was to carry out proteomic profiling on differentially affected
dystrophic tissues. Differences in protein concentration levels of the severely affected
cardiac muscle and the naturally protected extraocular muscle were used to explore
pathogenesis of the disease.
A mass spectrometry-based approach combined with the highly sensitive difference
in-gel electrophoresis technique was used to reveal changes and identify novel
biomarkers in the dystrophic tissues. Following the pathogenesis of the disease the
naturally protected tissue displayed only moderate changes in protein concentration
expression. With a replacement of dystrophin with its homologue utrophin, restoration
of β-dystroglycan was observed along with an increased concentration in heat shock
proteins. While the severely affected cardiac muscle exhibited drastic decreases in the
expression levels of many proteins involved in energy metabolism including adenylate
kinase and many ATP synthase isoforms. Reduced concentrations were also observed
in numerous contractile proteins and intermediate filament proteins. With the loss of
these structural elements, a drastic increase in stress proteins was observed within
dystrophic myofibrils compared to normal fibres.
This thesis has successfully identified novel biomarkers that may be used to
determine suitability of new treatments or therapies of muscular dystrophy.


This paper presents a novel algorithm which uses compact hash bits to greatly improve the efficiency of non-linear kernel SVM in very large scale visual classification problems. Our key idea is to represent each sample with compact hash bits, over which an inner product is defined to serve as the surrogate of the original nonlinear kernels. Then the problem of solving the nonlinear SVM can be transformed into solving a linear SVM over the hash bits. The proposed Hash-SVM enjoys dramatic storage cost reduction owing to the compact binary representation, as well as a (sub-)linear training complexity via linear SVM. As a critical component of Hash-SVM, we propose a novel hashing scheme for arbitrary non-linear kernels via random subspace projection in reproducing kernel Hilbert space. Our comprehensive analysis reveals a well behaved theoretic bound of the deviation between the proposed hashing-based kernel approximation and the original kernel function. We also derive requirements on the hash bits for achieving a satisfactory accuracy level. Several experiments on large-scale visual classification benchmarks are conducted, including one with over 1 million images. The results show that Hash-SVM greatly reduces the computational complexity (more than ten times faster in many cases) while keeping comparable accuracies.


Fish is not only perishable product but also has segmented market. Consumption market such wants the fresh fish and certainty size. The problem is when the size of fish is too big for consumption, so that product is not wanted by consumer anymore. This research aimed at knowing the added value of shredded Lele and Patin catfish agribusiness and increasing prosperity of humanitarian society throughout processing the shredded catfishes. The data of this research was analyzed by Added Value Analysis of Hayami. The result showed that the shredded product of Lele catfish gave the added value IDR 14.295,00 per kilograms with the added value ratio was 25,53 percent and Conversion value was 0,35. Whereas, the shredded product of Patin catfish gave the added value IDR 18.295,00 per kilogram with the added value ratio was 29,04 percent and Conversion value was 0,35. The agribusiness toward processing and marketing of shredded Lele and Patin catfish was innovative agribusiness that could develop business opportunity so that it could move on the economical wheel and increasing humanitarian society prosperity actively. The market demand was still very wide either in town or out of town. The partnership among various not only government but also non government associations would be a good matter toward this agribusiness is running well.


In this study, we use data from the Urban Integration Survey conducted in 2001 in Nairobi, following the standard that has been adapted in several cities in Africa (Dakar, 1989; Bamako, 1992; Yaounde, 1996 and Antananarivo, 1998), to examine the underlying factors influencing entry into parenthood for men and women during the period of economic crisis. The analysis uses event history methods, specifically the Cox Proportional Hazards Regression model, stratified by generational age and run separately by sex. The results show that the majority of the migrants to Nairobi began childbearing in Nairobi, with migration status having no effect on entry into parenthood when other factors are controlled for. What seems important in delaying entry into union is some form of economic security, while social and economic contexts appeared weak for both men and women. One intriguing result was that there is an almost monotonic increase on the likelihood of entry into motherhood with increase in the level of education.


