Last year, at their request, I ran a session with a group of medical students who wanted to discuss potential career choices including craft specialties and clinical academia. I was dismayed when a female student recounted how she had been advised by a senior male surgeon not to choose a career in surgery—"surely you will want to have a family?" he asked. I have since heard almost identical stories from colleagues in several other medical schools, even including a similar conversation reported by a first year preclinical student. In PMJ, Hui-Ling Kerr and colleagues have added some new data to the wellaccepted body of evidence that women are less likely to choose a career in surgery than are their male equivalents. The Royal College of Surgeons' (RCS) most recent statistics indicate that in 2014, while 30% of surgical trainees were women, this figure translated into only 11% of consultants. That said, the figure has risen from just 3% in 2001. There is variability among subspecialties—for example fewer than 7% of neurosurgeons are women, compared with just over 26% in paediatric surgery. The results from Kerr et al's questionnaire, while involving only a small subject set, add further colour to a much larger canvas: that of problems with recruitment and retention of women across all science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) subjects. Indeed, consideration of gender in the workplace is not confined either to academia or to the health professions. Dame Helena Morrissey's 30% club aims to see a minimum of 30% women on Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 company boards by 2020 (as I write this, the number is 26%, up from 12.5% in 2010). There cannot be a medical school or division across the country still unaware of the Athena SWAN Charter, to which higher education institutions have been able to sign up for over 10 years, and whose Bronze-level, Silver-level and Gold-level awards are widely sought as a measure of institutional support for women's careers. Indeed, SWAN awards are already a requirement for some forms of National Institute for Health Research funding; the Research Councils have talked about making similar rules. University arts and social sciences departments now have a similar scheme, and membership organisations are about to become eligible. Analysis of the demographics within an organisation, and its internal culture, are essential first steps to trying to remedy any unwarranted imbalances. For example, the tipping point at which women 'disappear' from career ladders may be different in different disciplines. The RCS suggests that longer career trajectories for women, who for family reasons may train less than full-time, can explain their gender imbalance. 'Time will cure the problem', say some. But when I started medical school in 1980, 52% of my class was female, but some 35 years later, only 13% of my professorial cohort is. We speak of a 'leaky pipeline', but further discussion often focuses on the water rather than the pipe. From the simple perceptive of losing a significant proportion of talent in our future workforce, we cannot afford to maintain stereotypic attitudes and rigid regimens where they currently exist. It is notable that the limitation of weekly working hours in the clinical world has done much less to change gender demographics in clinical specialties than many would have hoped. So what exactly are the factors that prevent women from achieving their full potential, whether in surgery or elsewhere, and in some cases not even be willing to engage with the 'establishment' that they encounter? It is undeniable that biology plays a part. Although the introduction of shared parental leave in the UK may well help, women's careers are likely to be interrupted for longer—though chronic sleeplessness in homes with small children will of course not just affect women! The often unconscious (also termed 'implicit') biases that label women as somehow less able, committed or effective if they have a career break, or that affect other diversities, may be lessened following specific implicit bias training, but there is no good evidence yet to suggest that the effects of such training are long-lived. It would also be a mistake to assume that having children is the only barrier. Good role models may be few in number or insufficiently visible. A lack of inspiring role models can have a big effect, and this makes the first steps towards changing trainee and student minds more difficult to achieve. In my organisation, we work hard to try and put together appropriately balanced seminar speaker lists, but find that women invitees may be less free to travel and therefore less likely to accept invitations. At the very least, we can ensure that sessions are chaired by as diverse a team as possible. One thing that is universal, however, is that there is no single factor that if fixed, would make gender imbalance disappear. A long-hours working culture may not be easy to change, but increasing flexibility and or job-sharing may help. So also may schemes to provide more support for anyone who has caring responsibilities (which increasingly may be for older relatives) and to welcome returners from career breaks. We and others also put much effort into support (including peersupport networks) and mentoring for those at the mid-career level—in clinical academia, the 'leakiest' stage. In addition outreach activities, particularly to schools, can be important to lessen stereotyping at a much earlier stage. But above all, those I talk to who are working on Athena SWAN-related initiatives within STEMM and in related organisations such as the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Medical, Dental and Veterinary Schools' Councils, all agree that senior male engagement with trying to effect cultural change has been, and continues to be, very important. The attrition of women (or any other form of underrepresentation) is not a women's problem to be solved by women. It needs all of us to work together. The worst outcome for an organisation thinking about trying to address diversity issues, which of course extend far beyond gender, is the assumption that it's all someone else's responsibility and that tackling these problems is just a tick-box exercise. Recognition of missed opportunity and a real desire to change the culture in an organisation are critical. After all, many of us spend more of our waking hours in the workplace than we do in our own homes. Correspondence to Professor Fiona E Karet Frankl, Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, Cambridge Biomedical Campus Box 139, Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 0XY, UK; email@example.com


There is an increasing amount of educational research that aims at intervening in classroom teaching and learning practices, partly as a response to "what works" in education. However, few researchers ask the fundamental question of who actually "owns" the interventions, and not the least which ethical dimensions arise from intervening in classrooms. The present research investigates these two questions and relates them to the role of the researcher in formative intervention research, and by relating ethical dimensions to ethics of principles, consequences, relations and virtues. It suggests that interventionist researchers need to develop their reflexive sensitivity, both epistemologically and methodologically when they conduct formative interventions in classrooms, and that the idea of intervening requires different responses depending on the type of ethics that is applied. Interventionist researchers need to be more humble, more open to new ideas and changes in their original plans, and more able to share their contributions with the field of education compared to descriptive research designs. Also, they need to question the very idea of intervening in classrooms, legitimize it and reflect on it with ethical dimensions in mind.


Denmark and Germany both make substantial investments in low carbon innovation, not least in the wind power sector. These investments in wind energy are driven by the twin objectives of reducing carbon emissions and building up international competitive advantage. Support for wind power dates back to the 1970s, but it has gained particular traction in recent years thus opening up new innovation paths. This paper explores the key features, similarities and differences in innovation paths in Denmark and Germany and sheds light on their main determinants. The paper shows that there are many commonalities between Denmark and Germany when it comes to innovation pathways, both in technological and organisational innovation. In turbine technology, the similarities are the constant increase in turbine size and quality. The key difference to be found is the relative importance of different turbine designs. The 'Danish Design' remains the global standard. The direct drive design, while uncommon in Denmark, dominates the German installation base. Direct drive technology has thus emerged as a distinctly German design and sub-trajectory within the overall technological innovation path. When it comes to organising wind turbine deployment, both countries have moved along broadly similar paths. There are now fewer turbines deployed than at any time in the past 10 to 20 years, but on average these are concentrated in larger projects and the production capacity and total electricity output has increased significantly in both countries. The key difference is in the role of the offshore segment in deployment: Denmark has been a pioneer in the offshore segment, which has hitherto played a much smaller role in Germany. While this paper shows that there are many common features between the two countries, it also identifies a diversity of pathways, or rather, a co-existence of different subtrajectories in both core technology and in the organisation of deployment. It is as yet unclear whether the future will bring more convergence or divergence. To address this, the paper explores specific determinants of innovation paths: government policies, demand conditions, geography, value chains, and the strategies undertaken by firms. It demonstrates that the innovation paths common to both countries have roots in a confluence of determining factors which are mainly due to social and political priorities, preferences and decisions at national level. However, the sub-trajectories, which create variation between Denmark and Germany, differ in this regard. They tend to have roots in 'given' geographical conditions and in company-level technology choices. In other words, many of the similarities in innovation paths between Denmark and Germany have common national causes, while company-specific strategies also influence the innovation paths in significant ways. This raises important questions about the national specificity of innovation paths in wind power development. Finally, the paper briefly addresses the increasing global interconnectedness of wind technology markets and the role of emerging new players, such as China and India.


When species occupy habitats that vary in quality, choice of habitat can be critical in determining individual fitness. In most migratory species, juveniles migrate independently of their parents and must therefore choose both breeding and winter habitats. Using a unique dataset of marked black-tailed godwits (Limosa limosa islandica) tracked throughout their migratory range, combined with analyses of stable carbon isotope ratios, we show that those individuals that occupy higher quality breeding sites also use higher quality winter sites. This seasonal matching can severely inflate inequalities in individual fitness. This population has expanded over the last century into poorer quality breeding and winter habitats and, across the whole population; individual birds tend to occupy either novel or traditional sites in both seasons. Winter and breeding season habitat selection are thus strongly linked throughout this population; these links have profound implications for a wide range of population and evolutionary processes. As adult godwits are highly philopatric, the initial choice of winter habitat by juveniles will be critical in determining future survival, timing of migration and breeding success.


Despite aiming to provide minority ethnic groups with material equality and protection from discrimination, the British ethno ‐ cultural system of recognition has perpetuated social differentiation which is difficult to transcend. Drawing from interviews with informants and ten in ‐ depth case studies with Latin American and Latino ‐ British families in the Yorkshire and Greater Manchester regions of the north of England, the paper explores the fraught relationship between these migrants and their multicultural framework of incorporation. Significant here are the contested understandings of the Latin American collective identity combined with the diversity of migration trajectories, socio ‐ economic backgrounds, and life course needs of migrants and their children which contribute to soft panethnic identifications among the participant population. It is argued that by encouraging migrants and their descendants to seek recognition through absolute ethnic differences, multicultural recognition systems can reproduce colonial categories and fail to respond to the diverse social and life course needs of migrants.


