The focus of this research narrative is children's perceptions of social class and their experiences of poverty as a social identity. Participatory action research that includes narrative reflection is demonstrated for its capacity and potential as a source of agency that may contribute to youths' academic, social, and political emancipation. In this research we analyze perceptions and attitudes about social class as these perceptions and attitudes are expressed by a group of children who are economically poor and who reside in an urban area in the Pacific Northwest. Our purpose has been to engage our students in a transformative educational process, with the further intention of deepening students' understandings of their own power to act in the world, or to "write their own futures" This readers' theater narrative has been scripted from personal, cultural texts that the co-authors (Susan and Morgan) selected from young people's writing in response to reading Charles Dickens' Hard Times and other period literature. The research takes place in the context of the At Home At School (AHAS) program at Washington State University Vancouver, directed by Susan Finley and where Morgan Parker is an undergraduate research assistant.


Objective: Acute kidney injury is independently associated with poor outcomes in critically ill children. However, the main biomarker of acute kidney injury, serum creatinine, is a late marker of injury and can cause a delay in diagnosis. Our goal was to develop and validate a data-driven multivariable clinical prediction model of acute kidney injury in a general PICU using electronic health record data. Design: Derivation and validation of a prediction model using retrospective data. Patients: All patients 1 month to 21 years old admitted between May 2003 and March 2015 without acute kidney injury at admission and alive and in the ICU for at least 24 hours. Setting: A multidisciplinary, tertiary PICU. Intervention: The primary outcome was early acute kidney injury, which was defined as new acute kidney injury developed in the ICU within 72 hours of admission. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to derive the Pediatric Early AKI Risk Score using electronic health record data from the first 12 hours of ICU stay. Measurements and Main Results: A total of 9,396 patients were included in the analysis, of whom 4% had early acute kidney injury, and these had significantly higher mortality than those without early acute kidney injury (26% vs 3.3%; p < 0.001). Thirty-three candidate variables were tested. The final model had seven predictors and had good discrimination (area under the curve 0.84) and appropriate calibration. The model was validated in two validation sets and maintained good discrimination (area under the curves, 0.81 and 0.86). Conclusion: We developed and validated the Pediatric Early AKI Risk Score, a data-driven acute kidney injury clinical prediction model that has good discrimination and calibration in a general PICU population using only electronic health record data that is objective, available in real time during the first 12 hours of ICU care and generalizable across PICUs. This prediction model was designed to be implemented in the form of an automated clinical decision support system and could be used to guide preventive, therapeutic, and research strategies.


The prevention of Diabetic Mellitus (DM) and its complications is the main aim of this study, in addition to the training of lotion foot care application and the development of small scale industry. The research team delivered knowledge in the form of training on Diabetic Mellitus, healthy food, treatment and prevention of complications, and small-scale production of cosmetic products. The aim of this study was to determine the correlation between training on diabetic and lotion foot care application as preventive measures against diabetic complications on the patient's blood glucose levels in the community of residents in Banyuurip Jaya, Surabaya. It was expected from this training that the knowledge of the residents increases and people living with diabetic undergo lifestyle changes and therefore blood sugar levels can be controlled. The parameters measured in this research were blood glucose levels, the anti diabetic drug types consumed, and compliance on diabetics. This study used the data taken from 60 patients with DM over a period of one month.
Questionnaires and log books was used to retrieve data and changes in blood glucose levels in diabetic patients. The results showed the demographic data of patients with type 2 diabetic of 85% female and 15% male, with the range of patients aged of 61-70 years of 46.67% and had history of diabetic (90%). The history of drugs consumed by respondents was anti diabetic drugs such as metformin (40%), glimepiride (33.37%) and insulin (6.67%). In addition, the increased knowledge of DM patients after being given the training compared to before training was shown in several questions in the questionnaire. A statistical analysis using t-test analyzed a correlation between training provided in order to enhance understanding of the patient, as well as correlation with blood glucose levels. A paired T-test showed that there was a relationship between the knowledge of trainees before and after training (p less than 0.05). An interesting result was that there was no relationship between blood glucose levels before and after training provided (p> 0.05).


Note: "Careful with that Gun: Lee, George, Wax, and Geach on Gay Rights and Same-Sex Marriage" has been revised. Please see "Judging the Case Against Same-Sex Marriage" at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2257557.Many Americans think that homosexual sex is morally wrong and oppose same-sex marriage. Philosophers trying to defend these views have relied on two strategies. One is to claim that such sex is wrong irrespective of consequences: there is something intrinsic to sex that makes it only licit when it takes place within a heterosexual marriage (in which there is no contraception or possibility of divorce). Patrick Lee and Robert P. George have developed and clarified this claim. The second strategy focuses on consequences: the baleful effects on heterosexual families of societal tolerance for homosexuality. Amy Wax (who is not a clear opponent of same-sex marriage, but who is worried by it) has tried to array evidence to support the second. Mary Geach has developed a novel hybrid, relying on the second argument to support the first one. Both strategies fail. The first cannot show that the intrinsic goodness of sex is at once (a) derived from its reproductive character and (b) present in the coitus of married couples who know themselves to be infertile, but not present in any sex act other than heterosexual marital coitus. As for evidence of bad consequences of tolerance of homosexuality, the evidence is all the other way.


We explore the possibility of constructing a string model of the early Universe. Our model assumes an intuitive picture of the string era of the Universe, the dominance of a single long string, as suggested by string thermodynamics. We argue that, irrespectively of the precise initial condition, the system evolves such that it approaches the scaling era in which the long string, the loops, and the radiation coexist with roughly equal weight. The scenario is based on the notion of the scaling solution obtained in the study of the evolution of a cosmic-string network. Unlike the cosmic-string case, however, there exist self-consistency conditions one of which relates the motion of the string in a classical background geometry to the structure of space-time itself. The other determines the effective number of light degrees of freedom for given fundamental constants in string theory. Interestingly, our scenario offers an explanation of the origin of cosmic entropy: it has been stored in the complex structure of the cosmic fundamental string.


Background: A new classification called OXIS was proposed for categorising the interproximal contacts of primary molars, and its prevalence was established. The aim of this study was to establish the variations in interproximal contacts of primary canines and thereby modify the OXIS classification of primary molars to primary canines. Additionally, we aimed to estimate the applicability of modifications to primary anterior teeth. Methods: A retrospective study was conducted with sectional die models obtained from a previous study of 1,090 caries-free children. Two calibrated examiners evaluated a total of 4,674 contacts from the occlusal aspect. The contacts were scored according to the former OXIS classification, with two modifications incorporated to encompass the morphological differences and rotations of primary canines and other primary anterior teeth. Results: The most prevalent contact was O (62.1%), followed by X (19.6%), I (12.6%), S type I (4.1%), and S type II (1.6%). Inter-arch comparison by means of the Chi-square test revealed significant differences for all types of contacts ( P < .001). Conclusions: The interproximal contacts of canines were categorised as O, X, I, S I, and S II. The OXIS classification of primary molars was modified to befit the variations in primary canines. This study showed the presence of different types of contacts in primary canines. Identification of these contacts and their complexity has warranted a need for this to be studied as an inherent risk factor for caries risk assessment.


Influences of Ni impurity on the removability of primary scale in hydraulic descaling were investigated in 0.02 and 0.1 mass% Si mild steels. And the thickness distribution of residual scale was discussed in relation to the unevenness of the scale/steel interface. The removability of primary scale reduced due to the existence of Ni impurity ranging to 0.05 mass% in each steel. With an increase in Si content up to 0.1 mass%, the removability of Ni added steels showed heating temperature dependence between 1 150 and 1 250°C. The existence of Ni impurity made the scale/steel interface of steel uneven. Estimating the unevenness of the interface by measuring the interface length, it was found that the austenite transgranular unevenness governs the change in the total interface length rather than the oxide invasion into austenite grain boundaries. A reduction of scale removability caused by Ni impurity was explained by the increased interface length. In spite of the large difference in scale removability between 0.02 and 0.1 mass% Si steels containing more than 0.05 mass% Ni, the unevenness of the scale/steel interface was the identical with each other. Therefore, the temperature dependence of the scale removability in Ni added 0.1 mass% Si steel was not explained by this factor. Other mechanisms concerning fayalite formation and its morphology should be taken into account for this behavior.


INTRODUCTION
The aim of this study was to examine the level of lucidity and its relation with metacognitive beliefs and dream anxiety in medical students.

METHODS
Nine hundred sixteen medical students were enrolled in the study. The participants were assessed with the Lucidity and Consciousness in Dreams Scale (LuCiD), the Metacognition Questionnaire-30 (MCQ-30), and the Van Dream Anxiety Scale (VDAS).

RESULTS
There was no significant difference in mean total lucidity score between females and males, but there were some significant sex differences in subscales of lucidity, and control was significantly higher in male students, while realism, thought, and dissociation were significantly higher in female students. In addition, females had more dream anxiety levels, higher total MCQ-30 scores, and higher cognitive confidence and uncontrollability scores according to Metacognition Questionnaire-30 than males. We also found that the mean lucidity level was positively correlated with the mean total metacognition score and the mean total dream anxiety level.

DISCUSSION
Our results suggest that female medical students tend to have more realistic dreams (p=0.018), have more logical thoughts during dreaming (p=0.011), and have a more dissociative experience during dreaming (p=0.028), while male medical students have more controlled dream events (p=0.002). There seem to be differences according to lucidity features between sexes, and the relationship between subdomains of lucidity and metacognition might lead to new therapeutic approaches to several psychiatric disorders such as anxiety disorders.


Over the last years, a number of methods have been proposed to automatically learn and optimize fuzzy rule bases from data. The obtained rule bases are usually robust and allow an interpretation even for data sets that contains imprecise or uncertain information. However, most of the proposed methods are still restricted to learn and/or optimize single layer feed-forward rule bases. The main disadvantages of this architecture are that the complexity of the rule base increases exponentially with the number of input and output variables and that the system is not able to store and reuse information of the past. Thus temporal dependencies have to be encoded in every data pattern. In this article we briefly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of hierarchical recurrent fuzzy systems that tackle these problems. Furthermore, we present a neuro-fuzzy model that has been designed to learn and optimize hierarchical recurrent fuzzy rule bases from data.