4. A fourth variant (Ch z) has been recognised by starch gel electrophoresis. Examination of normal plasma by this technique shows the presence of four cholinesterase fractions (C I , C z, C, and C.). The slowest moving band (C.) contains about 90% of the activity. In about 10% of the normal population a fifth band (C6) can be detected. This extra band is genetically determined (Harris et al, 1962 and 1963) Individuals possessing this extra band have a higher mean cholinesterase activity than the normal population and are not sensitive to suxamethonium. The gene determining the C6 fraction is not an allele of the other variants (Harris et al, 1963a).


This paper studies the forward kinematics of a sinking winch mechanism, which is in category of four-cable-driving parallel robot. The tension states (tautness or slackness) of cables are firstly taken into consideration in the forward kinematics model. We propose atraversal algorithm to solve the model. Both pose of platform and the tensions in cables can be solved if the lengths of four cables are given. The effectiveness of the algorithm is demonstrated by three examples. The results of this paper can be used to measure the pose of platform and the tensions of cables from the lengths of four cables.


In this paper, a three-echelon supply chain model is analyzed to determine strategies to reduce the supply chain system dynamics. Uniqueness of this research stems from the use of multiple models with varying degrees of detail representing the same supply chain. The significance of a detailed supply chain model on the quality of result is made clear. Factors employed to build an abstract to a detailed model include: transportation and production delay, demand at the retailer, and production and transportation capacity. It is shown that the system dynamics itself varies with increasing detail in the model. In addition, it is examined to see if a strategy found effective in improving the system dynamics with an abstract model is effective with a detailed model. It is established that the strategy found to be the most effective on an abstract model is not always the best strategy for the real supply chain.


The Christian camp experience has tremendous potential for faith formation and spiritual transformation. The confirmation camp program in Finland offers important lessons to the international community about camp's role in perpetuating current church models and its potential to transform the church. This article builds on the rich quantitative findings of confirmation camp in Finland, offering new qualitative data from a foreign perspective seeking to understand, appreciate, and characterise the Finnish camp experience in order to benefit the church in Finland and Christian camping throughout the world.


UNLABELLED
Individuals with substance use disorders are more likely to have antisocial and borderline personality disorder than non-substance abusers. Recently, research has examined the relations between early maladaptive schemas and personality disorders, as early maladaptive schemas are believed to underlie personality disorders. However, there is a dearth of research on the relations between early maladaptive schemas and personality disorders among individuals seeking treatment for substance abuse. The current study examined the relations among early maladaptive schemas and antisocial and borderline personality within in a sample of men seeking substance abuse treatment (n = 98). Results demonstrated that early maladaptive schema domains were associated with antisocial and borderline personality symptoms. Implications of these findings for substance use treatment and research are discussed.

KEY PRACTITIONER MESSAGE
Antisocial (ASPD) and Borderline (BPD) personality disorder symptoms are prevalence among individuals seeking substance abuse treatment. Early maladaptive schemas are believed to underlie the development of ASPD and BPD symptoms, and are also prevalence among individuals seeking substance use treatment. Findings from the current study suggest that specific early maladaptive schema domains predict ASPD and BPD symptoms in a substance abuse treatment seeking sample of adult males. The treatment of ASPD and BPD among men seeking substance use treatment may want to focus on early maladaptive schemas.


This paper contributes to the ongoing debate in the 'new' economic geography over the dialectic between the cultural and the economic, and in which the study of the geography of consumption is a prime example. The consumer behavior of culturally distinct immigrants is an intriguing and complex economic and cultural inquiry. In this paper we explore the grocery-shopping behavior of suburban middle-class Chinese immigrants in Toronto, where the group's ethnic economy has become full-fledged. Using a mixed approach combining focus groups and logistic modeling, we examine the preferences of Chinese immigrants between the fast-growing Chinese supermarkets and competing mainstream supermarket chains. Attention is focused upon the interplay of ethnic identity and accessibility in determining store patronage. The findings suggest a stronger effect of ethnic affinity on immigrants' choice of shopping venue than that of economic rationality. Grocery shopping, a most mundane and taken-for-granted activity, is practiced with sociocultural meanings by immigrants, and the social use of ethnic shopping spaces indicates that immigrants are not only consumers in ethnic shopping places but coactors in producing the unique ethnic retail environment.


