Artists, scientists, anthropometrists and tailors have accurately measured the human body with traditional tools, such as tape measures, callipers and accumulated visceral experience for centuries. Due to the progressive acceleration in the quality of 3D graphics technology and computer processing power, many product industries that traditionally use 3D software as a 3D design and prototyping tool, are also successfully measuring, customizing and re-engineering the products they design and manufacture through the integrated use of 3D Laser scanning technology.

In the changing world of Fashion, 3D graphics technology has at last emerged from the shadows of academic research projects and hit the high streets. 3D body measurement surveys, using mobile 3D laser scanners, have mapped the true shape and body sizes of the UK and USA populations. Virtual fit and 3D visualisation technology has expanded out from the Internet, into the physical world, and is now available for shoppers to visualise made to measure garments.

The acceptance of three-dimensional body-scanning and 3D digital design tools into our everyday experiences can be seen as a significant move toward encouraging and developing new, innovative learning and teaching methods in Art & Design education. This paper describes an experimental study into the application of 3D laser scanner technology for use in learning and teaching of undergraduate and postgraduate fashion and textiles design; clothing manufacture, fashion marketing, merchandising and promotion. The study focuses on testing the 3D scanning equipment with a student sample group. The use of the sample group attempts to simulate a range of body shapes, categorised by the traditional standard size chart specification method, currently used to design new fashion collections for high street clothing retail and UK fashion education.

The methods applied for evaluation and testing of the 3D laser scanner for body measurement are described, and the results of the initial user experiences are discussed. The study seeks to establish the overall efficiency of 3D scanning technology and investigates the potential value for integration of the 3D Laser scanner with 3D clothing design and construction software. Conclusions provide recommendations on the potential effectiveness of connecting the results of the 3D body measurement study to the fashion curriculum


Emission spectra are investigated of a low-threshold InAs quantum-dot laser of the "dots-in-a-well" (DWELL) type operating near 1230 nm. An external dispersion cavity with a diffraction grating is coupled to the laser diode to suppress the subsidiary modes and to tune the central wavelength. A wavelength-dependent competition between the grating-coupled mode and the internal Fabry-Perot modes of the laser suggests that a hole burning in the spectral density of a DWELL laser occurs with a characteristic spectral half width of /spl sim/13 nm (10.5 meV). Simple models of spectral "flattening" and spectral hole burning are presented to explain the broad free-running and grating-coupled lasing spectra of the DWELL device.


1. The peripheral blood changes in uncomplicated kala-azar are those of pancytopenia; namely, anemia, leukopenia and thrombocytopenia. The red blood cell morphology is normal and there is very little evidence of increased erythrogenic activity. The leukopenia is due to a reduction in all types of cells, especially neutrophils.

2. When the disease is complicated by other infections the anemia is more severe and anisocytosis, poikilocytosis, and polychromatophilia may appear and normoblasts may occasionally be seen in the peripheral blood. Leukocytosis may develop, the leukopenia may persist or the syndrome of agranulocytosis may intervene.

3. As the duration of the disease increases, the spleen tends to become larger and the anemia, leukopenia and thrombocytopenia become progressively more severe. Leukopenia generally appears first, followed by anemia and finally thrombocytopenia. The degree of leukopenia, anemia and thrombocytopenia follow closely the degree of splenic enlargement.

4. The bone marrow in kala-azar is hyperplastic and infiltrated by reticulo-endothelial cells. In spite of this there appears to be an abundance of blood forming tissue, especially erythropoietic tissue.

5. Differential cell studies on preparations of sternal marrow reveal a marked reduction in the polymorphonuclear neutrophils and eosinophils. Myeloblasts, promyelocytes, neutrophilic myelocytes and metamyelocytes are present in approximately normal proportions as are the lymphocytes and monocytes. Plasma cells are somewhat increased. Erythroid cells, especially polychromatic normoblasts are numerous and the leukocyte-erythroid ratio is altered, more than the normal proportion of normoblasts being found. Megakaryocytes are present in normal or slightly reduced numbers. Staining abnormalities are noted in these cells and there is a striking reduction in platelet production.

6. During effective anti-leishmanial therapy parasitized reticulo-endothelial cells disappear and the percentage of reticulo-endothelial cells gradually diminishes as the polymorphonuclear neutrophils increase. There is a significant increase in the eosinophilic cells. Lymphocytes become more numerous and the plasma cells diminish in number. Nucleated red cells become less numerous and the leukocyte-erythroid ratio returns to normal. At the same time the proportion of orthochromatic normoblasts to polychromatic normoblasts increases. The relative number of megakaryocytes increases and platelet formation from the megakaryocytes is accelerated even beyond the normal. Huge groups of platelets are frequently seen in the marrow smears. A rise in platelets in the peripheral blood takes place late, after there has been a significant rise in hemoglobin and leukocytes. The three cellular elements are restored to normal in the peripheral blood in the same order as their reduction from normal.

7. Evidence is presented which contradicts the view that the pancytopenia is due to a crowding out of the bone marrow by reticulo-endothelial cells.

8. Certain similarities between the hematologic changes in this disease and those accompanying the hypersplenic syndromes are noted.


The farm sector of the Western Cape is modelled u sing a sector mathematical programming model to determine the effect of different water policies on output, prices, welfare and employment. Two scenarios are analysed, namely the effect of a restriction of water available for irrigation, and an increase in water tariffs. Results show a relative shift away from (intensive) irrigated production, and a decrease in producer welfare, especially for irrigation farmers, under both scenarios. When water availability is decreased, the negative effect falls disproportionately on the poor as employment decreases. In the long run the negative effects are severe, as there is a relative shift out of industries where the Western Cape has a competitive advantage.


In many image segmentation problems involving limited and low-quality data, employing statistical prior information about the shapes of the objects to be segmented can significantly improve the segmentation result. However, defining probability densities in the space of shapes is an open and challenging problem, especially if the object to be segmented comes from a shape density involving multiple modes (classes). In the literature, there are some techniques that exploit nonparametric shape priors to learn multimodal prior densities from a training set. These methods solve the problem of segmenting objects of limited and low-quality to some extent by performing maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation. However, these methods assume that the boundaries found by using the observed data can provide at least a good initialization for MAP estimation so that convergence to a desired mode of the posterior density is achieved. There are two major problems with this assumption that we focus in this thesis. First, as the data provide less information, these approaches can get stuck at a local optimum which may not be the desired solution. Second, even though a good initialization directs the segmenting curve to a local optimum solution that looks like the desired segmentation, it does not provide a picture of other probable solutions, potentially from different modes of the posterior density, based on the data and the priors. In this thesis, we propose methods for segmentation of objects that come from multimodal posterior densities and suffer from severe noise, occlusion and missing data. The first framework that we propose represents the segmentation problem in terms of the joint posterior density of shapes and features. We incorporate the learned joint shape and feature prior distribution into a maximum a posteri- ori estimation framework for segmentation. In our second proposed framework, we approach the segmentation problem from the approximate Bayesian inference perspective. We propose two different Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling based image segmentation approaches that generates samples from the posterior density. As a final contribution of this thesis, we propose a new shape model that learns binary shape distributions by exploiting local shape priors and the Boltzmann machine. Although the proposed generative shape model has not been used in the context of object segmentation in this thesis, it has great potential to be used for this purpose. The source code of the methods introduced in this thesis will be available in https://github.com/eerdil.


Detailed analysis of NO formation routes and its contributions with strain rate in hydrogen/air flames were numerically investigated. LiG detailed reaction mechanism has been used for calculation, which is compared with experimental data in literature. It shows good agreement with experiment for both temperature and NO mole fraction. Three routes have been found important for NO formation in hydrogen flames. These are the Thermal route, NNH route and N₂O route. Strain rate were varied to discuss the EI NO reduction trend in hydrogen nonpremixed flames, which are analyzed by each NO formation routes. As a result , as the strain rate increase, EI NO decrease sharply until strain rate 100s -1 and decrease slowly until strain rate 310s -1 again, after that EI NO keeps nearly constant. It can be identified that EINO trend with the strain rate is well explained by a combination of variation of production rate of above Thermal, NNH and N₂O route. Also result of Thermal-Mech. that includes only thermal NO reaction is compared with those of Full-Mech. . As a result, It can be identified that there was difference between the two results of calculation. It is attributed to result that Thermal-mech did not consider contributions of NNH and N₂O route. From these result, we can conclude that NOx emission characteristics of hydrogen nonpremixed flames should consider contributions of above three routes simultaneously.


Epilepsy is very common. The prevalence in the Netherlands is 5:1000 inhabitants. The diagnosis is mostly made on clinical grounds and often incorrectly. If there are doubts about the diagnosis, the patient can be referred to a specialised centre for a seizure registration with an EEG and video recording. The disorder generally responds well to treatment with anti-epileptics. Some 60-70% of patients treated with these remain free of seizures. If medicinal treatment fails then a surgical intervention can be considered. For patients with temporal epilepsy in particular, there is quite a high chance that a surgical intervention will resolve the symptoms. Where it proves difficult to satisfactorily adjust the medication of a patient, stimulation of the left vagus nerve can be considered. Paying more attention to the side effects of the medication and the limitations imposed on the patients can reduce the negative influence of epilepsy on the quality of life.