The hemoglobin of sea worm Amphitrite ornata, which for historical reasons is abbreviated as DHP for dehaloperoxidase, has two physiological functions: it binds dioxygen in the ferrous state and dehalogenates halophenols, such as 2,4,6-trichlorophenol (TCP), using hydrogen peroxide as the oxidant in the ferric state. The crystal structures of three DHP variants (Y34N, Y34N/S91G, and L100F) with TCP bound show two mutually exclusive modes of substrate binding. One of them, the internal site, is deep inside the distal pocket with the phenolic OH moiety forming a hydrogen bond to the water molecule coordinated to the heme Fe. In this complex, the distal histidine is predominantly located in the closed position and also forms a hydrogen bond to the phenolic hydroxide. The second mode of TCP binding is external, at the heme edge, with the halophenol molecule forming a lid covering the entrance to the distal cavity. The distal histidine is in the open position and forms a hydrogen bond to the OH group of TCP, which also hydrogen bonds to the hydroxyl of Tyr38. The distance between the Cl4 atom of TCP and the heme Fe is 3.9 Å (nonbonding). In both complexes, TCP molecules prevent the approach of hydrogen peroxide to the heme, indicating that the complexes are inhibitory and implying that the substrates must bind in an ordered fashion: hydrogen peroxide first and TCP second. Kinetic studies confirmed the inhibition of DHP by high concentrations of TCP. The external binding mode may resemble the interaction of TCP with Compound I, the catalytic intermediate to which halophenols bind. The measured values of the apparent Km for TCP were in the range of 0.3-0.8 mM, much lower than the concentrations required to observe TCP binding in crystals. This indicates that during catalysis TCP binds to Compound I. Mutant F21W, which likely has the internal TCP binding site blocked, has ~7% of the activity of wild-type DHP.


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[Rh(P2N2)X] complexes (2-X, X = Cl, BF4) featuring a tetradentate iminophosphorane phosphine ligand were synthesised and characterised. X-Ray analysis provides evidence for a square planar geometry without coordination of the chloride anion. These complexes proved to be air-sensitive, and their oxidation to Rh(III) complexes 3-X was observed in air. The controlled reaction of 2-BF4 with one equivalent of hexachloroethane yielded [Rh(P2N2)Cl2(BF4)] (3-BF4). Direct synthesis of 3-Cl can also be achieved by coordination of the [P2N2] ligand to [RhCl(THT)3] (THT = tetrahydrothiophene). The reactivity of Rh(I) complexes 2 was further investigated, and no reaction was observed with silanes, aryl halides, or pinacolborane, although decomposition was observed under 1 atm of H2 upon prolonged heating. Interestingly, reduction of complex 3-Cl was observed by NMR upon treatment with silanes or sodium isopropoxide. Therefore, complex 3-Cl was used for catalytic transfer hydrogenation of polar bonds. The reduction of aromatic and aliphatic ketones can be carried out using 1% catalyst and 10% sodium isopropoxide, while imines are partially reduced under these conditions.


This article is focused on Swedish folk high schools and study associations as organisational settings (and not explicitly at teaching efforts and educational activities). It concerns results from a research project about introducing and implementing information and communication technology (ICT) in these value based organisations. Our research has mainly been conducted through interviews with people engaged on different organisational levels. In this article empirical results are analysed in relation to actor-network theory (ANT). Human and non-human actors are linked together in a web of relationships referred to as an actor-network. Interaction among actors, contradictory roles of ICT and relations to essential values in these organisations are discussed.


ABSTRACTWeanling male Fischer (F), Long-Evans (LE), and Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were fed a semi-purified basal diet or a 20% cabbage diet for 3 and 4 weeks. Hepatic polysubstrate mono oxygenase (FSM) activity was measured. Significant strain differences were found in aniline hydroxylase and p-nitrophenol O-demethylase activities. Aniline hydroxylase and NADPH cytochrome c reductase activities were significantly decreased in all strains after 4 weeks of cabbage dietary treatment. F and LE rats consuming the cabbage diets also had significantly reduced O-demethylase activity after 4 weeks. Except in LE, aminopyrine N-demethylase activity tended to be elevated in the strains consuming the cabbage diets. Cabbage diets increased testes weight in SD and thyroid weights in LE rats. All strains showed decreased thymus weights in the cabbage dietary treatments. This study with rats shows that hepatic PSM activities, as well as some organ changes due to dietary cabbage are strain dependent.


In this paper we study the formal relationship between testing preorder/equivalences for a behavioural subset of UML Statechart Diagrams and a conformance relation for implementations with respect to specifications given using such diagrams. We study the impact of stuttering on the above mentioned relationship. In the context of UMLSDs, stuttering occurs when no transition of the UMLSD is enabled by the current event in the current (global) state of the underlying state-machine. We consider both the case in which the semantics underlying the testing relations does not model stuttering explicitly - we call it the non-stuttering semantics - and the case in which it does it - i.e. the stuttering semantics. We show that in the first case the conformance relation is stronger than the reverse of the MUST preorder and, consequently, stronger than the MAY preorder. Much more interesting results can be proven in the second case, possibly under proper conditions on the sets of events under consideration. In fact the conformance relation is shown to coincide with the MAY preorder, and thus be implied by the reverse MUST preorder. Finally, we show important substitutivity properties which hold in the case of stuttering semantics.


Regulatory Factor X (RFX) is a protein containing a characteristic DNA binding domain that is called RFX domain. Members of the RFX family are known to be present in human, mouse, Drosophila, Caenorhabditis elegans, Schizosaccharomyces pombe and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Two RFX proteins, Drosophila RFX (dRFX) and dRFX2 have been identified in Drosophila so far. It is known that dRFX is involved in the differentiation of central and peripheral nerves, while dRFX2 is essential to the cell cycle progression and it may be involved in regulation of apoptosis. A novel protein, dRFX3 carrying RFX domain was identified by a Drosophila genome database search. dRFX3 is a likely homolog to the human RFX5, because of a significant sequence similarity in RFX domains between these two proteins. Two lines of transgenic fly carrying the HA-dRFX3 cDNA were established. Adult flies expressing dRFX3 specifically in the eye and the wing imaginal discs exhibited severe rough eye and atrophied wing phenotypes, respectively. 5-Bromo-2'-deoxyuridine incorporation assays and the immunological detection using anti-Cyclin B antibody indicated that the overexpression of dRFX3 in the eye imaginal discs exerted no effect on the cell cycle progressions. On the other hand, overexpression of dRFX3 in the eye imaginal discs interfered with the differentiation of R2/R5 photoreceptor cells and also induced apoptosis. These data suggest that the dRFX3 plays a negative role for the differentiation of R2/R5 photoreceptor cells and plays a positive role in the regulation of apoptosis.


The paper presents the results of a survey conducted in the high schools of Calarasi county. The purpose is to estimate the education option of the future graduates. The survey was conducted on a stratified sample, of 630 future graduates of 7 high schools in Călărasi county. In order to inform closer to reality, the design of the questionnaire sought to identify options for the University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Bucharest, following the evaluation by the pupils, of the group of university education offers. Almost all, of 96.7 % of pupils expressed their intention to continue their studies in the higher education, most of them continuing the tradition of the past years, to direct their options to the economic education, respectively 31%. The school population was divided into five layers, depending on the number of graduates registered in the University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Bucharest, in the academic year 2014/2015. The demand for the University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Bucharest represents 27% of the demand for the public education, most of them coming from the high schools with agricultural and economic profile. In order to improve the promotion strategy, along with the options estimation, the investigation aimed also to identify the main reasons for the choice made and to highlight the main sources of information. Analyzing the distribution of reasons, we found out that the first reasons are: good training, existing specializations, internships abroad, providing accommodation.


In this work, structural stability and thermal transformation of Pt-Sn bimetallic nano clusters are studied by molecular dynamics simulations, combined with the modified embedded atom method. For a more accurate description of the interatomic interactions, new Modified Embedded Atom Method alloying parameters for Pt-Sn are derived based on ab initio density functional theory calculations. The calculated Gibbs free energies of formation show that all kinds of structures are energetically favorable and the most stable structure is solid solution cluster, and then the core/shell, and eutectic-like cluster. For whatever compositions the eutectic-like clusters must transform into one pure Sn cluster and one Pt core/Sn shell cluster up to certain temperature during heating process, the Sn coverage on Pt core is dependent on its composition. For solid solution and Pt core/Sn shell or Sn core/Pt shell, once the structure forms, it can keep basically unchanged from the point of view of elemental distribution. Surface segregation is not apparent observed.


AIM
This paper is a report of an assessment of the construct validity of the Chinese version of the Edinburgh Feeding Evaluation in Dementia scale.

BACKGROUND
The Edinburgh Feeding Evaluation in Dementia scale has previously been translated and back-translated and to determine the equality of the Chinese and English versions. However, the construct validity of the Chinese version has not been investigated.

METHODS
Participants (n = 477) were selected from residents with dementia in licensed long-term care facilities in Taiwan in 2006-2007. Data collectors received training before observing feeding for 2 days during lunch and dinner. Data were analysed using principal component analysis, Mokken scaling and correlation.

FINDINGS
A two-factor structure was demonstrated for the 11 items of the Chinese version of the scale and six items conformed to a Mokken scale. The Chinese version of the scale correlated with external constructs such as weight and body mass index, as predicted by the unmet needs model.

CONCLUSION
A confirmatory factor analysis is needed to confirm that the Chinese version measures the same qualities, in the same proportions, and with the same factor structure as the original Edinburgh Feeding Evaluation in Dementia scale.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the effect of pilocarpine on the salivary peptide and protein profile in patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome (SS) and to study the differences between patients with primary SS, patients with SS associated with other rheumatic diseases, and healthy control subjects.

