The West German Grand Coalition, headed by Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger from the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and Foreign Minister Willy Brandt from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) took office in November 1966 in the changing international context of de´tente. After the 1962 Cuba Crisis, the two superpowers entered into a dialogue designed to reduce East-West tensions, although it did not prevent the outbreak of serious regional crises such as the Vietnam War. From a Franco-German view point, relations had reached a low ebb at the end of Ludwig Erhard's chancellorship. Disagreements on de´tente and its implications had contributed to the constant degradation of the climate between Paris and Bonn. Erhard's and his Foreign Minister Gerhard Schroder's reluctance to engage in political dialogue with Eastern Europe – despite the initiation of the policy of movement – convinced the French President to move forward alone with his eastern policy.


BACKGROUND We undertook a study to understand how women who are victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) want physicians to manage these abusive relationships in the primary care office. METHODS Thirty-two mothers in IPV shelters or support groups in southwestern Ohio were interviewed to explore their abuse experiences and health care encounters retrospectively. The interviews were taped and transcribed. Using thematic analysis techniques, transcripts were read for indications of the stages of change and for participants' desires concerning appropriate physician management. RESULTS Participants believed that physicians should screen women for IPV both on a routine basis and when symptoms indicating possible abuse are present, even if the victim does not disclose the abuse. Screening is an important tool to capture those women early in the process of victimization. When a victim does not recognize her relationship as abusive, participants recommended that physicians raise the issue by asking, but they also warned that doing more may alienate the victim. Participants also encouraged physicians to explore clues that victims might give about the abuse. In later contemplation, victims are willing to disclose the abuse and are exploring options. Physicians were encouraged to affirm the abuse, know local resources for IPV victims, make appropriate referrals, educate victims about how the abuse affects their health, and document the abuse. Participants identified a variety of internal and external factors that had affected their processes. CONCLUSIONS In hindsight, IPV victims recommended desired actions from physicians that could help them during early stages of coming to terms with their abusive relationships. Stage-matched interventions may help physicians manage IPV more effectively and avoid overloading the victim with information for which she is not ready.


This paper presents preliminary investigations of the short range (~10 cm) narrowband wireless channel appropriate to specks operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM band. Path loss measurements have been made in the laboratory using rectaxial antennas at 2.45 GHz. The transmitted signal is an unmodulated carrier and the receiver is a spectrum analyzer. Characterization of signal power variations are important for system design and so path loss and fading models have been derived. The paper presents a comprehensive narrowband channel model (including interference due to neighboring nodes) for application to asynchronous short-range wireless networks. Medium access is assumed to be CSMA based and SIR will therefore depend on inhibition distance and antenna characteristics. Aggregated interference due to neighboring nodes has been calculated. Finally, cumulative SIR values have been used to construct link budgets and bit error rates.


pure occupational groups. No attempt was made to do this and there was no discussion of the purity of the ultimate occupational groups used for analysis. It is not, therefore, possible to accept the authors' conclusions concerning the occupational origin of abnormalities which they describe. However, their chief conclusion, namely that steel workers show a higher incidence of radiographic abnormalities than iron workers and that the highest incidence is in the fettling shop, may well be true as it confirms previous findings by the Silicosis and Asbestosis Medical Board and by other workers in this field. A surprising frequency of slightly abnormal radiographs was observed in the younger workers. The authors suggest four entirely irrelevant explanations and do not mention the possibility that the interpretation of the radiographs, whose unreliability they have admitted, may be at fault. Pattern shop workers, exposed only to wood dust, from their radiographs also showed evidence of dust inhalation. It is not possible to be certain of the cause or the reliability of the radiographic findings, since there is no discussion of the previous occupations of these men, nor of the observer error in interpreting such slight radiographic changes. No important conclusions are derived from the spirometric and clinical investigations, and the observations on the incidence of tuberculosis in various occupational groups are not of much value, as no reference is made to the age distribution of men in the groups. The final conclusion is that the incidence of active tuberculosis is much the same as that found in the general population. The account of the dust sampling investigations could have been given very briefly. A detailed analysis of the dust samples taken is difficult to justify in view of the authors' own opinion that " on account of the doubts and difficulties arising in the valuation of the samples and of the time and labour consumed in this work .... dust counts in iron foundries have a limited value ". Similar criticism can be made of the publication of elaborate chemical analyses of both samples of dust, nearly the whole of which were of a particle size incapable of entering the lung. In spite of its scientific and logical fallacies the report has its values but to claim that it contains a great deal of information of scientific value is hardly justified. C. M. FLETCHER


This study introduced a new questionnaire on subject, didactic, and educational teacher interest and analyzed their relations to occupational well-being (burnout, enjoyment, flow) and instructional practices in a sample of 281 teachers from elementary and both low- and high-achievement secondary schools. Results of confirmatory factor analysis verified the three-dimensional structure of the newly developed interest measure. Evidence for the construct validity of the interest measure was provided by structural equation analyses showing that teachers' occupational well-being and instructional practices were predicted by their interests, even when controlling for self-efficacy beliefs. Specifically, both didactic and educational interest contributed to lower levels of burnout and predicted beneficial instructional practices (e.g., cognitive stimulation). In addition, subject and educational interest were the main predictors of enjoyment and flow in class.


To the Editor. —Retinal microvascular disease is associated commonly with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). However, a central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO) has not, to our knowledge, been described in association with AIDS. Report of a Case. —A 34-year-old homosexual white man with a two-month history of AIDS, diagnosed on the basis of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, complained of blurred vision in his left eye for three weeks. He first noted this condition the morning after a blood transfusion for dapsone-induced anemia (hemoglobin value, 82 g/L; hematocrit, 0.26). Dapsone therapy had been discontinued a few days previously. He had no other opportunistic infections. His only other medications were pentamidine inhalations every two weeks and oral egg lecithin. An examination on July 31, 1987, revealed best corrected vision with plano of 20/25 OD and 20/40—OS eye, with a central scotoma in the left eye. There was no anterior segment neovascularization and


Active layers of bulk heterojunction are extensively studied because of their great potential for application in low-cost optoelectronic devices like photovoiltaic cells and photodiodes. The performance of such devices is strongly influenced by the formed nanostructures which determine the transport ability of the organic composite. We investigated the charge carrier transport properties of two organic composites: poly(3-hexyothiophene) (P3HT) with (6,6)-phenyl-C60-butyric acid methyl ester (60PCBM)and poly(triarylamine) (PTTA) blended with 60PCBM. The optimised organic blend was used as a matrix material for Cu-In-Se nanocrystals. Adding Cu–In–Se nanocrystals to a P3HT/60PCBM bulk heterojunction leads to a significant improvement of the maximum external quantum efficiency of the investigated system from 48% to 70% (at wavelength 520 nm).


In the past, traditional games were thought to be dying out, few people cared, and the games continued to flourish. In the present day we assume children to have lost the ability to entertain themselves, we become concerned, and are liable, by our concern, to make what is not true a reality. In the long run, nothing extinguishes self-organized play more effectively than does action to promote it. It is not only natural but beneficial that there should be a gulf between the generations in their choice of recreation. Those people are happiest who can most rely on their own resources; and it is to be wondered whether middle-class children in the United States will ever reach maturity 'whose playtime has become almost as completely organized and supervised as their study' (Carl Withers). If children9s games are tamed and made part of school curricula, if wastelands are turned into playingfields for the benefit of those who conform and ape their elders, if children are given the idea that they cannot enjoy themselves without being provided with the 'proper' equipment, we need blame only ourselves when we produce a generation who have lost their dignity, who are ever dissatisfied, and who descend for their sport to the easy excitement of rioting, or pilfering, or vandalism. But to say that children should be allowed this last freedom, to play their own games in their own way, is scarcely to say more than John Locke said almost three centuries ago: 'Children have as much a Mind to shew that they are free, that their own good Actions come from themselves, that they are absolute and independent, as any of the proudest of your grown Men.'


The project known as PhET, originally stood for Physics Education Technology, but was quickly expanded into the other natural sciences.A'  It is a project which, with a grant from the NSF and other sponsors, now provides free inquiry- based simulations in the natural sciences and mathematics.A'  The project was founded by Nobel Prize winner Carl Wieman. The simulations are highly interactive, easy to use, and based on the latest educational research. The GMU Honors College teaches several science courses geared to high achieving liberal arts students.A'  The courses cover a wide range of topics that include astrobiology, energy/environmental issues, and scientific thought and processes. Despite their high ability and motivation, these students often report a reluctance to engage in scientific inquiry. A' PhET simulations were used as laboratory experiments to teach basic concepts in physics and chemistry. Students display high engagement and interest utilizing PhET simulations. Students also were able to demonstrate creativity in problem solving, and a reduced fear of making mistakes. A' The PhET computer simulations allowed students to quickly identify cause and effect relationships between simulation inputs and outputs.