Languages differ in the way they convey paths. S-languages conveying manner of motion directly in a main verb, while Vlanguages require a separate verb. This difference has been shown to influence the conceptualization and narration of motion events. We therefore asked: would this difference arise in the paths that people draw, particularly in visual narratives? We annotated the representations of path information (source, trajectory, goal) in a corpus of 35 comics from Sand Vlanguages. We found that panels from S-languages depicted the path of an action more often than those from V-languages, consistent with previous research on increased motion event salience for S-languages. These findings suggest that the conceptualization of paths from spoken language may influence the graphic depiction of paths.


Abstract A novel series of N-alkyl-substituted cyclic sulfamides were developed from a screening hit. Chemistries were developed which allowed surveys of N-alkyl groups and amines resulting in the identification of N-trifluoroethyl-substituted cyclic sulfamides with good in vitro and in vivo γ-secretase activity. One compound with subnanomolar activity elicited a reduction in brain Aβ40 after oral dosing in APP-YAC mice.


Betty Risteen Hasselkus Everyday occupation is a primary means by which we organize the worlds in which we live. The phenomenological experiences of day-to-day life build meaning and community in our lives; yet everyday occupation is often "seen but unnoticed." Cultural tendencies and invisible social forces contribute to the obscurity of the everyday and, in severe situations, to occupational deprivation. The purpose of this Slagle lecture is to raise awareness of the complexity and "delicate layerings" of everyday occupation, its theoretical and conceptual underpinnings, the consequences of severe occupational constraints to health and well-being, and the essential relevance of everyday occupation to occupational therapy and occupational science. Everyday occupation related to food is probed in depth to illustrate the richness of day-to-day living. Occupational therapy personnel are encouraged to gain deeper understandings of the importance and meaning of everyday occupation in the lives of clients and the general public, thereby helping people find value in their everyday practices.


Comprehensive bibliographies often rely on community contributions. In such settings, de-duplication is mandatory for the bibliography to be useful. Ideally, de-duplication works online, i.e., when adding new references, so the bibliography remains duplicate-free at all times. While de-duplication is well researched, generic approaches do not achieve the result quality required for automated reconciliation. To overcome this problem, we propose a new duplicate detection and reconciliation technique called RefConcile. Aiming specifically at bibliographic references, it uses dedicated blocking and matching techniques tailored to this type of data. Our evaluation based on a large realworld collection of bibliographic references shows that RefConcile scales well, and that it detects and reconciles duplicates highly accurately.


A change in USMARC coding in bibliographic records for reproductions was implemented in 1991, and that change created inconsistencies between post-1991 major microform record sets and ones already existing in library catalogs. Because retrieval and display in OPACs may depend on Date 1 in USMARC field 008, this particular inconsistency has become more apparent and troublesome as records with newer coding have been added to catalogs containing records with older coding. Libraries have several choices in preserving their investment in the pre-1991 records. One way is automated editing of the records. We describe one method using Visual Basic. Microform collections play a major role in providing access to out-of-print or rare materials that would otherwise be difficult to acquire or be completely unavailable to many academic library users. Topical microform collections, in particular, have been important in the development of many academic library collections. Newer libraries needing access to historical materials published before their parent institutions existed, and older institutions needing to support newly added disciplines, find purchasing microform collections an attractive option for building collections. As microform publishers began to make such collections available for purchase, a primary concern for libraries was the availability of analytical machine-readable cataloging records for the specific titles in the collections. Beginning in the 1980s, sets of analytic bibliographic records became available for purchase through individual vendors, OCLC's Major Microform Sets service (now known as OCLC WorldCat Collection Sets), or the Research Library Group RLIN Set Processing Service. Purchasing these bibliographic record sets continues to enjoy popularity as libraries recognize the benefit of public catalog access to set contents without increasing the work of in-house cataloging staff. Record quality may vary from set to set or even within sets, and postload clean-up can be significant, but the utility of these sets of records from a user access point of view cannot be denied.[1] The purchase price of machine-readable records for large microform sets represents a significant investment in access, as does participation in cooperative projects to catalog the titles in individual microform sets. The magnitude of this investment should warrant maintenance of those records in online systems, especially when changing cataloging or coding conventions make data obsolete or inconsistent. Albeit not without controversy, basic descriptive cataloging practice for both microform and macroform reproductions of monographs has remained relatively constant since the publication of the first edition of Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR) in 1967. AACR called for the catalog record to be based on the original publication with information about the reproduction described in a note.[2] Crystal Graham observed that "the second edition of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR2) completely reversed course ... by emphasizing the physical object instead of the original publication."[3] She goes on to describe in detail the controversy in the cataloging community associated with chapter 11 in AACR2. That controversy led to the contrary North American practice articulated in the Library of Congress's interpretation of chapter 11. In essence, the previous AACR practice of emphasizing the original publication rather than the reproduction was continued. While the bibliographic description was based on the original work, USMARC fixed-length data elements were coded to reflect the reproduction (e.g., country of publication, date type, and dates). During the 1980s, the scale of preservation microfilming projects forced the reconsideration of cataloging practices. This is because rules required that each reproduction have its own separate record and with so many microfilming projects underway there was a proliferation of similar bibliographic records. …