METHODS
Saliva specimens were obtained from 9 primary SS patients, 9 secondary SS patients, and 10 healthy controls. Samples were analyzed for levels of 62 different salivary proteins using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry using a spectrometer equipped with an electrospray ionization source. In 6 of the primary SS patients, saliva was collected at 30 minutes, 60 minutes, and 24 hours after taking 5 mg of pilocarpine.

RESULTS
Before pilocarpine, approximately 60% of salivary proteins in samples from primary SS patients were not identifiable or showed lower levels than those in healthy controls. After 30-60 minutes following pilocarpine treatment, approximately one-third of the less represented proteins was found in a similar percentage of primary SS patients and controls. Almost all of the proteins that were detectable at lower levels in primary SS patients compared with controls reached levels similar to those in controls at 30-60 minutes after pilocarpine. The parotid gland proteins had the best response to pilocarpine. Primary SS patients were characterized by higher alpha-defensin 1 levels and by the presence of beta-defensin 2. Secondary SS patients showed an intermediate protein profile between that of the primary SS patients and the controls.

CONCLUSION
Pilocarpine partially restored the levels and numbers of identifiable proteins in saliva from patients with primary SS. Higher levels of alpha-defensin 1 and the presence of beta-defensin 2 in the saliva of patients with primary SS could be markers of oral inflammation in this patient group.


The relation between striatal dopamine D2 receptor binding and aging was investigated in rhesus monkeys with PET. Monkeys (n = 18, 39 to 360 months of age) were scanned with 11C-raclopride; binding potential in the striatum was estimated graphically. Because our magnetic resonance imaging analysis revealed a concomitant relation between size of striatum and age, the dynamic positron emission tomography (PET) data were corrected for possible partial volume (PV) artifacts before parameter estimation. The age-related decline in binding potential was 1% per year and was smaller than the apparent effect if the age-related change in size was ignored. This is the first in vivo demonstration of a decline in dopamine receptor binding in nonhuman primates. The rate of decline in binding potential is consistent with in vitro findings in monkeys but smaller than what has been measured previously in humans using PET. Previous PET studies in humans, however, have not corrected for PV error, although a decline in striatal size with age has been demonstrated. The results of this study suggest that PV correction must be applied to PET data to accurately detect small changes in receptor binding that may occur in parallel with structural changes in the brain.


Spatial quantum optics and quantum information based on the high order transverse mode are of importance for the super-resolution measurement beyond the quantum noise level. We demonstrated experimentally the transverse plane TEM01 Hermite—Gauss quantum squeezing. The squeezed TEM01 mode is generated in a degenerate optical parametric amplifier with the nonlinear crystal of periodically poled KTiOPO4. The level of 2.2-dB squeezing is measured using a spatial balance homodyne detection system.


Aerogel is regarded as one kind of super thermal insulation materials which could be large-scalely used as building materials. However, the aerogel's production cost and poor mechanical property limit the its applications. In this paper, we put forward a new low cost way to produce a novel building thermal insulation material: synthesized the aerogel within the expanded perlite's pores, and using sodium silicate as precursor without adopting supercritical fluid drying and surface modification. The thermal conductivity of expanded perlite was successfully decreased after modified by aerogel.


Pluripotent epiblast (EPI) cells, present in the inner cell mass (ICM) of the mouse blastocyst, are progenitors of both embryonic stem (ES) cells and the fetus. Discovering how pluripotency genes regulate cell fate decisions in the blastocyst provides a valuable way to understand how pluripotency is normally established. EPI cells are specified by two consecutive cell fate decisions. The first decision segregates ICM from trophectoderm (TE), an extraembryonic cell type. The second decision subdivides ICM into EPI and primitive endoderm (PE), another extraembryonic cell type. Here, we investigate the roles and regulation of the pluripotency gene Sox2 during blastocyst formation. First, we investigate the regulation of Sox2 patterning and show that SOX2 is restricted to ICM progenitors prior to blastocyst formation by members of the HIPPO pathway, independent of CDX2, the TE transcription factor that restricts Oct4 and Nanog to the ICM. Second, we investigate the requirement for Sox2 in cell fate specification during blastocyst formation. We show that neither maternal (M) nor zygotic (Z) Sox2 is required for blastocyst formation, nor for initial expression of the pluripotency genes Oct4 or Nanog in the ICM. Rather, Z Sox2 initially promotes development of the primitive endoderm (PE) non cell-autonomously via FGF4, and then later maintains expression of pluripotency genes in the ICM. The significance of these observations is that 1) ICM and TE genes are spatially patterned in parallel prior to blastocyst formation and 2) both the roles and regulation of Sox2 in the blastocyst are unique compared to other pluripotency factors such as Oct4 or Nanog.


With increasing demand for compact aspherical optics in the field of imaging and optical data storage, fabrication technology for low cost micro aspherical optics has become a research priority. There are various types of micro aspherical optics, such as injection molded lens, glass molded lens, glass and hybrid lens. Among these types of lens, the hybrid is regarded as one of the most suitable because it combines good optical properties with low cost. The hybrid lens is fabricated by fabricating an aspherical layer on a spherical glass lens. To fabricate the hybrid lens at low cost, a UV imprinting process is preferred for its simplicity. However, in the conventional UV imprinting process volumetric shrinkage of the photopolymer causes various problems such as surface wrinkling and asymmetric local shrinkage. To overcome such limitations of the UV imprinting process, a shrinkage compensation method using an iris diaphragm to control the direction of polymerization is proposed and analyzed experimentally. To evaluate the proposed UV imprinting process, a hybrid lens was designed and fabricated, and its geometrical property was measured and compared with the design value.


ABSTRACT Introduction: Basal cell carcinoma nevus syndrome (BCCNS) is a rare syndrome characterized by multiple basal cell carcinomas (BCC), odontogenic keratocysts, and other abnormalities. The most common etiology, the loss-of-function PTCH1 mutations and consequent constitutive hedgehog signaling, can be blocked by smoothened inhibitors (SIs). However, other causes and alternative pathways have been identified. Areas covered: Vismodegib and sonidegib are SIs approved for treating advanced BCCs and BCCNS-BCCs, but not without adverse effects. Other SIs include itraconazole, SUBA-itraconazole, and paridegib. Their roles in treating resistance to vismodegib and sonedegib warrant further investigation. Inhibition of downstream hedgehog signaling or PI3K by arsenic trioxide, imiquimod, and busparlisib may control SI resistance. Other potential therapeutic targets to control resistance include TP53, BRCA1, wnt, and SUFU. Expert opinion: BCCNS is more complex than a genetic disease whose consequences result from the predominant PTCH mutation. Other gene mutations, genetic modulation, stromal and surrounding tissue interactions, as well as molecular and electrical chemical constituents contribute to BCCNS being a complex adaptive system with individual and varying presentations in affected patients. Current technology needs to be applied to elucidate the dynamics of disease activity for individual patients.


The Covid-19 pandemic has shaken the world. It has presented us with a series of new challenges, but the policy response may be difficult due to the severe uncertainty of our circumstances. While pressure to take timely action may push towards less inclusive decision procedures, in this paper I argue that precisely our current uncertainty provides reasons to include stakeholders in collective decision-making. Decision-making during the pandemic faces uncertainty that goes beyond the standard, probabilistic one of Bayesian decision theory. Agents may be uncertain not just about factual properties of the world, but also about how to model their decision problems and about the values of the possible consequences of their options. As different stakeholders may have irreconcilable disagreement about how to resolve these uncertainties, decision-making procedures should take everybody's perspectives into account. Moreover, those communities that are hit harder by the pandemic are also those that are typically excluded from knowledge production. Thus, in the face of Covid-19 uncertainty, both democratic and epistemic considerations highlight the importance of stakeholders' inclusion in policy decision-making.


Similarity search in multimedia databases requires an efficient support of nearest neighbor search on a large set of high dimensional points as a basic operation for query processing. As recent theoretical results show, state of the art approaches to nearest neighbor search are not efficient in higher dimensions. In our new approach, we therefore precompute the result of any nearest neighbor search which corresponds to a computation of the voronoi cell of each data point. In a second step, we store the voronoi cells in an index structure efficient for high dimensional data spaces. As a result, nearest neighbor search corresponds to a simple point query on the index structure. Although our technique is based on a precomputation of the solution space, it is dynamic, i.e. it supports insertions of new data points. An extensive experimental evaluation of our technique demonstrates the high efficiency for uniformly distributed as well as real data. We obtained a significant reduction of the search time compared to nearest neighbor search in the X tree (up to a factor of 4).


The main focus of this study was the effect of chronic disease (hypertension, diabetes mellitus, heart disease, lung disease, cancer, and arthropathy) on the functional status (activities of daily living - ADL, instrumental activities of daily living - IADL) among the elderly, controlling for age, gender, living arrangements, education, and comorbidity. The analysis was based on information provided by the SABE Project, from the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, including individuals 60 years of age and over (n = 1,769), from January 2000 to March 2001. A multinomial logistic regression model was used. Compared to the absence of dependency category, heart disease (OR = 1.82), arthropathy (OR = 1.59), lung disease (OR = 1.50), and hypertension (OR = 1.39) were the main diseases that affected the IADL dependency category. Lung disease (OR = 2.58), arthropathy (OR = 2.27), hypertension (OR = 2.13), and heart disease (OR = 2.10) had important impact on the IADL and ADL dependency categories. The results were statistically significant (p < 0.05).