ABSTRACT Objective: People who undergo hematopoietic stem cell transplantation are highly dependent on their caregiver during their lengthy treatment and recovery. The effectiveness of their caregiver's social support can profoundly affect their day-to-day treatment experiences and, in turn, how they recall those experiences and are affected by them long after the treatment ends. Method: Our participants were 182 men and women who had undergone a transplant within the previous 9 months to 3 years. They completed baseline measures (including a measure of caregiver social support effectiveness) and then completed three writing assignments describing their transplant experiences. Linguistic analyses were conducted to investigate their use of words indicating negative emotions, cognitive processing (insight and causation), and practical problems with money and insurance. Theory-based hypotheses predicted associations between specific functional types of caregiver support (emotional, informational, and instrumental) and these word categories. Results: As hypothesized, the effectiveness of different functional types of support from a caregiver were uniquely associated with theoretically relevant categories of word use. Structural equation models indicated that more effective caregiver emotional support predicted lower use of negative emotion words; more effective caregiver informational support predicted lower use of causation words; and more effective caregiver instrumental support predicted lower use of words related to money and insurance. Significance of results: Our findings provide insights to guide research on the mechanisms through which caregiver support influences patient outcomes after stem cell transplantation. For instance, research suggests that these kinds of effects could have implications for survivors' current self-concept, psychosocial functioning, and meaning-making.


Due to limited budgets and an ever-diminishing timeframe for the production of foreign language subtitles, pressure on subtitle companies is at an all-time high. Although translation technologies are ubiquitous in other areas of translation, especially localisation, and have been helping translators work more efficiently for a number of years now (Lagoudaki, 2006), it is strange to note that subtitle companies have been slower to jump on the bandwagon. Recent research from both academia and the industry (O'Hagan, 2003; Carroll, 2004; Gambier, 2005) suggests that the inroads made in natural language processing and machine translation could go a long way to alleviating some of this pressure.

In this thesis, we set out to establish how example-based machine translation (EBMT) can be used to speed up the subtitling process, thus improving the throughput of the subtitler, and also as a means of automatically producing foreign language subtitles which subtitle companies may not normally provide, even though they would be extremely helpful for the viewing public.

Through the development of the modular corpus-based MT engine, MaTrEx (Stroppa
et al., 2006), and the collection of a large amount of subtitle data extracted from over
50 full-length features (Armstrong et al., 2006a), we were able to apply a number of
EBMT techniques to produce subtitles for the language directions German-English and English-German. These machine-produced subtitles were evaluated using a range of both well-established automatic metrics common to machine translation as well as some novel manual evaluation strategies. Both automatic metrics and the human evaluation were very useful in the developmental process where we were able to isolate and fix errors made by our system. In addition, through obtaining a human's perspective on the subtitles produced by our system, we were able to gauge the acceptability of these subtitles for public viewing, and have provided a solid grounding for future research into the acceptability of (semi-) automatically generated subtitles.


To achieve the dual goals of minimising global pollution and meeting diverse demands for environmental justice, energy transitions need to involve not only a shift to renewable energy sources but also the safe decommissioning of older energy infrastructures and management of their toxic legacies. While the global scale of the decommissioning challenge is yet to be accurately quantified, the climate impacts are significant: each year, more than an estimated 29 million abandoned oil and gas wells around the world emit 2.5 million tons of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. In the US alone, at least 14 million people live within a mile of an abandoned oil or gas well, creating pollution that is concentrated among low-income areas and communities of colour. The costs involved in decommissioning projects are significant, raising urgent questions about responsibility and whether companies who have profited from the sale of extracted resources will be held liable for clean-up, remediation and management costs. Recognising these political goals and policy challenges, this article invites further research, scrutiny and debate on what would constitute the successful and safe decommissioning of sites affected by fossil fuel operations – with a particular focus on accountability, environmental inequality, the temporality of energy transitions, and strategies for phasing out or phasing down fossil fuel extraction.


In this thesis the theory of the dialogical self (Hermans) is explored in the context of
 global mobility and hybrid identities. A group of global nomads were asked whether they recognise different cultural identities within themselves and whether a dialogue between two personal cultural voices introduced new meaning into their personal meaning system. Also the emotional component of their personal cultural positions and dialogical valuations was explored using the Self Confrontation Method (Hermans).
An exciting discovery was that the non Dutch voices or positions were often valued with ambivalent feelings and that these positions often carried the emotional valuation of powerlessness and isolation or protest and resistance and that they were often hidden, subdued or disenfranchised.
We can recognise an internal power structure between personal cultural positions that seems to be related to dominant discourses in society.

 I also describe an acculturative learning process of career consultants as
they started to work with tertiary educated refugee clients. They reflect on their
experiences in Balint intervision sessions and wrote case studies about their experiences. During their first sessions, their confusion was obvious as they realised that their routine way of working was not appropriate when dealing with a person from a completely different cultural context.

In dialogue with each other and with their clients they adjusted their approach so that they could better explore the alterity of the other and at the same time identify their own cultural conditioning.
This shows that both the acculturating foreigner and the native Dutchman partake
of a process of acculturation to an environment that is becoming increasingly
diverse and complex.

In my research a number of subtle discursive strategies are unveiled that could play a part in the fact that diversity in organisations is hard to realise and/or maintain.
If cultural migrants hide their personal cultural diversityvdue to the dominant discourses in society and locals avoid the initial discomfortvof the first stages of an intercultural learning process, due also partly to thevhabitus of pillarisation (Koopmans, 2003) in The Netherlands, then there is a
fundamental gap in bridging a communicative divide. My thesis was written to bridge this communicative divide and as a counternarrative to the at times all too simplistic thinking about adaptation and acculturation in the Dutch public domain.

By reflecting on my personal and professional development, my research with global noamds and my work as a career coach with refugees I have developed a practical methodology with which to explore the complexities of individuals with bi and multicultural identities.
A practical result that emerges out of the two parts of my research is the development
of a PEACE methodology (Personal Emotional Account of Cultural Experience),
with the help of which the complexity of personal cultural positions of
multicultural migrants may be explored and discussed. This as an inspiration and
suggestion, for others to follow.


Abstract A numerical model is designed to integrate the primitive equations in two dimensions to evaluate a new vertical coordinate scheme for hydrostatic flow. Because potential temperature is nearly conserved for large-scale atmospheric flow, potential temperature is utilized as the vertical coordinate in the layer bounded by the lower troposphere and the top of the model atmosphere which is near the middle stratosphere. The vertical coordinate scheme circumvents some of the problems that have appeared in previous isentropic coordinate models by utilizing a variable depth layer near the earth's surface in which a function of pressure is the vertical coordinate. For this reason, no coordinate surface intersects the surface of the earth and complicated topographic features can easily he constructed. In addition, adiabatic and superadiabatic lapse rates can develop near the surface of the earth because the vertical coordinate in this region is a quasi-horizontal function of pressure. Two experiments are pe...


ABSTRACTA theoretical study on the agglomeration kernel of bipolar charged particles in external fields is presented in order to investigate particle agglomeration under the combined effects of a direct-current (DC) electric field and an acoustic field, while taking into consideration particle collision efficiency. Three agglomeration kernels are considered in our model, namely Coulomb agglomeration, electric agglomeration, and acoustic agglomeration. The model performance is validated by comparing its predictions with the available exact solutions of peculiar cases. Our results indicate that the collision efficiency increases when an electric field is applied simultaneously with an acoustic field. The size of the total agglomeration kernel formed by the three processes listed above increases with the external electric field intensity and the sound pressure level (SPL). Based on this model which includes collision efficiency, the electric and acoustic agglomeration kernels both increase rapidly as the agglomeration nucleus particle size increases, eventually approaching saturation for large diameters. On the other hand, the total agglomeration kernel decreases as the sound frequency increases within the investigated range. The agglomeration kernels of particles with different relative dielectric constants, such as fly ash particles, solid carbon particles and water droplets, are investigated as well.


There are several widely used Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) implementation fidelity measures, including the Schoolwide Evaluation Tool (SET), but there is limited empirical investigation substantiating the association between specific fidelity cut point scores and student outcomes. This article examined different SET cut points in reference to school-level outcomes across 180 elementary, middle, and high schools participating in randomized trials of PBIS. Specifically, we examined the implementation fidelity achieved in the sample, as well as within each school level (i.e., elementary, middle, and high). Using the binary complier index, we examined the association of each of three SET cut points with behavioral and academic outcomes using t tests and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses. Although the t tests did not provide confirmation of one specific cut point, post hoc analyses suggested that the cut point may need to be tailored to school levels. There was moderate convergence between implementation on one scale (i.e., responses to behavioral violations) and academic achievement, based on ROC curve analyses for the 70% and 80% cut points. Implications for research and practice are discussed.


Fetal intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) results in abnormal cardiac function that is apparent antenatally due to advances in fetoplacental Doppler ultrasound and fetal echocardiography. Increasingly, these imaging modalities are being employed clinically to examine cardiac function and assess wellbeing in utero, thereby guiding timing of birth decisions. Here, we used a rabbit model of IUGR that allows analysis of cardiac function in a clinically relevant way. Using isoflurane induced anesthesia, IUGR is surgically created at gestational age day 25 by performing a laparotomy, exposing the bicornuate uterus and then ligating 40-50% of uteroplacental vessels supplying each gestational sac in a single uterine horn. The other horn in the rabbit bicornuate uterus serves as internal control fetuses. Then, after recovery at gestational age day 30 (full term), the same rabbit undergoes examination of fetal cardiac function. Anesthesia is induced with ketamine and xylazine intramuscularly, then maintained by a continuous intravenous infusion of ketamine and xylazine to minimize iatrogenic effects on fetal cardiac function. A repeat laparotomy is performed to expose each gestational sac and a microultrasound examination (VisualSonics VEVO 2100) of fetal cardiac function is performed. Placental insufficiency is evident by a raised pulsatility index or an absent or reversed end diastolic flow of the umbilical artery Doppler waveform. The ductus venosus and middle cerebral artery Doppler is then examined. Fetal echocardiography is performed by recording B mode, M mode and flow velocity waveforms in lateral and apical views. Offline calculations determine standard M-mode cardiac variables, tricuspid and mitral annular plane systolic excursion, speckle tracking and strain analysis, modified myocardial performance index and vascular flow velocity waveforms of interest. This small animal model of IUGR therefore affords examination of in utero cardiac function that is consistent with current clinical practice and is therefore useful in a translational research setting.


