Parties and social movements play an important role in many theories of political science. Yet, the study of intraparty politics remains underdeveloped as random samples are difficult to conduct among political activists. This paper proposes a novel procedure to sample different parties over time and space by utilizing the advertising option of the social media webpage Facebook. As this method allows for quotas and the collection of large samples at relatively low cost, it becomes possible to improve the representativeness through poststratification and subsample robustness checks. Three examples illustrate these advantages of Facebook sampling: First, a Facebook sample approximated intraparty decisions and the outcome of a leadership contest of the Alternative for Germany. Second, a weighted Facebook sample achieved similar estimates as a representative local leader survey of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Third, by evaluating subgroups of key demographics for parties with unknown population parameters, two Facebook samples show that the color-coded conflict in Thailand was driven by different concepts of regime type, but not by a left–right divide on economic policy-making. Facebook sampling appears to be the best and cheapest method to conduct time-series cross-sectional studies for political activists.


Catastrophic flood events can trigger human resettlement away from rivers. To understand the spatiotemporal changes of flood risk, we need to determine the way in which humans adapt and respond to flood events. One adaptation option consists of resettling away from flood-prone areas to prevent or reduce future losses. We use satellite nighttime light data to discern the relationship between long-term changes in human proximity to rivers and the occurrence of catastrophic flood events. Moreover, we explore how these relationships are influenced by different levels of structural flood protection. We found that societies with low protection levels tend to resettle further away from the river after damaging flood events. Conversely, societies with high protection levels show no significant changes in human proximity to rivers. Instead, such societies continue to rely heavily on structural measures, reinforcing flood protection and quickly resettling in flood-prone areas after a flooding event. Our work reveals interesting aspects of human adaptation to flood risk and offers key insights for comparing different risk reduction strategies. In addition, this study provides a framework that can be used to further investigate human response to floods, which is relevant as urbanization of floodplains continues and puts more people and economic assets at risk.


Significant findings from the 1988-9 Taulbee report, which is based on a December 1989 survey of the Forsythe list of computing departments, are summarized. The survey focuses on the production and employment of PhDs who graduated in 1988-89 and the faculty of PhD-granting computing departments during the 1989-90 academic year. Among the findings is an 8% increase in PhDs granted. Of the 625 new PhDs, none are black, six are Hispanic, and 87 are women. The 129 CS departments have 2550 faculty members (an increase of 123, or nearly one per department) and reported hiring 204 faculty and losing 161. >


This thesis deals with legal issues arisen from consumer-activated payment orders, regarding credit transfers, which are initiated via the Internet under an agreement (about using Internet-services) previously entered into between the bank and the payer (or the originator). This Internet-service is in the thesis called Internet banking. More and more customers, both consumers and others, activate such payment orders on-line. Payments or payment orders are not a new phenomenon but in the thesis they are dealt with from an electronic perspective.

The thesis? subject matter is the bank-customer relationship from a Swedish private law perspective. Three questions are of central concern for this thesis. Firstly, how is the private law regulation regarding payment orders made? Secondly, what is the law of substance regarding payment orders initiated via the Internet? Finally, what legal implications, if any, occur when a payment order is initiated electronically via the Internet? The thesis examines different aspects of the bank-customer relationship. One aspect is, from a customer's point of view, the right to use Internet-services. Another aspect is payment by mistake but also the right of revocation or countermand. Yet another aspect is the bank's obligations as an intermediary as regards to payment orders. Furthermore, the thesis examines how to produce information generated electronically as evidence in a court of law. An overall question in the thesis is whether banks are subject to a higher degree of risk when using the Internet as a communication channel. In the thesis it is argued, the answer to that question is no.


The IBM Enterprise Privacy Architecture (EPA) is a methodology for enterprises to provide an enhanced and well-defined level of privacy to their customers. EPA is structured in four building blocks. The privacy regulation analysis identifies and structures the applicable regulations. The management reference model enables an enterprise to define and enforce an enterprise privacy strategy and the resulting privacy practices. The privacy agreement framework is a methodology for privacy-enabling business process re-engineering. It outputs a detailed model of the privacy-relevant players and activities as well as the privacy policies that govern these activities. The technical reference architecture defines the technology needed for implementing the identified practices.