Objective: People who develop type 2 diabetes (T2D) have higher mortality risk. Regarding Asturias Study, after 18 years of follow-up, we have estimated all-cause, cardiovascular and cancer mortality-risks according to categories of impaired glucose metabolism. Research Design and Methods: Asturias study (launched in 1998) included a mortality follow-up of 18 years of its regionwide sample representative of population aged 30-75 years. Age and sex- stratified hazard ratios (HR) were calculated for 48 participants with diagnosed T2D (self reported diagnosis or antidiabetic medication), 83 with undiagnosed T2D (no diagnosed T2D, glycated hemoglobin A1c ≥6,5%, fasting glycemia≥126 mg/dL or glycemia after 75g glucose load ≥200 mg/dL), 296 with prediabetes (glycated hemoglobin A1c 5,7-6,4%, fasting glycemia 100-125 mg/dL or glycemia after 75g glucose load 140-199 mg/dL) and 607 with normoglycemia. Results: Over 18,612 person-years, 204 people died (32 with undiagnosed T2D, 30 with diagnosed T2D, 62 with prediabetes and 80 with normoglycemia). HR for all cause mortality, adjusted by previous cardiovascular disease, history of high blood pressure, LDL cholesterol level, age, sex, BMI and estimate glomerular filtration rate, was 2.22 (1.42-3.48) for diagnosed T2D, 1.57 (1.03-2.39) for undiagnosed diabetes. Adjusted hazard ratio for cardiovascular mortality was 3.12 (1.55-6.29) for diagnosed T2D and, for cancer mortality, was 1.83 (0.79-4.22) vs. normoglycemia. Women with T2D have higher age-standarized cardiovascular-mortality risk than men with T2D (7.36 (2,84-19.09) vs. 1.58 (1.45-5.56)). People with prediabetes have similar mortality risks as people with normoglycemia. Conclusions: In Asturias, age and sex-standardized all-cause mortality is more than two times higher for adults with T2D than for adults without T2D. HR for cardiovascular mortality is highly increased in women with T2D comparing with men with the same condition. Disclosure J. Ares: Research Support; Self; Sanofi. S. Valdes: None. P. Botas: None. C. Sanchez-Ragnarsson: None. E. Menendez-Torre: Speaker9s Bureau; Self; Sanofi, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk A/S. E. Delgado: Advisory Panel; Self; AstraZeneca. Speaker9s Bureau; Self; AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk A/S. Advisory Panel; Self; Sanofi-Aventis. Speaker9s Bureau; Self; Sanofi-Aventis. Research Support; Self; Sanofi-Aventis. Speaker9s Bureau; Self; Esteve, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.. Advisory Panel; Self; Abbott. Speaker9s Bureau; Self; Lilly. Research Support; Self; Menarini Group.


The use of numerical optimization methods to select reciprocating
engine anti-vibration characteristics is investigated. A rigid body
power train model coupled through an arbitrary array of vibration
isolators to a rigid supporting structure forms the basis of the
dynamic model. By calculating the forced response of the power train
to its internally generated excitation, the strain energy summed over
the isolators may be determined. This energy, which is indicative of
the efficiency of the vibration isolative mounts, is used as the
objective function in the optimization procedure. The method is
expected to be useful in preliminary design studies of front wheel
drive vehicles where traditional methods of mounting automotive
engines are not necessarily applicable. [Continues.]


In the red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta Buren, the neuronal and molecular mechanisms related to worker division of labor are poorly understood. Workers from different subcastes (major, medium and minors) perform different tasks, which are loosely associated with their size. We hypothesized that the short neuropeptide F (sNPF) signaling system (NPY-like) could be involved in mechanisms of worker division of labor and sensing or responding to colony nutritional requirements. Thus, we investigated the expression of the short neuropeptide F receptor (sNPFR) in the brain and subesophageal ganglion (SEG) of workers from colonies with and without brood. Across worker subcastes a total of 9 clusters of immunoreactive sNPFR cells were localized in the brain and the subesophageal ganglion (SEG); some of these cells were similar to those observed previously in the queen. Worker brain sNPFR cell clusters were found in the protocerebrum near mushroom bodies, in the central complex and in the lateral horn. Other sNPFR immunoreactive cells were found at the edge of the antennal lobes. Across subcastes, we observed both a constant and a differential pattern of sNPFR clusters, with a higher number of sNPFR cells found in minor than in major workers. Those sNPFR cells detected in all worker subcastes appear to be involved in olfaction or SEG functions. The differential expression of clusters in subcastes suggests that sNPFR signaling is involved in regulating behaviors associated with specific subcastes and thus, division of labor. Some sNPFR cells appear to be involved in nutrient sensing and/or brood care, feeding behavior and locomotion. In colonies without brood, workers showed a lower cluster number, and an overall reduced sNPFR signal. Our results suggest the sNPF signaling system is a candidate for the neurobiological control of worker division of labor and sensing brood presence, perhaps correlating with protein requirements and availability.


Evolutionary diversification can occur in allopatry or sympatry, can be unselected or driven by selection, and can be phenotypically manifested immediately or remain phenotypically latent until later manifestation in a newly encountered environment. Diversification of host-parasite interactions is frequently studied in the context of intrinsically selective coevolution, but the potential for host-parasite interaction phenotypes to diversify latently during parasite-blind evolution is rarely considered. Here we use a social bacterium experimentally adapted to several environments in the absence of phage to analyse allopatric diversification of latent host quality - the degree to which a host population supports a viral epidemic. Phage-blind evolution reduced host quality overall, with some bacteria becoming completely resistant to growth suppression by phage. Selective-environment differences generated only mild divergence in host-quality. However, selective environments nonetheless played a major role in shaping evolution by determining the degree of stochastic diversification among replicate populations within treatments. Ancestral motility genotype was also found to strongly shape patterns of latent hostquality evolution and diversification. These outcomes show that adaptive landscapes can differ in how they constrain stochastic diversification of a latent phenotype and that major effects of selection on biological diversification can be missed by focusing on trait means. Collectively, our findings suggest that latent-phenotype evolution (LPE) should inform host-parasite evolution theory and that diversification should be conceived broadly to include latent phenotypes.


Swedberg, but in our trial withdrawals for this reason were according to prespecified criteria and in line with usual clinical practice. The size of our trial was indeed based on a comparison of active with placebo treatment, but, as we pointed out, an assessment of the two active agents was an important secondary objective from the outset. The advantage of the diuretic over the 3 blocker was clear, particularly for coronary events, and is also suggested by other recent results.' Swedberg is surely not suggesting that findings of such immediate clinical relevance should remain unreported.


EEG recordings provide an important means of brain-computer communication, but their classification accuracy is limited by unforeseeable variations in the signal due to artefacts or recogniser-subject feedback. A number of techniques were recently developed to address a related problem of recogniser robustness to uncontrollable signal variation which also occurs in automatic speech recognition (ASR). In this article we consider how some of the proved advantages of the "multi-stream combination" and "tandem" approaches in HMM/ANN hybrid based ASR can possibly be applied to improve the performance of EEG recognition.


The influence of central cholinolytic cyclosil on the oxidative phosphorilation, ATPase activity and ultrastructure of hepatic mitochondria has been studied. The increased effectivity of mitochondrial macroergic compounds formation in the presence of cyclosil (0.04 mg/ml) was noticed. The oxygen consumption rate of these particles did not change. These findings and the electron microscopic observations on mitochondrial swelling in the presence of the cholinolytic agent suggest that cyclosil enchances the degree of mitochondrial energization.


[ 1 ] To understand the coupled water and energy cycles in semiarid environments, we measured temporal fluctuations of evapotranspiration (ET) and identified key sources of the observed variability. Flux measurements are made using the Bowen ratio method, accompanied by measurements of soil moisture and radiation. We present data from semiarid grassland and shrubland sites, situated within 2 km of each other in New Mexico. The study includes three summer monsoon seasons. Midday available energy ( Q a ) is higher at the grassland than at the shrubland by 20% or 70 W m (cid:1) 2 because of differences in net radiation (R n ) and soil heat flux (G). At both sites, midday evaporative fraction and daily ET are strongly correlated with surface soil moisture ( q 0–5cm ) but poorly correlated with water content at greater depths or averaged throughout the entire root zone. The sensitivity of EF to q 0–5cm is 30% lower at the grassland site. The differences in Q a and EF cancel, yielding similar time series of ET at the two sites. Decreases in q 0–5cm , ET, and EF following rainfall events are rapid: exponential time constants are less than 3 days. With the exception of the largest storms, infiltration following rainfall events only wets the top 10 cm of soil. Therefore the surface soil layer is the primary reservoir for water storage and source for ET during the monsoon season, suggesting that direct evaporation is a large component of ET. Given these results, predicting ET based on root zone–averaged soil moisture is inappropriate in the semiarid environments studied here.


OBJECTIVE: To report a case of impaired absorption of orally administered phenobarbital associated with the concomitant administration of activated charcoal, and recovery of the absorption after administration of the 2 drugs was separated by a 1.5-hour interval. CASE SUMMARY: A 78-year-old woman, weighing 50 kg, who had undergone brain surgery was prescribed phenobarbital 120 mg/day for postoperative convulsions. Her serum phenobarbital concentration reached 24.8 μg/mL (therapeutically effective level 10–30). Thereafter, her renal function worsened, and activated charcoal 6 g/day was started. Four months after the start of activated charcoal, blood analysis revealed that the serum phenobarbital concentration was as low as 4.3 μg/mL. The phenobarbital dose was increased to 150 mg/day. Further evaluation revealed that activated charcoal and phenobarbital had been administered concomitantly. The dosage regimen was altered to separate the administration of the agents by at least 1.5 hours. Subsequently, the patient's serum phenobarbital concentration increased to 11.9 μg/mL within 3 weeks. Her serum phenobarbital concentration was measured monthly thereafter and remained stable in the range of 14.8–18.6 μg/mL. DISCUSSION: Our patient's low serum phenobarbital concentration was considered likely to have been due to impaired gastrointestinal absorption of phenobarbital as a result of adsorption of phenobarbital on the activated charcoal. An objective causality assessment showed that the interaction was probable. CONCLUSIONS: Administration of activated charcoal and phenobarbital should be separated by an interval of at least 1.5 hours.