Fluorescent DNA probes are used to characterise the chromosome constitution of preimplantation embryos. FISH is used to select normal or balanced embryos in carriers of balanced chromosomal rearrangements, for embryo sexing or for aneuploidy screening in women of advanced age, who have had recurrent abortions or IVF failures. In most cases, FISH is performed on interphase blastomeres which are asynchronously dividing cells, that can be in G1, S or G2. However, a correct interpretation of a double FISH signal, which may correspond to a split signal, to a replicated chromosome region or to the presence of an extra chromosome is essential to establish an accurate diagnosis. To determine if the cell stage could influence the interpretation of FISH results, we compared the signal characteristics of one locus-specific probe, two different subtelomere region probes, and a centromere region probe in non-dividing Sertoli cells and in proliferating lymphocytes. Most cells had two signals per chromosome pair (i.e., a situation corresponding to G0 in Sertoli cells and to G1 or to a prereplication stage in lymphocytes). Nevertheless, in proliferating cells the percentage of nuclei with a number of signals different from the expected (two unreplicated chromosomes per pair) was different from that found in non-dividing cells (P < 0.05). It was estimated that 10.8% of double dots in dividing cells resulted from DNA replication. The sequence of replication was first the locus-specific region, second a telomere region, and third the centromere. In conclusion, the DNA replication process could result in errors of interpretation (misdiagnosis) in 7% of proliferating cells. Thus, the use of a cell cycle phase-specific marker could avoid errors by indicating the cell stage in which the nucleus analysed is found.


We point out that a face-centered cubic (FCC) optical lattice, which can be realised by a simple scheme using three lasers, provides one a highly controllable platform for creating Weyl points and topological nodal superfluids in ultracold atoms. In non-interacting systems, Weyl points automatically arise in the Floquet band structure when shaking such FCC lattices, and sophisticated design of the tunnelling is not required. More interestingly, in the presence of attractive interaction between two hyperfine spin states, which experience the same shaken FCC lattice, a three-dimensional topological nodal superfluid emerges, and Weyl points show up as the gapless points in the quasiparticle spectrum. One could either create a double Weyl point of charge 2, or split it to two Weyl points of charge 1, which can be moved in the momentum space by tuning the interactions. Correspondingly, the Fermi arcs at the surface may be linked with each other or separated as individual ones.


The strategy of developing new electrode materials, which integrate well with carbon materials or conducting polymers to form a robust synergistic composite, can distinctly boost the electrochemical performance of supercapacitors (SCs). In this study, a novel Ni coordination supramolecular network (CSN) of [Ni2(3,5-PDC)2·(H2O)8·(H2O)2]n (denoted as Ni-PDC, 3,5-PDC = 3,5-pyridinedicarboxylic acid) was successfully integrated with nitrogen-doped graphene (NG) via a one-step hydrothermal method, forming a superior composite electrode material of Ni-PDC@NG. The Ni-PDC@NG electrode showed a high specific capacitance of 735 F g−1 at a current density of 1 A g−1 and an outstanding cycling stability (85.3% capacitance retention after 14 000 cycles); furthermore, it also maintained a good rate capability by exhibiting a capacitance retention of 53% even at a high current density of 40 A g−1. Significantly, a SC device was assembled with the Ni-PDC@NG electrode as the cathode and an activated carbon electrode as the anode, which not only exhibited a high energy density of 21.7 W h kg−1 at a power density of 801 W kg−1, but also retained 45.2% of its initial energy density even at a high power density of 16 036 W kg−1. Besides, this as-fabricated device exhibited excellent long-term durability with 97.9% capacitance retention after 6000 cycles.


The in situ hydrolysis of acetontrile to acetate was utilized to construct crystal structures of lanthanide complexes for two analogous ligands, including dimeric [Ln2(Hhpip)2(OAc)6] (Ln = Eu, Tb, Dy; Hhpip = 2-(2-hydroxyphenyl)imidazo[4,5-f][1,10]phenanthroline) and two-dimensional polymeric [Tb(hnpip)(OAc)2]n, where hnpip− is the hydroxyl-deprotonated form of 2-(2-hydroxy-5-nitrophenyl)imidazo[4,5-f][1,10]phenanthroline acting as a tridentate bridging ligand. The former had a [Ln2(μ-η1:η2-OAc)2(μ-η1:η1-OAc)2(η2-OAc)2] subunit, whereas in the latter, [Tb2(μ-η1:η2-OAc)2] and [Tb2(μ-η1:η1-OAc)2] subunits are alternately aligned. The DMSO solution of [Eu2(Hhpip)2(OAc)6] and [Eu2(pip)2(OAc)6] (pip is 2-phenylimidazo[4,5-f][1,10]phenanthroline) were found to have a specific and prompt photoluminescence response to CO32− with significant emission colour change. The limit of detection was about 10 μM, depending on the complex and wavelength monitored.


Next generation network (NGN) Release 1 is the ITU- T architecture for packet-switched networks that supports the provisioning of broadband and QoS-guaranteed multimedia services, such as Video on Demand and TV streaming, independently of the underlying network transport technologies. Control plane (CP)-enabled transport networks might be a candidate to support NGN services in the Metro/Core segment since are able to setup automatically connections. Typically, these networks are based on automatically switched optical network (ASON) architecture and/or on generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) protocol suite. This work presents a snapshot of the current status of standardization reached by the NGN architecture and proposes an NGN enhancement to include CP-enable transport networks among the NGN supported transport technologies. An NGN prototype implementing the proposed architectural enhancement is also presented as a proof of concept. The prototype highlights how set-up multimedia over IP (MoIP) services using GMPLS-controlled transport objects.


OBJECTIVES
Chronic non-bacterial osteomyelitis (CNO) is an autoinflammatory disorder of the skeletal system. Treatment with NSAIDs is generally effective in the majority of patients, however, a sizeable proportion of patients have persistent disease and subsequent treatment strategies are required. The aim of this study was to characterise the clinical and radiological disease course in CNO patients treated with the bisphosphonate pamidronate (PAM).

METHODS
Eight CNO patients refractory to NSAIDs, glucocorticoids and sulfasalazine were treated with 6 cycles of PAM in four-weekly intervals. The disease course was assessed by clinical examination and whole-body (WB) MRI at standardised time points during the treatment phase and in a 6 months follow-up.

RESULTS
Seven patients were in complete clinical remission after 6 applications of PAM. WB MRIs showed regression of inflammatory lesions in 7 patients with complete remission in only one patient and partial remission in 6 patients. One patient developed radiological progression despite a marked improvement of clinical symptoms. In the follow-up after PAM therapy, 3 patients developed MRI confirmed relapse. Additional applications of PAM induced a sustained clinical remission and partial radiological response in two of them. Mild temporary adverse effects were noted in 5 patients.

CONCLUSIONS
Our study highlights that PAM is effective in controlling clinical symptoms (e.g. pain) in CNO patients. However, subclinical bone inflammation was still detectable by MRI in most of the patients and disease progression was noticed in some patients after cessation of PAM.


Background Congenital or early life infection with Toxoplasma gondii has been implicated in schizophrenia aetiology. Childhood cat ownership has been hypothesized as an intermediary marker of T. gondii infection and, by proxy, as a risk factor for later psychosis. Evidence supporting this hypothesis is, however, limited. Method We used birth cohort data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) to investigate whether cat ownership in pregnancy and childhood (ages 4 and 10 years) was associated with psychotic experiences (PEs) in early (age 13, N = 6705) and late (age 18, N = 4676) adolescence, rated from semi-structured interviews. We used logistic regression to examine associations between cat ownership and PEs, adjusting for several sociodemographic and socioeconomic factors, household characteristics and dog ownership. Missing data were handled via multiple imputation. Results Cat ownership during pregnancy was not associated with PEs at age 13 years [adjusted odds ratio (OR) 1.15, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.97–1.35] or 18 years (OR 1.08, 95% CI 0.86–1.35). Initial univariable evidence that cat ownership at ages 4 and 10 years was associated with PEs at age 13 years did not persist after multivariable adjustment (4 years: OR 1.18, 95% CI 0.94–1.48; 10 years: OR 1.12, 95% CI 0.92–1.36). There was no evidence that childhood cat ownership was associated with PEs at age 18 years. Conclusions While pregnant women should continue to avoid handling soiled cat litter, given possible T. gondii exposure, our study strongly indicates that cat ownership in pregnancy or early childhood does not confer an increased risk of later adolescent PEs.


Religiosity can significantly impact human behavior yet little is known about how religious belief and practice integrate with work. Using the Faith at Work Scale, we surveyed Christian workers in the United States (n = 374) and found that work-faith integration was positively associated with faith maturity, church attendance, age and denominational strictness, and negatively associated with organizational size. Denominational groups varied in their degree of integration but displayed similar patterns across dimensions of integration. Work-faith integration was manifest most strongly in integration related to the self, and somewhat less so in areas related to others and in transcendent aspects of work. Respondents attributed spiritual disciplines and workplace mentors as salient influences of work-faith integration. Implications for workplace spirituality scholarship and management are explored.