Levulinic acid is a platform chemical that derived by environmental friend biomass. We have previously reported a reaction pathway to transform levulinic acid to maleic anhydride through methyl scission on supported vanadium oxide, which could achieve a 70% yield. The structure of vanadium oxide on the surface of supports can be informative for catalyst selection. We investigated the polymerization of vanadium oxide on support through diffuse reflectance UV-vis spectroscopy. Peak deconvolution of ligand to metal charge transfer region of the spectra provided knowledge of different coordinated structure. All of our catalysts have bulk V2O5 that exists on the surface of supports because of the impregnation synthesis method. Monomeric tetrahedral VOx only presents on low vanadium loading catalysts. We also examined structures of various probe molecules absorbed on the catalyst surface and difference between them as temperature increases from 313K to 693K through in situ Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. The binding structure of methyl ketones and levulinic acid on the catalyst was also investigated. Results confirmed our hypothesis that oxidation of levulinic acid has a distinct reaction pathway from the oxidation of methyl ketone, which is dehydration followed by dehydrogenation and oxidation instead of oxidative methyl scission. Spectroscopic Analysis of the Vanadium Oxide Catalyst During the Ketone Oxidation


Abstract The present paper commits to the study of the heat transfer analysis and material behaviour of the thermally cycled mould steel used in glassware production. Thermal cycling experiments of AISI 431 stainless steel were carried out at specially designed computer controlled cycling mechanism which could contact the sample with molten glass at 900°C. Two different heat transfer analysis models were performed to calculate the temperature distribution in the specimen which was an input into the stress models as thermal loads. There is a consistency between the model results which were acquired assuming that the material was only subjected to plastic deformation, and the measurements that were performed during thermal cycling process by thermocouples. These cycling models could be used for advanced failure analysis of this kind of subjected materials. The results of repeated high temperature cycling process and thermal shocks created by initial temperature domain (20–900°C) are discussed.


Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is an unobtrusive method used to observe patterns in illicit drug use, poliovirus, and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). The pandemic and need for surveillance measures have led to the rapid acceleration of WBE research and development globally. With the infrastructure available to monitor SARS-CoV-2 from wastewater in 58 countries globally, there is potential to expand targets and applications for public health protection, such as other viral pathogens, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), pharmaceutical consumption, or exposure to chemical pollutants. Some applications have been explored in academic research but are not used to inform public health decision-making. We reflect on the current knowledge of WBE for these applications and identify barriers and opportunities for expanding beyond SARS-CoV-2. This paper critically reviews the applications of WBE for public health and identifies the important research gaps for WBE to be a useful tool in public health. It considers possible uses for pathogenic viruses, AMR, and chemicals. It summarises the current evidence on the following: (1) the presence of markers in stool and urine; (2) environmental factors influencing persistence of markers in wastewater; (3) methods for sample collection and storage; (4) prospective methods for detection and quantification; (5) reducing uncertainties; and (6) further considerations for public health use.


The purpose of this study is to explore the effectiveness of escalating company policies and standard operating procedures at Celcom Axiata Berhad as well as the possible reason behind the violation of the clause in the documents. In spite of, this
study also provide ample evidence of the case of internal fraud and employee's wrongdoings at Celcom Axiata Berhad from January 2012 until September 2013.Thus, the emphasis in the research is to provide fundamental discussing about internal
fraud and wrongdoings cases and advantage of establishing and maintaining a set of company policy and standard operating procedures as a reference document to set limit, maintain control and resolved dispute among employees and other interested
parties to curb internal fraud and wrongdoings among employees.
The aim of this study is (i) to ascertain whether Celcom Axiata Berhad has specific policies and standard operating procedures to curb internal fraud; (ii) to determine whether Celcom Axiata Berhad's policies and standard operating procedures on internal frauds are successful in preventing fraud cases; and (iii) to assess the level of awareness and comprehension among employees on the existence of relevant company policies and standard operating procedures on internal fraud prevention; and (iv) to examine the opportunity and rationalization for internal fraud in Celcom Axiata
Berhad. This study adopted content analysis of file and company documents as the instruments for data collection. The cases selected in this study will be based on actual cases that had been investigated and enforcement was discharged. A total of seven cases were involved in this study. All the case studies involved with internal fraud and wrongdoings at Celcom Axiata Berhad reported in January 2012 until September 2013. The name of the staff involved is not disclosed due to private and confidential
information. The case files were obtained from department of Fraud Prevention and Investigation under Facilities Division, Celcom Axiata Berhad. However for company policy and standard operating procedures were retrieved from Document Control
System by accessing the company intranet, also known as Bluenet.The findings from this study demonstrates that the internal fraud involving employee's misconduct and wrongdoing might be reduces if documented policies and standard operating procedures are now in place for all major aspects of the company's business, workable, well establish and maintain to ensure that they remain effective


The aim of this study was to identify if acquiring ICT skills through DOT Lebanon's ICT training program (a local NGO) improved income generation opportunities after 3-months of completing the training. The target population was the NGO's vulnerable young beneficiaries. This study was completed in an effort to find creative and digital solutions to the high rate of youth unemployment in Lebanon (37%), one of the highest rates in the world. Results showed that 48% of beneficiaries who were unemployed at baseline, were exposed to at least one income generation opportunity 3 months after completing the DOT Lebanon training. Also, 49% of beneficiaries who were already employed at baseline were exposed to at least one income generation opportunity. Gender, English proficiency and governorate were variables that were found to be statistically significant. Males were more likely than females to be exposed to income generation opportunities. Those who knew little English had better chances than those who had no English proficiency. Beneficiaries living in the capital Beirut were more likely than others to be exposed to income generation opportunities.


Reliable multicast protocols are becoming an essential element in distributed applications such as interactive distance learning applications. However, the existing implementations of reliable multicast protocols are not sufficient to satisfy the group communications requirements of some distributed applications. Our experience of using number of multicast protocols in IRI distance learning applications shows the necessity of providing an application-layer reliable multicast server (RMS) to extend the primitive group communication services provided by such multicast protocols. Examples of such services include handling heterogeneous environments (such as LAN vs. WAN networks and different reliable multicast protocols), automatic fault recovery and simple application interface. In this paper, we motivate and describe the design and the implementation of RMS architecture which has been used in IRI learning sessions for two semesters. We also show how RMS improves the reliability, performance and flexibility of IRI sessions via supporting extended group communication services.


Enhanced fluorescence emission in molecular aggregates and solids has received wide attention in view of its extensive application potential. The uncommon effect of enhancement over quenching has largely been attributed to the rigidification of the molecule and its environment, and the restriction of intramolecular non-radiative excited state decay channels. The critical role of molecular orientations in hindering intermolecular energy transfer and the associated non-radiative excited state energy loss has been explored in recent studies. Further examples are demonstrated to argue for a closer look at the concomitant role of intra and intermolecular effects in realizing enhanced fluorescence in molecular aggregates.


As our cities continue to urbanize, opportunities for children's unstructured outdoor play are declining. Play is a right to children, and holds a critical role in children's lives. Creating opportunities for play during school hours produces significant physical and social health benefits. OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) is a registered community interest program originating in England transforming attitudes to play supervision, environment and provision within schools. In Toronto, Canada an OPAL pilot project is being implemented at six public elementary schools. Using data from this pilot, this study examines how differences in happiness while playing at schools vary across play conditions and duration. The study explores baseline data collected in Spring 2016 among 352 of 9-12-year-old children, attending grades 4 to 6. Binomial logistic regression was performed for recess and lunch play showing the correlation between happiness and play duration. There are statistically significant relationships between happiness and play conditions.

Key words: outdoor play, unstructured, happiness, children, Toronto


In 1919 American Communist Party member Benjamin Gitlow was arrested for distributing a "Left Wing Manifesto," a publication inspired by the Russian Revolution. He was charged with violating New York's Criminal Anarchy Law of 1902, which outlawed the advocacy of any doctrine advocating to the violent overthrow of government. Gitlow argued that the law violated his right to free speech but was still convicted. He appealed and five years later the Supreme Court upheld his sentence by a vote of 7-2. Throughout the legal proceedings, much attention was devoted to the "bad tendency" doctrine - the idea that speakers and writers were responsible for the probable effects of their words - which the Supreme Court explicitly endorsed in its decision. According to Justice Edward T. Sanford, "A state may punish utterances endangering the foundations of organized government and threatening its overthrow by unlawful means." More important was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' dissent, in which he argued that the mere expression of ideas, separated from action, could not be punished under the "clear and present danger" doctrine. As Holmes put it, "Every idea is an incitement" and the expression of an idea, no matter how disagreeable, was protected by the First Amendment. While the majority disagreed, it also raised and endorsed the idea that the Bill of Rights could be violated by neither the federal government nor individual states - an idea known as "incorporation" that was addressed for the first time in this case. In recreating Gitlow, Marc Lendler opens up the world of American radicalism and brings back into focus a number of key figures in American law: defense attorney Clarence Darrow; New York Court of Appeals justices Roscoe Pound and Benjamin Cardozo; Walter Pollak of the fledgling ACLU; and dissenting justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis. Lendler also traces the origins of the incorporation doctrine and the ebb and flow of Gitlow as a precedent through the end of the Cold War. In a time when Islamic radicalism raises many of the same questions as domestic Communism did, Lendler's cogent explication of this landmark case helps students and Court-watchers alike better understand "clear and present danger" tests, ongoing debates over incitement, and the importance of the Holmes-Brandeis dissent in our jurisprudence.


According to Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, the European Union is a political and economic union founded on a respect for fundamental rights and the rule of law, referred to hereafter as EU fundamental values. The central place of this commitment in the EU Treaties suggests a founding assumption: That the EU is a Union of states who themselves see human rights and the rule of law as irrevocable parts of their political and legal order. Reminiscent of the entry of Jorg Haider's far-right Freedom Party into the Austrian government in 2000, the events of 2012 have done much to shake that assumption; questioning both how interwoven the rule of law tradition is across the present-day EU, and the role the EU ought to play in policing potential violations of fundamental rights carried out via the constitutional frameworks of its Member States. Much attention in this field, much like the focus of this paper, has been placed on events in one state in particular: Hungary.