Abstract Fluid volume homeostasis in health and heart failure (HF) requires a complex interaction of 2 systems, the intravascular and interstitial‐lymphatic circulations. With the development of HF both the intravascular and interstitial compartments undergo variable degrees of volume remodeling which can include significant expansion. This reflects the impact of multiple pathophysiologic mechanisms on both fluid compartments which initially play a compensatory role to stabilize intravascular circulatory integrity but with progression in HF can evolve to produce the various manifestations of volume overload and clinical HF congestion. The intent of this review is to help enhance recognition of the pathophysiologic and clinical importance of the interlinked roles of these 2 circulatory systems in volume regulation and chronic HF. It would also be hoped that a better understanding of the interacting functions of the intravascular and interstitial‐lymphatic fluid compartments can potentially aid development of novel management strategies particularly addressing the generally undertargeted interstitial‐lymphatic system and help bring such approaches forward through a more integrated view of these 2 circulatory systems.


We examine the relationship between the seven invariants of the complex MT tensor, which we previously proposed as a vehicle for testing the dimensionality of the regional conductivity structure prior to an analysis of MT data, and the three invariants of the real 'phase tensor', recently introduced as an innovative aid in the treatment ofMT data. It is found that the relevant invariants, and the necessary conditions on them for galvanically distorted data to be consistent with ID, 2D, or 3D regional structures, agree in almost every detail for the two approaches. The new method does lead, however, to an improved normalisation of the eighth (dependent) invariant previously introduced. It is shown that the phase tensor can be expressed as a sum of three simple matrices, clearly associated with ID, 2D and 3D regional conductivity structures respectively. It is further shown that it can be depicted graphically as a single Mohr circle that retains the principal properties of the separate real and imaginary Mohr circles associated with the MT tensor. The simplicity and elegance of the phase tensor method is achieved by dispensing with the capability of distinguishing between galvanically distorted and undistorted data in ID and 2D regions, a distinction that is ultimately unimportant and unnecessary with real data. The paper concludes with a simple illustrative example of the theory applied to a real MT dataset from NE Australia. A shallow ID regional conductivity structure associated with a sedimentary basin is revealed, and a 2D anomaly with calculated strike angle is also identified.


This article will explore the organizational dynamics of knowledge and scientific truths in a digital age and the hauntological implications inherent in such processes. It will consider the concept of haunted data and its methodological and performative force in relation to the question of what accrues power, status and authority within the context of changing conditions of truth-claims within digital archives. The article will focus on a scientific controversy related to priming, which largely took shape within the context of post-publication-peer-review. Post-publication-peer-review (PPPR) is a distributed form of commentary made possible by social and digital media. Different publics can now add their own commentary to published academic journal articles as they circulate across websites, blogs and weblogs, twitter, Google+ posts, in Reddit communities, in comments attached to Wikipedia, online science journalism articles, newspaper articles and so on. For some scientists, the digital disruption of the publishing industry is opening scientific conversation up to new publics and can help contribute to the impact of the article. For others it is dangerous and might damage the integrity of science and the concepts used to adjudicate truth-claims. What is missing from these debates are the hauntological consequences of these new publishing forms and their implications for how we might understand the affectivity and dynamism of data and digital archives once thought fossilized or fugitive. This includes the particular organisation of practices of memory and forgetting, and attention and inattention within digital controversies.


A new sliding mode control (SMC) algorithm for the third-order uncertain, nonlinear and time-varying dynamic system subject to acceleration constraint is proposed. The algorithm employs a time-varying switching plane. At the initial time t = to, the plane passes through the point determined by the system initial conditions in the error state space. Afterwards, the plane moves with a constant velocity to the origin of the state space. In order to select the switching plane parameters, the integral of the absolute error is minimised. Two types of the acceleration constraints are considered. First, a conventional constraint expressed by an inequality is analysed and then an elastic (or stretchable) constraint represented by a penalty function is taken into account. In the second case, we assume that the threshold value of the system acceleration is known and exceeding this value is undesirable, however possible if justified by essential improvement of the system performance. In both cases, the switching plane is chosen in such a way that the reaching phase is eliminated, insensitivity of the system to the external disturbance and the model uncertainty is guaranteed from the very beginning of the proposed control action and fast, monotonic error convergence to zero is achieved.


At the Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women held at Mount Holyoke College in August 1978 I heard Audre Lorde read her essay, "Uses of the Erotic, the Erotic as Power." The experience transformed my life. It wasn't the essay alone. It was Audre Lorde's presence, the quality of her voice, the clarity of sound, her thoughts propelled with such precision and confidence. It was also the story of how the panel got to happen and the audience response to it.There were three participants. They had titled their session "Lesbians and Power." The program committee at the Berks unilaterally changed the title to something innocuous, deleting the word "lesbian," and scheduled it in a small room. Audre Lorde and her co-panelists were outraged. They printed a flyer (this is in the day before cell phones, computers, and email), reclaimed the word "lesbian" in their title, and secured the largest auditorium on the campus.Two thousand women came. We listened with rapt attention. At the end of each paper there was robust applause. Then the floor was opened for discussion. A woman rose and told the story of the panel's titled obscurity and near demise. She asked if all the lesbians in the room would please stand. Almost the entire audience rose.In August 1978 I had only recently separated from my husband, and while we had joint custody of our two young children, they lived with me. I had been struggling to come out for years, trying to overcome the terror induced by near-constant FBI and police surveillance because I was a member of the U.S. Communist Party and because I was a prominent activist in movements for civil rights, peace, and social justice. I also had been physically brutalized. I remained seated in that moment, too frightened to stand. It occurred to me that the few other women still sitting may well have also been closeted lesbians!However, I understood the politics of solidarity. I knew that those two thousand women were not all lesbians; and I knew that Audre Lorde and her sister organizers had presented me with a miraculous moment. One year and two months later I met the love of my life, and gradually over the next several years I came out to more and more people, until I was finally able to join my two other fully "out" colleagues at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1983. By then I had left the Communist Party. I am immensely grateful to my students and a broad spectrum of faculty and staff for their warm support and encouragement and as grateful for the unconditional love of my partner. Still, the pivotal moment of consciousness-raising, as we used to call it, was with Audre Lorde at that panel at the Berks.Later I wrote to Audre and asked her to send me a copy of the paper on the erotic. She did, along with a note of immense kindness. When I began teaching an introduction to feminism course at the UCSC in the winter of 1980 that essay was on my syllabus as required reading. After Lorde's book Sister/ Outsider was published in 1984 I used it as a text, adding "Poetry Is Not A Luxury" and "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action" as essential course readings. I taught that class through the fall of 2008, also sometimes reading selections from Lorde's poetry aloud to my students. The students loved her writing.I taught my introductory course from a multiracial, multicultural, and, later, transnational perspective. It was explicitly antiracist. It adopted an intersectional analysis of gender, race, class, and sexuality, using the Combahee River Collectives Statement as its bellwether text, and later incorporating the work of Kimberlee Crenshaw. The course embraced lesbian and gay sensibilities, again expanding and incorporating queer and transgender perspectives as these issues emerged. It was interdisciplinary, with a range of perspectives from the humanities and social sciences and with occasional forays into the sciences, using the work of Donna Haraway, for example, or the story of the Nobel Prize-winning founder of molecular biology, Barbara McClintock. …


network security problems have also developed simultaneously, causing severe damage, thus reducing the efficiency of the networks and also the nodes in the networks. Protection provided at the nodes is not sufficient to completely protect the node from external attacks, hence a collaborative approach, is used to solve the network security problems. This paper explains the implementation of collaborative network security platform based on a Peer-toPeer (P2P) network. An experiment is demonstrated where-in a peer can download a required file from a central server; these files may contain malicious software that could affect the peer. The services required to deal with the malicious software is provided by another server.


This work explores charmless $B$ decays using the LHCb detector. LHCb is one of the four main experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) located at CERN, and is designed to perform CP violation measurements and to study rare decays of hadrons containing $b$ or $c$ quarks. Among charmless $B$ decays, the $B^0_s$ decay modes to final states with two light resonances ($\eta$, $\eta^{\prime}$, $\omega$, $\phi$) are particularly interesting in view of time-dependent CP violation studies. More specifically they can be used to measure the CP-violating phase difference between the $B^0_s$--$\bar{B}^0_s$ mixing amplitude and the $b\to s\bar{s}s$ decay amplitude. Among these, $B^0_s \to \phi\phi$ has been exploited by LHCb through an angular analysis of the vector-vector final state. The other modes have lower measured or expected event yields, but don't require an angular analysis. We present the results of a search for the yet unobserved $B^0_s \to \eta^{\prime} \phi$ decay using $3 \rm{fb}^{-1}$ of data collected by LHCb during the LHC Run 1 (2011--2012). The decay $B^{0}_{s} \to \eta^{\prime} \phi$ has been studied in several theoretical frameworks and the predictions for its branching fraction cover a wide range, typically from $0.05 \times 10^{-6}$ to $20 \times 10^{-6}$. In the analysis presented in this thesis the $B^+ \to \eta^{\prime} K^+$ decay is used as normalisation in the computation of the branching fraction for the searched mode. The $B^{0}_{s} \to \eta^{\prime} \phi$ signal yield is obtained from a simultaneous two-dimensional fit of the reconstructed $B$ and $\eta^{\prime}$ invariant masses of the $B^{0}_{s} \to \eta^{\prime} \phi$ and $B^+ \to \eta^{\prime}K^+$ candidates in Run 1 data. No significant signal is found and, for the first time, an upper limit on the $B^{0}_{s} \to \eta^{\prime} \phi$ branching fraction is set: {\cal B}(B^{0}_{s} \to \eta^{\prime} \phi)< 0.82\,(1.01)\times 10^{-6} \quad \mbox{at 90% (95%) CL}\,. \nonumber Although large theoretical uncertainties make most predictions compatible with the result of this analysis, the upper limit is significantly smaller than the central values of most of the predictions, which tends to favour the lower end of the range of predictions. Furthermore, prospect studies using the Run 2 data collected in 2015 and 2016, are presented for $B^{0}_{s} \to \eta^{\prime} \phi$ and for two other decay modes already studied with Run 1 data, $B^{0}_{s} \to \eta^{\prime} \eta^{\prime}$ and $B^+ \to \phi\pi^+$. The $B^+ \to \eta^{\prime} K^+$} and $B^+ \to \phi K^+$ decay modes are used as normalisation channels. The study shows that at least the full Run 2 dataset, to be collected until the end of 2018, will be needed to aim at an observation of the $B^{0}_{s} \to \eta^{\prime} \phi$ and $B^+ \to \phi\pi^+$ decays, taking into account also the wide range of predictions for these modes, while for the already established $B^{0}_{s} \to \eta^{\prime} \eta^{\prime}$ decay the statistics collected by the end of Run 2 will allow a measurement of the $B^{0}_{s}$ lifetime.