Heparan sulphate proteoglycans and the extracellular matrix of bone-marrow-stromal cells are important components of the microenvironment of haematopoietic tissues and are involved in the interaction of haematopoietic stem and stromal cells. Previous studies have emphasized the role of heparan sulphate proteoglycan synthesis by bone-marrow-stromal cells. In the present study we describe the expression of glypican-4 (GPC-4), belonging to the glypican family, in bone-marrow-stromal cells and haematopoietic-progenitor cells of human and murine origin. Expression of GPC-4 was shown on the mRNA-level by reverse transcription-PCR and Northern blot analysis. Amplification products were cloned and sequenced, to confirm these results. To analyze the expression of GPC-4 on the protein level, polyclonal antibodies against selected peptides were raised in rabbits. Western blot analysis showed expression of GPC-4 as a heparan sulphate proteoglycan in the human haematopoietic-progenitor cell line TF-1 and normal human bone marrow. These results were confirmed by FACS analysis of TF-1 cells. Furthermore, GPC-4-positive progenitor cells and stromal cells were enriched from normal human bone marrow by magnetic-cell sorting and analysed by confocal laser-scanning microscopy.


Pathogenic microorganisms are serious threats in schools, where contact with many microorganisms occur frequently throughout the school day. Classrooms are considered an optimal place for contact between microorganisms and young children. the aim of the current study was to study the prevalence of bacteria isolated in samples from different sites in primary schools and to show whether schools are sanitized and clean for children or it is just the core reason for their illness. The study was done in a highly standard private school and a public school in order to study the effect of variance in the social classes on the cleanliness of the schools. Different colonies were separated and identified by staining techniques and biochemical tests. Thirteen different types of bacteria with different amounts were isolated from 176 samples collected from different surfaces. It was found that the number of bacteria in public school is higher than that of the private school. The distribution of bacterial strains isolated from the two schools averaged 37.1% for Staphylococcus sp. followed by 11.3% for Enterobacter sp. and then 7.3%, 7.1% and 6.3% for Yersinia sp. Streptococcus sp. and Micrococcus sp. respectively. Other strains ranged between 5.9% to 1.5%. Bacterial isolates were tested for their susceptibility by well diffusion test against three commercial disinfectants commonly used for surface and hand cleaning in schools, namely; Clorox, Renol and Dettol. The highest percentage of resistance was seen against Renol (50%) followed by Dettol (38%) and was identified to be Escherichia coli, while least resistance occurring among all isolates was noticed against Clorox (18%). Children in private and public schools are at high risk of catching serious bacterial infections and they are surrounded by a cram of microorganisms. The current research shows that new ways must be developed to improve our schools' hygiene to make it a healthier and safer place to learn in.


Transcranial pulsed current stimulation (tPCS) of the human motor cortex has received much attention in recent years. Although the effect of anodal tPCS with different frequencies has been investigated, the effect of cathodal tPCS (c‐tPCS) has not been explored yet. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of c‐tPCS at 4 and 75 Hz frequencies on corticospinal excitability (CSE) and motor performance. In a randomized sham‐controlled crossover design, fifteen healthy participants attended three experimental sessions and received either c‐tPCS at 75 Hz, 4 Hz or sham with 1.5 mA for 15 min. Transcranial magnetic stimulation and grooved pegboard test were performed before, immediately after and 30 min after the completion of stimulation at rest. The findings indicate that c‐tPCS at both 4 and 75 Hz significantly increased CSE compared to sham. Both c‐tPCS at 75 and 4 Hz showed a significant increase in intracortical facilitation compared to sham, whereas the effect on short‐interval intracortical inhibition was not significant. The c‐tPCS at 4 Hz but not 75 Hz induced modulation of intracortical facilitation correlated with the CSE. Motor performance did not show any significant changes. These results suggest that, compared with sham stimulation, c‐tPCS at both 4 and 75 Hz induces an increase in CSE.