We report on the development and characterization of a passive heterodyne hot electron bolometer (HEB) imager operating at 850 GHz. HEB detectors provide unprecedented sensitivity and spectral resolution at terahertz frequencies covering the frequency range of 0.5-5 THz. Terahertz imagers based on HEB technology have sufficient sensitivity to operate in a passive imaging mode, thus eliminating the need for active illumination. We demonstrated a fully automated passive imaging system based on our HEB technology. The front-end heterodyne detector includes a quasi-optically coupled HEB device in close proximity to a monolithic microwave integrated circuit low-noise IF amplifier. We integrated a compact commercial harmonic multiplier local oscillator (LO) source to provide the LO biasing for the HEB detector. Our high spectral resolution terahertz imager has a noise equivalent temperature difference value of 0.4 K and a spatial resolution of approximately 4 mm.


Small and medium-sized European businesses find it hard to raise capital, especially during their development phase. This column compares the situation in the US and Europe and suggests that many SMEs in Europe still face significant difficulties in identifying and accessing sources of funding. Promoting greater equity involvement and improving access to and information on all of the various funding options would do much to boost growth.


Historical buildings like churches, cathedrals and other cultural heritage monuments require special and continuous attention for their conservation. The required restorations need the information obtained using different methodologies. Like other complementary techniques, the geophysical prospecting allows to study different problems from different points of view. GPR studies performed in special buildings allow detecting voids in the walls, humid zones and fissures in constructive materiais. In fact, this methodology can detect anomalous areas, where there are problems. Different problems studied in special buildings, in areas where the damages were known, let us to identify humidity problems (strong reflections), voids into the walls (small reflections appearing usually in the materials between the rocks and in the contact between the different constructive elements or epochs), and fissures. AIso, radar data shows the existence of different anomalies near the building: structures underneath the studied one, small movements and settlements, and old wells, canals or another kind of water conduction buried nowadays that can cause the hurnidity or the settlement problems; deformations of the strata under the construction, etc. The examples reported here were obtained from measurements performed in areas with important hurnidity (efflorescences and detachment caused by water), with important deformations or in zones where the constructions were built in different epochs and different materiais. The differences between the damaged and nondamaged are as are clearly observed in the radar data interpretations.


ABSTRACT The Burnside Formation records the shift from marine-shelf to largely alluvial conditions in the Paleoproterozoic ( 1.9 Ga) Kilohigok foreland basin in the northwest Canadian Shield. The Burnside is a thick (up to 3.5 km), northwest-tapering siliciclastic wedge representing a sandy braid-delta and braided-river system that prograded northwest across the Archean Slave craton. Criteria are developed to distinguish shallow-marine facies from alluvial facies allowing construction of a stratigraphic framework for this unfossiliferous, alluvially dominated succession. The sandy alluvial system prograded over a storm-influenced fine-grained siliciclastic shelf. Shelf associations can be divided into siltstone-dominated and mixed siltstone-sandstone. The siltstone-dominated association comprises facies ranging from mudstones deposited below storm-wave influence to siltstones deposited under storm and fair-weather wave conditions. Mixed siltstone-sandstone facies form coarsening-upward sequences on the scale of several meters to a few tens of meters that appear to represent prograding marine sand bars. Initial alluvial influence is manifested by associations of mixed siltstone and sandstone with shallow-water wave-formed and current-formed structures, abundant soft-sediment deformation, and isolated meter-size channels filled with trough-cross-bedded andstone and associated rip-up clasts. Thick (tens to hundreds of meters) tabular-bedded fine sandstones represent a delta-platform environment between coarser-grained trough-cross-bedded braid-delta distributary channels. Unidirectional paleocurrents in the transitional alluvial facies indicate predominantly west to southwest transport. The bulk of the Burnside comprises several associations representing sandy alluvial braid-plain facies. Conglomeratic lithologies are subordinate to sandy ones and are restricted largely to the proximal (southeastern) part of the basin. Braid-plain facies, occupying hundreds of meters of section, consist mainly of hierarchies of trough cross-bedding on scales of a few meters to many tens of meters. Unidirectional paleocurrents from the main alluvial associations cluster with a single narrow west-northwest mode. Associations of sedimentary facies and paleocurrents indicate that initially the alluvial system was restricted to the proximal part of the basin and drained longitudinally between the orogenic hinterland and a synsedimentary flexural arch created by thrust loading. Contemporaneous shallow-marine-shelf facies were present to the northwest over and beyond the flexural arch. An abrupt shift to transverse drainage and the superposition of medial-braid-plain facies directly on marine-shelf and deltaic facies in the foreland mark an abrupt, unconformable contact representing the progradation of the alluvial system over the cratonic foreland. The area of maximum disparity between marine and nonmarine facies coincides with the area of greatest stratigraphic thinning and erosion, and marks th crest of the flexural arch. Only the transverse paleocurrent mode is recorded over the flexural arch and in the distal foreland. Stratigraphic relations suggest that marginal-marine and braid-delta facies tracts in the distal foreland shifted abruptly over large distances and were sensitive to changes in relative sea level. In contrast, braid-plain facies tracts shifted very little, and more gradually. The large lateral extent of alluvial facies suggests that the source area had a humid or monsoon climate.


BACKGROUND
Probiotic capsules have been shown to reduce the incidence of antibiotic-associated diarrhoea in a number of settings. If probiotic yogurt were equally efficacious then it would provide a simple and cost-effective means of preventing antibiotic-associated diarrhoea.

AIM
To investigate whether eating live bio yogurt at the time of taking oral antibiotics can prevent antibiotic-associated diarrhoea.

DESIGN OF STUDY
This study was a three-arm (bio yogurt, commercial yogurt, no yogurt) randomised controlled trial with double blinding between the two yogurt arms.

SETTING
A single primary care general practice surgery in Hingham, Norfolk. The study population included all ages except babies.

METHOD
Patients aged over 1 year who required a 1-week course of antibiotics were included in the study. There was complete follow up for 369 patients. The intervention was the consumption of 150 ml of live strawberry-flavoured yogurt for 12 days, starting on the first day of taking the antibiotic. Diarrhoea was defined as 'three or more loose stools per day over at least 2 consecutive days' within 12 days of starting the antibiotics.

RESULTS
Of the 120 patients in the no-yogurt group, 17 (14%, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 9.0 to 21.5) developed diarrhoea. Of the 118 given commercial yogurt, 13 (11%, 95% CI = 6.6 to 17.9) developed diarrhoea; nine of the 131 patients (7%; 95% CI = 3.7 to 12.5) given bio yogurt developed diarrhoea (P = 0.17).

CONCLUSION
Overall, this study failed to demonstrate that yogurt has any effect on antibiotic-associated diarrhoea.


BACKGROUND
Lifestyle has been shown to affect fertility in both males and females, with compelling evidence that smoking and being under or overweight impairs natural and assisted fertility, and other factors such as stress and caffeine have also been implicated. The objective of this study was to determine whether providing infertile couples with individualized lifestyle assessments and ongoing support facilitates positive lifestyle changes enhancing healthy fertility.

METHODS
We conducted a prospective cohort pilot study of 23 infertile couples attending an Adelaide-based fertility clinic for advice and treatment relating to infertility. The intervention was a comprehensive assessment interview with the couple, focused on health and lifestyle. Motivational interviewing techniques were used and ongoing support provided. The assessment was repeated after 4 months and included an exit questionnaire. The main outcome measure(s) was self-reported lifestyle changes, including increased exercise, modified diet, reduced caffeine and alcohol consumption, ceased or reduced smoking and decreased psychological stress.

RESULTS
Following the initial lifestyle assessment interview, all participants reported adverse lifestyle behaviour.

CONCLUSIONS
The results suggest that the FAST (Fertility ASsessment and advice Targeting lifestyle choices and behaviours) approach of an individualized assessment of current lifestyle practice followed by ongoing one to two weekly telephone support is effective in promoting healthy lifestyle change. Larger studies using this methodology are now required.


Three pentanal-derived acetal esters have been prepared using a sonochemical method employing the principles of green chemistry. As many as two steps were required to produce these esters of alkyl 9,10dihydroxystearate in 67-85% yield. The green synthesis evaluation was carried out through a comparison between reflux and sonochemical methods, as well as homogeneous and solid acid catalysts. Activation of Indonesian natural bentonite was conducted by Bronsted acid-enabled dealumination to obtain a low-cost solid acid catalyst. It was found that sonochemical esterification of the acid-catalyzed by H-bentonite gave products in up to 70% yield in 3 times shorter reaction time than the reflux method, which is remarkable. The final acetalization step with n-pentanal in the presence of H-bentonite with sonochemical method afforded three pentanal-derived dioxolane derivatives in 69–85% yields, which are higher than the conventional method. Examination of the physicochemical properties of each product revealed that methyl 8-(2-butyl-5-octyl-1,3-dioxolan-4-yl)octanoate is the most suitable novel biolubricant to substitute currently commercial lubricant.


Starting from the QCD Lagrangian we derive the effective action for massive quark and antiquark at large distances, corresponding to the minimal area low of the Wilson loop. The path integral method is used to quantize the system and the spectrum is obtained with asymptotically linear Regge trajectories. Two dynamical regimes distinguished by the string energy--momentum distribution are found: at large orbital excitations ($l\gg 1$) the system behaves as a string and yields the Regge slope of $\frac{1}{2 \pi \sigma}$, while at small $l$ one obtains a potential-like regime for relativistic or nonrelativistic system . The problem of relative time is clarified. It is shown that in the valence quark approximation one can reduce the initial four-dimensional dynamics to the three-dimensional one. The limiting case of a pure string (without quark kinetic terms) is studied and the spectrum of the straight-line string is obtained.