Purpose
Informed by the broaden-and-build theory of emotions, this study aims to investigate the relationships between consumers' motives and personal and social outcomes in access-based services (ABS). Further, drawing on territorial behaviour literature, the second goal of this research is to test the moderating effects of psychological ownership on the relationships between personal outcomes and consumer territorial behaviour.

Design/methodology/approach
This research comprises a quantitative online survey complemented by a qualitative interview study. The quantitative study employed an online consumer panel survey of 317 samples. Later, the qualitative study sought additional insights into the economic benefit motives and manifestation of territorial behaviour of bicycle-sharing users to enrich the results of quantitative study. The quantitative data were analysed using structural equation modelling, and the interviews were transcribed and analysed using an inductive and deductive thematic analysis.

Findings
The results indicated that specific motives significantly affected certain personal outcomes. Namely, economic benefit, enjoyment and reputation motives drove life satisfaction, while enjoyment, sustainability and social relationships promoted feelings of gratitude. Furthermore, life satisfaction positively affected consumer cooperation, helping other consumers and territorial behaviour. In contrast, feelings of gratitude had a positive relationship with cooperation and helping other consumers, but a negative one with territorial behaviour. Additional examination revealed that consumers' psychological ownership of the shared bicycle in an ABS model moderated the effect of gratitude on consumer territorial behaviour.

Research limitations/implications
This study offers and tests a model on ABS in the context of bicycle-sharing services. Thus, it presents avenues to test the model on other ABS, e.g. clothing or home sharing.

Practical implications
Managers in ABS can foster positive emotional states of gratitude and life satisfaction that will inevitably promote consumer cooperation and helping behaviour.

Originality/value
This study is among the first to propose and examine a model that tests the relationships between consumers' motives and personal and social outcomes in ABS.


This paper discusses research into whether the memories of adaptive autonomous agents can be made to spontaneously evolve spacing effects. Experiments involving human memory have shown that learning trials massed closely in time elicit slower learning than the equivalent number trials spaced apart in time. These "spacing effects" have been observed across a wide array of conditions. The experimental results detailed here show that such effects can be made to evolve spontaneously in autonomous agents. The results also suggest that the greater learning difficulty humans experience from closely spaced trials may not be the result of a defect of biology, but rather may be a consequence of a need to give only the appropriate weight to each learning experience.


Introduction: In Konya, Turkey, the community celebrates the traditional ceremony of Shivlilik, which oc- curs on the first day of the seventh month in the lunar-based Hijri calendar. In the evening, people light bonfires of tires in the streets, and children and young people attempt to jump over the flames. Flame burns regularly occur due to falling. Attention should be given to preventing injuries such as these that are caused by social and regional customs. Methods: This retrospective study was carried out using data from the Konya Education and Research Hospital Burn Unit. Patients admitted to our hospital between June, 2009, and May, 2012, was evaluated. Results: Eleven patients were admitted to hospital with flame burns caused by jumping over fires on the days when the tradi - tional Shivlilik ceremony was celebrated. The clinical data evaluated included the patient's age and sex, the depth of the burn injury, the total burned surface area (TBSA), and the distribution of the burn areas. Conclusions: Serious flame burns occur because of the traditional Shivlilik ceremony. We must promote some changes in this ceremony in order to prevent these burns.


We propose a scheme to generate vector optical solitons in a four-level active-Raman-gain medium. We show that this scheme, which is fundamentally different from that using optical fibers and that via electromagnetically induced transparency, is capable of achieving robust vector optical solitons with superluminal propagating velocity. We demonstrate that such vector optical solitons can be generated at room temperature and with very low light intensity. We investigate also the interaction between two superluminal vector optical solitons and point out that their elastic and inelastic colliding properties can be used to design rapidly responding optical soliton switching and logic gates.


email@example.com firstname.lastname@example.com firstname.lastname@example.com Abstract— various information systems are widely used in information society era, and the demand for highly dependable system is increasing year after year. However, software testing for such a system becomes more difficult due to the enlargement and the complexity of the system. In particular, it is too difficult to test parallel and distributed systems sufficiently although dependable systems such as high-availability servers usually form parallel and distributed systems. To solve these problems, to propose a software testing environment for dependable parallel and distributed system using the cloud computing technology, named D-Cloud. D-Cloud includes Eucalyptus as the cloud management software, and Fault VM based on QEMU as the virtualization software, and D-Cloud frontend for interpreting test scenario. D-Cloud enables not only to automate the system configuration and the test procedure but also to perform a number of test cases simultaneously, and to emulate hardware faults flexibly. In this paper, present the concept and design of D-Cloud, and describe how to specify the system configuration and the test scenario. Furthermore, the preliminary test example as the software testing using D-Cloud was presented. Its result shows that D-Cloud allows to set up the environment easily, and to test the software testing for the distributed system.


The recent discovery of a subfossil polar bear (Ursus maritimus) jawbone in the Poolepynten coastal cliff sequence, western Svalbard, and its implications for the natural history of the polar bear motivated an effort to better constrain the environmental history and age envelope of the Poolepynten sediment sequence. The focus of the present study is on the lithostratigraphy of the coastal cliffs and on re‐dating the sequence using the Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating technique. We report a revised lithostratigraphy and nine new OSL ages. It is concluded that the Poolepynten sequence contains evidence of four regional glaciation events, recorded in the strata as erosional unconformities or glacial deposits followed by shallow‐marine deposition signifying transgressions and subsequent glacio‐isostatic rebound and regression. Our OSL ages refine previous age determinations (14C and IRSL) and support the interpretation that the subfossil polar bear jawbone is probably of last interglacial (Eemian) age.


[5,6-dihydro-4H-4(isobutylamino)thieno(2,3-B)thiopyran-2-sul fonamide-7,7- dioxide] (MK-927), a potent carbonic anhydrase inhibitor capable of reducing intraocular pressure after topical application, is currently under investigation for the treatment of glaucoma. The purpose of this study was to characterize the pharmacokinetics of the enantiomers of MK-927 with particular emphasis on the effect of dose on the elimination kinetics. Because the drug resided primarily in erythrocytes, the kinetic analysis was generally performed based on the drug concentration of whole blood. Following iv administration, the rat cleared the (R)(-)-enantiomer more rapidly than the (S)(+)-isomer. The stereoselective difference in elimination kinetics was dose-dependent; total blood clearance of the (R)(-)-enantiomer was approximately 40 times that of the (S)(+)-isomer at 0.05 mg/kg, and about 7-fold at 5 mg/kg. For both enantiomers, the pharmacokinetic parameters remained unchanged when the dose increased from 0.05 to 0.2 mg/kg, while the total blood clearance and apparent volume of distribution increased substantially as the dose exceeded 2 mg/kg. Nevertheless, the terminal half-life for each enantiomer appeared to be dose-independent. The enantiomers were extensively bound to erythrocytes in a stereoselective manner; at low concentrations, the (S)(+)enantiomer was bound 3-fold more strongly than the (R)(-)-enantiomer in vitro and 6-fold in vivo. Clearly, the magnitude of stereoselectivity in the elimination kinetics of MK-927 enantiomers (40-fold) cannot be explained solely by stereoselective binding. Thus, other factors may also contribute to the overall stereoselectivity in the elimination kinetics of MK-927. The dose-dependent kinetics of the enantiomers was probably due to the saturable binding to carbonic anhydrase.


Technological advances made wireless sensors cheap and reliable enough to be brought into industrial use. A major challenge arises from the fact that wireless channels introduce random packet dropouts. Power control and coding are key enabling technologies in wireless communications to ensure efficient communication. In this paper, we examine the role of power control and coding for Kalman filtering over wireless correlated channels. Two estimation architectures are considered; initially, the sensors send their measurements directly to a single gateway (GW). Next, wireless relay nodes provide additional links. The GW decides on the coding scheme and the transmitter power levels of the wireless nodes. The decision process is carried out online and adapts to varying channel conditions to improve the tradeoff between state estimation accuracy and energy expenditure. In combination with predictive power control, we investigate the use of multiple-description coding (MDC), zero-error coding (ZEC), and network coding and provide sufficient conditions for the expectation of the estimation error covariance matrix to be bounded. Numerical results suggest that the proposed method may lead to energy savings of around 50%, when compared with an alternative scheme, wherein transmission power levels and bit-rates are governed by simple logic. In particular, ZEC is preferable at time instances with high channel gains, whereas MDC is superior for time instances with low gains. When channels between the sensors and the GW are in deep fades, network coding improves estimation accuracy significantly without sacrificing energy efficiency.