We present a model of object location memory developed within the ACT-R cognitive architecture and compare the model's performance to that of human participants in a modi- fied version of the toy test . The results of the experiment reveal that the accuracy of location recall is significantly affected by both the number of objects in the set and the order in which objects are selected for relocation. The model provides a close fit to the human data and is able to account for the combined effects of set size and selection order found in the experiment using ACT-R's declarative memory processes—in particular the similarity-based blending mechanism which combines the values of related memory elements to produced an aggregate response.


Class-switched, affinity-matured murine monoclonal antibody (MAb) producing cell lines reactive with PED/PEA-15 were generated and isolated in less than 4 weeks following polynucleotide immunizations using only 5 microg of DNA in conjunction with the Powderject gene gun. Somatic fusions of peripheral lymph node cells were performed 13 days after initiating delivery of DNA encoding the target antigen. The data presented demonstrates the rapid production, identification, and characterization of class-switched, affinity-matured MAbs that bind PED/PEA-15. The reported strategy enabled the rapid development of MAbs that are useful in enzyme-linked immunoadsorbent assay (ELISA), Western blotting, and immunoprecipitations.


The current proliferation of proposals for health care reform makes it difficult to sort out the differences among plans and the likely outcome of different approaches to reform. The current health care system has two basic features. The first, enrollment and eligibility functions, includes how people get into the system and gain coverage for health care services. We describe 4 models, ranging from an individual, voluntary approach to a universal, tax-based model. The second, the provision of health care, includes how physician services are organized, how they are paid for, what mechanisms are in place for quality assurance, and the degree of organization and oversight of the health care system. We describe 7 models of the organization component, including the current fee-for-service system with no national health budget, managed care, salaried providers under a budget, and managed competition with and without a national health budget. These 2 components provide the building blocks for health care plans, presented as a matrix. We also evaluate several reform proposals by how they combine these 2 elements.


As technology scales, interconnect planning has been widely regarded as one of the most critical factors in determining the system performance and total power consumption. As the result of shrinking dimension, on-chip wires are getting more resistive, and the delay is becoming larger comparing to gate delay. On the other hand, the self capacitance of wires does not scale with feature size, and as wiring density grows, the total coupling capacitance increases, which results in substantial increment of interconnect power consumption. Meanwhile, off-chip interconnect is also becoming a limiting factor for system performance since the growth of chip's I/O bandwidth has been outpaced by the growth of communication. To meet the performance challenge, the per-pin interconnect bandwidth must be further improved with given power budget.
For on-chip interconnect, buffer insertion has been adopted to reduce the signal delay. However, the added buffers require extra power consumption and increase routing complexity. In this dissertation, we investigate a set of interconnect performance metrics, optimize the repeated on-chip wires under different design goals and compare the performance metrics of optimum results. The quantitative delay-energy trade-offs for different design goals are demonstrated.
Even with repeaters, nominal on-chip global wires still can not keep up with the pace of gate scaling. We propose a high speed signaling scheme using transmission line properties to address the performance issue. The transmission line allows the signal to travel at the speed of light in the medium. The signal toggles as wave instead of enforced electronic charges and thus saves power. However, the inter-symbol interference (ISI) limits the communication bandwidth. We use passive compensation to alleviate the ISI and develop an optimization flow for a given technology and wire dimension. We compare the nominal repeated wires with the transmission lines under different design goals.
For off-chip serial links, we propose a set of passive equalization schemes to enhance the performance with low power consumption. We apply the schemes to the CPU-memory links using IBM POWER6 system as a test vehicle. An optimization flow is devised to optimize the parameters of the equalizers. We derive the performance improvement and power consumption of the proposed schemes. We also demonstrate the sensitivities to the variations of RLC parameters and noise.