Nasal cavity radiographs and CT images from 31 dogs with nasal cavity cancer were compared. All dogs had abnormal clinical signs relating to -nasal cancer and histologic confirmation of malignant nasal cavity neoplasia. No dog had cyto reductive surgery prior to imaging. All radiographic and CT examinations were abnormal. CT was more accurate than radiographs in identifying unilateral versus bilateral nasal cavity disease and tumor extension into adjacent structures such as the cranial cavity, hard palate, and pterygopala-tine fossa. The improved accuracy of CT in these respects was not of benefit in the confirmation of nasal cavity disease because radiographs were abnormal in every instance. However, CT may be useful for more accurate tumor staging, predicting possible treatment-related complications, and planning of surgery and radiation therapy. It was also determined that one dorsally located radiation therapy portal bounded laterally by the medial ocular canthi, as described in previous reports, would not have been adequate for encompassing all abnormal tissue in 28 of the 31 dogs evaluated.


On the occasion of the flight of Zond 7 four turtles were included in the payload. A detailed histological analysis was carried out upon recovery of the subjects. No gross changes were observed, but the nuclei in the cells of many tissues decreased in volume by a statistically significant amount. This decrease is assumed to correspond to certain changes in function which adapted the animal to space flight conditions. No pathological changes were observed.


A comparative study of the antihypertensive effects of hydrochlorothiazide (HCT) monotherapy and of its combinations with triamterene (T), carried out in 57 patients with Stage II noncomplicated essential hypertension, have shown the best antihypertensive effect of 2 tablets of triampur (TP), containing 12.5 mg HCT and 25 mg T each; 25 mg of HCT have been less effective. Triampur more markedly reduced the systolic arterial pressure (APs) at rest, with the patient lying down. If the drug doses are doubled, TP intake leads to a somewhat more manifest reduction of APs than HCT. The pattern and the degree of orthostatic shifts are virtually unchanged by both the drugs. In exercise test neither TP nor HCT in the afore doses influenced the pattern and degree of the hemodynamic shifts. These results evidence that TP hypotensive effect and the underlying hemodynamic shifts are in fact identical in their pattern and manifestation to the effect of HCT alone and are mainly due to this latter drug.


The main objective of this study is to examine the relationship between
entrepreneurial self-efficacy and self-independent motive with students' self-employment
intentions and also to investigate entrepreneurial supports as the
moderating effect in the relationship between self-efficacy and self-independent with
self-employment intentions. In order to do so, this study is taken to further
understand the influence of self-efficacy and self-independent motive towards self-employment intentions among Science and Non-Science students in Universiti Malaysia
Sabah (UMS). This research also investigates about the relationship between
demographic factors and self-employment intentions. Demographic factors that were use are age, gender, entrepreneurial experience, family experience in self-employment careers and entrepreneurial education exposure. The target population for this study is focused on third and final year of undergraduate and postgraduate students. Respondents are required to fill up the questionnaire as the instrument for data collection. The questionnaire is included nine demographic items and 33 questions for section 2 to 5 by using the five-likert scale in order to get response from the sampling I
unit. Findings for demographic factors shows that only entrepreneurial experience is
supported on self-employment intentions between Science and Non-Science students
and; age and exposure to entrepreneurial education are partially supported while
gender and family experience in entrepreneurship are not supported. On the other
hand, findings for self-efficacy and self-independent indicated that both are supported
towards self-employment intentions. From the findings also, the study found that
entrepreneurial supports do moderate the relationship between self-efficacy and self-independent
with self-employment intentions. As for the conclusion, there is a
Significant difference in self-employment intentions between Science and Non-Science
students in UMS.


Anuran tadpoles are excellent models for regeneration studies. The tail, an organ essential for swimming for the aquatic tadpole, regenerates completely following injury or amputation. However, treatment with the morphogen, vitamin A or retinoic acid inhibits normal tail regeneration and induces homeotic transformation of tail to limbs. This phenomenon was discovered for the first time in the Indian marbled balloon frog Uperodon systoma in the Developmental Biology laboratory of Utkal University (Odisha, India) in the year 1992. In this paper, we present the results of morphological, histological, biochemical and molecular (immonohistochemistry) investigations of vitamin A induced homeotic transformation in different anuran species. In addition, we discuss the putative role of fibroblast growth factor 1 during spinal cord regeneration in the tadpoles of the Indian tree frog, Polypedates maculatus, an ideal model for regeneration studies in an Indian context.


The popularity of social media is constantly growing. More than 84% of Internet users have accounts on social networks and spend between two and four hours per day on the Internet. Each user has 195 "friends" on average. Spending time in the social media is already activity number one in the Internet, exceeding the popularity of activities such as searching for information search and using e-mail. It is expected that Facebook will replace e-mails as the main means of communication. Recently the number of people, who use social networks not only to communicate but also to find information about various goods and services, is steadily increasing. Social networks is gaining increasing popularity as a powerful business tool. The business is taking its first steps in using social media platforms as an effective marketing channel. The first part of the article examines the main reasons, which determine the closer integration between the social media and business processes within companies. These reasons include the use of social tools by the majority of Internet users; the undoubted advantages that social media can provide for businessеs; the employees' passion for social networks; and the need for a clearly developed marketing strategy for using social media. Special attention is paid to the latest data on the use of digital technology in Bulgaria and the reasons, which determine the serious lagging of our country compared to other EU countries in some of the most important aspects. In the second part, the author outlines the main areas in which social media can help the business: marketing; sales; customer service; PR campaigns; personnel recruitment; customer relationships management; brand promotion and increase of brand recognition; training and staff development. An attempt is made to highlight some of the manifestations of social tools in each of the above mentioned areas, based on specific examples.


Venture capital has a significant impact on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). In Zanzibar Isles, small businesses have been and are the stepping stone of industrialization in Isles. The purpose of this study was to find out the impact of venture capital on growth
of SMEs in Zanzibar. The lack of finance has been cited as a major contributor to SMEs failure in Zanzibar Urban West Region. Despite the lack of Venture Capital Organization
in Zanzibar Urban West Region, Venture capital is the best source of business finance.
The methodology used interview guide and the data was collected, coded, quantified and analyzed quantitative and qualitatively. Quantitative data was analysed with the use of statistical package for social science (SPSS). The findings in this study revealed that venture capital has an impact on growth of SMEs. The study has demonstrated that use of venture capital can improve SMEs and hence strengthen Zanzibar Economy. The study
concluded that countries that use venture capital experience improved economic growth and thus Zanzibar should follow that experience by promoting the establishments of Venture Capital Organizations, and also SME's of Zanzibar should be encouraged to use this form of finance to achieve their economic growth.


While there may be some womens rights advocates who have pondered that question in the context of winning the lottery few have actually had the opportunity to plan their work with such a large sum in mind. Instead the dominant sense is one of scarcity -- too few interested funders with too little money to support existing womens rights organizations and initiatives. Is it that womens rights groups are not bold enough in their fundraising strategies? Is it that donors simply dont get the urgency and importance of this work? What has really been happening in terms of funding for womens rights organizations in the last ten years and what have been the driving forces behind those trends? This report is the result of an ongoing action research initiative launched by the Association for Womens Rights in Development (AWID) to explore these questions and to draw insights into possible strategies for changing the existing funding landscape so that more resources are made available to womens rights organizations. (excerpt)


We present a digital programmable light spectrum synthesis system based on a digital micromirror device (DMD) from Texas Instruments. A DMD pattern-scanning calibration method is developed and applied to the synthesis of various infrared C-band (1530-1565 nm) spectral profiles, including a fast programmable tunable light source with a bandwidth of approximately 3.8 nm, a square profile, a sawtooth waveform, and a triangular spectrum profile. The experimental results show that the wavelength resolution of the DMD spectrum synthesis system is approximately 0.076 nm/pixel. The proposed spectrum synthesis system has a number of key advantages, including a rapid and stable performance and multichannel compatibility. The spectrum synthesis system is suitable for various applications, including pulse shaping for coherent control and harmonic generation, a tunable light source, an equalizer for erbium-doped fiber amplifiers, and a wavelength scanner.


With the dramatic development of the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of perovskite solar cells (PSCs), the device lifetime has attracted extensive research interest and concern. To enhance device durability, developing dopant-free hole-transporting materials (HTMs) with a high performance is a promising strategy. Herein, three new HTMs with a N,N′-diphenyl-N,N′-di(m-tolyl)benzidine (TPD) core: TPD-4MeTPA, TPD-4MeOTPA and TPD-4EtCz are designed and synthesized, showing suitable energy levels and excellent film-formation properties. PCEs of 15.28% were achieved based on pristine TPD-4MeOTPA as the HTM, which is a little lower than that of the p-doped 2,2′,7,7′-tetrakis-(N,N-di-4-methoxyphenylamino)-9,9′-spirobifluorene (spiro-OMeTAD)-based device (17.26%). Importantly, the devices based on the new HTMs show relatively improved stability compared to devices based on spiro-OMeTAD when aged under ambient air with 30% relative humidity in the dark.