1. Single Malpighian tubules of the stick insect have been studied as preparations isolated in drops of haemolymph under liquid paraffin. Measurements of osmotic pressure have been made on haemolymph and urine.

2. The urine is more or less isotonic with the haemolymph over a wide (45-145%) range of osmotic pressure. But in a majority of cases the urine is slightly but significantly hypotonic to the haemolymph.

3. From these and other observations it is concluded that water must be actively transported across the wall of the tubule. The implications of this conclusion are discussed.

4. The normal rate of urine production is of the order of 0.07 x 1o-3 cu.mm./sq.mm./min. The rate increases with increasing dilution of the haemolymph and vice versa.

5. Urine production normally ceases, probably as a result of distension of the tubule, when the pressure in the lumen rises to about 20 cm. H2O.


Both convergence and diversity are crucial to evolutionary many-objective optimization, whereas most existing dominance relations show poor performance in balancing them, thus easily leading to a set of solutions concentrating on a small region of the Pareto fronts. In this paper, a novel dominance relation is proposed to better balance convergence and diversity for evolutionary many-objective optimization. In the proposed dominance relation, an adaptive niching technique is developed based on the angles between the candidate solutions, where only the best converged candidate solution is identified to be nondominated in each niche. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed dominance relation outperforms existing dominance relations in balancing convergence and diversity. A modified NSGA-II is suggested based on the proposed dominance relation, which shows competitiveness against the state-of-the-art algorithms in solving many-objective optimization problems. The effectiveness of the proposed dominance relation is also verified on several other existing multi- and many-objective evolutionary algorithms.


A new interconnection network topology called Hierarchical Hexagon HH(n) is proposed for massively parallel systems. The new network uses a hexagon as the primary building block and grows hierarchically. Our proposed network is shown to be superior to the star based and the hypercube networks, with respect to node degree, diameter, network cost, and fault tolerance. We thoroughly analyze different topological parameters of the proposed topology including fault tolerance routing and embedding Hamiltonian cycle.


Abstract We report the case of a patient, DRB, who shows impaired auditory comprehension of abstract but not concrete words, in the context of preserved comprehension of all types of written words. Good performance on auditory lexical decision for abstract words indicates that DRB is able to access these lexical entries. This pattern may be termed "abstract word meaning deafness." Repetition is also more impaired for abstract words than concrete words. DRB is unable to repeat nonwords or write them to dictation. He makes semantic errors in real word repetition, which is compatible with the view that his repetition is semantically mediated. Exactly the same pattern of semantic errors and a particular difficulty with abstract words is found in tasks where DRB is required to write to dictation. DRB's auditory comprehension and repetition impairments are not affected by word frequency. Performance on specific words is inconsistent, and is improved following a written cue.


Conventional circuit-switched networks are increasingly being replaced by packet-based networks for voice communication applications. Additionally, there has been an increased deployment of services supporting speech based interactions. These trends demand reliable transmission of speech data not just for playback but also to ensure acceptable automatic speech recognition (ASR) performance. In this paper, we present an overview of techniques that have been investigated to improve ASR performance against two major degradation factors in the context of packet networks: (1) information loss due to a low bit-rate codec and (2) packet loss due to channel (network) conditions. In addition, we highlight another key issue, packet loss rate, by showing ASR performance as a function of packet size and channel condition.


Abstract The relation between the prediction and explanation of the false belief task (FBT) with counterfactual reasoning (CFR) was explored. Fifty eight 3-5 year-olds received a prediction or an explanation FBT, a belief attribution task and some counterfactual questions of increasing difficulty. Linguistic comprehension was also controlled. CFR highly predicted FBT in the explanation version but not in the prediction one. Additionally, results in the explanation version indicate that CFR underlies achievements prior to the understanding of the representational mind and stimulates the explicitness of the mental domain. This study identifies the conditions under which CFR becomes a fundamental cognitive tool for social cognition. The results obtained contribute to the dialog between the two major theoretical approaches: theory-theory and simulation theory.


The results indicated that the levels of IL-1, IFN, and TNF, especially those of IL-1 and INF, produced by cultured rat kupffer cells were increased in the presence of Cordyceps sinensis (CS) or the drug serum (DS) from rats fed on CS. The experimental result of DS was similar to that of CS. However, the former had a better repeatability and stability.


There has been a recent push in the literature to identify and use more evidence-based practices for positive behavioral supports for challenging student behaviors in the classroom environment. Further, interest in targeting early education environments such as preschool has been growing given the persistence of behavioral difficulties in the absence of early and effective intervention (Campbell & Ewing, 1990; Kazdin, 1987; Powell et al., 2006; Stormont, 2002). Two previous meta-analyses (Maggin et al., 2011; Soares et al., 2016) provided some initial support for effectiveness of token economies with challenging student behavior; however, the inclusion of the preschool setting was limited and both studies used older versions of design standards to evaluate the quality of studies in the literature. The present study served to extend those meta-analyses by targeting preschool classrooms. Further, the current study included the most recent What Works Clearinghouse Design Standards to evaluate whether token economies meet criteria as an evidence-based practice. Ten studies were included in the final analyses. Two sets of effect sizes were calculated: Baseline-Corrected Tau and Hedge's g. An omnibus effect size showed an overall large effect; however, similar to previous meta-analyses, several methodological concerns were identified. Moderator analyses for several variables were conducted; however, no moderator analyses were significant. Limitations and future directions were discussed.


A hybrid transfer-matrix finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method is proposed for modeling the optical properties of finite-width planar periodic structures. This method can also be applied for calculation of the photonic bands in infinite photonic crystals. We describe the procedure of evaluating the transfer-matrix elements by a special numerical FDTD simulation. The accuracy of the new method is tested by comparing computed transmission spectra of a 32-layered photonic crystal composed of spherical or ellipsoidal scatterers with the results of direct FDTD and layer-multiple-scattering calculations.


ABSTRACT China's Belt and Road Initiative has led to an efflorescence of interest in the heritage of the "Silk Road," both in China and abroad. In this article, I approach the BRI and its associated "Silk Road fever" ethnographically, discussing its effects on a particular region of China. What was once characterized in official discourse as a "remote border region" is now recovering its history of camel-based connectivity, and using this to imagine its future development. I situate this Silk Road discourse within the context of the politics of land, ethnicity, and the environment in a Chinese border region. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in this region, and analysis of local publications, the article shows how this discourse provides ethnic Mongol elites in the west of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region with resources to defend pastoralist livelihoods threatened by the state's recent grassland conservation policies. I thus show how the BRI's spatial imaginary is "domesticated" in a particular part of China, and shine a light on the spatial politics which this imaginary – and the nonhumans involved in it – affords.


Experience Sampling Method (ESM) is widely used in idiographic approaches to collect within-person patterns. Planning a suitable survey schedule while designing an ESM based experiment is challenging as it must balance between survey fatigue of users, and the timeliness and accuracy of the responses provided by users. Even with the proliferation of ESM experiments, survey scheduling typically remains confined to use of fixed schedules, where periodic probes are sent to user, or event-based schedules, where depending on the number of events, large number of probes may interrupt user frequently. We propose a novel survey scheduling scheme, Low-Interference High-fidelity (LIHF) ESM schedule, which is designed to reduce interference while retaining fidelity of user response. We integrated LIHF into an ESM application, called TapSense, that is used to infer user's emotion from typing characteristics on smartphone keypad. Conducting a 2-week field study involving 9 users, using proposed metrics we show that using LIHF there is 26% reduction in survey fatigue, 50% improvement in triggering survey probes in timely manner, and 8% improvement in predicting emotion states based on typing patterns compared to typical ESM scheduling techniques.


The circumgalactic medium (CGM) of nearby star-forming galaxies shows clear indications of O vi absorption accompanied by little to no detectable N v absorption. This unusual spectral signature, accompanied by highly nonuniform absorption from lower-ionization-state species, indicates that the CGM must be viewed as a dynamic, multiphase medium, such as occurs in the presence of turbulence. Motivated by previous isotropic turbulent simulations, we carry out chemodynamical simulations of stratified media in a Navarro–Frenk–White (NFW) gravitational potential with a total mass of 1012 M⊙ and turbulence that decreases radially. The simulations assume a metallicity of 0.3 Z⊙ and a redshift-zero metagalatic UV background, and they track ionizations, recombinations, and species-by-species radiative cooling using the MAIHEM package. We compare a suite of ionic column densities with the COS-Halos sample of low-redshift star-forming galaxies. Turbulence with an average one-dimensional velocity dispersion of ≈40 km s−1, corresponding to an energy injection rate of ≈4 × 1049 erg yr−1, produces a CGM that matches many of the observed ionic column densities and ratios. In this simulation, the NN V/NO VI ratio is suppressed from its equilibrium value due to a combination of radiative cooling and cooling from turbulent mixing. This level of turbulence is consistent with expectations from observations of better constrained, higher-mass systems and could be sustained by energy input from supernovae, gas inflows, and dynamical friction from dark matter subhalos. We also conduct a higher resolution ≈40 km s−1 run, which yields smaller-scale structures but remains in agreement with observations.