A case report of ovarian pregnancy is presented. A 38 year old woman, gravida 3 para 2, was admitted to the hospital for suspected ectopic pregnancy, with vaginal bleeding at 12 weeks after her last menstrual period, associated with pelvic pain. An ultra-sonography led to the diagnosis of ovarian right ectopic pregnancy with dead fetus associated with a compartmentalized hemoperitoneum. Unilateral oophorectomy was carried out by laparotomy. Histological studies confirmed an ovarian pregnancy.


The addition of grain refiners during industrial direct chill (DC) casting of aluminum billets promotes formation of smaller equiaxed grains with obvious advantages. However, the role of grain refining in the extent of macrosegregation in DC cast Al alloys is still unclear. This is particularly evident in the case of commercial aluminum alloys with various alloying elements. In this work, the structure and associated macrosegregation patterns in DC cast AA 2024 (Al–Cu–Mg) aluminum alloy billets were studied at different casting speeds. The concentration profiles of Cu and Mg, measured along the billet diameter, showed an expected negative segregation in the center and close to the surface. The severity of segregation increases at a higher casting speed. On the other hand, grain refining does not seem to have any dramatic effect on the macrosegregation patterns. The experimental results are correlated with microstructural observations such as grain size and morphology and the occurrence of "floating" grains across the cross-section of the billet.


In a distributed storage environment, where the data is placed in nodes connected through a network, it is likely that one of these nodes fails. It is known that the use of erasure coding improves the fault tolerance and minimize s the redundancy added in distributed storage environments.The use of regenerating codes [1] not only make the most of the erasure coding improvements, but also minimizes the amount of data needed to regenerate a failed node. In this paper, a new family of regenerating codes based on quasi-cyclic codes is presented. Quasi-cyclic minimum sto rage regenerating (quasi-cyclic MSR) codes are presented and th eir existence with high probability is proved. Regenerating co des with optimal bandwidth constructed from a base MSR code by using graphs are also provided. These codes not only achieve optimal MBR parameters in terms of stored data and bandwidth, but also for a specific choice of the parameters involved, the y can be decreased under the optimal MBR point. Quasi-cyclic regenerating codes are also very interestingbecause of their simplicity and low complexity. They allow a repairby-transfer in the optimal bandwidth case (no operations ar e needed) and a pseudo repair-by-transfer in the MSR case, whe r operations are needed only when the new node enters into the system replacing a lost one.


The fast growth and spread of Web 2.0 environments have demonstrated the great willingness of general Web users to contribute and share various type of content and information. Many very successful web sites currently exist which thrive on the wisdom of the crowd, where web users in general are the sole data providers and curators. The Semantic Web calls for knowledge to be semantically represented using ontologies to allow for better access and sharing of data. However, constructing ontologies collaboratively is not well supported by most existing ontology and knowledge-base editing tools. This has resulted in the recent emergence of a new range of collaborative ontology construction tools with the aim of integrating some Web 2.0 features into the process of structured knowledge construction. This paper provides a survey of the start of the art of these tools, and highlights their significant features and capabilities.


We calculate the differential conductance at a probe inserted in the weak link of a topological Josephson junction, consisting of a semiconducting nanowire deposited on top of two separated superconductors. Our aim is to understand how the peculiar features in the spectrum of Andreev bound states, arising due to the presence of Majorana bound states at the ends of the two topological superconducting wires defining the junction, can be determined through a measurement of the differential conductance. We find that when the probe allows a single propagating mode, the differential conductance presents a dip at zero voltage of zero conductance close to the position where the spectrum exhibits the topologically protected crossing. This can be viewed as a signature of the presence of Majorana states, which does not require fermion parity conservation and is robust against parameters' changes, as well as disorder. On the contrary, when the probe allows two or more propagating modes the differential conductance resembles the spectrum of Andreev bound states. This has been established making use of both numerical and analytical methods.