Theoretical Background: Appropriately decoding and recognizing facial expressions is a substantial ability that develops very early in infancy and is crucial for the understanding of and adaptation to social interactions (Thomas, De Bellis, Graham, & LaBar, 2007). Furthermore, in humans and other primates, facial expressions serve as important social cues to regulate behavior and for establishing and maintaining social relationships (Kringelbach & Rolls, 2003). Studies with normal adults showed that they direct most of their attention to the core features of the face (i.e. eyes, nose, and mouth) and spend less time on non-feature areas while exploring facial expressions (Pelphrey et al., 2002). Within the core features, the eyes are considered to provide humans with the most information in terms of emotion recognition. Numerous studies confirmed this bias towards inspecting the eyes from very early in ontogeny (Holmes, Richards, & Green, 2006; Walker-Smith, Gale, & Findlay, 1977). Deficits in emotion recognition and eye-to-eye gaze are core symptoms of various disorders with difficulties in social interactions (e.g. autism, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, social phobia, etc.). In addition, individuals with a personality trait called alexithymia have distinct difficulties in recognizing emotions. Alexithymia is a non-clinical, psychological concept defined by difficulties in understanding and regulating emotions. The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) is well known for its physiological functions in milk ejection and during labour. Apart from these functions, OT receptors are distributed in various brain areas associated with social behavior (for a review, see Heinrichs & Domes, 2008). Given that oxytocin is believed to promote social attachment in non-human mammals and approach behavior – such as trust – in humans, we hypothesized that oxytocin might also promote the ability to infer the mental state of others from social cues of the eye region in subjects with particular deficits in recognizing emotions (RMET, Baron-Cohen, 1999; Domes et al., 2007). Moreover, oxytocin was expected to improve the performance in a task testing the ability to detect subtle changes in human facial expressions (emotion recognition task; Porges et al., in press) and to modulate eye gaze when viewing videos of facial expressions.
Methods: In a placebo-controlled, double-blind design, 65 healthy male participants were randomly assigned to receive a single dose of 24 IU oxytocin intranasally 40 minutes before the experiment. During the experimental phase, participants performed an emotion recognition task. For this task, pictures of the eye region of the six basic emotions (fear, sadness, disgust, happiness, anger, surprise and neutral) were chosen from the "Pictures of Facial Affect" (Ekman & Friesen, 1976). Pictures were presented to the participants on a computer screen with four alternative labels describing what the person displayed might be thinking or feeling at the moment. While we used static stimuli of only the eye region for the first experiment, the second study used the affect recognition test, (ART; Porges et al., in press), which presents videos of faces expressing different emotions. Participants were shown 48 neutral faces in a randomized sequence, which turned into one of the six primary emotions (anger, happiness, surprise, disgust, sadness and fear) over time. Within these experiments, eye movements were assessed during the viewing of the facial expressions.
Results: Results of the first study investigating the effects of oxytocin in persons with selective difficulties in recognizing emotions showed that the single administration of 24 IU oxytocin led to an increased ability to recognize emotions in the high-alexithymic group (t30 = 2.23; p = .033), while no such effect occurred in the low-alexithymic group (t31 = -.594; p = .557). Furthermore, in the group with high alexithymia, oxytocin administration induced an improvement of emotion recognition particularly in emotions that are difficult to recognize (t30 = 2.218; p =.034). The results of the second study revealed that over the whole time sequence, subjects with oxytocin made more fixations towards the eyes (F1;59 = 3.23; p = 0.077) and spent significantly more time fixating the eye region (F1;59 = 4.42; p = 0.04) than the placebo group for happy facial expressions. In terms of the time sequence of the videos of facial expressions, we found that particularly in the early time phase during face exploration, subjects with oxytocin spent significantly more time on the eyes (F1;60 = 6.37; p = .014) and made significantly more fixations to the eyes (F1;60 = 6.73; p = .012). Moreover, subjects of the oxytocin group looked less at (F1;60 = 3.94; p = .052) and spent less time fixating on the nose (F1;60 = 3.67; p = .06) in the early detection phase.
Conclusion: This is the first study to show that a single dose of intranasal oxytocin is sufficient to improve performance in an emotion recognition task in healthy men with difficulties in identifying and describing emotions. Although alexithymia is a subclinical phenomenon, it is associated with general psychological distress, especially with depression and anxiety, and has been observed in numerous psychiatric and somatic disorders (Bankier, Aigner, & Bach, 2001; Gil et al., 2007; Le, Ramos, & Munoz, 2007; Marchesi, Bertoni, & Maggini, 2008; Saarijarvi, Salminen, Taylor, & Toikka, 2006; Taylor, Bagby, & Parker, 1997). Further, our results show that a single dose of oxytocin enhances the gaze toward the eye region for all basic emotions, and in particular in happy faces. These findings may therefore have several important clinical implications. People with impaired ability to process or regulate emotions have been shown to be at risk of developing mental disorders such as major depression, anxiety disorder, eating disorders, and substance abuse. Moreover, the inability to focus the attention toward the eyes seems to be responsible for emotion recognition deficits, for example in autism or social anxiety disorder, and thus, oxytocin may provide substantial support in the treatment of disorders with social deficits.


A competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was developed to quantify endogenous acetaldehyde-protein adducts (APAs) produced in plant seeds at low acetaldehyde concentrations without exogenous reducing agents. The key point of this technique is the use of a gelatin-acetaldehyde adduct, which is synthesized under 1 mM acetaldehyde and 10 mM NaCNBH3, to pre-coat plate wells to obtain the proper binding parameters for the quantification of APA in seed proteins. Compared with the traditional, direct ELISA method, the competitive one has higher sensitivity and less background. Using competitive ELISA, we determined the accumulation of endogenous APAs in seeds in relation to the loss of seed viability. Lettuce seeds were exposed to 2 mM gaseous acetaldehyde during storage for 30 or 45 d; the relative humidity and temperature of storage were studied independently. Viability decreased only in acetaldehyde-treated seeds, as either the temperature or the relative humidity increased. A loss in viability was accompanied by an increase in the accumulation of APA. The APA content also increased as viability decreased in five species of seeds, which were aged naturally without exposure to acetaldehyde. It is suggested that the modification of functional seed proteins with endogenously evolved acetaldehyde may be an important cause of seed aging.


Objectives: To investigate the expression of β3-adrenergic receptor (β3-AR) in the atrium of rats with chronic heart failure (CHF). Methods: The heart failure rat model was established by aortic constriction. Thirty-six male Wistar rats were divided into Sham group (n = 10) and heart failure model group (n = 26), which were further divided into CHF control (CHF group) and BRL group. The rats in the BRL group were treated with a selective β3-AR agonist, BRL-37344 (4.0 nmol/kg, twice weekly) for 4 weeks. Results: In the BRL group, the left ventricular end-systolic pressure (83.21 ± 13.0 vs 101.50 ± 12.12 mm Hg) and the absolute values of the maximal rate of rise and fall of left ventricular pressure ([±dP/dtmax] 2.81 ± 0.04 vs 0.35 ± 0.04 and −2.72 ± 0.06 vs −3.33 ± 0.06) were lower than in the CHF group (P < .01). The left atrial mass index (LAMI) in the BRL group (0.4132 ± 0.0306) was higher than that in the CHF (0.3212 ± 0.0136) or Sham group (0.2683 ± 0.0145; P < .01). The levels of the left atrial β3-AR messenger RNA (mRNA) expression in the BRL group (0.932 ± 0.055) was higher than that in the CHF (0.706 ± 0.043) or Sham group (0.310 ± 0.020; P < .01). In all animals, there was a positive correlation between the level of β3-AR mRNA expression and the left or right atrial mass index (correlation coefficient ranged from 0.744 to 0.937). Conclusion: There is a significant increase in the β3-AR mRNA expression in the atrium of rats with heart failure. The level of β3-AR mRNA expression was associated with the AMI and was enhanced by a selective β3-AR agonist, BRL-37344.


In view of the problems and difficulties in the information system integration of the small and medium-sized super-hard cutting tools enterprises, the characteristics of the design and manufacture of the CBN turning tool were analyzed. The demand of the enterprises for the 3C integrated system of CBN turning tool was presented. The 3-layer architecture of the 3C integrated system of CBN turning tool was proposed, which included the data layer, the application layer and the user layer. The object-oriented method was adopted to design the system and the class model of the system was constructed. Based on these, the 3C integrated system of CBN turning tool for small and medium-sized enterprises was developed. The key technologies of the system were put forward. The system had been applied to the enterprise and run well.


The effect of retention time on redox sequences along the hydrological flow path of groundwater discharging through low-relief coastal stream sediments and the subsequent impact on the fate of NO3 carried in the groundwater was examined in two intact cores. Rates of denitrification were determined for the organic-rich streambed sediments, and a macroscopic, multispecies, reactive transport model based on multiple Monod kinetics was developed to interpret and extend the experimental results. Regionalized sensitivity analysis and parameter estimation were used to determine a set of parameters that best describe the experimental data for one column. The calibrated model successfully replicated the spatial profiles of nitrate under both steady and transient conditions in the second column operated under different conditions. A dimensionless form of the model was used to examine how coupled biogeochemical reactions and hydrological transport processes operate within the stream sediments could be understood in terms of Peclet (ratio of advection to dispersion) and Damkohler numbers (the ratio of the characteristic time of transport to the characteristic time for reaction). At the study site, the Peclet number and the Damkohler numbers for both oxygen and nitrate are high (Pe = 25, DaN = 47.5, and DaO = 40). When Pe > 5, Damkohler numbers explain observed variations in nitrate removal rates; as the flow rate increases, the solute residence time in the reactive zone is shortened resulting in a lesser extent of reaction, such that more NO3 is delivered to the stream water. [1] The effect of retention time on redox sequences along the hydrological flow path of groundwater discharging through low-relief coastal stream sediments and the subsequent impact on the fate of NO 3 À carried in the groundwater was examined in two intact cores. Rates of denitrification were determined for the organic-rich streambed sediments, and a macroscopic, multispecies, reactive transport model based on multiple Monod kinetics was developed to interpret and extend the experimental results. Regionalized sensitivity analysis and parameter estimation were used to determine a set of parameters that best describe the experimental data for one column. The calibrated model successfully replicated the spatial profiles of nitrate under both steady and transient conditions in the second column operated under different conditions. A dimensionless form of the model was used to examine how coupled biogeochemical reactions and hydrological transport processes operate within the stream sediments could be understood in terms of Peclet (ratio of advection to dispersion) and …


A family with Peutz-Jeghers syndrome is reported, colonic involvement having been demonstrated on several affected members. Of the 50 members of the family about whom we could get informations, 21 had the characteristic cutaneous lesions (and usually had had some manifestation of the intestinal disease). Our first patient had a colonic carcinoma, and we could detect at least another colonic carcinoma in the family. A third attained member of the family was known to have died from "throat cancer". The most frequent clinical manifestations of this family patients are intussusception related abdominal crisis of colicky pain and rectorrhagy. In Peutz-Jeghers syndrome, there is a slight increase in the risk of malignancy, and digestive cancer can arise from coexistent adenomas, from cancerous changes of hamartomas, or "de novo", i.e., appear on previously normal mucosa.