This thesis focuses on the role of parents for adolescents' development at career transitions within a framework of developmental regulation. In this framework, I assumed that adolescents' career-related activities are complemented by career-specific parental activities. Two main objectives guided my work: First, this thesis aimed at investigating the associations between career-related developmental regulation of adolescents and parents. Second, this thesis asked for the potential benefits of developmental regulation of both adolescents and parents. I integrated several lines of theory concerning adolescents' developmental regulation (referred to as self-regulation) as well as parents' regulation (referred to as other-regulation, Sameroff, 2010) to derive the research questions. Individuals face various career-related transitions during adolescence that channel their development in many ways (Nurmi, 2004; Salmela-Aro, 2009). These transitions take place within the educational system, e.g., a transition from one school form to another, or concern the entrance into the labor market, e.g., a transition from school to vocational training. Individual initiative is required to successfully master career transitions in adolescence (Nurmi, 2004; Heckhausen, Wrosch, & Schulz, 2010; Savickas, 2005). Previous theory and research on adolescents' developmental regulation have concentrated on what can be called phase-adequate engagement. Phase-adequate engagement encompasses behaviors which are undertaken by an adolescent to accomplish developmental goals related to an upcoming transition (e.g., Kracke & Heckhausen, 2008). Such goals can have different content, but have in common their focus on the transition. Appropriate developmental goals are thus in accordance with age-graded norms and standards (Nurmi, 2001; 2004). Previous research also demonstrated that phase-adequate engagement is benecial for adolescents. For instance, they are more likely to get an apprenticeship when they actively engage in writing applications (Nagy, Koller, & Heckhausen, 2005). Moreover, youths who are actively engaged are more satisfied with the choices they make (Schindler & Tomasik, 2010), and show higher positive affect after high school graduation (Haase, Heckhausen, & Koller, 2008) than those who are not engaged. Despite the importance of individual initiative for the successful mastery of career transitions, developmental psychologists have repeatedly stressed the fact that this initiative is embedded in a social context, i.e., the relationships with other people, and is bound to societal and institutional constraints (e.g., Silbereisen, Eyferth, & Rudinger, 1986; Vondracek, Lerner, & Schulenberg, 1986). In adolescence, parents are highly influential in youths' decisions about their future career (e.g., Youniss & Smollar, 1985). However, parents' role for adolescents' phase-adequate engagement has so far only been explored in a way that yields very broad conclusions. For example, there is increasing evidence which shows that having good relations to parents (in terms of, for example, a warm relationship and few conflicts) is correlated with several indicators of adolescents' career development (Whiston & Keller, 2004). However, theoretical conceptualizations of and empirical research on the actual processes through which parents influence adolescents are rather rare. The present thesis sets out to fill this gap. Since phase-adequate engagement comprises various behaviors, I focused on one aspect of it which has received a lot of attention in the literature: career exploration. Exploration encompasses the process of seeking and processing information, and of comparing alternatives, which informs an individual's choices about future career (e.g., Patton & Porfeli, 2007). With regard to parents' other-regulation in the domain of career, no systematic work has been carried out so far. I thus worked out a conceptualization and operationalization of parents' career-specific behaviors. I sought to answer five research questions with multiple studies and with data gathered in different ways. On the one hand, I collected data on two time levels: the macro-level (from year to year) and the micro-level of development (from week to week, cf. Lichtwarck-Aschoff, Kunnen, & van Geert, 2008). On the other hand, I gathered data from adolescents as well as from their mothers and fathers. I conducted five empirical studies, based on four different data sets to tackle the five research questions outlined below. Three data sets pertained the macro-level of development with adolescents facing high school graduation. Furthermore, I conducted a diary study with weekly assessments during the application process to university, which is a new approach in the domain of adolescent career development. The main results can be summarized as follows according to the five research questions. First, how do actual processes of phase-adequate engagement look like at the transition to college? This question was tackled on a week to week level. The results point to a lot of variability both between youths and within individuals. On the one hand, the results revealed inter-individual differences in how adolescents made a choice concerning their college major which corresponded with the amount of exploration they engaged in. On the other hand, the results showed that exploration is a highly fluctuating behavior which changed from week to week. Second, given the objective to study parental other-regulation, how is parental career-related involvement best to be conceptualized? I developed and validated a questionnaire instrument to capture parental other-regulation. This instrument comprised three facets of parents' career-specific involvement: support, interference, and lack of engagement. Third, how are adolescents' phase-adequate engagement and parents' involvement associated? Taken together, the results of the different studies conducted revealed that parents' support related positively to adolescents' exploration. Moreover, the role of interference was dependent on the type of exploration studied, and on the level of analysis (macro- vs. micro-level). Interference, and to some extent lack of engagement, were positively related to decision-problems in youths. Fourth, do the intensities of and the associations between adolescents' and parents' developmental regulation depend on temporal and process characteristics related to a transition? Empirical support was found for the assumption that adolescents' exploration would be affected by process features of a transition. Parents' involvement was adapted to the situation of the adolescent and was also affected by process characteristics. Fifth, what is the payoff of adolescents' phase-adequate engagement for process satisfaction while making the transition from school to college and for later adjustment to college? Are there such benefits of parents' career-related involvement as well? The results of the diary study showed that both youths' exploration and parents' support contributed to higher process satisfaction during the transition to college. Moreover, the results revealed that forming a strong commitment to one college major option, combined with higher levels of exploration, was associated with better adjustment later in college. In sum, the development of appropriate measures made it possible to test theoretical assumptions concerning adolescents' and parents' developmental regulation at the macro- and the micro-level of development. The empirical results further provide a basis for future research that focuses on possible mechanisms of self- and other-regulation. This thesis concludes with suggestions for future studies rooted in a dynamic view of development (van Geert & Steenbeck, 2005).


Vulnerability assessments can play a vital role in designing appropriate adaptation and mitigation policies targeted towards climate change and its impacts on ecosystems, and those who depend upon these resources for their livelihoods. This paper assesses climate change in Karnataka, the agriculture and livelihoods contexts of vulnerability. Karnataka state has the second largest area under rainfed agriculture in India and several studies have shown that climate change is happening in the state. Agriculture sector is vulnerable to climate variability and change across its three regions: coastal, hilly and plains. Long-period monthly rainfall data (1901-2016) at district, region and state level was collected from India Meteorological Department and other sources and changes in seasonal and annual rainfall are analyzed. A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was run on a dataset of seven variables for agricultural vulnerability and ten variables for livelihood vulnerability across thirty districts. The PCA generated three components for each index that broadly represented the underlying themes of agriculture and livelihood vulnerability present in the larger data set. Two vulnerability indices i.e., agricultural vulnerability index and livelihood vulnerability index were developed for all districts. Long-period rainfall analysis showed a small decreasing trend in annual rainfall at the state level. South-eastern region is becoming slightly wetter, while parts of hilly region becoming drier. In one district, rainfall reduced by 460 mm and in the neighbour it raised by 250 mm. Decadal meteorological drought analysis indicated an increasing trend in moderate droughts in north interior Karnataka. Indicators like cropping intensity, gross area irrigated and commercial crop area are the major drivers in determining the agricultural vulnerability. Livelihood index indicators like per capita income, population density, percentage of literacy rate and livestock units are major drivers for livelihood vulnerability. Agricultural vulnerability index analysis indicates four districts and livelihood vulnerability index analysis shows five districts as most vulnerable.


The Banksia integrifolia (Proteaceae : Grevilleoideae) species complex currently comprises three varieties: var. aquilonia from northern Queensland; var. integrifolia from coastal Victoria and New South Wales; and var. compar, which is polymorphic and comprises two forms, a coastal form from southern Queensland and a montane form from north-eastern New South Wales and south-eastern Queensland. Ordination analysis of morphological characters of adults and seedlings indicates that the montane populations of var. compar comprise a separate taxon, which is phenetically closer to var. integrifolia than it is to typical var. compar. Banksia integrifolia var. aquilonia is phenetically quite distinct from the remaining taxa. The new names and combinations Banksia integrifolia subsp. monticola K.R. Thiele, B. integrifolia subsp. aquilonia (A.S. George) K.R. Thiele and B. integrifolia subsp. compar (R.Br.) K.R. Thiele are published.


The problem of evaluating the time-to-failure percentiles in progressively-censored tests on solid insulating materials is addressed. Statistical methods to estimate the parameters of the Weibull distribution (and their confidence limits) are examined on the basis of the results of aging with combined thermal-electrical stresses carried out on XLPE insulated cable models. These tests are performed at the same stresses on samples more than 1 m long and subjected to progressive censoring of aging times, or on short specimens about 20 cm long and subjected to complete, or singly-censored, life tests. This procedure allows the effectiveness of progressively-censored tests in estimating life percentiles to be verified, and the accuracy of the methods to be compared. >


Shape memory polymer foams have significant potential in biomedical and aerospace applications, but their thermo-mechanical behavior under relevant deformation conditions is not well understood. In this paper we examine the thermo-mechanical behavior of epoxy shape memory polymer foams with an average relative density of nearly 20%. These foams are deformed under conditions of varying stress, strain, and temperature. The glass transition temperature of the foam was measured to be approximately 90 °C and compression and tensile tests were performed at temperatures ranging from 25 to 125 °C. Various shape recovery tests were used to measure recovery properties under different thermo-mechanical conditions. Tensile strain to failure was measured as a function of temperature to probe the maximum recovery limits of the foam in both temperature and strain space. Compression tests were performed to examine compressibility of the material as a function of temperature; these foams can be compacted as much as 80% and still experience full strain recovery over multiple cycles. Furthermore, both tensile strain to failure tests and cyclic compression recovery tests revealed that deforming at a temperature of 80 °C maximizes macroscopic strain recovery. Deformation temperatures above or below this optimal value lead to lower failure strains in tension and the accumulation of non-recoverable strains in cyclic compression. Micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scans of the foam at various compressed states were used to understand foam deformation mechanisms. The micro-CT studies revealed the bending, buckling, and collapse of cells with increasing compression, consistent with results from published numerical simulations.