Speech synthesis (text to speech, TTS) and recognition (automatic speech recognition, ASR) are important speech tasks, and require a large amount of text and speech pairs for model training. However, there are more than 6,000 languages in the world and most languages are lack of speech training data, which poses significant challenges when building TTS and ASR systems for extremely low-resource languages. In this paper, we develop LRSpeech, a TTS and ASR system under the extremely low-resource setting, which can support rare languages with low data cost. LRSpeech consists of three key techniques: 1) pre-training on rich-resource languages and fine-tuning on low-resource languages; 2) dual transformation between TTS and ASR to iteratively boost the accuracy of each other; 3) knowledge distillation to customize the TTS model on a high-quality target-speaker voice and improve the ASR model on multiple voices. We conduct experiments on an experimental language (English) and a truly low-resource language (Lithuanian) to verify the effectiveness of LRSpeech. Experimental results show that LRSpeech 1) achieves high quality for TTS in terms of both intelligibility (more than $98%$ intelligibility rate) and naturalness (above 3.5 mean opinion score (MOS)) of the synthesized speech, which satisfy the requirements for industrial deployment, 2) achieves promising recognition accuracy for ASR, and 3) last but not least, uses extremely low-resource training data. We also conduct comprehensive analyses on LRSpeech with different amounts of data resources, and provide valuable insights and guidances for industrial deployment. We are currently deploying LRSpeech into a commercialized cloud speech service to support TTS on more rare languages.


ABSTRACT The study investigated changes in teaching practices and classroom processes, seen from a student perspective, before and after the education reforms of the 1990s, and the introduction of the Swedish 1994 National Curriculum for comprehensive school. The total time pass stretches from 1980 to 2014. The focus is on comparisons of results based on identical statements in questionnaires, given to six nationally representative student cohorts within the ongoing Evaluation Through Follow-up project, who attended grade 6 or grade 9. The findings show the working atmosphere in the Swedish grade-6 schools to have improved during the 1980s, pointing also to changes in the teacher role. Teacher-led class teaching was in less use than in previous decades, but still the most dominating teaching condition, with an increase from 2005 to 2011. In grade 9, the changes are reverse, with a tendency for reduced time for teacher-led class teaching from 2003 onwards, and the use of less group work and fewer tests. From the mid-1990s onwards an explosive spread of individual work was identified in both grade 6 and grade 9. The changes in teaching practices and classroom processes are discussed in the light of individualization, curricula goals and education reforms.


Perceived objects automatically potentiate afforded action. Object affordances also facilitate perception of such objects, and this occurrence is known as the affordance effect. This study examined whether object affordances facilitate the initial visual processing stage, or perceptual entry processes, using the temporal order judgment task. The onset of the graspable (righthandled) coffee cup was perceived earlier than that of the less graspable (left-handled) cup for right-handed participants. The affordance effect was eliminated when the coffee cups were inverted, which presumably conveyed less affordance information. These results suggest that objects preattentively potentiate the perceptual entry processes in response to their affordances.


Surface defects such as step edges play an important role in determining the surface properties, affecting immensely the growth mechanisms and morphologies of the nanostructures in epitaxial film growth processes. Here, we probe the dynamics of the oxidation on stepped Cu(100) using molecular dynamic simulations in conjunction with a reactive force field, and we elucidate the mechanisms and energy barriers affecting the oxidation process. Molecular dynamic simulations show that the adsorbed oxygen adatoms are unevenly distributed on the stepped surface, favoring the top terrace. We show that this behavior is due to Ehrlich–Schwobel (ES) barrier effect. However, differently from the reduced interlayer self-diffusion in descending a step as in a conventional ES barrier effect, we find instead that the ES barrier reduces the ascending diffusion barrier for oxygen, promoting its transport across the step edge and enhancing oxidation of the upper terrace. Additionally, we find that the ES barrier is step-heigh...


The present investigation is a case-control study designed to assess the level of association between alcohol consumption and the occurrence of severe adverse reaction (SAE) following ivermectin consumption. Thirty-six (36)  cases of SAE occurred in the health districts of Bankim, Nanga Eboko, Obala, Okola and Sa'a. Case and control (43) individuals were submitted to a questionnaire related to their alcohol consumption 24 before and 24 to 48 h following ivermectin intake. An in-depth interview of siblings and local health worker was conducted to assess alcohol consumption around Mectizan intake. The degree of alcohol use was assessed using the level of serum transaminases and the alcohol use disorder identification test (AUDIT). The alcoholic beverages of the study communities were conventional such as beer, whisky, or locally made. Locally produced beverages included "arki" ("Odontol", "Hah", ...) and palm wine. The bark, sap or fruit of plants adjuvant are known to contain alkaloids and tannins which are potent neurotropic substances. The likelihood of developing SAE among cases and controls did not differ significantly with history of consumption of alcoholic beverages. Nor did it differ for other indicators of chronic alcohol consumption.