In this article we present a micro-analysis of 27 English blogs of people who reflect on their illness experience and the ostomy surgery they had to undergo as a result of that illness. We adopt an approach based on two related perspectives: conversation analysis and discursive psychology. Both perspectives consider language as a tool for social action. Our findings demonstrate that the discourse of the blogs serves three important social functions. First, the bloggers are able to describe how they have managed their ill-health for a long time, and how ostomy surgery became an inevitable next step. Second, bloggers can demonstrate their acceptance of the ostomy bag in embodied and personified ways (e.g., naming their bag) as well as emphasizing a return to a new normal. Third, ostomates present their stoma as a transformational occurrence. They do so by emphasizing extraordinary achievements in their lives after their stoma surgery and by displaying a strong normative claim to act as a role model. With this micro-analysis we have attempted to uncover how ostomates engage in identity work vis-a-vis their illness and how this is accomplished in the discourse of their blogs. This fine-grained analysis may be of importance to fellow ostomates and medical professionals, as it highlights the main concerns of ostomates in their experiential account of ostomy surgery.


Children with ASD often experience marked difficulty achieving proficiency in narration, and often require explicit instruction to learn this important discourse skill.  The present study was designed to extend the work of Colozzo et al., 2011 by examining the relationship between content and form in the narratives of school-age children with ASD as they participated in a narrative intervention program to improve their knowledge of story structure and ultimately, to improve their ability to create coherent, organized narratives. Children received two, individual, 50-minute intervention sessions weekly for a period of about 7 - 11 weeks. Children were asked to make up their own stories once weekly. These stories were scored for narrative proficiency and for grammatical accuracy. Findings revealed that prior to beginning narrative treatment, all of the children's grammatical accuracy was high while their narrative proficiency scores were low. In the first weeks of treatment, all children experienced a significant decrease in grammatical accuracy (<70%), however their narrative scores were observed to increase. Narrative proficiency scores continued to increase and become stable for all children. Interestingly, grammatical accuracy returned to normal (90% or greater) during the last weeks of intervention as children's narrative proficiency became stable. The findings from this study support the presence of a content-form tradeoff, as children learn difficult linguistic skills, other skills that are ordinarily stable, may fluctuate until the new skill is mastered. The absence of grammatical errors may  not be taken as an indication that the student is proficient in constructing a coherent, organized narrative. Further implications are discussed.


This paper uses an exogenous increase in income for a specific sub-group in Taiwan to explore
the extent to which higher income leads to higher levels of health and wellbeing. In 1995, the
Taiwanese government implemented the Senior Farmer Welfare Benefit Interim Regulation
(SFWBIR) which was a pure cash injection, approximately US$110 (£70) per month in 1996, to
senior farmers. A Difference-in-differences (DiD) approach is used on survey data from the
Taiwanese Health and Living Status of Elderly in 1989 and 1996 to evaluate the short term effect
of the SFWBIR on self-assessed health, depression, and life satisfaction. Senior manufacturing
workers are employed as a comparison group for the senior farmers in the natural experiment
because their demographic backgrounds are similar. This paper provides evidence that the
increase in income from the SFWBIR significantly improved the mental health of senior farmers
by reducing the scale of depression (CES-D) by 1.718, however, it had no significant short term
impact on self-assessed health or life satisfaction.


This paper proposes a novel method for tracking failure detection. The detection is based on the Forward-Backward error, i.e. the tracking is performed forward and backward in time and the discrepancies between these two trajectories are measured. We demonstrate that the proposed error enables reliable detection of tracking failures and selection of reliable trajectories in video sequences. We demonstrate that the approach is complementary to commonly used normalized cross-correlation (NCC). Based on the error, we propose a novel object tracker called Median Flow. State-of-the-art performance is achieved on challenging benchmark video sequences which include non-rigid objects.


ABSTRACT Questions: The objectives of this study were to assess the effect of Pteridium aquilinum (bracken) control treatments, at the national scale, and the impact of restoration practices, at the local scale, on P. aquilinum performance. Hypotheses: 1. Geographical location (locally between and within sites) affects the control of P. aquilinum through time. 2. Are the P. aquilinum control treatments successful at all sites, and if so which ones? 3. The treatments applied at the individual site level to restore vegetation influences the performance of P. aquilinum through time. Location: Four geographically distinct acid grassland and heathland sites infested with P. aquilinum across Great Britain. Methods: Six main-plot, bracken control treatments were applied to all sites with site-specific vegetation restoration treatments. Response variables (P. aquilinum cover, frond length and density) were monitored twice yearly, in June and August between 1993 and 2003. Results: Between- and within-site spatial variation was found, although impact is perhaps less than suggested from shorter-term data. Despite local variation all sites responded similarly to bracken control treatments; asulam treatment resulted in a rapid reduction in frond performance followed by a continued recovery taking approximately ten years to return to untreated values. Cutting treatments tended to have a slower impact at the start but an increasing one over time, especially cutting twice per year. Restoration treatments had a limited impact; the only significant effect in August was grass seeding on frond length at Sourhope. In June only, the plots where sheep were fenced out showed a significant reduction in P. aquilinum cover at Peak. Conclusions: Long-term control of Pteridium aquilinum at all sites and on all measures was best achieved using a continuous cutting treatment, preferably twice per year. Nomenclature: Stace (1997) for higher plants; Hill et al. (1991, 1992, 1994) for bryophytes; Coppins (2002) for lichens.


Seven wheat genotypes (Sirvan, Zarin, Pishgam, Karim, Baran, Heidary, and Rizhav) were crossed in diallel mating to develop 42 F1's hybrids. The resultant hybrids along with parents were evaluated during cropping season 2015-16 at agriculture and natural resources Pardis of Tehran University, Iran, using RCB design with 3 replications under drought stress and normal field conditions from the booting stage till physiological maturity. General combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) for agronomic traits were determined. The main objective of the research was the identification and proper selection of best-performing wheat parental genotypes and best F1's hybrids, based on GCA and SCA estimates. Significant differences were observed among the wheat genotypes for all the reported traits in this article. Results for combining ability analysis indicated that mean squares of GCA and SCA effects were significantly high for most of the traits. The estimates of σ2gca and σ2sca and its ratio (σ2gca/σ2sca) indicated that non-additive genetic expression was dominant for most of the traits studied, then the heterosis breading is a useful program, however selection on superior hybrids should be postponed to the next generation for these traits in recombination program. It is concluded that Zarin, and Baran are recommended as the best general combiners for a future wheat breeding program. The maximum values of SCA observed in flag leaf length in normal and peduncle length in drought condition related to crosses of Rizhav with other parents. So, it is suggested these series of crosses can be down to improve these traits at the mentioned condition.


The Rust programming language has a safe memory model that promises to eliminate critical memory bugs. While the language is strong in doing so, its memory guarantees are lost when any unsafe blocks are used. Unsafe code is often needed to call library functions written in an unsafe language inside a Rust program. We present Fidelius Charm (FC), a system that protects a programmer-specified subset of data in memory from unauthorized access through vulnerable unsafe libraries. FC does this by limiting access to the program's memory while executing unsafe libraries. FC uses standard features of Rust and utilizes the Linux kernel as a trusted base for splitting the address space into a trusted privileged region under the control of functions written in Rust and a region available to unsafe external libraries. This paper presents our design and implementation of FC, presents two case studies for using FC in Rust TLS libraries, and reports on experiments showing its performance overhead is low for typical uses.


It has been conjectured with regard to patient readmission patterns that there might be significant differences in patient characteristics, need factors, enabling resources, and health behavior. The aim of this study was to identify the profiles of readmitted patients in Hong Kong (n = 120) based on their predisposing characteristics, needs, health behavior, and enabling resources. All the readmitted patients were recruited to the study in three hospitals from 2003 to 2005. A cluster analysis yielded three clusters: Clusters 1, 2, and 3 constituted 27.5% (n = 33), 27.5% (n = 33), and 45.0% (n = 54) of the total sample, respectively. The study results show that community nurse services do affect the rate at which patients are admitted to hospital for a second time. The findings might help by providing important information that will enable health-care policy-makers to identify strategies to target a specific group of patients in the hope of reducing its readmission rate.