Otospondylomegaepiphyseal dysplasia (OSMED) (MIM 215150) is an autosomal recessive syndrome. It is a skeletal dysplasia characterized by multiple skeletal anomalies, flat nasal bridge, mid-face hypoplasia, anteverted nostrils and sensorineural hearing loss. In this case report, we evaluated a 3-year-old Turkish girl born to consanguineous parents. She had a medical history of bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, frontal bossing and strabismus. The radiographic findings supported OSMED syndrome with her phenotype. Our aim was to facilitate the early diagnosis of this rarely seen syndrome and to contribute to the natural history of patients with OSMED syndrome. J Med Cases. 2016;7(5):161-163 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14740/jmc2431w


A study was performed to validate the effectiveness of a bone demineralization process with respect to its inactivation of viruses. The viruses selected for study included human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), duck hepatitis B virus (a model for human hepatitis B), bovine viral diarrheal virus (a model for human hepatitis C), human cytomegalovirus, and human poliovirus (a model for small nonenveloped viruses, e.g., hepatitis A). This study was performed in compliance with Good Laboratory Practice regulations using validation methodology similar to that used to ensure the safety of blood derivatives and other products. Use of the bone demineralization process described in this report resulted in a reduction in infectivity of greater than one million (10(6)) for all viruses and as much as one trillion (10(12)) for the poliovirus.


Recently, palmprint identification has been developed for security purpose. In this paper, we propose a novel palmprint recognition scheme which has three features: 1) representation of palmprint images by Local Binary Pattern (LBP); 2) dimensionality reduction by tensor subspace learning; and 3) recognition by multiple kernel classification method based on tensor analysis. LBP can effectively capture substantial palm features while keeping robustness to illumination. Then we reduce the dimensionality of each palmprint samples based on tensor subspace learning which can preserve the spatial structure of LBP. Tensor multiple kernel SVM classifier is finally employed for palmprint recognition. Experimental results on PolyU palmprint database show the effectiveness of the proposed method.


Haidt and Joseph's Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) is one of the most influential theory of morality using the Moral Foundation Questionnaire (MFQ) to map differences in human morality across the cultures and within societies. The theory assumes five module-like moral domains developed in human evolutionary history upon which are culturally different moralities built: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. These domains are embedded in two broad areas of Individualizing and Binding morality. In the former it is an individual at a center of harming and unfair treatment and in the latter, it is the community binding people into mutual relationships under domains of loyalty, authority, and purity in the spotlight. MFQ was mostly used to shed a light on a link between morality and political ideology, but its use is much more diverse including religion. However, in the studies using MFQ, there is usually a poor fit between the five moral domains model and the data indicated by low CFI and TLI indices favoring null model over the five-factor model with five distinct moral domains. The crucial question is why are these indices so low and how to explain this fact? We hypothesized that five-factor model does not correspond the way people think about the moral issues as captured by MFQ. Thus, we tested enhanced and more suitable alternative model based on recent development in the factorial statistics, namely two-tier model and employed more efficient measures of internal reliability (Omega Index, Hierarchical Omega Index and Explained Common Variance). A two-tier model achieved better results than a previously employed five-factor model. Results indicate an overestimation of the five moral domains model in the research as to discern Individualizing and Binding morality seems to be more appropriate. Broader implications of results for MFQ, MFT, and research of morality will be discussed.


When Michael Heller proposed that excessively fragmented property rights in land can frustrate its commercial development, patent scholars began debating whether Heller's anticommons theory applies to property rights in inventions. Do "patent thickets" exist? The rise and fall of the first American patent thicket -- the Sewing Machine War of the 1850s -- confirms that patent thickets do exist and that they can frustrate commercial development of new products. But this historical patent thicket also challenges the widely held assumption that this is a modern problem arising from allegedly new issues in the patent system, such as incremental high-tech innovation and the impact of "patent trolls." The Sewing Machine War exhibited all of these phenomena, proving that these are hoary issues in patent law. The denouement of this patent thicket in the Sewing Machine Combination of 1856, the first privately formed patent pool, further challenges the conventional wisdom that patent thickets are best solved through public-ordering regimes that limit property rights in patents. The invention and incredible commercial success of the sewing machine is a striking account of early American technological, commercial, and legal ingenuity, which heralds important empirical lessons for how patent thicket theory is understood and applied today.


Purpose To reduce patient and procedure identification errors by human interactions in radiotherapy delivery and surgery, a Biometric Automated Patient and Procedure Identification System (BAPPIS) was developed. BAPPIS is a patient identification and treatment procedure verification system using fingerprints. Methods The system was developed using C++, the Microsoft Foundation Class Library, the Oracle database system, and a fingerprint scanner. To register a patient, the BAPPIS system requires three steps: capturing a photograph using a web camera for photo identification, taking at least two fingerprints, and recording other specific patient information including name, date of birth, allergies, etc. To identify a patient, the BAPPIS reads a fingerprint, identifies the patient, verifies with a second fingerprint to confirm when multiple patients have same fingerprint features, and connects to the patient's record in electronic medical record (EMR) systems. To validate the system, 143 and 21 patients ranging from 36 to 98 years of ages were recruited from radiotherapy and breast surgery, respectively. The registration process for surgery patients includes an additional module, which has a 3D patient model. A surgeon could mark 'O' on the model and save a snap shot of patient in the preparation room. In the surgery room, a webcam displayed the patient's real-time image next to the 3D model. This may prevent a possible surgical mistake. Results 1,271 (96.9%) of 1,311 fingerprints were verified by BAPPIS using patients' 2nd fingerprints from 143 patients as the system designed. A false positive recognition was not reported. The 96.9% completion ratio is because the operator did not verify with another fingerprint after identifying the first fingerprint. The reason may be due to lack of training at the beginning of the study. Conclusion We successfully demonstrated the use of BAPPIS to correctly identify and recall patient's record in EMR. BAPPIS may significantly reduce errors by limiting the number of non-automated steps.


This study identified subgroups of female sexual assault survivors based on characteristics of their victimization experiences, validated the subgroup structure in a second cohort of women recruited identically to the first, and examined subgroups' differential associations with sexual risk/safety behavior, heavy episodic drinking (HED), psychological distress symptomatology, incarceration, transactional sex, and experiences with controlling and violent partners. The community sample consisted of 667 female survivors of adolescent or adult sexual assault who were 21 to 30 years old (M = 24.78, SD = 2.66). Eligibility criteria included having unprotected sex within the past year, other HIV/STI risk factors, and some experience with HED, but without alcohol problems or dependence. Latent class analyses (LCA) were used to identify subgroups of women with similar victimization experiences. Three groups were identified and validated across 2 cohorts of women using multiple-group LCA: contact or attempted assault (17% of the sample), incapacitated assault (52%), and forceful severe assault (31%). Groups did not differ in their sexual risk/safety behavior. Women in the forceful severe category had higher levels of anxiety, depression, and trauma symptoms; higher proportions of incarceration and transactional sex; and more experiences with controlling and violent partners than did women in the other 2 groups. Women in the forceful severe category also reported a higher frequency of HED than women in the incapacitated category. Different types of assault experiences appear to be differentially associated with negative outcomes. Understanding heterogeneity and subgroups among sexual assault survivors has implications for improving clinical care and contributing to recovery.


Literature on the governance of stem cell research often assumes that improved regulation and biopolitical governance will keep stem cell research practices within the bounds of acceptable scientific development. But examples from India, Mainland China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Israel illustrate how formal regulation of stem cell research plays out differently in practice, showing that the standardization of stem cell research in fact creates new spaces in which "unacknowledged" but tolerated stem cell research practices proceed and flourish. The special issue illustrates how in Asian countries, depending on the quality of the research infrastructure, donated embryos and oocytes acquire different values for researchers, and competition in the life sciences requires different attitudes and efforts from scientists. Owing to the varying health needs and investment in the life sciences, disagreement exists about the national values associated with stem cell research, and its importance as a healthcare resource for local populations.


ABSTRACT Publishing the results of thoughtfully designed research projects allows contemporary investigators to revisit the findings years later. The willingness of academics to make specific predictions about the impact of introducing user-choice principles into a state vocational education and training market has enabled comparisons to be drawn using extensive statistical collections. These data sets do not cover each of the forecasts; for example, employer reactions to increased marketisation can only be inferred. However, extensive information has been recorded on the training provider and student responses. The jurisdiction under study has a long history of centralised government decision-making and bureaucratic regulatory control; which allows for a substantial level of confidence in the causal relationship between public policy implementation and outcomes observed in the vocational education and training market. By making data-driven comparisons between what was hypothesised and the results over a long period of time, it is re-affirmed that good research is relevant and can assist governments in achieving their intended public policy priorities.