The study dwells on application of interpersonal communication in reference and information services in university libraries. Four research questions in line with the objective of the study were formulated to guide the study. The study adopted descriptive survey research design with the total population of 1,116. The sample size of the study was 330 students while 16 reference staff were studied without sampling due to their manageable size. Data was collected using questionnaire. A total number of 346 copies of questionnaire distributed were correctly filled and returned by the respondents who comprised entire reference staff, postgraduates and undergraduates' library users of university of Nigeria, Nsukka; Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike and Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. Data were analyzed using mean scores. Result shows that face to face communication, simplified language, customer relations were among the major interpersonal communication patterns in reference services in university libraries. It was found that interpersonal communication to a great extent contributes to effective reference and information services in university libraries by making exchange of message easier, and enhancing understanding of users information needs. Major hindrances to effective application of interpersonal communication in reference and information services include inability to frame queries correctly, lack of adequate listening skills, stereotype and interiority complex of librarians, etc. Strategies for enhancing interpersonal communication include carefully listening, right framing of reference queries and many more. The study recommended effective user education program while reference staff should be well educated to be able to communicate effectively with users of different background.


Partially purified fibroblast interferon and double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) of fungal origin were administered as single graded doses to A2G and Balb/c mice shortly before intraperitoneal infection by specified virulent or avirulent strains of representative togaviruses (Semliki Forest virus, Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis virus and yellow fever virus). Changes of efficiency of infection arising from interference at the level of clearance or replication and changes of the expression of virulence or protective immunity, were compared for different initial doses of interferon or dsRNA in relation to different levels of infection by defined virus strains. Interferon and dsRNA, although acting through quantitatively different mechanisms, both reduced effective dose of virus and influenced only the extent of primary replication and host stimulation. Neither agent changed in any way the outcome of infection in terms of expression of virulence (regulatory immunity) or protective immunity. These results are discussed in terms of the control of virus infections at stages before or after immune stimulation can be effective.


We have examined the amplitude ratio SKKS/SKS from two deep focus events recorded by the APT89 portable seismic experiment. For one of the events (beneath the Solomon Islands), we obtain a profile of 18 stations in the distance range 99–108°. We observe large systematic variations in this ratio as a function of distance. From 99° to 106° the ratio is fairly constant and in the range 0.1 to 0.5, but it then rapidly increases to the range 0.5–3.5 between 106° and 108°. Such variations are in fact predicted by standard earth models, such as PREM, although this feature of the wavefield has not previously been observed. It is due to the momentary drop in SKS amplitude at the ray parameter where the reflected phase ScP is critically reflected. Because ray theory is not valid in this distance range, we use Full Wave theory to model the amplitudes. We have been able to match the distance pattern reasonably well if we use a model with the P-velocity at the base of the mantle reduced by 1.5% compared to PREM. Although fewer stations are available, the second event shows the same basic distance pattern, except that the abrupt increase in the ratio occurs at a closer distance. This suggests an even lower P-velocity for this region (about 3.5% slower than PREM) and is consistent with lateral heterogeneity at the base of the mantle of a few percent.


Abstract Purpose: Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) combines selective accumulation of 10B carriers in tumor tissue with subsequent neutron irradiation. BNCT has been proposed for the treatment of multiple, non-resectable, diffuse tumors in lung. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy and toxicity of BNCT in an experimental model of lung metastases of colon carcinoma in BDIX rats and perform complementary survival studies. Materials and methods: We evaluated tumor control and toxicity in lung 2 weeks post-BNCT at 2 dose levels, including 5 experimental groups per dose level: T0 (euthanized pre-treatment), Boronophenylalanine-BNCT (BPA-BNCT), BPA + Sodium decahydrodecaborate-BNCT ((BPA + GB-10)-BNCT), Beam only (BO) and Sham (no treatment, same manipulation). Tumor response was assessed employing macroscopic and microscopic end-points. An additional experiment was performed to evaluate survival and oxygen saturation in blood. Results and conclusions: No dose-limiting signs of short/medium-term toxicity were observed in lung. All end-points revealed statistically significant BNCT-induced tumor control vs Sham at both dose levels. The survival experiment showed a statistically significant 45% increase in post-treatment survival time in the BNCT group (48 days) versus Sham (33 days). These data consistently revealed growth suppression of lung metastases by BNCT with no manifest lung toxicity. Highlights Boron Neutron Capture Therapy suppresses growth of experimental lung metastases No BNCT-induced short/medium-term toxicity in lung is associated with tumor control Boron Neutron Capture Therapy increased post-treatment survival time by 45%


This paper uses a new measure of real exchange rates as an indicator of international competitiveness. This new measure involves defining all prices and exchange rates on an appropriately weighted basket of currencies rather than a single currency. The measure is applied to the data for Japan, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. For comparison purposes, we calculate real exchange rates based on purchasing power parity (PPP) for these countries. To check for the relative performance of the two measures, cointegration tests are employed. The results indicate that the new measure tends to be closely related with the export growth for the sample countries, while the PPP-based measure is not. Moreover, the PPP-based real exchange rates tend to understate the measures of competitiveness for these countries. This result has important implications in terms of the levels of these countries' exchange rates as well as the well-known Balassa hypothesis.


Introduction: Sodium fluoride (NaF) toxicity has been a subject of extensive studies over the last years because of their environmental persistence and world widespread distribution. Its toxicity on many organs has received considerable attention, but its neurotoxicity has not been entirely studied. Aim of the Work: Studying the histological changes occurring in the cerebellar cortex of albino rats following chronic exposure to NaF and the possible protective role of vitamin B6. Materials and Methods: Twenty adult male albino rats were divided into group I (control), group II (each animal was daily injected I P with 3.6 mg vitamin B6), group III (each animal received 10 mg/kg NaF orally once daily) and group IV (each rat was given vitamin B6 concomitantly with NaF at the same dose, period and route of group II and III). After three months the cerebellum was dissected and prepared for light and electron microscopic study. Results: The cerebellum of NaF treated animals exhibited severe degenerative changes especially in Purkinje cells. There was multilayer disposition of these cells associated with structural changes in the form of dilated rER and Golgi complex, swollen mitochondria in addition to marginated nuclear chromatin. The surrounding neuropil appeared vacuolated with accumulation of neuroglial cells. Many myelinated nerve fibers displayed disruption in myelination and irregular neurofilaments. Silver stained sections showed accumulation of cytoskeletal elements in Purkinje cells. On the other side, these changes were ameliorated in rats of group IV which received vitamin B6 concomitantly with NaF. Conclusion: Chronic administration of NaF induced degenerative changes in the cerebellar cortex which could be ameliorated by vitamin B6. Original Article


ABSTRACT Housing scholars stress the importance of the information environment in shaping housing search behavior and outcomes. Rental listings have increasingly moved online over the past two decades and, in turn, online platforms like Craigslist are now central to the search process. Do these technology platforms serve as information equalizers or do they reflect traditional information inequalities that correlate with neighborhood sociodemographics? We synthesize and extend analyses of millions of U.S. Craigslist rental listings and find they supply significantly different volumes, quality, and types of information in different communities. Technology platforms have the potential to broaden, diversify, and equalize housing search information, but they rely on landlord behavior and, in turn, likely will not reach this potential without a significant redesign or policy intervention. Smart city advocates hoping to build better cities through technology must critically interrogate technology platforms and big data for systematic biases.


It is sometimes argued that road safety measures or automobile safety standards fail to save lives because safer highways or safer cars induce more dangerous driving. A similar but less extreme view is that ignoring the behavioral adaptation of drivers would bias the cost-benefit analysis of a traffic safety measure. This article derives cost-benefit rules for automobile safety regulation when drivers may adapt their risk-taking behavior in response to changes in the quality of the road network. The focus is on the financial externalities induced by accidents because of the insurance system as well as on the consequences of drivers' risk aversion. We establish that road safety measures are Pareto improving if their monetary cost is lower than the difference between their (adjusted for risk aversion) direct welfare gain with unchanged behavior and the induced variation in insured losses due to drivers' behavioral adaptation. The article also shows how this rule can be extended to take other accident external costs into account.


The variations in loads can be defined as either increment or decrement in the load. Variation in load causes a similar change in the amount of current which produces opposite variation in output voltage. Microgrids typically use renewable energy resources to meet varying load demands of the local area. Such sources need power electronic converters for controlling proper voltage level for efficient operation. Hence it becomes essential to design control scheme for the DC-DC converters to stabilize the voltage in DC micro grids under any type of load variations. This research work proposes a DC micro grid structure in which sliding mode controller based DC-DC converters are implemented. Microgrid structure is then simulated using MATLAB SIMULINK where output voltage regulation is achieved efficiently in case of rise as well as fall in the load connected on DC micro gird.


Abstract Many problems in the analysis of natural terrain surface shapes and the construction of terrain maps to model them remain unsolved. Almost the whole process of thematic interpretation of aerospace information consists of a step-by-step grouping and further data conversion for the purpose of creating a completely definite, problematically oriented picture of the earth's surface. In this article, we present application of a new method of drawing 3D visibility networks for pattern recognition and its application on terrain surfaces. For the determination of complexity of 3D surface terrain, we use fractal geometry method. We use algorithm for constructing the visibility network to analyse the topological property of networks used in complex terrain surfaces. Terrain models give a fast overview of a landscape and are often fascinating and overwhelmingly beautiful works by artists who invest all their interest and an immense amount of work and know-how, combined with a developed sense of the portrayed landscape, in creating them. At the end, we present modelling of terrain surfaces with topological properties of the visibility network in 3D space.