 Key words: Alcohol consumption, onchocerciasis, AUDIT, serious adverse events, encephalopathy.


We describe a relatively new effort within CMS to converge on a set of web based tools, using state of the art industry techniques, to engage with the CMS offline computing system. CMS collaborators require tools to monitor various components of the computing system and interact with the system itself. The current state of the various CMS web tools is described along side current planned developments. The CMS collaboration comprises of nearly 3000 people from all over the world. As well as its collaborators, its computing resources are spread all over globe and are accessed via the LHC grid to run analysis, large scale production and data transfer tasks. Due to the distributed nature of collaborators effective provision of collaborative tools is essential to maximise physics exploitation of the CMS experiment, especially when the size of the CMS data set is considered. CMS has chosen to provide such tools over the world wide web as a top level service, enabling all members of the collaboration to interact with the various offline computing components. Traditionally web interfaces have been added in HEP experiments as an afterthought. In the CMS offline we have decided to put web interfaces, and the development of a common CMS web framework, on an equal footing with the rest of the offline development. Tools exist within CMS to transfer and catalogue data (PhEDEx and DBS/DLS), run Monte Carlo production (ProdAgent) and submit analysis (CRAB). Effective human interfaces to these systems are required for users with different agendas and practical knowledge of the systems to effectively use the CMS computing system. The CMS web tools project aims to provide a consistent interface to all these tools.


Endmember extraction and unmixing methods that exploit nonlinearity in hyperspectral data are receiving increased attention, but they have significant challenges. Global feature extraction methods such as isometric feature mapping have significant computational overhead, which is often addressed for the classification problem via landmark-based methods. Because landmark approaches are approximation methods, experimental results are often highly variable. We propose a new robust landmark selection method for the purpose of pixel unmixing that exploits spectral and spatial homogeneity in a local window kernel. We compare the performance of the method to several landmark selection methods in terms of reconstruction error and processing time.


This paper presents the direct decompression method for calculating the punching strengths of post-tensioned slabs. It is a method already used for determining the shear strengths of beams. In many respects it is similar to the Federation Internationale de la Precontrainte (FIP) treatment of punching in post-tensioned slabs, but it is simpler to use. The predictions of two variants of the direct decompression approach, and of the FIP method, are compared with the results of tests of slabs with various arrangements and profiles of tendons. It is shown that the direct method reduces the scatter of ratios of experimental and calculated strengths although all three approaches provide reasonable results.


Students enrolled in the New York Summer Study Program will find a wealth of resources in the arts in NYC


Development of a highly potent anti-RSV monoclonal antibody with extended half-life intended to be used as RSV prophylaxis for all infants. Pan-RSV prophylaxis The common respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) can progress to a very dangerous lower respiratory infection in some infants. A protective monoclonal antibody is available but is not recommended for general use. Zhu et al. describe the selection and optimization of a human monoclonal antibody able to neutralize a wide array of RSV A and B viruses and protect cotton rats at lower doses than the currently approved antibody. The antibody was optimized to persist in circulation, and data indicate that infants could be given a single dose and be protected for the entirety of the RSV season. If administered widely, this antibody could potentially prevent the hospitalization of thousands of children each year. Prevention of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) illness in all infants is a major public health priority. However, no vaccine is currently available to protect this vulnerable population. Palivizumab, the only approved agent for RSV prophylaxis, is limited to high-risk infants, and the cost associated with the requirement for dosing throughout the RSV season makes its use impractical for all infants. We describe the development of a monoclonal antibody as potential RSV prophylaxis for all infants with a single intramuscular dose. MEDI8897*, a highly potent human antibody, was optimized from antibody D25, which targets the prefusion conformation of the RSV fusion (F) protein. Crystallographic analysis of Fab in complex with RSV F from subtypes A and B reveals that MEDI8897* binds a highly conserved epitope. MEDI8897* neutralizes a diverse panel of RSV A and B strains with >50-fold higher activity than palivizumab. At similar serum concentrations, prophylactic administration of MEDI8897* was ninefold more potent than palivizumab at reducing pulmonary viral loads by >3 logs in cotton rats infected with either RSV A or B subtypes. MEDI8897 was generated by the introduction of triple amino acid substitutions (YTE) into the Fc domain of MEDI8897*, which led to more than threefold increased half-life in cynomolgus monkeys compared to non-YTE antibody. Considering the pharmacokinetics of palivizumab in infants, which necessitates five monthly doses for protection during an RSV season, the high potency and extended half-life of MEDI8897 support its development as a cost-effective option to protect all infants from RSV disease with once-per-RSV-season dosing in the clinic.