Sedimentary rocks of the Upper Carboniferous Malte Brunfjellet Formation are investigated in five sections, located on a N–S-oriented transect along the Lomfjorden Fault Zone in eastern Spitsbergen. Results of facies and microfacies analysis led to a redefinition of the Malte Brunfjellet Formation, and formerly unspecified Carboniferous sedimentary rocks in the investigated area are now assigned to this formation. In the northern part of the Lomfjorden Trough, the Malte Brunfjellet Formation consists of a 41 m-thick, cyclic succession with variegated shales at the base and tidal flat sandstones or dolomites at the top. They are conformably deposited on gray, siliciclastic deposits of the Billefjorden Group, and in turn conformably overlain by the limestone succession of the Wordiekammen Formation. The cyclicity and overall sedimentary development of the mixed clastic/ carbonate succession indicate coastal plain to sabkha environments controlled by high-frequency sea-level fluctuations. In the southern Lomfjorden Trough, the Malte Brunfjellet strata, resting unconformably on Neoproterozoic basement rocks, comprise a basal, 13 m-thick, siliciclastic interbedding of distinct red shales, siltstones and sandstones, reflecting alluvial to fluvial environments under warm, semi-arid climatic conditions. The redbed succession is separated by a 32 m-thick scree-covered interval from a 15 m-thick, cyclic intercalation of grayish sandstones, caliche horizons, and shallow-marine, near-shore limestones, forming the upper part of the formation. The deposits reflect a development into a coastal plain controlled by sea-level fluctuations and an overall rising sea level. This lateral facies variation with shallow-marine environments in the north and alluvial to near-shore environments in the south reflect a successive transgression of the Lomfjorden Trough from northerly directions. Biostratigraphy of smaller foraminfers and cyclostratigraphy indicate a Bashkirian age for the marine sediments deposited in the upper part of the Malte Brunfjellet Formation. The marine sediments in the Lomfjorden Trough are contemporaneous with shallow-marine deposits in the Billefjorden and the St. Jonsfjorden troughs in central and western Spitsbergen. They mark the first, nearly Spitsbergen-wide, transgression, which resulted in the Svalbardwide deposition of the shallow-marine carbonates of the Wordiekammen Formation.


Gorlin's Goltz syndrome (GGS) is a rare autosomal dominant inherited condition. It in-volves many organs, but principally affects the skin, skeleton, endocrine and nervous sys-tems. It consists of the classic triad of basal cell carcinomas, multiple jaw cysts and skeletal deformities along with other defects. The authors report an unusual case of a fifteen year old male patient who reported with the complaint of swelling and mild pain in the lower right side of the jaw. Investigations revealed multiple cystic lesions in both upper and lower jaws which were found to be Odotogenic Keratocysts (OKC), presence of bifid rib and mul-tiple nevi. The clinico-pathological diagnosis was made as Gorlin- Goltz syndrome (GGS) since the present case exhibited three major criterias.


The influence of sympathectomy of the ear artery in rabbits on the activity of a number of redox coenzymes inthe vascular wall (lactic, glucose-6-phosphoric, isocitrate, and succinic dehydrogenases: LDH, G-6-PDHm isoCDH, and SDH, respectively) was studied by the quantitative histochemical method. Sympathectomy produced a significant diminution of all the dehydrogenase activities. The effect of adrenalin and noradrenaline on the dehydrogenase activities differed. Adrenalin increased thI LDH activity in the intact perfused artery, but had no effect on the CDH and G-6-PDH. Contrary to adrenalin, noradrenaline increased not only the LDH activity, but also that of the G-6-PDH. The action of noradrenaline on the sympathectomized vessel depended on the place of noadrenaline entrance, i.e. through the intima or the adventitia.


Climate Change is one of the major threats to humankind. It endangers every creature on earth,
causes rising sea levels, draughts, increases extreme weather events, air pollution and species
extinction, just to mention a few of the destructive consequences of global warming. If scientific
studies prove to be right, some regions will become inhabitable, others unfertile, third ones may
disappear in the ocean. Regarding the continuous population growth, this may lead to disastrous
situations with nations unable to supply their inhabitants with the basic needs.
For a long time climate change and its impact had been replaced or marginalized. Governments
feared economic disadvantages when fostering emission reductions and could either not afford it or
were afraid of relative losses. Insecurity within the international climate regime about the
compliance of other actors, the refusal of many developing and emerging countries to contribute to
climate protection as well as scientific inaccuracy intensified the problem.
One of the few actors that dealt with the problem of climate change almost from the time of it´s
discovery was the European Union. As one of the major producers of greenhouse gases, historically
as well as presently, the EU bears special responsibility and is expected, by many developing and
emerging countries, to behave as a role model. In the past the Union had mostly been able to fulfill
this expectation and developed to a leader within the rising international climate regime.
After years of stagnation and small compromises 2015 may be a year of crucial importance to
climate protection, as the United Nations Climate Conference in Paris (COP 21) is of central
meaning to the future collaboration and the realisation of the two-degree target, meaning that global
warming shall be limited to maximal two degrees. The conference´s main goal is to establish a new
agreement which shall replace the Kyoto Protocol as a universal and legally binding convention and
introduce a new era of common action against climate change. Due to it´s historically evolved
leadership, it´s economic and political power as well as it´s responsibility for climate change it can
be expected that many countries will orientate themselves on the European Union´s exertions and
adapt to it their own efforts. Correspondingly, the role assumed by the EU, it´s endeavours to realise
an ambitious agreement on climate protection and it´s own commitments to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions, will be one of the decisive factors in the realisation of a successful climate convention.
This assignment deals with the valuation of efforts the Euopean Union invests in the preparation
process for the UN Climate Conference in Paris 2015. Moreover, it tries to assess whether the
Union once more assumes the role of leadership within the climate regime and, if so, what sort of
leadership it may be. According to the Union´s endeavours of the last two decades the hypothesis of
this assignment goes as follows: The European Union assumes a leading role in the preparation process to the UN Climate Conference 2015.
In order to investigate the role of the European Union the work of Alexandra Lindenthal,
´Leadership im Klimaschutz´, will be employed as theoretical framework, on whose basis the
present Union´s efforts can be assessed. Lindenthal generates a theory in which she distinguishes
between four different types of leadership. These types can be measured by certain indicators,
including the topics interests, resources, power, norms and form of communication, which can be
employed in order to evaluate the efforts of the European Union during the preparation process for
the UN Climate Conference in Paris, focusing on the commitments defined in the 2030 framework
for climate and energy policies and the attitude the EU (or leading European nations) adopt during
preliminary international conferences as the Climate Conferences in Geneva, Bonn or the G7
Summit 2015. Accordingly, the methodological approach to answer the research question is based
upon a qualitative content analysis.
Additionally, the assignment gives some background information to the European Union´s role in
past Climate Conferences, international expectations as well as to the meaning and structure of the
United Nations Climate Conference. On the one hand this knowledge will help the reader to fully
understand the subject and to give the topic a broader frame. On the other it will allow to answer the
question how the endeavours of the EU are to be valued, taking into account the needs and official
goals of climate protection.


The current trend in nuclear industry to extend the burnup limits up to high burnup requires the analysis of the phenomenology related to the nuclear fuel, specifically the diffusion and fission gas release (FGR) related to this phenomenon plays an important role. In this paper, the diffusion of stable fission gases (xenon and krypton) in nuclear fuel UO2 is addressed through the predictions for FGR to rod void volumes obtained with FRAPCON-3 fuel performance code. The theoretical base of diffusion model in FRAPCON-3 code is shown and some modifications are proposed, such as the removing of empirical correlations not related to diffusion phenomenon and fitting parameters included in the model. Besides, the resolution process in the proximities of grain boundaries is considered in a different way, and the grain growth mechanism from a specific temperature threshold is implemented into the code. The database applied for evaluation is presented and the results with the original and modified model are shown.


ABSTRACT: This study creates citation-based rankings for accounting institutions by topical areas (AIS, audit, financial, managerial, tax, and other) and methodologies (archival, analytical, experimental, and other) extending prior count-based ranking studies that disaggregate rankings by topic and methodology. We report separate rankings for different year windows (previous six years, 12 years, and since 1990) and only give institutions credit for authors who currently work for the institution. We show that disaggregated citation-based rankings are important as the correlations for some topic areas and methodologies with an overall ranking are modest. We also show that the correlation for citation-based and count-based rankings can differ significantly in some situations suggesting the importance of considering both types of rankings in decision making. Data Availability: Requests for data may be made to the authors.