Background Ulnar neuropathy at the elbow is an entrapment neuropathy, while ulnar nerve dislocation might also be involved in its incidence and severity. Wheelchair marathon athletes may be at an increased risk for Ulnar Neuropathy. However, there is a paucity of research into the prevalence of Ulnar Neuropathy and ulnar nerve dislocation in this population. Objective To investigate the prevalence of ulnar neuropathy at the elbow and ulnar nerve dislocation in wheelchair marathon athletes. Participants Wheelchair marathon athletes (N = 38) who participated in the 2017, 2018, and 2019 Oita International Wheelchair Marathon. 2 athletes participated only one time, 36 athletes repeatedly. Data from athletes`latest assessment were used. Methods The day before the race, questionnaires, physical examinations, and ultrasonography were conducted to screen for Ulnar Neuropathy in both upper limbs. Ulnar nerve dislocation was confirmed by physical examination and ultrasonography. Results 11 (29%) athletes were diagnosed with Ulnar Neuropathy. There were no significant differences in age, height, weight, Body Mass Index, or history of primary illness between athletes with and without Ulnar Neuropathy. In the group without Ulnar Neuropathy, 44% of athletes reported to have been engaging in other wheelchair sports, compared to 9% in the group with Ulnar Neuropathy (p = 0.037). Ulnar nerve dislocation was diagnosed in 15 (39%) athletes by ultrasonography. Out of the 14 elbows of 11 athletes diagnosed with Ulnar Neuropathy, 9 (64%) elbows had ulnar nerve dislocation. Conclusion The prevalence of Ulnar Neuropathy in wheelchair marathon athletes was higher than previously reported in able-bodied, non-athlete individuals and lower than in non-athletes with lower limb dysfunction. Therefore, while wheelchair sports may provide some protection against Ulnar Neuropathy, this study further supports the importance of screening for Ulnar Neuropathy, as well as for ulnar nerve dislocation as a potential risk factor for the development of Ulnar Neuropathy.


This study aimed at investigating whether students' usage of self-regulated learning strategies depends on the course or whether these strategies represent general academic skills that students can use to learn any course. A general version and three course-specific versions of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) were administered to a sample of 425 tenth graders in Sultanate of Oman. The general version of the MSLQ described self-regulated learning strategies as course-free general academic learning strategies, whereas the course-specific versions described these strategies within the context of mathematics, social studies, and Arabic. The results showed that (1) self-regulated learning strategies represented course-free general academic skills, (2) task value and test anxiety latent means were higher in mathematics than in social studies and Arabic, but these means did not differ between social studies and Arabic (3) the dimensions of the general and the course-specific versions of the MSLQ correlated similarly with achievement in mathematics, social studies, and Arabic except for self-efficacy, wherein the correlation coefficients between self-efficacy and achievement in these courses were higher when self-efficacy was measured via a course-specific measure rather than a general measure that assesses self-efficacy as a general academic skill.


The EU and ASEAN are often compared and seen as relatively successful regional organisations in their respective regions. Yet of late, both regional organisations are under intense scrutiny as they confront challenges posed by the financial crisis and rising geopolitical tensions. Their inability to respond effectively to these challenges has brought about a chorus of criticisms. Noting the current tensions face by both the EU and ASEAN in their respective regions, one could not help but wonder how and if they would be able to deal with the increasing complex security landscape because of a weakened US, and the rise of the rest. This article will compare and contrast the approaches taken by the EU and ASEAN thus far in trying to build peace and prosperity, and how they manage the demands of power politics to distill some lessons on what they can learn from each other in order to navigate an increasingly paradoxical world of economic interdependence but political fragmentation.


The text summarizes raw material, manufacture method, stab-resistant mechanism, stab-resistant effect and the problem of the hard stab-resistant clothing, semi-soft Stab-resistant clothing and soft stab-proof clothing, and evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of various stab-resistant clothing. Base on the analysis of the development course and status of stab-resistant clothing, it explores and discusses the developing trend and research emphases of the stab-resistant clothing according to requirements of the industrialization of the stab-resistant materials. This paper also put forward the suggestions and ideas about manufacture stab-proof textiles by composed yarn technique.


Anion–π interactions have been receiving a great deal of attention from the scientific community for the past five years. This type of non-covalent bond is being recognized as a supramolecular interaction by chemists. Remarkably, the status for the lone pair(lp)-π interaction, namely the bonding association between a neutral electron-rich molecule and an electron-poor π ring, is hardly studied. The importance of lp–π interactions was clearly evidenced in a number of biological systems more than ten years ago; amazingly, only a few examples of lp–π interactions involving small synthetic molecules have been reported so far in the literature. Are these examples unique? Actually, a detailed analysis of the Cambridge Structure Database shows that such interactions are not unusual in organic compounds, but apparently have been overlooked in the past.


: The purpose of the study was to verify the knowledge of male university students regarding induced abortion. The sample was comprised of 71 male students that corresponded to 70% of the population made up of students from different health related programs at a federal university. Data was collected in August and October of 1998, by means of a questionnaire that was based on two previous exploratory studies. The respondents were 17 to 22 years old, catholic, single and financially dependent. The results demonstrated that a large percentage of male students had knowledge of what an induced abortion was and of its consequences, as well as of the methods used to induce the fetal loss. The respondents expressed a negative opinion about abortion and placed the responsibility for such a decision on the couple. They also indicated that besides the woman, other individuals, such as friends and family members bared some responsibility for the decision to end or not a pregnancy.


It is of interest to evaluate crossbred pigs for hot carcass weight (HCW) and birth weight (BW); however, obtaining a HCW record is dependent on livability (LIV) and retained tag (RT). The purpose of this study is to analyze how HCW evaluations are affected when herd removal and missing identification are included in the model and examine if accounting for the reasons for missing traits improves the accuracy of predicting breeding values. Pedigree information was available for 1,965,077 purebred and crossbred animals. Records for 503,716 commercial three-way crossbred terminal animals from 2014 to 2019 were provided by Smithfield Premium Genetics. Two pedigree-based models were compared; model 1 (M1) was a threshold-linear model with all four traits (BW, HCW, RT, and LIV), and model 2 (M2) was a linear model including only BW and HCW. The fixed effects used in the model were contemporary group, sex, age at harvest (for HCW only), and dam parity. The random effects included direct additive genetic and random litter effects. Accuracy, dispersion, bias, and Pearson correlations were estimated using the linear regression method. The heritabilities were 0.11, 0.07, 0.02, and 0.04 for BW, HCW, RT, and LIV, respectively, with standard errors less than 0.01. No difference was observed in heritabilities or accuracies for BW and HCW between M1 and M2. Accuracies were 0.33, 0.37, 0.19, and 0.23 for BW, HCW, RT, and LIV respectively. The genetic correlation between BW and RT was 0.34 ± 0.03, and between BW and LIV was 0.56 ± 0.03. The positive and moderate genetic correlations between BW and other traits imply a heavier BW resulted in a higher probability of surviving to harvest. Despite the heritable and correlated aspects of RT and LIV, results imply no major differences between M1 and M2; hence, it is unnecessary to include these traits in classical models for BW and HCW.


Green extraction process is a method which is used to obtain various plant extracts with minimum impact on the environment. Green extraction will reduce energy consumption, allow use of alternative solvents and renewable natural products, and ensure a safe and high quality extract. Ultrasound-assisted enzymatic extraction (UAEE) is one of green extraction method. UAEE is a mild, efficient and environmental friendly extraction method and it has been adopted for extracting various kinds of compounds. The use of enzyme will catalyze hydrolysis of the cytoderm and glycoproteins, therefore enhancing the release of bioactive substances by disrupting plant cells. The optimum extraction conditions with a maximum yield extract of 48.63% are as follows: the concentration of ethanol is 50% and the amount of added enzyme is 70 mg/g. Crude extract from keji beling leaves is tested using Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) to identify components that have anti-hypercholesterolemic activity, which are hexadecanoic acid, octadecanoic acid and demethyl squalene.


A novel primary object discovery (POD) algorithm, which uses reliable object proposals while exploiting the recurrence property of a primary object in a video sequence, is proposed in this paper. First, we generate both color-based and motion-based object proposals in each frame, and extract the feature of each proposal using the random walk with restart simulation. Next, we estimate the foreground confidence for each proposal to remove unreliable proposals. By superposing the features of the remaining reliable proposals, we construct the primary object models. To this end, we develop the evolutionary primary object modeling technique, which exploits the recurrence property of the primary object. Then, using the primary object models, we choose the main proposal in each frame and find the location of the primary object by merging the main proposal with candidate proposals selectively. Finally, we refine the discovered bounding boxes by exploiting temporal correlations of the recurring primary object. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed POD algorithm significantly outperforms conventional algorithms.


The higher we are, the further we see. From a different angle, we may view the world in a different way. Sometimes, we are unaware that a tiny event can influence a person so deeply that his life would be changed due to it; and that a "big discovery" might in fact have been long known to counterparts in the field. No matter who you ask, a friend, a tutor, a colleague, or a student, they will ask you something they have always wondered. It seems as though we live in a world with a vastness of unknowns and it is a fascinating process to discover them by seeing things from different angles.


Based on the Nacional Households Survey (PNAD), this paper analyzed the employment quality in the Brazilian agriculture and six main crops (rice, coffee, sugarcane, manioc, corn and soybean) in the 2001-2004 period. An Employment Quality Index (EQI) was created for this analysis, based on four dimensions: level of education; degree of job formalization; main job income; and employee benefits. The EQI was calculated for the permanent and temporary workers, considering the local of the households (urban and rural).