Present the results of a study that compares the perceived adequacy of library resources for research, the formal channels found to be useful in providing information needed for research, the methods used to keep abreast with current research literature, the problems faced when obtaining information required for research with publication productivity of 83 academic engineers and 239 academic scientists from the University of Malaya and National University of Malaysia. Respondents' views were sought on how libraries can improve their services to support research activities. The feedback from interviewing 56 academic scientists and engineers about the results obtained from the survey is also presented. The services that correlate positively are inter-library loans and help from library staff in searching online databases. The sources, which correlate with high total publication scores are research reports, conference proceedings and library accession lists. Scientists who used varied methods to keep themselves up-to-date with current research literature are highly productive. The highly productive scientists indicated the following situations as problematic for them when searching information needed for research: no help in finding information, not knowing where to look for information, not finding relevant information, receiving information too late, and not knowing how to choose relevant databases. This indicates that the productive scientists do need help in obtaining information. The respondents also gave useful suggestions on how library services could be improved to support research effectively.


Hybrid modelling of blast vibration uses the signal produced from a single hole test shot to simulate the vibration that would be produced by a full-scale production blast. This simulation can be used to determine optimum hole timings to minimise the vibration generated at a point of interest. This thesis studies the assumptions that are
made to facilitate the use of hybrid modelling with emphasis placed on near to mid field applications.

A highly accurate seismograph is developed and used to monitor a series of test blasts carried out in limestone and chalk. The repeatability of single hole test shots is
investigated. It is shown that in the near field single holes are generally highly repeatable even with relatively major differences in design. It is also shown that an
inversion of the radial and transverse vibration traces may occur. The factors which affect the vibration magnitude are also explored, showing that the level of confinement can have a large effect on the magnitude of vibration.

Two, three and five hole production blasts are examined to determine the signal generated by each hole in the blast. It is shown that in a two hole blast the second hole can produce an inverted signal in the radial and transverse components.

The three and five hole are disassembled by using a computer program to test every possible combination of convolved single holes and select the best. It is concluded
that the complex interaction of the vibration generated by each blast hole makes it very difficult to model the vibration generated by a production blast in the near field.


Abstract We propose a strategy for assessing how the inflow to the disability insurance program has been governed over time. Using ex-post mortality, we analyze the ex-ante health of individuals entering the program, compared to individuals not entering the program in the same year. Applying this strategy to Sweden, we find large variation in the relative health of new beneficiaries compared to non-beneficiaries over time. Some of the fluctuations correspond well to formal changes to screening stringency. However, we also find large variation in health during periods when no changes to formal eligibility criteria have been pursued.


Kazakhstan ratified the Kyoto Protocol on 26 March 2009. As part of measures aimed at implementing the Kyoto Protocol, Kazakhstan is preparing for launching its first domestic emissions trading scheme (ETS). National cap-and-trade system is expected to be a key climate-policy instrument for reaching general commitments of the country to mitigate climate change. Emitters which are subject to the Kazakh emissions trading scheme are allocated with emission caps, which can be traded within national cap-and-trade scheme. Such emitters can reduce their own emissions and then sell excess of cap allowances on the market. If emitting more than allowed, they can buy allowances if any available, otherwise are obliged to pay strict fines defined by the government. Domestic sectors, which are subject to Kazakh emissions trading scheme, were chosen with the intention to regulate key sectors and categories by one market-based tool. Kazakh ETS will cover companies emitting from twenty thousand tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. In the time when Kazakhstan is actively investigating other options for reducing emissions to comply with its present voluntary commitments and future commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, establishment of a domestic emissions trading scheme may be a good option. That is why Kazakh ETS is taking serious attention of the government. In this way, the government intends to raise the interest of operators to move gradually to energy efficiency and low-carbon policy by their own initiatives. GHG emissions can be reduced by several means such as establishing renewables,installing energy-saving technologies, and such others; however, GHGs can also be reduced through increasing GHG absorbing measures, provided within the land use, landuse change and forestry (LULUCF) sector of the Kyoto Protocol. Kazakh emissions trading scheme does not provide trading of carbon units in the LULUCF sector directly. Planting new forests to absorb carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is one viable option to employ forests to curb climate change. The idea of planting carbon offsets is now being implemented worldwide under the Kyoto Protocol and beyond it. There are three major frameworks for LULUCF projects. First, avoiding emissions by conservation of existing carbon stocks, second, increasing carbon storage by sequestration, and third, substituting carbon for fossil fuel and energy intensive products. The aim of the study is to analyze how the LULUCF sector can be employed under current Kazakh emissions trading scheme.