Introduction Acute leukemias are often associated with the suppression of hematopoiesis. This condition is generally believed to reflect the "crowding-out" effect by the rapidly proliferating leukemia cells. Emerging data, however, has indicated that leukemia cells can instructively modulate the marrow microenvironment that is essential for the maintenance of hematopoietic homeostasis. One of the underlying mechanisms likely implicates leukemia-associated disruption of the marrow stem cell niche; however, the mechanisms by which acute leukemia employs to modulate niche architectural alterations are not well understood. A better understanding of the leukemia niche elements and the implicated molecular pathways involved in the niche regulation will facilitate the development of therapies to accelerate hematopoietic recovery and reconstitution in leukemia patients. Methods We used AML human NSG xenografts and the murine T-ALL model induced by the retroviral transfection of marrow progenitors with activated form of Notch1 (ICN1). In the murine T-ALL model, the transformed progenitors were co-transplanted with the wild type (WT) marrow cells into irradiated immune-sufficient C57BL/6 mice. The activated Notch1 drives leukemia transformation characterized by the expansion of an immature CD4+/CD8+ population of T progenitors. We tracked the niche location of leukemia using multi-photon intravital microscopy. The niche cell compartment and the reconstitution of co-transplanted marrow cells were characterized by flow cytometry, RT-PCR and in vitro differentiation assays. Results In NSG mice receiving primary human AML cells, we observed that leukemia development was accompanied by a suppression of the host hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) compartment. A similar hematopoietic suppression was observed in the C57BL/6 mice receiving ICN1-expressing progenitors but not in the mice receiving control cells in a disease stage-dependent manner, characterized by a loss of the HSC population at the later disease stage and a prominent suppression of B lymphopoiesis in the companion non-transformed marrow compartment. Co-culturing with leukemia cells only modestly affected HSPC differentiation, indicating elements of leukemia microenvironment are also important to mediate the hematopoietic suppression. To understand how leukemia cells modulate niche, we longitudinally tracked the niche localization and the proliferation of pre-leukemia cells in lethally irradiated host mice. We found that ICN1-expressing individual pre-leukemia cells can be identified on day1 at the peri-vascular niche after adoptive transfer, and appeared as clusters around day8 followed by a rapid expansion phase 2-3 weeks after transplantation. We then demonstrated that the CD8 + leukemia cells, which are enriched for leukemia initiating cells, but not the CD8 - cells, homed to the peri-vascular niche in the secondary leukemia transplanted hosts. Further, co-transplantation of leukemia cells with WT HSCs decreased HSC homing to the marrow and displaced them from the peri-vascular niche. In addition, leukemia mice displayed a marked loss of endosteal-lining osteoblasts, accompanied with a down-regulation of the transcription factors essential for the osteoblast differentiation in both osteoblastic progenitors and the multi-potent stromal cells (MSCs), and leukemia MSCs displayed a suppressed osteoblast formation when compared to control MSCs. In contrast, expressions of Notch signaling targets as well as CXCL12 were up-regulated in the leukemia stromal cells. The requirement of Notch in the alteration of leukemia niche function is supported by the observation that gamma-secretase inhibitor (GSI) treatment of mice receiving GSI-insensitive ICN1 cells attenuated the HSC suppression. Conclusion In summary, we found a potentially common mechanism employed by different types of acute leukemia to instructively modulate niche components essential for normal hematopoiesis. Specifically, we identified that T-ALL leukemia cells driven by ICN1 induces a hematopoietic suppression through competitive displacement of the normal HSCs from the proliferating peri-vascular niche and an ablation of the endosteal osteoblasts. Our future studies will target to elucidate the mechanistic co-regulation of normal and malignant hematopoiesis by leukemia microenvironment. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


Context. Massive ultra-compact galaxies (MUGs) are common at z = 2−3, but very rare in the nearby Universe. Simulations predict that the few surviving MUGs should reside in galaxy clusters, whose large relative velocities prevent them from merging, thus maintaining their original properties (namely stellar populations, masses, sizes and dynamical state).
Aims. Our goal is to obtain a complete census of the MUG population at 0.02 < z < 0.3, determining the number density, population properties and environment.
Methods. We have taken advantage of the high-completeness, large-area spectroscopic GAMA survey, complementing it with deeper imaging from the KiDS and VIKING surveys. We find a set of 22 bona-fide MUGs, defined as having high stellar mass (> 8 × 1010 M⊙) and compact size (Re < 2 kpc). An additional set of seven lower-mass objects (6 × 1010 < M⋆/M⊙ < 8 × 1010) are also potential candidates according to typical mass uncertainties.
Results. The comoving number density of MUGs at low redshift (z < 0.3) is constrained at (1.0 ± 0.4)×10−6 Mpc−3, consistent with galaxy evolution models. However, we find a mixed distribution of old and young galaxies, with a quarter of the sample representing (old) relics. MUGs have a predominantly early or swollen disk morphology (Sérsic index 1 < n < 2.5) with high stellar surface densities (⟨Σe⟩∼1010 M⊙ Kpc−2). Interestingly, a large fraction feature close companions – at least in projection – suggesting that many (but not all) reside in the central regions of groups. Halo masses show these galaxies inhabit average-mass groups.
Conclusions. As MUGs are found to be almost equally distributed among environments of different masses, their relative fraction is higher in more massive overdensities, matching the expectations that some of these galaxies fell in these regions at early times. However, there must be another channel leading some of these galaxies to an abnormally low merger history because our sample shows a number of objects that do not inhabit particularly dense environments.


The gut continually encounters many environmental factors, including pathogens and foods. Therefore, the gut requires specialized mechanisms to protect it from the adverse effects of these factors while maintaining gut homeostasis. It has been estimated that more than 10 14 microorganisms live in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, with the numbers and species of these microbes differing by site within the GI tract (1). Gut bacteria have been shown to digest complex carbohydrates and plant polysaccharides, neither of which may be metabolized by human enzymes, and to produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) that regulate cell differentiation and proliferation and have anti-inflammatory or immunomodulatory effects. These bacteria also produce a variety of essential vitamins, including vitamin B12, vitamin K, folate and biotin, which are not produced by host cells. Moreover, gut microbiota play an important role in the regulation of systemic immunity, by stimulating intestinal epithelial cells to produce transforming growth factor-β which regulates the development of FoxP3+ regulatory T (Treg) cells and type 17 helper (Th17) cells (2). Taken together, these findings indicate that gut microbiota are greatly involved in the maintenance of host health, which in turn implies that dysbiosis of gut flora could cause various diseases. Because blood from the intestines flows into the liver, the liver is directly affected by metabolites, cytokines and bacteria (via bacterial translocation) present in the intestines. Therefore, the liver is the organ most affected by the intestinal environment created by microbiota.


The safety of contemporary volatile anesthetic agents with respect to kidney function is well established, and growing evidence suggests that volatile anesthetics even protect against ischemic nephropathy. However, studies examining effects of volatile anesthetics on kidney function frequently demonstrate transient proteinuria and glycosuria following exposure to these agents, although the cause of these findings has not been thoroughly examined. We describe the case of a patient who underwent a neurosurgical procedure, then experienced glycosuria without hyperglycemia that resolved within days. Following a second neurosurgical procedure, the patient again developed glycosuria, now associated with ketonuria. Further examination demonstrated nonalbuminuric proteinuria in conjunction with urinary wasting of phosphate and potassium, indicative of proximal tubule impairment. We suggest that transient proximal tubule impairment may play a role in the proteinuria and glycosuria described following volatile anesthetic exposure and discuss the relationship between these observations and the ability of these agents to protect against ischemic nephropathy.


Catalysts for electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction in aqueous electrolytes suffer from high energy input requirements, competition with hydrogen evolution from water reduction, and low product selectivity. Theory suggests that plasmonic catalysts can be tuned to selectively lower the energy barrier for a specific reaction in a set of competitive reactions, but there has been little experimental evidence demonstrating plasmon-driven selectivity in complicated multielectron electrochemical processes. Here, the photoactivity at a plasmonically active silver thin film electrode at small cathodic potentials selectively generates carbon monoxide while simultaneously suppressing hydrogen production. At larger cathodic potentials, the photoactivity promotes production of methanol and formate. Methanol production is observed only under illumination, not in dark conditions. The preference of the plasmonic activity for carbon dioxide reduction over hydrogen evolution and the ability to tune plasmonic activity wi...


The intestinal microbiota and its metabolites play vital roles in host growth, development, and immune regulation. This study analyzed the microbial community distribution and the cytokine and short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) content of cecal contents (Con group), soft feces (SF group), and hard feces (HF group) of 60-day-old Hyplus rabbits and verified the effect of soft feces on the cecal immune microenvironment by coprophagy prevention (CP). The results showed that there were significant differences in the levels of phylum and genus composition, cytokines, and SCFAs among the Con group, SF group, and HF group. The correlation analysis of cytokines and SCFAs with differential microbial communities showed that Muribaculaceae, Ruminococcaceae_UCG-014, Ruminococcaceae_NK4A214_group, and Christensenellaceae_R-7_Group are closely related to cytokines and SCFAs. After CP treatment, the contents of propionic acid, butyric acid, IL-4, and IL-10 in cecum decreased significantly, whereas TNF-α and IL-1β increased significantly. Moreover, the inhibition of coprophagy led to the downregulation of the expression levels of tight junction proteins (Claudin-1, Occludin, and ZO-1) related to intestinal inflammation and intestinal barrier function, and the ring-like structure of ZO-1 was disrupted. In conclusion, coprophagy can not only help rabbits obtain more probiotics and SCFAs but also play an essential role in improving the immune microenvironment of cecum.


This contribution delves into the discretionary power of national legislatures to implement additional or altered criteria in light of Article 12 of Directive 2014/24/EU (ie the institutionalised and non-institutionalised exemptions). Sparked by national implementations of this provision, it creates a stomping-ground for broader discussions on self-organisation within EU public procurement law. In light of the Lithuanian Case law that has been brought before the CJEU (Irgita Case, pending), it discusses what type of harmonisation was used for this provision, if these implementations are, thus, valid in light of EU law, and what this means for the influence of EU public procurement law on the organisation of public tasks on the Member State level.