Existing works on diffusion fail to account for the incapacitating effects conflict events may have on the operational capability of the combatant sides and how these effects may determine the evolution of a conflict. I hypothesize that it is those events with losses on the state side that are likely to be associated with geo-temporal spillovers, whereas events with insurgency losses are less likely to be associated with future mayhem in their vicinity. To test my arguments, I first introduce a new, comprehensive and detailed event dataset on the long-running civil conflict in Turkey. The Turkish State–PKK Conflict Event Database (TPCONED) includes the exact date and county-level location for the fatal events of the armed conflict between the Turkish state and the rebel organization PKK since its very beginning in 1984 with detailed information on combatant casualties. I then employ a split population bi-probit model which allows me to comprehensively depict the geotemporal evolution of the conflict by acknowledging, estimating and accounting for the variation in the underlying conflict proneness across locations as a latent variable that shapes the diffusion of events. The results of the statistical analyses offer support for my hypotheses and reveal that how events evolve over space and time is conditioned by the damages suffered by the combatant sides. I demonstrate the robustness of these results on a matched sample I obtain by employing the Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) on the data.


A new quantum mechanical scheme to calculate electronic correlation energies, spin-component-scaled MP2, was tested as a tool to predict reaction energies and barriers in computational organic chemistry. Three common pericyclic reactions with known unsatisfactory MP2 descriptions were reinvestigated with the modified MP2 approach, in which the parallel and anti-parallel spin components of the correlation energy are scaled separately. The SCS-MP2 calculated reaction and activation energies of nine Diels-Alder reactions, four [3,3] sigmatropic rearrangements, and ten electrocyclization reactions are compared to those of the MP2, B3 LYP, QCISD(T), and G3 methods. For each, the SCS-MP2 results are in excellent agreement with the experimental data and compare far more favorably to G3 than both MP2 and B3 LYP. Careful evaluation of the effect of the size of the atomic orbital (AO) basis set shows that the larger expansions improve the agreement with experiment for the SCS-MP2 method, while they get worse for both MP2 and B3 LYP.


In Savage Attack: Tribal Insurgency in India the authors ask whether there is anything particularly adivasi about the forms of resistance that have been labelled as adivasi movements. What does it mean to speak about adivasi as opposed to peasant resistance? Can one differentiate adivasi resistance from that of other lower castes such as the dalits? In this volume the authors move beyond stereotypes of tribal rebellion to argue that it is important to explore how and why particular forms of resistance are depicted as adivasi issues at particular points in time. Interpretations that have depicted adivasis as a united and highly politicised group of people have romanticised and demonized tribal society and history, thus denying the individuals and communities involved any real agency. Both the interpretations of the state and of left-wing supporters of tribal insurgencies have continued to ignore the complex realities of tribal life and the variety in the expressions of political activism that have resulted across the length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent.


The clustering of acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) in the post-synaptic membrane of skeletal muscle is an early developmental event in the formation of the neuromuscular junction. Several studies show that laminin, as well as neural agrin, can induce AChR clustering in C2C12 myofibers. We recently showed that specific isoforms of the alpha7beta1 integrin (a receptor normally found at neuromuscular junctions) colocalize and physically interact with AChR clusters in a laminin-dependent fashion. In contrast, induction with agrin alone fails to promote localization of the integrin with AChR clusters. Together both agrin and laminin enhance the interaction of the integrin with AChRs and their aggregation into clusters. To further understand this mechanism we investigated cluster formation and the association of the alpha7beta1 integrin and AChR over time following induction with laminin and/or agrin. Our results show that the alpha7beta1 integrin associates with AChRs early during the formation of the post-synaptic membrane and that laminin modulates this recruitment. Laminin induces a rapid stable association of the integrin and AChRs and this association is independent of clustering. In addition to laminin-1, merosin (laminin-2/4) is present both before and after formation of neuromuscular junctions and also promotes AChR clustering and colocalization with the integrin as well as synergism with agrin. Using site directed mutagenesis we demonstrate that a tyrosine residue in the cytoplasmic domain of both (&agr;)7A and (&agr;)7B chains regulates the localization of the integrin with AChR clusters. We also provide evidence that laminin, through its association with the alpha7beta1 integrin, reduces by 20-fold the concentration of agrin required to promote AChR clustering and accelerates the formation of clusters. Thus laminin, agrin and the alpha7beta1 integrin act in a concerted manner early in the development of the post-synaptic membrane, with laminin priming newly formed myofibers to rapidly and vigorously respond to low concentrations of neural agrin produced by innervating motor neurons.


In this paper we develop a functional programming language for quantum computers by extending the simply-typed lambda calculus with quantum types and operations. The design of this language adheres to the 'quantum data, classical control' paradigm, following the first author's work on quantum flow-charts. We define a call-by-value operational semantics, and give a type system using affine intuitionistic linear logic. The main results of this paper are the safety properties of the language and the development of a type inference algorithm.


[full article in English]
When teaching, many educators must respond to unruly and disruptive students. While most scholarship on student disruption focuses on classroom management strategies and tactics, few studies consider the nature of the disruption, its ideological significance and the social consequences that follows. Via ethnographic methods and microethnographic discourse analysis, this paper examines the complexity and contradictions of macro- and microstructures as they manifest during a student's disruption of a classroom discussion of a novel in an 11th and 12th grade English Language Arts class in the United States. Using Bakhtin's notion of carnival as a theoretical framework, this paper examines the pattern of disruption in the classroom that evoked multiple and contradictory ideologies and both maintained and subverted power structures in the context. Contrary to the belief that classroom disruptions are always challenges to power, they sometimes reinforced power relations on a broader cultural level. This paper urges that research and scholarship embrace complexity and contradiction as inherent in the interactions of people in schools and seeks to rethink how educators view and respond to classroom disruption. It concludes by advocating that embracing complexity and contradiction will better allow teachers and researchers to think through systems of education as a way to effectively and ethically intervene when these structures prove problematic.


We think of critical humility as a way of being that includes a reflective practice that can help white people develop capacity to interrupt white privilege effectively. We describe the experiential sessions that we facilitated as all-day institutes at the White Privilege Conference (WPC) beginning in 2008 and continuing to the upcoming conference in 2012. The purpose of our experiential institute is to give white people an opportunity to learn about critical humility. The purpose of this paper is to provide enough information about each experiential activity in the institute so that others can use our work for their own purposes.


The DNA sequence of the second hypervariable region of the mitochondrial control region of the Neandertal type specimen, found in 1856 in central Europe, has been determined from 92 clones derived from eight overlapping amplifications performed from four independent extracts. When the reconstructed sequence is analyzed together with the previously determined DNA sequence from the first hypervariable region, the Neandertal mtDNA is found to fall outside a phylogenetic tree relating the mtDNAs of contemporary humans. The date of divergence between the mtDNAs of the Neandertal and contemporary humans is estimated to 465,000 years before the present, with confidence limits of 317,000 and 741,000 years. Taken together, the results support the concept that the Neandertal mtDNA evolved separately from that of modern humans for a substantial amount of time and lends no support to the idea that they contributed mtDNA to contemporary modern humans.


The automatic detection of particular objects, characterized by specific textures in digital images, is usually obtained employing a standard classifier. It firstly discriminates among different feature values associated to different textures in the same image, and then it assigns these values to some respective belonging classes. Thus, the process of extracting the feature values is a very critical task, affecting the final level of recognition in the same classifier. Here, some optimal feature functions are introduced. These functions are computed on their respective cooccurrence matrices associated to the image blocks, and are characterized in: increasing the distance between the distributions of feature values and, at the same time, decreasing the width of possible regions of overlapping. That leads to a significant improvement in the "level of separation" of the classes associated to the source information and, consequently, to a significant improvement in the global classifier performance.


This article interrogates the processes and politics of standard setting in human rights. It traces the history of the human rights project and critically explores how the norms of the human rights movement have been created. This article looks at how those norms are made, who makes them, and why. It focuses attention on the deficits of the international order, and how that order—which is defined by multiple asymmetries—determines the norms and the purposes they serve. It identifies areas for further norm development and concludes that norm-creating processes must be inclusive and participatory to garner legitimacy across various divides.


Background. The mass media plays an important role in public health behavior. Purpose. The objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of mass media coverage of the H1N1 pandemic on the number of emergency department (ED) visits and hospital admission rates. Methods. An ecological study of ED visits to 8 general Israeli hospitals due to influenza-like illness during the period June–October 2009 was performed. Data on the number of visits per day for children and adults and daily hospitalization rates were analyzed. Associations with the estimated value of H1N1-related publications and weekly reports from nationwide sentinel clinics were assessed. The analysis was performed in 2012–2013. Results. There were 55,070 ED visits due to influenza-like illness during the study period. The overall number of media reports was 1,812 (14.3% radio broadcasts, 9.8% television broadcasts, 27.5% newspaper articles, and 48.5% major website reports). The overall estimated value of advertising of publications was $16,399,000, excluding the Internet. While H1N1 incidence recorded by Israeli sentinel clinics showed no association with mass media publications, peaks of media reports were followed by an increase in the number of ED visits, usually with a delay of 3 days (P = .005). This association was noted in children (P < .001) but not in adults (P > .1), with a corresponding decrease in hospital admission rates. Publications' framing had no association with ED visits. Conclusions. During the 2009 H1N1 influenza outbreak in Israel, an increase in mass media coverage was associated with an increase in pediatric ED visits. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2014;35(6):709–716


Antiserum against bovine retinal S-antigen, a soluble protein (MW = 50 kDa) thought to be involved in phototransduction, was used in an immunohistochemical and immunochemical study of vertebrate eyes and pineal systems and invertebrate photoreceptor organs. Positive reactions, not seen with antiserum preabsorbed with highly purified S-antigen, were observed in planarian and starfish ocelli; scallop eyes; polychaete eye; crayfish compound eye; lamprey, salmon, frog, turtle, quail and hamster eyes. A specific reaction was also seen in the pineal organ of all the vertebrates examined, albeit weak in turtle and quail. In addition, several structures associated with photoreceptor organs, including the reduced frontal eyes of crayfish, the organ of Bellonci in crayfish eyestalk, and bipolar cells resembling those giving rise to Landolt's clubs in quail and golden hamster retinae, were immunopositive. Immunochemical studies revealed the presence of a single immunopositive band of protein which was similar but not identical in size in all vertebrate eyes and pineal organs (except that of chicken pineal) and invertebrate tissue examined. The wide distribution of positive reaction in photoreceptive tissue indicates that the retinal S-antigen determinant has been highly conserved during evolution.