Benthic foraminifera (total assemblages) were studied from 30 sea-floor samples collected along a bathymetric transect on the southern shelf of the Marmara Sea from depths of 15–350 m. At each station, Kaiho's Benthic Foraminiferal Oxygen Index (BFOI) was calculated based on species abundances using the methods outlined by Kaiho (1994). The calculated BFOI values were converted to analogue oxygen values, and calibrated to the dissolved oxygen values measured 1 m above the sea floor at each station.  In the surface waters and central part of the Marmara Shelf transect, the BFOI values reproduce the measured dissolved oxygen values with a remarkable degree of accuracy. Beneath the pycnocline at depths of 30 to 75 m , the BFOI underestimated the measured oxygen values. This discrepancy is attributed to seasonally higher summer oxygen values within the chlorophyll maximum, corresponding to the position of the Mediterranean Inflow Water (MIW) present during summer. In the deeper part of the transect ( below 140 m) , BFOI values overestimated the measured oxygen values.  This discrepancy is attributed to the presence of denser MIW that cascades down the submarine canyon beneath the Marmara ship channel during winter, ventilating the deep Marmara Sea.  The BFOI accurately points out the seasonal differences in the position and depth of the MIW in the southwestern Marmara Sea. The BFOI likely reflects the longer-term oxygen values averaged over the span of many years.


ABSTRACT We examined the harmful side effects on indigenous soil microorganisms of two organic solvents, acetone and dichloromethane, that are normally used for spiking of soil with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons for experimental purposes. The solvents were applied in two contamination protocols to either the whole soil sample or 25% of the soil volume, which was subsequently mixed with 75% untreated soil. For dichloromethane, we included a third protocol, which involved application to 80% of the soil volume with or without phenanthrene and introduction of Pseudomonas fluorescens VKI171 SJ132 genetically tagged with luxAB::Tn5. For both solvents, application to the whole sample resulted in severe side effects on both indigenous protozoa and bacteria. Application of dichloromethane to the whole soil volume immediately reduced the number of protozoa to below the detection limit. In one of the soils, the protozoan population was able to recover to the initial level within 2 weeks, in terms of numbers of protozoa; protozoan diversity, however, remained low. In soil spiked with dichloromethane with or without phenanthrene, the introduced P. fluorescens VKI171 SJ132 was able to grow to a density 1,000-fold higher than in control soil, probably due mainly to release of predation from indigenous protozoa. In order to minimize solvent effects on indigenous soil microorganisms when spiking native soil samples with compounds having a low water solubility, we propose a common protocol in which the contaminant dissolved in acetone is added to 25% of the soil sample, followed by evaporation of the solvent and mixing with the remaining 75% of the soil sample.


Airborne measurements of aerosol particle size distributions were made in the Mexican Intertropical Convergence Zone. The volume concentrations of submicron and super micron particles at cloud base were compared with those in near-cloud regions over a range of altitudes. Of 78 near-cloud regions analyzed, 68% and 45% had enhanced volumes of submicron particles and supermicron particles, respectively. In addition, 35% of these regions had supermi-cron particles removed, presumably by precipitation. In 61% of the cases the enhancement in volume occurred over the size range from 0.1 to 50 µm whereas only submicron volumes were enhanced in 35% of the cases. In regions near clouds that were formed in air of maritime origin the frequency of volume enhancement decreased with increasing altitude and was twice as frequent on the dissipating side of clouds compared to the growing side. No such differences were found in the regions near clouds formed in air originating from the land. The frequency and average magnitude of volume enhancement are in qualitative and quantitative agreement with previous observational and theoretical studies that relate enhancements in particle mass to the uptake by cloud droplets of SO 2 accompanied by additional growth by droplet coalescence.


Developing a safe and efficient collision avoidance policy for multiple robots is challenging in the decentralized scenarios where each robot generates its paths without observing other robots' states and intents. While other distributed multi-robot collision avoidance systems exist, they often require extracting agent-level features to plan a local collision-free action, which can be computationally prohibitive and not robust. More importantly, in practice the performance of these methods are much lower than their centralized counterparts. We present a decentralized sensor-level collision avoidance policy for multi-robot systems, which directly maps raw sensor measurements to an agent's steering commands in terms of movement velocity. As a first step toward reducing the performance gap between decentralized and centralized methods, we present a multi-scenario multi-stage training framework to learn an optimal policy. The policy is trained over a large number of robots on rich, complex environments simultaneously using a policy gradient based reinforcement learning algorithm. We validate the learned sensor-level collision avoidance policy in a variety of simulated scenarios with thorough performance evaluations and show that the final learned policy is able to find time efficient, collision-free paths for a large-scale robot system. We also demonstrate that the learned policy can be well generalized to new scenarios that do not appear in the entire training period, including navigating a heterogeneous group of robots and a large-scale scenario with 100 robots. Videos are available at https://sites.google.com/view/drlmaca.


Carbon‐based nanomaterials have been considered promising candidates to mimic certain structure and function of native extracellular matrix materials for tissue engineering. Significant progress has been made in fabricating carbon nanoparticle‐incorporated cell culture substrates, but only a limited number of studies have been reported on the development of 3D tissue constructs using these nanomaterials. Here, a novel approach to engineer 3D multilayer constructs using layer‐by‐layer (LbL) assembly of cells separated with self‐assembled graphene oxide (GO)‐based thin films is presented. The GO‐based structures are shown to serve as cell adhesive sheets that effectively facilitate the formation of multilayer cell constructs with interlayer connectivity. By controlling the amount of GO deposited in forming the thin films, the thickness of the multilayer tissue constructs could be tuned with high cell viability. Specifically, this approach could be useful for creating dense and tightly connected cardiac tissues through the co‐culture of cardiomyocytes and other cell types. In this work, the fabrication of stand‐alone multilayer cardiac tissues with strong spontaneous beating behavior and programmable pumping properties is demonstrated. Therefore, this LbL‐based cell construct fabrication approach, utilizing GO thin films formed directly on cell surfaces, has great potential in engineering 3D tissue structures with improved organization, electrophysiological function, and mechanical integrity.


This paper examines the evolution of government policy in England on widening participation. It traces government policy on widening participation in relation to social class from Robbins (1963) through Dearing (1997) to 'The Future of Higher Education' (2003) and the passing of the Higher Education Act (2004). The paper concludes that there is a lack of participation in policy formulation by certain key groups, particularly those directly affected by widening participation policy. In addition, although the government's widening participation policy has generally progressed, it has done so within an overly bureaucratic system of control that fails to give higher education institutions the autonomy they need. There are also occasions when aspects of policy seem to be taking backward steps. Moreover, while the government adopts a rhetoric of strategic rationality, policy on widening participation often appears to be ad hoc, piecemeal and lacking a cohesive, evidence-based rationale. Finally, there are times when New Labour appears to lack the political will to implement radical policies.


Several existing works study either adversarial or natural distributional robustness of deep neural networks separately. In practice, however, models need to enjoy both types of robustness to ensure reliability. In this work, we bridge this gap and show that in fact, explicit tradeoffs exist between adversarial and natural distributional robustness. We first consider a simple linear regression setting on Gaussian data with disjoint sets of core and spurious features. In this setting, through theoretical and empirical analysis, we show that (i) adversarial training with $\ell_1$ and $\ell_2$ norms increases the model reliance on spurious features; (ii) For $\ell_\infty$ adversarial training, spurious reliance only occurs when the scale of the spurious features is larger than that of the core features; (iii) adversarial training can have an unintended consequence in reducing distributional robustness, specifically when spurious correlations are changed in the new test domain. Next, we present extensive empirical evidence, using a test suite of twenty adversarially trained models evaluated on five benchmark datasets (ObjectNet, RIVAL10, Salient ImageNet-1M, ImageNet-9, Waterbirds), that adversarially trained classifiers rely on backgrounds more than their standardly trained counterparts, validating our theoretical results. We also show that spurious correlations in training data (when preserved in the test domain) can improve adversarial robustness, revealing that previous claims that adversarial vulnerability is rooted in spurious correlations are incomplete.


Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has traditionally been viewed as a disease affecting older men with a history of smoking, while being neglected and under-diagnosed in women. This scenario has changed in recent years as there has been a steady increase in COPD prevalence and mortality rates in women. The increased prevalence of COPD among women is likely attributable to several factors including the increased rates of cigarette smoking observed in women during recent years, exposure to indoor air pollution as well as increased occupational exposures since women take on previously male-dominated occupational roles related to risk exposure. In this review we have analyzed the difference in COPD phenotypes and features related to gender difference.


Research on residential care has been well established in the literature. Nonetheless, research drawing from the actual experiences of adolescents is relatively scarce. A qualitative study was designed highlighting the voices of children, analysing their fostering experience, interpersonal relationships, their participation in daily decisions, and future aspirations. The sample included 33 early adolescents in residential care aged 12–14 in Portugal (n = 17) and Spain (n = 16). Results showed that there was agreement in terms of the importance given to education, their satisfaction with the material conditions of residential centre, and their dissatisfaction concerning matters of individuality, autonomy, participation, and socialization.


In research on selective exposure to information, people have been found to predominantly seek information supporting rather than conflicting with their opinion. In most of these studies, participants were allowed to search for as many pieces of information as they liked. However, in many situations, the amount of information that people can search for is restricted. We report four experiments addressing this issue. Experiment 1 suggests that objective limits regarding the maximum number of pieces of information the participants could search for increases the preference for selecting supporting over conflicting information. In Experiment 2, just giving participants a cue about information scarcity induces the same effect, even in the absence of any objective restrictions. Finally, Experiment 3 and 4 clarify the underlying psychological process by showing that information limits increase selective exposure to information because information search is guided by the expected information quality, which is basically biased towards supporting information, and information limits act to reinforce this tendency. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


A new concept is described for low pH concrete that can allow reinforcement with aluminium metal rods or fibres. In regular concrete the high pH will after short while lead to substantial amounts of hydrogen gas evolution. However, by replacing cement partially by an active pozzolan (e.g. calcined blue clay) in a sufficient amount to consume all calcium hydroxide produced by the cement hydration, the remaining alkalis will have aluminate or silicate as counter ion and metallic aluminium will be stable. Since aluminium is stable towards the environment, the concrete can then be designed with respect to strength class rather than environment classes.