The overall partition of iodine between air and aqueous solution containing sodium hydroxide is very complicated due to the complex reactions of iodine dissolved in the aqueous phase. The equilibrium constants of the several elementary reactions which influence the overall partition were measured for the range of 10° to 80°C. Then the dependencies of the overall partition of iodine upon both temperature and concentration were theoretically analyzed by an approximate method.


Abstract A revised diagram plotting the Fe/Mn ratio of pyroxene and olivine verses the anorthite content of plagioclase indicates that the Angrite Parent Body originated from a solar system reservoir with a similar Mn-Fe signature to that from which the Earth was derived. The major difference in terrestrial and angritic basalts is the extreme volatile depletion (particularly Na and K) in the latter. Considerable research and publication has been focused on angrite meteorites, which are among the oldest objects in the solar system (~4.56 Ga; Keil 2012). These meteorites include a silica-undersaturated mafic mineral assemblage. The identity and location of their parent body is still unknown and widely debated. Our new work on angrites SAH 99555, LEW 86010, NWA 10463, LEW 87051, and Angra dos Reis focused on olivine and is interpreted in the context of existing pyroxene and plagioclase data sets. This paper improves the "Mn-Fe in olivine and anorthite content of plagioclase tool for planetary parentage" specifically targeted at finding members of the angrite group of meteorites.


Entrepreneurs hold a significant fraction of the total wealth in the economy; they are approximately 8% of the population but hold 39% of total net worth. In this paper, we construct and solve numerically a life cycle optimization model with intergenerational transmission of bequests to study the choice of starting an entrepreneurial activity, and its effect on the wealth accumulation of entrepreneurs and on the distribution of wealth in the population. We examine two forces that determine self selection into an entrepreneurial activity: initial wealth and attitudes to risk. Starting a business requires initial funds, and entrepreneurs may have to invest part of their own wealth into the business activity. Some of this initial funds may come from parental transfers and bequests. Entrepreneurial income has higher return, but is riskier than labor income: more risk averse households may decide not to become entrepreneurs, despite the expected gains from such activity. We calibrate our model to the US economy. We find that the possibility of an entrepreneurial activity increases by 50% the fraction of wealth held by the top 1%. We also show that increasing the coefficient of risk aversion significantly decreases the percentage of entrepreneurs, and even in the absence of initial funding requirements, we cannot match the percentage of 8.6% of entrepreneurs. We also study the effects of changes in the initial funding requirements and in the degree of intergenerational altruism.


History has not yet taken its full measure of Martin Butzer who must be adjudged as standing within the sphere of Reformed rather than Lutheran theology, not only because of his masterful influence on Calvin or Calvin's considerable influence on him, but because his pioneer work in Biblical hermeneutics and patristic study helped to shape the whole Reformed Church. If Luther's theology is to be interpreted over against the development of Western thought particularly in its medieval form, that of Butzer is to be understood in terms of the Catholic Church and patristic theology of the first six centuries, for here we have a great attempt to get behind medievalism and, as Calvin put it, writing from Strasburg, to restore the face of the ancient Catholic Church. In further contrast to the Lutheran position Butzer's theology is more broadly based on the teaching of Scripture. Ephesians, Galatians and the Johannine writings, for example, are interpreted together, and so the Biblical ideas of election and adoption into the Body of Christ are placed alongside the doctrines of rebirth and justification by faith, and they are thought into each other, while the ministry of the Gospel, as well as the Gospel itself, becomes a de fide matter. It was in line with this that, while Luther laid all the stress upon the Word of God, Butzer (to be followed by Calvin) invariably stressed the Word and Spirit in their inseparable conjunction.