Ecosystems can undergo regime shifts where they suddenly change from one state into another. This can have important implications for formulation of management strategies, if system characteristics develop that are undesirable from a human perspective, and that have a high resistance to restoration efforts. This paper identifies some of the ecological and economic consequences of increased abundance of filamentous algae on shallow soft bottoms along the Swedish west coast. It is suggested that a successive increase in the sediment nutrient pool has undermined the resilience of these shallow systems. After the regime shift has occurred, self-generation properties evolve keeping the system locked in a highdensity algae state. The structural and functional characteristics of the new system state differ significantly from the original one, resulting in less valuable ecosystem goods and services generated for society. In Sweden, loss of value results from the reduced capacity for mitigating further coastal eutrophication, reduced habitat quality for commercial fishery species, and the loss of aesthetic and recreational values.


ackground:Autoimmune diseases are chronic conditions initiated by the loss of immunological tolerance to self-antigens. The pathogenic hypothesis comprises a complex interaction between genetic, environmental and hormonal factors. Aim of this study to assess the association between toxoplasmosis and some autoimmune diseases. Methods: A case-control study was conducted to estimate the association between toxoplasmosis and some of autoimmune disease including diabetes mellitus, rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus. The present study was carried out on 48aborted women, and 21non-aborted women, all of these cases were limited to females only in the reproductive age (16-50 years).Toxo-IgM and Toxo-IgG antibodies were detected with (ELISA) (Human/ Germany) in both groups, and measure blood sugar, ACCP, and ANF. Results: The infections with toxoplasmosis were 5(17.9%) and 23(82.1%) among those with diabetes mellitus and rheumatoid arthritis disease respectively. However, none of the 8 women with SLE had toxoplasmosis, Furthermore; the results revealed that toxoplasmosis positive women were about 4.4 folds more likely to have RA. (OR= 4.4, P≤ 0.01). Conclusion: This research concludes that the primary or secondary infections with Toxoplasma gondii can mimicry immune response and make shift in the immune response to induce autoimmune disease.


We present an experiment that investigates the usefulness of muscle monitoring information from arm mounted force sensitive resistors (FSR) for activity recognition. The paper is motivated by previous work that has demonstrated the feasibility of using FSRs for muscle activity monitoring (on leg muscles) and presented some initial signals related to distinct arm activities. We systematically investigate the performance of an FSR system on 16 different manipulative gestures and 2 subjects. The aim is to test the limits of the system, compare them to established sensing modalities (3D acceleration and gyro), and establish the value of combining FSR with other sensing modalities. We also present a hardware setup that addresses key problems that were identified in previous work: large variations in the attachment force and sensor placement accuracy issues. For all classifiers the overall accuracy of the FSR system is in the middle between the accelerometer (between 5% and 10% better) and the gyro (between 2% and 11% worse). Adding FSRs to another sensor improves the accuracy by 1% to 29%.


This article gives an overview of the quantitative pathologic techniques used today, with special emphasis on interactive morphometry and its application in the clinical setting. At present, stereologic calculations may be necessary, but in a diagnostic setting have only rarely proved to be essential. The reproducibility of the measurements is discussed in relation to the definition of the particles and staining methods. A number of technical factors that cause random errors are mentioned, such as quality of the slides, magnification, definition of the particles to be measured and measuring protocol. Large-scale experiments have revealed that the means of nuclear morphometric and certain stereologic features are reproducible, such as in the volume percentage of epithelium, the surface densities of glands and the mitotic activity index. The diagnostic applications of the standard deviation and shape factors of nuclear quantitative features require additional precautions, however. Having quantified cell and tissue features, multivariate analysis may result in a better discrimination of two or more groups under study. The quantitative pathologic examination of cells and tissues can provide important diagnostic and prognostic information. Quantitation in pathology is especially useful in so-called continuous lesions, in which interobserver and intraobserver disagreement is considerable. An important requirement of diagnostic morphometry is object selection by a skilled pathologist; the use of morphometry as a black box can result in dramatic errors. The criteria used for a morphometric classification rule that can be used for clinical applications are summarized. Quality control of the whole measuring system is essential. Application of these techniques for more than six years in diagnostic pathology has repeatedly corrected previous qualitative diagnoses.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Attribution methods aim to explain a neural network's prediction by highlighting the most relevant image areas. A popular approach is to backpropagate (BP) a custom relevance score using modified rules, rather than the gradient. We analyze an extensive set of modified BP methods: Deep Taylor Decomposition, Layer-wise Relevance Propagation (LRP), Excitation BP, PatternAttribution, DeepLIFT, Deconv, RectGrad, and Guided BP. We find empirically that the explanations of all mentioned methods, except for DeepLIFT, are independent of the parameters of later layers. We provide theoretical insights for this surprising behavior and also analyze why DeepLIFT does not suffer from this limitation. Empirically, we measure how information of later layers is ignored by using our new metric, cosine similarity convergence (CSC). The paper provides a framework to assess the faithfulness of new and existing modified BP methods theoretically and empirically. For code see: this https URL


In this work the immune structure of an organized group with respect to acute respiratory infections and the etiological structure of cases of acute pneumonia was studied. The sera taken from 602 persons were tested for the presence of antibodies to 14 infective agents of the viral, bacterial and mycoplasmal nature. The data indicate that all these agents circulate in the group under study with the prevalence of influenza A (H3N2), influenza B and group III parainfluenza viruses. Among etiological agents of acute pneumonia, the combination of Staphylococcus with Mycoplasma pneumoniae and adenovirus was noted. The Legionella etiology of some group cases of acute pneumonia among young persons was established on the basis of the increased titers of L. pneumophila antibodies in the indirect hemagglutination, indirect immunofluorescence and enzyme immunoassay. The source of this infection was highly dispersed water aerosol, containing the infective agent, in shower baths. This was bacteriologically confirmed by the isolation of three Legionella strains. The study showed that no transfer of Legionella infection in the group through contacts was possible.


Abstract A wind turbine power curve can be modeled with different models. In this study, the Weibull distribution model was used to determine energy output of six commercial wind turbines ranging from 335 to 1,000 kW. Wind turbine power curves were modeled with seven power curve models, and energy output results were compared with Wind Atlas Analysis and Application Program (WAsP) results. To compare these models, the hourly average wind data measured at 50 m height in Turkey was used. Three models estimated energy output to be dramatically smaller for all cases and one model estimated energy output to be higher for all cases. In some cases, error of energy output estimation can reach to 80%.


C226 Background: Vorinostat is a small molecule inhibitor of histone deacetylase (HDAC), which like other HDAC inhibitors induces hyperacetylation of a number of proteins, resulting in a multitude of downstream effects. Increased levels of acetylated histones are associated with activation of expression of selected genes as well as with impaired mitotic progression. HDAC inhibitors also induce increased acetylation of non-histone proteins, including numerous transcription factors, Hsp90, Ku70, and α-tubulin. Vorinostat has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of cutaneous manifestations in patients with CTCL who have progressive, persistent or recurrent disease on or following two systemic therapies.
 Methods: The PPTP includes a molecularly characterized in vitro panel of cell lines (n=27) and in vivo panel of xenografts (n=61) representing most of the common types of childhood solid tumors and childhood ALL. Vorinostat in vitro testing used media containing 20% FCS and evaluated concentrations from 10 nM to 100 µM. Vorinostat was tested against the xenografts of the PPTP in vivo panels using intraperitoneal administration for six weeks (5-days on, 2-days off) at a dose of 125 mg/kg. Three measures of antitumor activity were used: 1) response criteria modeled after the clinical setting; 2) treated to control (T/C) tumor volume at day 21; and 3) a time to event (4-fold increase in tumor volume) measure based on the median EFS of treated and control lines (intermediate activity required EFS T/C > 2, and high activity additionally required a net reduction in median tumor volume at the end of the experiment).
 Results: Vorinostat was uniformly active against the PPTP in vitro panel with a median IC50 of 1.44 μM (range, 0.45 μM to 8.5 μM). Toxicity rates for treated and control animals were 12.7% and 1.7%, respectively, with 7 of 43 xenografts excluded from analysis for excessive toxicity. Vorinostat induced significant differences in EFS distribution compared to controls in 16 of 30 evaluable solid tumor xenografts, but in none of 6 evaluable acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) xenografts. Although there were significant differences in EFS distribution in many of the PPTP solid tumor xenografts, no xenograft met the criteria for intermediate activity (EFS T/C > 2) for the time to event activity measure. No objective responses were observed in any of the solid tumor in vivo panels or in the ALL panel. The best response observed was PD2 (progressive disease with growth delay), which was noted in 9 of 30 evaluable solid tumor xenografts.
 Conclusions: Vorinostat has little activity as a single agent against the xenografts of the PPTP's in vivo panel. These results do not exclude potential activity for vorinostat against a biological subtype of a pediatric cancer that is not represented within the PPTP panel. Given the limited in vivo activity observed for vorinostat, further preclinical work will focus on identifying vorinostat combinations with increased potential for having a favorable therapeutic index when translated into the pediatric clinical setting. Combinations of vorinostat with agents that modify transcriptional activity (e.g., retinoids and demethylating agents) are of particular interest for evaluation in pediatric preclinical models. (Supported by NCI NO1CM42216)


Drilling waste generated during development of oil and gas offshore and onshore fields are required to be disposed of in a responsible and environmentally friendly manner. The remoteness of such environments, coupled with the ever-tightening environmental regulations and then green operation initiatives of operators, can create significant economical, logistical and regulatory challenges. The subsurface drilling cuttings reinjection becomes the preferred option allowing oil and gas operators to achieve zero discharge which can meet the most stringent environmental standards.
 To prevent all possible injection issues that were experienced earlier in the industry globally (early 1990's), a novel "design, execute, evaluate approach was introduced, this enables us to deliver reliable, single sourced start to finish solutions
 Subsurface drilling waste injection has been and continues to be used on several offshore projects where many millions of barrels of waste have been injected in a single well. This has been achieved through the engineering approach "design, execute, evaluate". The design study assesses the subsurface strata and identifies suitable injection zones, with a focus on waste containment assurance. The execution and evaluation phase begins with an initial injectivity test to calibrate all the reinjection modelling completed so far, we then implement real time injections surveillance including advanced pressure analysis as a risk control tool. The key focus is to analyze, identify, and recommend necessary adjustments during injections to prevent injection failure.
 The studied cases have been operated successfully since their start to date. No injectivity issues have been experienced during drilling waste fluids injections. Several on-time interventions have been made to proactively prevent the well becoming plugged and maintaining surface injection pressures within normal ranges.
 Recent advances of Real-time data streaming have made big step change improvement in the data delivery process, monitoring pressure analysis. It creates a direct link between the wellsite and worldwide multidisciplinary technical expertise and provides visualization capability at anytime and anywhere to all personnel involved in the project.
 This step change in monitoring drilling cuttings reinjection operations provides truly "Acquisition to Answer" integrated solution, mitigates the injection risks and enhances the intrinsic value of drilling cuttings reinjection on offshore development projects.
 This paper shares the experience and the success of subsurface drilling cuttings reinjection where wastes are injected for final and responsible disposal. The offshore field cases are presented to illustrate the value of the recent technological advances along with best practice guidelines and recommendations for safe and economical disposal of drilling waste fluids to achieve true zero discharge results.