Frequency control is one important issue in autonomous operating mode of Microgrids (MGs). In stand-alone microgrids, when generation power is not enough, it is inevitable to shed some parts of the load. This paper presents a decentralized fuzzy controller for optimal load shedding in MGs. The proposed controller which is separately installed for each load center uses a hierarchical fuzzy controller approach to make the optimal decision. Three inputs of the hierarchical fuzzy controller are the power of non-critical load, the load energy not supplied and its interruption frequency. From a specific time of the past, these inputs are calculated for all load centers, and updated periodically. The non-critical part of the loads which can be shed to survive network. Each decentralized controller of the loads has a bilateral communication with the microgrid central controller to transact some information, periodically. Simulation results on a typical microgrid with several load buses showing the effectiveness of the proposed method.


Theories of total reconstruction have generally supposed that movement can be followed by an undoing operation like LF lowering (May 1977, 1985) or deletion of higher copies (Chomsky 1993). We argue that reconstruction effects can be derived only if the original movement is purely phonological. There are no undoing operations. We present three distinct arguments, based on an interaction between raising and wh-movement in English, facts from agreement with group terms in British English, and multiple scrambling in Japanese. The arguments imply that the T-model is correct in supposing that movement that affects both LF and PF must precede movement that affects only PF.


The aim of the BIOPAC trial was to determine long-term safety and efficacy of a novel microcrystalline paclitaxel-coated balloon (mcPCB) with a biocompatible polymer as an excipient in the treatment of occlusive femoropopliteal lesions. In this first-in-human prospective controlled randomized trial, 66 patients with femoropopliteal, symptomatic (Rutherford stages 2B to 5) occlusive arterial disease were randomized to either mcPCB (study group) or POBA (plain old balloon angioplasty) (control group) on a 1:1 basis. Late lumen loss (LLL) at 6 months was the primary endpoint of the study and serious adverse events (SAE: death, amputation, repeated revascularization) were considered a composite secondary endpoint. Routine angiography was scheduled for all study subjects at 6-month follow-up; outpatient appointments were scheduled at 12 and 36 months after intervention. At 6 months, the LLL was 63% lower in the mcPCB group compared to the POBA group (0.52 ± 1.2 vs 1.39 ± 1.1 mm; psup < 0.01). Binary restenosis occurred in 23% vs 52% of patients (p = 0.02). At 3 years, the prevalence of SAE was significantly lower in the mcPCB group (33.3 vs 63.3%; p = 0.02), which mainly resulted from a twofold reduction in target vessel revascularization rate (28.6 vs 59.3%; p = 0.02). The difference in mortality was nonsignificant (7.4 vs 14.3%; p = 0.42). Patients with mcPCB were less symptomatic and less likely to adhere to secondary prevention measures. In this pivotal trial, a novel mcPCB proved superior to POBA concerning LLL at 6-month follow-up, and SAE at 12 months. This result was sustained up to 3 years. There was no difference between groups regarding mortality. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02145065


Introduction Early sweet corn production is enhanced by use of clear plastic mulch. Some growers use this practice on their earliest plantings to gain a market advantage and higher price. In cool, wet springs the practice is highly profitable. In central and northern Iowa, the years with a yield advantage more than offset the costs for years with no gain. There are many color plastic choices with various advertised benefits such as increased soil temperature and reflective radiation that speeds plant growth and development. The sweet corn research is designed to evaluate a few color mulches that are reported to affect corn growth and development—specifically, the sugar content of the kernel at harvest. The blue is supposed to enhance photosynthesis and improve translocation of carbohydrates (sucrose) to the developing kernel. As sweet corn is harvested in the immature stage (as opposed to field corn) it is thought there might be a sugar boost (some Canadian work was indecisive). The mulches were manufactured using pigment resins of a proprietary nature that change the wavelength of reflective radiation – blue and red. Thus, we measured the reflective radiation to see if that is true. Some plastics are included that affect soil temperature more than reflective radiation (i.e, the olive and clear). Increasing soil temperature and resultant enhanced shoot growth and leaf surface area may have more to do with photosynthesis and sugar production than specific reflective radiation.


The gene encoding the beta subunit of Bacillus subtilis RNA polymerase was isolated from a lambda gt11 expression library using an antibody probe. Gene identity was confirmed by the similarity of its predicted product to the Escherichia coli beta subunit and by mapping an alteration conferring rifampicin resistance within the conserved rif coding region. Including the rif region, four colinear blocks of sequence similarity were shared between the B. subtilis and E. coli beta subunits. In E. coli, these conserved blocks are separated by three regions that either were not conserved or were entirely absent from the B. subtilis protein. The B. subtilis beta gene was part of a cluster with the order rplL (encoding ribosomal protein L7/L12), orf23 (encoding a 22,513-dalton protein that is apparently essential for growth), rpoB (beta), and rpoC (beta'). This organization differs from the corresponding region in E. coli by the inclusion of orf23. Experiments using promoter probe vectors and site-directed mutagenesis located a major rpoB promoter overlapping the 3'-coding region of orf23, 250 nucleotides upstream from the beta initiation codon. Thus, the B. subtilis rpoB region differs from its E. coli counterpart in both genetic and transcriptional organization.


Background/aims: The literature on refractive change in thyroid eye disease (TED) is limited. This study documents the refractive change in patients with TED undergoing orbital decompression. The authors propose possible mechanisms for their acquired refractive error. Methods: This is a retrospective observational case study of five patients with progressive TED. Their detailed eye examinations including refractive state preoperatively and postoperatively are presented. Results: An acquired hypermetropic shift with active TED before orbital decompression of up to 3.75D spherical equivalent refraction (SER) is reported in one patient. Post-orbital decompression, an induced myopic shift of between 1.00–2.50D SER for all patients is observed, noted to range from 1 day following surgery to up to 9 months, dependent on the availability of data. Axial length increased in two cases corresponding to postoperative myopic shift. Magnetic resonance imaging findings of one patient demonstrate flattening of the posterior pole as a cause of the acquired preoperative hypermetropia. Conclusions: TED has a significant effect on the refractive state of patients. The proposed mechanism of acquired hypermetropia relates to increased volume of orbital contents with flattening of the posterior globe. This is reversed with successful orbital decompression. Documentation of refractive error in all cases of progressive TED is recommended. Progressive acquired hypermetropia may be suggestive of TED activity.


Mlp24 and Mlp37 are homologous chemoreceptors of Vibrio cholerae that bind various amino acids. Although most of the residues involved in ligand interaction are conserved, these chemoreceptors show different affinities for the same ligand and play different cellular roles. A series of ligand complex structures of the periplasmic region of Mlp24 (Mlp24p) and following ITC analysis revealed that Ca2+ binds to the loop of Mlp24p and modulates the ligand binding affinity of Mlp24p. Moreover, Ca2+ changes the chemotactic behaviors mediated by Mlp24. We propose that Ca2+ acts as a cosignal that modulates the affinity of Mlp24 for the primary signal, thereby changing the chemotactic behavior of V. cholerae. ABSTRACT Bacteria sense environmental chemicals using chemosensor proteins, most of which are present in the cytoplasmic membrane. Canonical chemoreceptors bind their specific ligands in their periplasmic domain, and the ligand binding creates a molecular stimulus that is transmitted into the cytoplasm, leading to various cellular responses, such as chemotaxis and specific gene expression. Vibrio cholerae, the causative agent of cholera, contains about 44 putative sensor proteins, which are homologous to methyl-accepting chemotaxis proteins involved in chemotaxis. Two of them, Mlp24 and Mlp37, have been identified as chemoreceptors that mediate chemotactic responses to various amino acids. Although most of the residues of Mlp37 involved in ligand binding are conserved in Mlp24, these chemoreceptors bind the same ligands with different affinities. Moreover, they have distinct cellular roles. Here we determined a series of ligand complex structures of the periplasmic domains of Mlp24 (Mlp24p). The structures revealed that Ca2+ binds to the loop that forms the upper wall of the ligand-binding pocket. Ca2+ does not bind to the corresponding loop of Mlp37, implying that the structural difference of the loop may cause the ligand affinity difference. Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) measurements indicated that Ca2+ changes the ligand binding affinity of Mlp24p. Furthermore, Ca2+ affected chemotactic behaviors to various amino acids mediated by Mlp24. Thus, Ca2+ is suggested to serve as a cosignal for the primary signal mediated by Mlp24p, and V. cholerae fine-tunes its chemotactic behavior depending on the Ca2+ concentration by modulating the ligand sensitivity of Mlp24. IMPORTANCE Mlp24 and Mlp37 are homologous chemoreceptors of Vibrio cholerae that bind various amino acids. Although most of the residues involved in ligand interaction are conserved, these chemoreceptors show different affinities for the same ligand and play different cellular roles. A series of ligand complex structures of the periplasmic region of Mlp24 (Mlp24p) and following ITC analysis revealed that Ca2+ binds to the loop of Mlp24p and modulates the ligand binding affinity of Mlp24p. Moreover, Ca2+ changes the chemotactic behaviors mediated by Mlp24. We propose that Ca2+ acts as a cosignal that modulates the affinity of Mlp24 for the primary signal, thereby changing the chemotactic behavior of V. cholerae.


Incremental decision making in real-world environments is one of the most challenging tasks in embodied artificial intelligence. One particularly demanding scenario is Vision and Language Navigation~(VLN) which requires visual and natural language understanding as well as spatial and temporal reasoning capabilities. The embodied agent needs to ground its understanding of navigation instructions in observations of a real-world environment like Street View. Despite the impressive results of LLMs in other research areas, it is an ongoing problem of how to best connect them with an interactive visual environment. In this work, we propose VELMA, an embodied LLM agent that uses a verbalization of the trajectory and of visual environment observations as contextual prompt for the next action. Visual information is verbalized by a pipeline that extracts landmarks from the human written navigation instructions and uses CLIP to determine their visibility in the current panorama view. We show that VELMA is able to successfully follow navigation instructions in Street View with only two in-context examples. We further finetune the LLM agent on a few thousand examples and achieve 25%-30% relative improvement in task completion over the previous state-of-the-art for two datasets.