We propose a non-parametric anomaly detection algorithm for high dimensional data. We score each datapoint by its average $K$-NN distance, and rank them accordingly. We then train limited complexity models to imitate these scores based on the max-margin learning-to-rank framework. A test-point is declared as an anomaly at $\alpha$-false alarm level if the predicted score is in the $\alpha$-percentile. The resulting anomaly detector is shown to be asymptotically optimal in that for any false alarm rate $\alpha$, its decision region converges to the $\alpha$-percentile minimum volume level set of the unknown underlying density. In addition, we test both the statistical performance and computational efficiency of our algorithm on a number of synthetic and real-data experiments. Our results demonstrate the superiority of our algorithm over existing $K$-NN based anomaly detection algorithms, with significant computational savings.


Cooperative transmission among wireless network nodes can be exploited to resolve collisions and thereby enhance the network throughput. Incorporation of multi-beam adaptive array (MBAA) at a base station/access point (destination) receiver has been shown to improve the network performance. In this paper, we propose an efficient cooperative wireless medium access scheme that exploits novel relay selection methods in a network equipped with MBAA at the destination receiver. Unlike existing techniques that require the estimation of angles-of-arrival (AoAs), the proposed scheme uses the spatial correlation among users for simpler but more effective collision detection and resolution. We present two useful relay selection methods based on channel gain and spatial correlation. It is shown that the joint use of an effective relay selection method and an MBAA in a wireless network can significantly improve the uplink throughput. The throughput of the proposed scheme and its upper bound are analytically derived. Numerical and simulation results have demonstrated significant performance enhancement achieved by the proposed cooperative wireless medium access scheme.


Dramatic evolutionary transitions in morphology are often assumed to be adaptive in a new habitat. However, these assumptions are rarely tested because such tests require intermediate forms, which are often extinct. In vertebrates, the evolution of an elongate, limbless body is generally hypothesized to facilitate locomotion in fossorial and/or cluttered habitats. However, these hypotheses remain untested because few studies examine the locomotion of species ranging in body form from tetrapod to snake-like. Here, we address these functional hypotheses by testing whether trade-offs exist between locomotion in surface, fossorial and cluttered habitats in Australian Lerista lizards, which include multiple intermediate forms. We found that snake-like species penetrated sand substrates faster than more lizard-like species, representing the first direct support of the adaptation to fossoriality hypothesis. By contrast, body form did not affect surface locomotion or locomotion through cluttered leaf litter. Furthermore, all species with hindlimbs used them during both fossorial and surface locomotion. We found no evidence of a trade-off between fossorial and surface locomotion. This may be either because Lerista employed kinematic strategies that took advantage of both axial- and limb-based propulsion. This may have led to the differential occupation of their habitat, facilitating diversification of intermediate forms.


Abstract This is the first study to provide experimental evidence of the impact of corequisite remediation for students underprepared in reading and writing. We examine the short-term impacts of three different approaches to corequisite remediation that were implemented at five large urban community colleges in Texas, and we explore whether corequisites have differential impacts on students with different characteristics. Results from three first-time-in-college cohorts indicate that corequisite remediation increased the probability of completing a first college-level English course within one year by 24 percentage points and within two years by 18 percentage points. The impacts were positive for all three of the corequisite models examined and for traditionally underrepresented groups, including Hispanic students, first-generation college students, and students whose first language is not English. We saw modest positive impacts on the accumulation of college credits but no effect on persistence in college.


Measurements of the solubility of calf-skin tropocollagen in neutral phosphate buffers in the temperature range 20-37 degrees C show that native collagen fibril formation is an endothermic process made thermodynamically favourable by a large positive entropy of precipitation associated with structural changes in the surrounding solvent. The effect of inorganic ions and small solute molecules on precipitation seems to be correlated with their structural effects on liquid water. Heterogeneity in the precipitation properties of the collagen solutions may be related to changes in the configurational entropy of the macromolecules due to intramolecular cross-linking.