The article describes the changes in the retail trade in Poland in the years 2000-2012 with a special focus on convenience stores. It presents factors affecting the current situation in the retail trade. Moreover, it attempts to identify the prospects for the further development of convenience stores in Poland. The research was conducted on the basis of the review of relevant literature and available statistical data. On the basis of continuing trend one can predict that in the coming years the number of small convenience stores in Poland will be reduced. One can expect development of franchise networks. Moreover, specialized food shops offering local and regional products are expected to develop.


The thesis is composed of three chapters which analyze the monetary and macro-prudential policy using a New Keynesian DSGE model with the banking sector.

The first chapter evaluates the effectiveness of time-varying macro-prudential tools and their interaction with monetary policy using the model framework of Gertler and
Karadi (2011) which emphasizes the role of bank capital and endogenous leverage constraint due to the moral hazard problem. We consider the following three types of countercyclical macro-prudential tools: (i) capital requirements (CAR), (ii) deposit-based reserve requirements (DBRR), and (iii) asset-based reserve requirements (ABRR). The main findings are as follows. First, all three types of macro-prudential policy tools reacting to the financial condition (credit to output gap) are effective to mitigate the fluctuation of credit and business cycle by weakening the pro-cyclicality of banks' net worth and the counter-cyclicality of the endogenous leverage and external finance premium. Second, the effectiveness of each instrument differs by the source of shocks to the economy. In response to a TFP shock, the counter-cyclical CAR is the most effective to mitigate the fluctuation of credit and output and the ABRR is relatively more effective in response to capital quality shocks (credit supply shock). Third, all types of macro-prudential tools are welfare improving in combination with monetary policy, but the use of macro-prudential policy is relevant in response to the credit supply shock (financial shock). Finally, when the economy is hit by a financial shock, a relatively direct tool like asset-based reserve requirement (ABRR) can be the most welfare-improving and the relationship between monetary and macro-prudential policy can be complementary each other.

The second chapter examines the role of banks' endogenous reserves and capital and the usefulness of financial condition (credit aggregates and external finance premium) as an indicator for setting up a relevant monetary policy rule. For the task, I construct an extended version of Goodfriend and McCallum (2007) model which is characterized by banks' loan production function with inputs (collaterals, monitoring works and bank capital buffer) under the households' deposit in advance (DIA) constraint. Main findings are as follows. First, banks' endogenous reserves can mitigate the variation of external finance premium by substituting costly monitoring works for lending. However, the effect of endogenous reserves on output and credits depends on types of shocks (credit-demand vs credit-supply shock), which reflects the role of external finance premium (EFP) as a banking attenuator (pro-cyclical EFP) or financial accelerator (counter-cyclical EFP) respectively. Second, the effect of banks' endogenous reserves can be limited when banks can adjust their capital flexibly compared to when banks' keep their capital to asset ratio (leverage) stable. Third, considering the role of money and the frictions on the credit-supply side, monetary policy reacting actively to the financial condition is welfare improving. These results imply that quantitative easing (QE) policy during the crisis was effective but the effectiveness of QE can be limited when banks can lower their leverage in a pro-cyclical manner. And monetary policy should pay more attention to the financial condition and prevailing interest rates as well as inflation and output gap in the presence of substantive financial frictions on the credit supply side in particular when the banking shocks dominate the economy.

In the last chapter (co-authored with Professor Jagjit S. Chadha), we investigate the question facing many emerging economies: the extent to which a workhorse advanced economy model can yield important insights for monetary policy-making. We note that the standard sticky-price, monopolistically competitive model does not allow analysis of money and credit dynamics and led to a concentration of research on simple interest rate reaction functions. However, time-varying financial frictions tend to act as a tax on intermediation activities and so can vary output in a significant manner. In this chapter,
we consider the implications of financial frictions for baseline monetary policy using a model calibrated on Indian data and find that a simple interest rate reaction function may not be welfare maximizing when banking shocks are dominant in the economy.


In The Road (2006), Cormac McCarthy's approach to "naming differently" establishes the imaginative conditions for a New Earth, a New Eden. The novel diverges from the rest of McCarthy's oeuvre, a change especially evident when the book is set against Blood Meridian because their styles and concomitant worldviews differ so strikingly. The style of The Road is pared down, elemental: it triumphs over the dead and ghostly echoes of the abyss and, alternately, over relentless ironic gesturing. And it is precisely in The Road 's language that we discover the seeds of the work's unexpectedly optimistic worldview. The novel is best understood as a linguistic journey toward redemption, a search for meaning and pattern in a seemingly meaningless world — a search that, astonishingly, succeeds. Further, I posit The Road as an argument for a new kind of fiction, one that survives after the current paradigm of excess collapses, one that returns to the essential elements of narrative.


Research shows that sexual minorities are at greater risk for illicit substance use and related harm than their heterosexual counterparts. This study examines a group of active drug users to assess whether sexual identity predicts increased risk of substance use and harm from ecstasy, ketamine, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and crack. Structured interviews were conducted with participants aged 15 years and older in Vancouver and Victoria, BC, Canada, during 2008–2012. Harm was measured with the World Health Organization's AUDIT and ASSIST tools. Regression analysis controlling for age, gender, education, housing and employment revealed lesbian, gay or bisexual individuals were significantly more likely to have used ecstasy, ketamine and alcohol in the past 30 days compared to heterosexual participants. Inadequate housing increased the likelihood of crack use among both lesbian, gay and bisexuals and heterosexuals, but with considerably higher odds for the lesbian, gay and bisexual group. Lesbian, gay and bisexual participants reported less alcohol harm but greater ecstasy and ketamine harm, the latter two categorised by the ASSIST as amphetamine and hallucinogen harms. Results suggest encouraging harm reduction among sexual minority, high-risk drug users, emphasising ecstasy and ketamine. The impact of stable housing on drug use should also be considered.


We propose an all-optical scheme to prolong the quantum coherence of a negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond at cryogenic temperatures. Optical control of the NV spin suppresses energy fluctuations of the 3 A 2 ?> ground states and forms an energy gap protected subspace. By optical control, the spectral linewidth of magnetic resonance is much narrower and the measurement of the frequencies of magnetic field sources has higher resolution. The optical control also improves the sensitivity of the magnetic field detection and can provide measurement of the directions of signal sources.


PURPOSE: The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence and severity of ocular complications in patients with mucopolysaccharidosis (MPS). METHODS: Twenty-nine patients with diagnosis of mucopolysaccharidosis were studied. Age, gender, visual acuity, presence of strabismus, refractive error, fundus examination, intraocular pressure, central corneal thickness and ocular echography were assessed for each individual. RESULTS: There were three patients with MPS I (12%), eleven patients with MPS II (37.9%), one patient with MPS III (3.4%) and fourteen patients with MPS VI (48.3%). Mean age was 9.5 years (ranged from 1.2 to 20 years, DP 5.5). Refraction was available in 26 patients, from which 88.5% (23 patients) were hyperopic, and 53.8% (14 patients) presented astigmatism. Best corrected visual acuity was available in 18 patients and the mean was 0.45 logMAR (DP 0.68). The mean spherical equivalent was +3.57 D (SD 2.46) and intraocular pressure was 17 mmHg (SD 3.9). The most common findings were: eyelid thickening in 24.1% (7 patients); corneal opacity in 55.2% of cases (16 patients); optic nerve atrophy in 23.1% (6 patients); and radial folds in the retina in 24% (7 patients). The fundus was examined in 26 out of 29 patients because corneal opacity avoided the exam in 3 of them. The average thickness of the complex sclera-retina-choroid (SRC was 1.78 mm (SD 0.51). CONCLUSION: The most prominent ophthalmologic findings were eyelid thickening, decreased visual acuity, high hyperopia, corneal opacity, perimacular radial folds in the retina and optic nerve atrophy.


We present extensions to the programmable DSP architectures for reduced power dissipations. These extensions address power reduction in both external and internal buses, which form a major component of power dissipation in pipelined programmable processors such as DSPs. We present two techniques to reduce power dissipation in the program and data memory address buses, a technique to reduce cross-coupling related power dissipation in the program memory data bus and a technique for reducing power dissipation in the input buses of the ALU. We present results in terms of power savings using these techniques.