The article analyses changes of EU structural policy in the new programming period of 2007 – 2013. In the beginning of the article the evaluation of EU structural policy is made, which allows to formulate the main principles of structural policy. Subsequent reconstruction of financial instruments of structural policy is analysed, and attention is paid to the fact that from 2007 only two structural funds formally remain. Combined with financial instruments for structural policy there are three funds in total. Also in the article an analysis of new objectives of structural policy is made. Legal bases for European territorialcooperation grouping is also analyzed. Finally, the article affirms that structural policy develops to cohesion policy.


Didactics and ATD E-learning is a somewhat ill-defined concept, but it is a fruitful one, insofar as it allows or even compels one to reconsider one's own views about more traditional ways of teaching and learning. Despite the title of this paper, let's make it clear from the start that we shall not indulge in comparing meticulously two hypostatized entities, " traditional " versus, say, " electronic " teaching and learning. In what ways can e-learning be regarded as a touchstone will become evident in what follows. On the other hand, we shall stick to what has come to be known, in many countries, as the anthropological theory of the didactic (ATD), a theory upon which we shall draw heavily in the sequel. (To go beyond what we shall make explicit hereunder on ATD, we refer the interested reader to, for example, Chevallard, 2007.) ATD defines didactics as the (incipient) science whose object is the structure and dynamics of the more or less fuzzy set of conditions and constraints that determine the controlled diffusion of knowledge and skills in society. (In this respect, ATD appears as a development program for didactics: although there can be different routes to the same state, it proposes itself as a freeway to a full-fledged scientific field in education.) A word of comment is in order here on the concurrent use of the closely related notions of " condition " and " constraint " : both are to be construed as determining factors of diffusion (and of retention, seen as a limiting case of diffusion) of knowledge; but while conditions are supposed to be adjustable (they lay within the reach of the development team, a notion to which we shall return), constraints are limiting factors presumed to remain unchanged (and out of reach) under present circumstances, even though circumstances may vary in a distant future. Didactic Organizations and Didactic Systems The notion on which this presentation really centers is that of a didactic organization (DO), a notion that subsumes all the features of whatever learning or teaching scheme one might think of, be it fashionable or obsolete. A didactic organization cannot exist unless some set of


Abstract A recent survey by BeGole of four major orthodontic journals revealed that76% of the original and scientific articles published in 1997 incorporated statistical procedures in their methodologies. To evaluate the information presented in these scientific articles, the clinician needs to have an understanding of the statistical techniques used in them. Although a number of the statistical methodologies were complex, requiring considerable statistical sophistication to understand and apply, the majority of the statistical methods that were used were more easily understood. The purpose of this article is to familiarize the orthodontic clinician with those statistical procedures commonly encountered in the orthodontic literature. Actual formulas and computations are not reviewed in this article and can be found in standard statistical texts. The focus of this article is to emphasize the appropriate use of techniques such as the Student t test, analysis of variance, the χ 2 test, and the nonparametric alternatives to these methods, which comprise more than 50% of the statistical tests used in the journals from 1997 examined by BeGole.


Preventing adolescent pregnancies and improving adolescent reproductive health are important as they not only touch on more tangible issues like maternal and child mortality, but also have a longterm effect on any country's basic wellbeing, from economic growth to societal and cultural development, to gender and equality issues. Nevertheless, pregnancies in adolescence still represent an important health challenge in the sub-Saharan country of Cameroon. This study seeks to establish a better understanding of the current reproductive health situation for adolescents in Cameroon and determine if adolescents have the means available to prevent early age pregnancy. Its main objectives are to answer these questions: 1) What is the Cameroonian government doing with respect to health polices and sexual health programs in order to prevent adolescents from early pregnancies, and what are the main outcomes of any health programs implemented? 2) What are the main barriers limiting improvement of adolescents' sexual and reproductive health situation in Cameroon? This study uses a review-based method to explore literature on the subject of adolescent reproductive health in Cameroon. The review considers the background to the current adolescent reproductive health situation in Cameroon, and describes the policies and programs used in efforts to meet the country's reproductive health needs. The main findings show that the Cameroonian government has a set of written health policies, dating back to the early 1990s, which touch on reproductive health, but none of them specifically address the issues of the subject among adolescents in Cameroon. Most of the implemented reproductive health programs have been short-term efforts headed up by non-governmental entities. Among these initiatives, the "Aunties program" and those based on peer education have shown the most effectiveness and promise among adolescents. Overall the efforts expended so far have regrettably been inadequate. The main barriers limiting the improvement of sexual and reproductive health in Cameroon can be summarised as: lack of existence of and access to qualified "adolescentfriendly" health facilities and personnel, lack of political will in development and implementation of nationwide health policies and programs, and a too short time-frame for the programs implemented. The situation is further complicated by structural, political, cultural and religious factors that have created a standstill and frequent unwillingness to move towards progress in bettering the reproductive health situation of Cameroonian adolescents.


Light affine logic is a variant of linear logic with a polynomial cut-elimination procedure. We study the extensional expressive power of light affine logic with respect to a general notion of encoding of functions in the setting of the Curry–Howard correspondence. We consider light affine logic with both fixpoints of formulae and second-order quantifiers, and analyse the properties of polytime soundness and polytime completeness for various fragments of this system. In particular, we show that the implicative propositional fragment is not polytime complete if we place some reasonable conditions on the encodings. Following previous work, we show that second order leads to polytime unsoundness. We then introduce simple constraints on second-order quantification and fixpoints, and prove that the fragments obtained are polytime sound and complete.


The development of appropriate test cases is an important issue for conformance testing of protocol implementations and other reactive software systems. A number of methods are known for the development of a test suite based on a specification given in the form of a finite state machine. In practice, the system requirements evolve throughout the lifetime of the system and the specifications are modified incrementally. We adapt four well-known test derivation methods, namely, the HIS, W, Wp, and UIOv methods, for generating tests that would test only the modified parts of an evolving specification. Some application examples and experimental results are provided. These results show significant gains when using incremental testing in comparison with complete testing, especially when the modified part represents less than 20 percent of the whole specification.


The return strategies in the home country of activities previously outsourced overseas have been defined by the academic literature with a plurality of terms ("back-shoring", "reshoring", "back-reshoring", "near-shoring", "on-shoring" and "in-shoring"). This paper analyses "back-shoring" with respect to its fragmented definitions. After presenting an articulate discussion on the state of the art in literature, we provide a quantitative analysis of this phenomenon at national level, reviewing the most significant cases of Italian companies that have decided to take the return strategies. The production system of Southern Italy is crossed only marginally by this phenomenon. Finally, thispaperfocuses on the main policy implications.


Effective data-driven PDE forecasting methods often rely on fixed spatial and / or temporal discretizations. This raises limitations in real-world applications like weather prediction where flexible extrapolation at arbitrary spatiotemporal locations is required. We address this problem by introducing a new data-driven approach, DINo, that models a PDE's flow with continuous-time dynamics of spatially continuous functions. This is achieved by embedding spatial observations independently of their discretization via Implicit Neural Representations in a small latent space temporally driven by a learned ODE. This separate and flexible treatment of time and space makes DINo the first data-driven model to combine the following advantages. It extrapolates at arbitrary spatial and temporal locations; it can learn from sparse irregular grids or manifolds; at test time, it generalizes to new grids or resolutions. DINo outperforms alternative neural PDE forecasters in a variety of challenging generalization scenarios on representative PDE systems.


Effective climate change mitigation requires global carbon emissions to be reduced at least by 50% over the 2000-2050 period, as recommended by the IPCC. Producing steel accounts for approximately 9% of all energy-related green house gas emissions. With the rapid urbanization and industrialization of the developing countries, demand for steel is anticipated to at least double by 2050. The daunting challenge is how emerging economies like India and China will be able to develop into modern economies without generating significant repercussions for the global climate. Today's best available steel making processes have optimised energy use to a large extent. For further emission reduction, climate change mitigation policies primarily aim at a response based on carbon sequestration of process and electricity related emissions. However, these approaches are far from proven and carry both technical and financial risks. This research shifts the focus from supply-side to demand-side measures to address this issue. The need to include management of in-use stocks in environmental policy is underlined, as stocks are important drivers for resource and energy consumption as well as waste and emission generation. The central idea behind this work is to highlight that the goal for developing countries should not be to acquire the same level of in-use stock as seen in the developed counties, but to attain the same services enjoyed by them with lower material stocks. This study first attempts to quantify the differences in steel stocks in vehicles, along with the total embodied energy and emissions among a set of developed countries. Using a novel approach, service provided by the vehicle stock is defined using suitable parameters. Further, using passenger car steel stock as an example, scenarios are developed for India, which reflect ways in which India could possibly attain the same level of service as seen in industrialized countries, but with lower steel stock. The approach presented here is based on a static model, which is used to provide an indication of the embedded energy and emissions associated with the instantaneous build-up of the steel stock, to provide a certain level of service. Factors that influence dependence on personal transport are studied and possible ways of making people less reliant on cars are suggested. The results from the scenario analysis indicate that for passenger cars, the emissions embedded in steel stock can be reduced by 75% if India chooses not to replicate the US pattern of development, but instead, with proactive planning and decision making, adopt measures that can make the population less dependent on individual transport. This project therefore, is a step towards drawing attention to the importance of including the role of anthropogenic stocks in environmental policy.


In 2004, I published an article in the Journal of Biblical Literature in which I argued that περιβόλαιον in 1 Cor 11:15 means "testicle." In the same journal in 2011, Mark Goodacre wrote a critique challenging and contesting my translation not only in this passage but also in Euripides' Herc. fur. 1269. In this article, I respond to Goodacre's critique and offer additional arguments supporting the translation of περιβόλαιον as "testicle" in both passages. I rely on modern linguistic theory to demonstrate that context requires the meaning of "testicle" for περιβόλαιον in both 1 Cor 11:15 and Herc. fur. 1269. I conclude that my reading of περιβόλαιον as "testicle" makes better sense of the use of this term in both passages than any other proposed readings, including Goodacre's.