Punjab state has become prosperous only due to its agriculture sector especially after the adoption of first green revolution in mid sixties'. It has done remarkably well in terms of output growth, despite weather and price shocks in the past few years. Its main crops are wheat, rice, sugarcane, vegetables, fruits and cotton.. The better agricultural performance of the state is a result of: farmers' response to better prices, continued technology gains, appropriate and timely policies coming together. In the second green revolution Punjab has given much importance to Horticulture. The state is also making significant progress in the production of fruits, vegetables and flowers. Animal Husbandry, Milk production, Goat Rearing, Pig Farming, Bee Keeping, Fisheries and Poultry are allied sector of agriculture which can promote income of the farmers. There is need to have stable and consistent policies for better results. There is need to have stable and consistent policies where markets play a deserving role and private investment in infrastructure is stepped up.


: The antagonistic effect of morphine on the positive inotropic response of ouabain was studied in 96 isolated rabbit hearts, using a modified Langendorff preparation. Decreased calcium (Ca) in the perfusate resulted in increased depression of peak left ventricular dP/dt by morphine (10(-4) gm/ml), and the number of beats required to reach the depression was proportionally reduced with the reduction of calcium chloride from 2.16 mM to 0.54 mM. Likewise, the positive inotropic effect of ouabain (10(-6) gm/ml) was proportionally reduced by the same reduction of calcium chloride concentration in the perfusate, but the number of beats required to reach the cardiotonic effect was proportionally increased with Ca deficiency. The opposing effects of ouabain and morphine were mutually antagonistic regardless of the order of drug administration. When the hearts had been previously exposed to morphine, ouabain stimulation was no longer beat-dependent. Following prior exposure to ouabain, the beat-dependency of morphine depression on the heart also was partially antagonized. These results suggest that the level of maximal dP/dt during morphine depression or ouabain stimulation is directly related to the extracellular concentration of Ca. The number of beats required to attain the depression or stimulation is probably a reflection of the rate at which equilibrium is established between the mobile fraction of extracellular and intracellular Ca, since transmembrane movement of Ca is believed to occur during each beat. A possible common site of morphine and ouabain effect may be the cellular membrane, where ionic flux occurs.


T HE ROLE of trauma in causing or aggravating multiple sclerosis (MS) has been intensely debated in the medical literature as well as in the courtroom for many years. In an attempt to develop a consensus opinion on this issue, the Therapeutics and Technology Assessment Subcommittee of the American Academy of Neurology critically reviewed relevant published data on the possible effects of trauma on MS. In an article published in 1999, the subcommittee stated,


ABSTRACT As ecovillages present themselves as models of low-carbon living measuring the Ecological Footprint (EF) of an ecovillage serves both to validate that claim and to examine the component features of how the EF is achieved. This article examines the first measurement of the EF of Ireland's only ecovillage, situated in the village of Cloughjordan in county Tipperary. The objectives here were to measure the EF of the ecovillage at the household scale and then to use the EF to provide meaningful feedback and reflective learning on human carbon intensity to the ecovillage residents. Various methods were applied in this action research to achieve high levels of engagement and potent communication of what could be learnt from the EF. This article places a particular focus on the necessary adaptation of an original EF method, on how it was implemented in the ecovillage, on the results obtained and on how these were communicated to the residents. The bottom-up component EF method samples consumption data at source and in so doing appoints consumption reflection and responsibility in ways the more remote compound method can not. The strategic combination of this specific quality with co-creation method aims to meaningfully engage and motivate a settlement to reduce its carbon intensity. According to the methodology, the ecovillage residents overshoot the fair earth share by 10% needing 1.1 planets to sustain their lifestyles. It is planned that subsequent to this intervention future measurements will show whether the overshoot has reduced.


Cell mediated and humoral immune protection against virus infections are discussed in relation to development and use of recombinant vaccines in the murine lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus infection. In the same model, immunopathological aspects of T cell immunity to viruses are examined in the murine lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus infection. This virus causes an acquired immunosuppression that is not caused by the virus itself but by cytotoxic antiviral T CD8+ effector T cells which destroy virus infected macrophages and antigen presenting cells. This paradoxical immunopathological mechanism may apply partially to HIV induced immunosuppression in humans.


A small number of sites in Pennsylvanian-age shale bedrock in Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania contain joints lined with rock-like material, similar in appearance to infilling material. Three unstable slopes, one each at Belle Valley, Ohio, East Steubenville, West Virginia, and Hopewell, Pennsylvania, were selected to investigate engineering properties of the lining material and the adjacent shale bedrock, as well as the role of lining material in contributing to slope instability. A detailed line survey was conducted at each site to determine the orientation and continuity of all joints intercepted by the line, and to examine the nature of the material lining the joints. The principal joint sets from each site were analyzed using stereographic projection techniques to determine potential modes of failure. The engineering properties determined for the lining material and the adjacent bedrock included Atterberg limits, grain-size distribution, slake durability, unconfined compressive strength, and shear strength parameters. The lining material was also examined in thin sections and by X-ray diffraction. This study shows that the rock-like material lining the joints consists of original shale bedrock altered by precipitation of hematite (Fe 2 O 3 ), pyrolusite (MnO 2 ), and goethite (FeOOH) from groundwater flowing through the joints. The lining material is stronger and more durable than the adjacent shale bedrock. The friction angle between the lining material and shale bedrock is higher at the Belle Valley site and lower at the East Steubenville and Hopewell sites. Wedge failures are the dominant mode of failure at all three sites.


Abstract Binder of Sperm Proteins (BSPs) are the most abundant seminal plasma protein family in the ram and bull. They have been extensively studied in the bull but less is known about their function in ovine seminal plasma and current knowledge suggests that BSPs may have different effects in these two species. In the bull, they facilitate capacitation and destabilize the sperm membrane during in vitro handling, whereas in the ram, they appear to stabilize the sperm membrane and prevent cryopreservation-induced capacitation-like changes. Further investigation into the effects of BSPs on ram spermatozoa under capacitating conditions is required to further clarify their physiological roles in the ram. We investigated the effects of Binder of Sperm Proteins 1 and 5 on epididymal ram spermatozoa in conditions of low, moderate, and high cAMP. BSPs had minimal effects on sperm function in low-cAMP conditions, but caused significant changes under cAMP upregulation. BSP1 stabilized the membrane and qualitatively reduced protein tyrosine phosphorylation, but significantly increased cholesterol efflux and induced spontaneous acrosome reactions. BSP5 slightly increased spontaneous acrosome reactions and caused sperm necrosis. However, BSP5 had minimal effects on membrane lipid order and cholesterol efflux and did not inhibit protein tyrosine phosphorylation. These findings demonstrate that under maximal cAMP upregulation, BSP1 affected ram spermatozoa in a manner comparable to bull spermatozoa, while BSP5 did not. Summary Sentence Binder of Sperm Proteins originating from seminal plasma play both pro- and decapacitating roles in ram spermatozoa.


Longitudinal measures of infant visual processing of faces and objects were collected from a sample of healthy infants (N=40) every month from 6 to 9 months of age. Infants performed two habituation tasks each month, one with novel female faces as stimuli, and another with novel complex objects. Different individual faces and objects served as habituation (i.e., visual learning) and dishabituation (i.e., novelty response) stimuli. Measures included overall looking time to the habituation stimuli, slope of habituation, and recovery to the dishabituation stimuli. Infants were more interested in faces than objects, but this was contextualized by task order. The order effect suggests a "habituation of habituation" effect. Infants showed an age-related decrease in interest in objects, but no decrease in interest in faces. This contradicts claims that infants shift around 6-7 months from interest in faces to interest in objects. The results showed modest between-month stability of interest in faces, but little stability in any other behavioral measures. This implies that habituation is driven more by unexplained subject x session x stimulus variance than by "infant IQ."


This paper analyzes the relationship between Global Wine Industry Share Price Indexes and composite stock market indexes using a Threshold Vector Error Correction Model (TVECM), aiming to investigate if investments in the wine sector play a role in determining financial risk and return to investors who include it in their portfolio. Whilst in most of the literature analyses the return of investments of fine wine, this paper places the focus to "normal" (i.e. non‐fine) wine, using data from the Mediobanca database covering companies in the wine industry listed on regulated stock market in France, US, Australia, Chile and China . The dataset cover the time period going from January 1, 2001, to the end of February 2009. The estimates of the TVECM lead to the following results: i) in more mature markets, like France and the US, the presence of a threshold in the relationship between wine index and composite index permit informed investors to make gainful investments; ii) in less mature markets, like Chile and China, there is evidence suggest that wine is not used as a financial parachute.


This article examines the formation of the first internet exchange point (IXP) in Mexico amid the implementation of telecommunication reforms and asymmetric regulations in a market with low level of competition. An IXP is defined as a shared interconnection facility and a key internet governance arena where players with myriad goals and functions mesh in interlaced technical and political dynamics. The study shows how data centres, passive infrastructure and autonomous system numbers play a critical role that stand out in the context of lack of infrastructure in Mexico. The paper argues that the challenges for an IXP to become stable in such a context in the global South is a result of IXP imagined affordances and the way that infrastructure, the telecommunications incumbent, its competitors, the state regulator, and the IXP operator interact, keeping the initiative in a fragile equilibrium. Issue 4


Compression of the ulnar nerve in the cubital tunnel is the second most common nerve entrapment syndrome in the upper extremity after carpal tunnel syndrome. Although various etiologies have been described, heterotrophic ossification is rarely seen. Heterotrophic ossification should be kept in mind as a cause of ulnar nerve entrapment after elbow trauma. Early diagnosis and surgical intervention are important in such cases before completion of the maturation phase. We report a case of heterotrophic ossification due to elbow trauma that caused cubital tunnel syndrome.