In view of the dramatic rise in the prevalence of food allergy globally, effective prevention strategies have become a public health priority. Several models have emerged around the etiology of food allergy, including the hygiene hypothesis, dual allergen exposure hypothesis, and vitamin D hypothesis. These form the basis for current and potential prevention strategies. Breastfeeding remains a key pillar of primary allergy prevention. Other nutritional interventions, including the use of whey-based, partially hydrolyzed formula in non-breastfed infants, also play an important role. In recent years, there has been a shift away from prolonged food allergen avoidance to the proactive allergen introduction from 4 months of age. This approach is supported by 2 pivotal randomized clinical trials showing that the early introduction of peanut and other food allergens significantly reduces the risk of food allergy. However, the implementation of this strategy at the population level still raises significant logistic problems, including patient selection and development of suitable food formats for young infants. Other prevention strategies, including vitamin D supplementation, are currently under evaluation. Maternal elimination diets during pregnancy and lactation are not recommended for allergy prevention. The treatment of food allergies has also seen major transformations. While strict allergen avoidance is still the key treatment principle, there is a greater focus on desensitization and tolerance induction by oral and epicutaneous immunotherapy. In addition, specialized hypoallergenic infant formulas for the treatment of infants with cow's milk allergy have undergone reformulation, including the addition of lactose and probiotics in order to modulate the gut microbiome and early immune responses. Further research is needed to inform the most effective food allergy prevention strategies at the population level. In addition, the wider application of food allergen immunotherapy may provide better health outcomes and improved quality of life for families affected by food allergies.


Ageing results from the accumulation of multifactorial damage over time. However, the temporal distribution of this damage remains unknown. In seasonal species, transitions between seasons are critical periods of massive physiological remodelling. We hypothesised that these recurrent peaks of physiological remodelling are costly in terms of survival. We tested whether captive small primates exposed to an experimentally increased frequency of seasonal transitions die sooner than individuals living under natural seasonality. The results show that experiencing one additional season per year increases the mortality hazard by a factor of 3 to 4, whereas the expected number of seasons lived is only slightly impacted by the seasonal rhythm. These results demonstrate that physiological transitions between periods of high and low metabolic activity represent a major mortality risk for seasonal organisms, which has been ignored until now.


Parkinson's disease (PD) patients show a characteristic loss of motor control caused by the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons. Mutations in the genes that encode alpha-synuclein and parkin have been linked to inherited forms of this disease. The parkin protein functions as a ubiquitin ligase that targets proteins for degradation. Expression of isoforms of human alpha-synuclein in the Drosophila melanogaster nervous system forms the basis of an excellent genetic model that recapitulates phenotypic and behavioural features of PD. Using this model, we analysed the effect of parkin co-expression on the climbing ability of aging flies, their life span, and their retinal degeneration. We have determined that co-expression of parkin can suppress phenotypes caused by expression of mutant alpha-synuclein. In the developing eye, parkin reduces retinal degeneration. When co-expressed in the dopaminergic neurons, the ability to climb is extended over time. If conserved in humans, we suggest that upregulation of parkin may prove a method of suppression for PD induced by mutant forms of alpha-synuclein.


We present a knowledge-rich approach to computing semantic relatedness which exploits the joint contribution of different languages. Our approach is based on the lexicon and semantic knowledge of a wide-coverage multilingual knowledge base, which is used to compute semantic graphs in a variety of languages. Complementary information from these graphs is then combined to produce a 'core' graph where disambiguated translations are connected by means of strong semantic relations. We evaluate our approach on standard monolingual and bilingual datasets, and show that: i) we outperform a graph-based approach which does not use multilinguality in a joint way; ii) we achieve uniformly competitive results for both resource-rich and resource-poor languages.


A series of six 6-oxoverdazyl (1[10]) substituted with a total of three 3,4,5-tri(decyloxy)phenyl and/or 3,4,5-tri(decylsulfanyl)phenyl groups was investigated by thermal, XRD, spectroscopic, magnetic and photovoltaic methods. The compounds exhibit columnar hexagonal (1[10]c, Colh), columnar hexagonal ordered (1[10]b, Colh(o)), columnar hexagonal 3D (1[10]a, 1[10]e and 1[10]f, Colh(3D)) or a sequence of two phases (1[10]b, Colh–Colh(3D)). The mesophase structure and stability and also thermochromism were investigated as a function of the number and distribution of decyloxy and decylsulfanyl substituents in the molecule. Thermal analysis demonstrated that the presence of the 3,4,5-tri(decyloxy)phenyl substituent in the C(3) position increases the phase stability. Spectroscopic analysis showed that only all-decyloxy derivative 1[10]b exhibits a hypsochromic shift upon Colh(o) formation, while all other compounds in the series show a modest bathochromic shift in the columnar phase relative to the isotropic phase. Magnetization investigation of 1[10]d demonstrated the paramagnetic behavior of isolated spins in isotropic and columnar phases. Negligible photocurrent was detected for 1[10]d in the columnar phase.


The purpose of this project was to create a set of guidelines in which a small winery could follow in order to produce their first batch of hard cider. These guidelines include taking inventory of equipment needed for the production process and comparing that to equipment the winery already possesses, allowing input cost to stay as low as possible. These guidelines were then used to conduct a cost analysis for a local winery to brew their first batch of hard cider.


Abstract : A preprocessor (Obsgrid) that creates input data for the Advanced Research version of the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF-ARW) is modified to perform a surface pressure objective analysis to allow surface analyses of other fields to be more fully utilized in the WRF-ARW initial conditions. Nested 27-, 9-, 3-, and 1-km horizontal grid spacing domains centered over San Francisco, California, on 9 February 2012 reveal an area in the initial condition surface fields of the 1-km domain in which horizontal gradients are very small, with sharp gradients at its edges. The lack of an objective analysis of surface pressure unnecessarily limits the application of other surface analyses into the WRF initial conditions and contributes to the creation of these structures. Therefore, a surface pressure objective analysis was added to Obsgrid for 9 February and also 4 additional case days. The surface pressure objective analysis allows surface analyses of other fields to be more fully utilized in the WRF initial conditions and leads to improvements in model air temperature and especially dewpoint. However, these improvements are not seen in observation nudging experiments since the observation nudging corrects for the errors introduced by the original lack of surface pressure objective analyses.


: This article concentrates on the relation between labour and family in the secondary sector of production of Corfu. it argues that family was crucial in forming the main characteristics of the labour force. The familial division of labour according to gender and age is examined not only as a decisive determinant in the categorisation of work positions as skilled and unskilled but also as a factor that defined the temporality or permanence of labour. it also focuses on the role of local and family networks and their effect on the labour market. These questions, thoroughly discussed by labour historians, will be applied to the case of Corfu, in an effort to complete the greek paradigm.


After dispersal, seeds can germinate and establish as seedlings, persist as seeds, or die. Knowledge of these three seed fates is crucial for understanding the abundance and distribution of plant populations and ultimately. community composition and diversity. Few studies, however, have simultaneously measured these fates, while also examining the factors causing mortality. The goal of this research was to simultaneously quantify the three seed fates and factors causing death (predation and fungal disease) for four species found in prairies in western Oregon, USA. The most common seed fate for the four study species was death (44-80%). Fungal disease, which has seldom been quantified in natural ecosystems, generally caused less than 10% mortality for each of the four species. Vertebrate predation substantially reduced seed numbers only for Bromus carinatus (21%). Of the unmeasured mortality factors, indirect evidence showed invertebrate predation was a cause of death for seeds of only one species. Prunella vulgaris. In addition, competitive pressures caused seedling death for only the two grass species. Bronmus carinatus and Cvnosurus echinatus. Survival as established seedlings was generally much more common than survival as persistent seed, with the exception of Daucus carota, in which 14% of the sown seeds persisted the first year.


After over a century of extensive research, hemoglobin has become the prototype of allosteric and cooperative proteins. Its molecular structure, known in great detail, has allowed the design of hundreds of site directed mutations, aimed at interfering with its function, and thus at testing our hypotheses on the molecular mechanisms of allostery. The wealth of information thus obtained is difficult to read except for specialists, not only because it makes use of many different technical approaches, but also because of its intrinsically patchy nature. Moreover, several researchers have tried to assign specific roles to segments of the polypeptide chains, rather than to single residues, and have tested their hypotheses by multiple point mutations or by complete replacement with the homologous segment from a different hemoglobin to produce chimeric macromolecules. This approach is in great need of a revision since putative functionally relevant segments partially overlap. This review briefly describes the structure and function of hemoglobin, and analyzes the effect of point mutations, multiple mutations and segment replacement, with special attention to possible biotechnological applications, ranging from pharmacology (Hb solutions as resuscitating fluids and sources of the protein found in hemoglobinopathies for biochemical studies) to bioreactors. Occasional reference is made to site directed mutants of myoglobin, whenever this helps clarifying perplexing results obtained on hemoglobin.


The perceived objective of price comparison sites is to aggregate price quotes from several firms. They are expected to reduce consumers' search costs and lead to more competitive markets. In this paper, I examine the difference in the prices consumers pay on comparison sites relative to traditional shopping methods. Using a unique data set, a mortgage firm's pricing strategies on Lendingtree.com, a price comparison site, and in traditional markets are examined. The results indicate that lendingtree.com and traditional consumers pay the same price on average. The presumed benefits from lower search cost on lendingtree.com do not result in lower mortgage prices.