In this paper, the effect of maternal health on the under-five mortality has been examined. Third wave of micro-level National Family Health Survey 2005-06 data for rural India is used. Using various alternative measures of maternal health, the paper finds strong association between maternal health and child mortality. In particular, the effects of maternal height, weight, presence of any disease and anemia are found significant. Based on our findings, we argue that if the possible generational transfer of poor health from a mother to her child has to avoid, policies aimed at attaining the millennium development goal of reduced child mortality should be directed on improving the health of existing and future mothers.


Incretin hormones are insulinotropic hormones from the intestinal mucosa, which after being released in response to ingestion of a meal, enhance insulin secretion in excess of that elicited by the absorbed nutrients (glucose. amino acids etc) themselves. To day it is well established that the most important incretin hormones are glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP, previously known as gastric inhibitory polypeptide) and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) from the upper and lower small intestinal mucosa, respectively. It has been shown that interference with the incretin function causes glucose intolerance and it has also been shown that the incretin function is greatly impaired in type 2 diabetes mellitus. The reason for this seems to be twofold: an impaired secretion of GLP-1 and a severely impaired insulinotropic effect of GIP in these patients. In agreement with this, administration of the active incretin, GLP-1, to patients with type 2 diabetes may nearly normalise their fasting and postprandial hyperglycaemia. In addition to its insulinotropic effects, GLP-1 has been shown to stimulate the formation of new beta cells in rodents, partly by enhanced beta cell proliferation and partly by enhancing differentiation of duct progenitor cells to mature beta cells. GLP-1 also inhibits glucagon secretion, inhibits gastric emptying and reduces appetite and food intake. During the last years, therefore, several most promising attempts have been made to develop GLP-1 into a clinically useful therapeutic agent for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.


Studies have incorporated trade and energy as determinants of emissions in the environmental Kuznets curve model to mitigate carbon emissions. These studies mostly focused on the overall trade without regard to goods trade that is more polluting. To this end, this study used a panel of African countries and investigate the role of goods trade and energy in generating carbon emissions. We utilized random coefficients and the generalised method of moment. Our findings confirmed the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. Findings further indicate that trade increases emissions and there exists evidence of non-linear nexus between trade and emissions. The composition effect increases emissions, but the effect is not robust to different estimates. Energy increases emissions, and the indirect effect of trade through energy revealed no evidence that trade has allowed Africa the use of an energy-efficient technique of production which reduces carbon emissions. Findings also confirmed the existence of income and factor abundance pollution haven hypothesis. Therefore, trade and energy should be considered in emissions mitigation policy.


The aim of this study was to investigate the plasticity of M1 innervating the tibialis anterior muscle (TA) induced by the long-term practice of football juggling using a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) technique. Ten football juggling experts and ten novices participated in this study. Motor evoked potentials (MEP) and the H-reflex were recorded from the right TA during isometric dorsiflexion at 10% of maximum voluntary contraction. The MEP input-output curve of the experts was steeper than that of the novices, and reduced short-interval intracortical inhibition and long-interval intracortical inhibition were observed in the experts. In contrast, the ratio of Hmax to Mmax did not differ between the groups. Our results show that football juggling experts displayed enhanced excitability in the M1 innervating the TA, which was induced by the long-term practice of the ankle movements required to perform football juggling well.


: A relatively new approach to measure health status is to use non-parametric frontier methods, based on index and production theory. The purpose of this study is to construct and investigate some properties of a non-parametric health status index. The index is based on a non-radial efficiency measure obtained from a non-parametric health characteristics frontier model. The paper includes an empirical application where the health status index is applied to Swedish data from a menopause clinic. The data is collected using the health status profile part of the EuroQol questionnaire. Quality weights are obtained using the time trade-off and visual analogue scale approaches. Correlations between the health status index and quality weights are analysed. The results show that the health status index is significantly correlated both with the rating scale and the time trade-off scores.


A person falling of a ship can be difficult to locate since the wake behind the ship forms achaotic field, making it extremely difficult to predict the location of the victim even if thetime when they fell overboard is known. Survivability for humans immersed at sea is verydependent on the time spent in the water, and varies significantly with sea temperature; thismakes it imperative that the victim is retrieved rapidly. Our current research is aimed atreducing this time using several UAV's searching the ships wake simultaneously, as a swarm.Since the wake is chaotic, a simulation was developed to model different random motions of avictim based on a chaotic equation. Our current research is making use of an establishedsimulator environment and developing it further to investigate how different platforms mayaffect rescue time, varying on the size of the ship, the weather conditions and whether thesearch is operated during day or night. Two different search strategies were implemented inthe developed simulator; these are Expanding Square search and Parallel search. An overallconclusion based on the results obtained is that the expanding square search tends to be amore rigid and reliable search strategy. Also the results show that for any scenario, the soughtperson is detected within minutes.


Pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation are connected to the physical and psychological well-being of women and the infant after delivery. Taking into consideration the need to build evidence for music therapy, this review explains the mechanism from the bio-psycho-immunological dimensions of stress and its consequences for women during pregnancy, labour and post-partum. The use of music as a correlate to stress and its consequences during the perinatal, prenatal, and postnatal process of pregnancy has been in research for more than 5 decades, yet there is no concrete understanding in that direction. India is culturally and musically rich with many traditional healing systems. Bringing them into the Music has an inside out effect and can be included in the mind-body concept. This paper discusses music in the Indian context that connects the body & mind as well as the traditional uses of music from a therapeutic view, and finally, the need for further research to bring forth evidence-based music therapy within healthcare.


BackgroundAs everyone knows, the pandemic COVID-19 is spreading in the whole world. The number of laboratory-confirmed cases reached 28,637,211 and that of the death cases was 917,404 in the world as of September 13 th , 2020. We sought to analyse the clinical characteristics, laboratory findings and therapy of some cases with COVID-19.MethodsIn this retrospective study, we extracted the data on 134 patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 in Wuhan Xinzhou District People's Hospital from January 16 th to April 24 th , 2020. Cases were confirmed by real-time RT-PCR and abnormal radiologic findings. Outcomes were followed up until May 1 th , 2020.ResultsCo-infection and severe underlying diseases made it easier for a case with COVID-19 to develop to be a severe one or reach an outcome of death. Age above 60 years old, male and symptoms such as fever, cough, chest tightness, headaches and fatigue were related to severe COVID-19 and an outcome of death. In addition, higher temperature, blood leukocyte count, neutrophil count, C-reactive protein level, D-dimer level, alanine aminotransferase activity, aspartate aminotransferase activity, α -hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase activity, lactate dehydrogenase activity and creatine kinase activity were also related to severe COVID-19 and an outcome of death, and so was lower lymphocyte count. Administration of gamma globulin seemed helpful for reducing the mortality of patients with severe COVID-19, however the P value was greater than 0.05 (P=0.180), which mean under the same condition, studies of larger samples are needed in the future.ConclusionMultiple factors were related to severe COVID-19 and an outcome of death. Administration of gamma globulin seemed helpful for reducing the mortality of severe cases. More related studies are needed in the future.


A number of authors have argued that only an aquatic-based diet can provide the necessary quantity of DHA to support the human brain, and that a switch to such a diet early in hominin evolution was critical to human brain evolution. This paper identifies the premises behind this hypothesis and critiques them on the basis of clinical literature. Both tissue levels and certain functions of the developing infant brain are sensitive to extreme variations in the supply of DHA in artificial feeding, and it can be shown that levels in human milk reflect maternal diet. However, both the maternal and infant bodies have mechanisms to store and buffer the supply of DHA, so that functional deficits are generally resolved without compensatory diets. There is no evidence that human diets based on terrestrial food chains with traditional nursing practices fail to provide adequate levels of DHA or othern-3 fatty acids. Consequently, the hypothesis that DHA has been a limiting resource in human brain evolution must be considered to be unsupported.


TInternationalizing a company is an objective process. The historical reality shows that, while developing, the company tends to exceed its local, national and regional limits of business environment, in order to expand its activity into the global economic space, whose formatting is possible through the very company's movement towards exterior. This process is based on the imminent expansionism of the market forces, their tendencies to invade the environment "unmarketedly", and to include it in an economic system based on the market mechanism. Companies involve themselves in the international production because they have a specific competitive advantage which is best exploited in this way. The advantage can consist in a product or in a brevetted technique, but it may also include management techniques or such as: company's or its employee's qualification and expertise.