The detection of cracks in solder joints has been a challenge for the current nondestructive inspection techniques. This paper investigates the capability of a laser ultrasound and vibrometer inspection system to detect thermal cycle induced cracks in flip chip solder joints. Correlation coefficient analysis of ultrasound vibration signals is presented and compared with the previous error ratio method. The correlation coefficient method improves the system's signal-to-noise ratio. Optimum detection locations on the chip surface are investigated and an auto-comparison method is introduced to inspect a chip with fewer detection points and without the dependence on a reference chip. The results show that the system is able to identify thermally cracked solder joints from well-connected joints. When fully developed, the system can be put in-line and serve as a low-cost go/no-go inspection tool to screen out defects in solder joints at an early stage in the manufacturing process. It can also be used to evaluate the quality of many other types of electronic packages and other devices.


In a Bearded Collie with acute weakness, hematemesis, melena, painful abdomen and pale mucous membranes a hematocrit of 13% and panhypoproteinemia were found. This combination of findings was the manifestation of severe gastrointestinal bleeding. Despite intensive laboratory and imaging investigations no systemic or local cause could be identified. After repeated client interrogation it was found that the dog had been receiving a food supplement for equines. It was further detected that this supplement besides a shell extract also contained willow (Salicaceae) and meadowsweet (Filipendula, Spiraea ulmaria) which contain salicin.Thus, the administration of this supplement was considered a possible cause of gastrointestinal bleeding. Even though measurement of toxic metabolites in the blood was not obtained and a cause-and-effect relationship not definitively proven, on principle it must be taken into consideration that any natural and so-called harmless agent supposed to have a positive effect may be associated with adverse effects in a predisposed individual.


OBJECTIVE
To gain insight into the shortage in health care capacity for patients who require immediate admission to hospital.

DESIGN
Prospective, descriptive.

METHOD
During the period 1 March-30 November 2001, data were collected on all patients presenting at the casualty department at the Sint Lucas Andreas Hospital in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, who had a surgical, internal medicine or neurological condition which required immediate admission and who could not be admitted due to a shortage in health care capacity. The following data were registered: date of transfer, age, gender, diagnosis, referring specialty, time of telephone call, accepting hospital and time of acceptance. During the same period, the surgery department also noted details of patients requiring immediate admission or transfer whom they turned away after presentation via the telephone by either the general practitioner or a different hospital.

RESULTS
131 patients could not be admitted, 68 men and 63 women with a mean age of 69 years. The distribution across the specialties was as follows: surgery: 63 patients (48%; mean age: 68 years); internal medicine: 48 patients (37%; 65 years); neurology: 20 patients (15%; 74 years). The most common reasons for admission were proximal femur fractures (24; 18%) and gastrointestinal disorders (27; 21%). Mean duration from making the telephone call until acceptance elsewhere was 70 min (range: 1-330) for surgery, 42 min (5-180) for internal medicine and 116 min (10-870) for neurology. The transfer of patients with proximal femur fractures (97 min) and cerebrovascular accident (129 min) took the longest. During the same period, 170 patients were refused by the department of surgery for first-time admission or transfer.


In 1579 the English writer Thomas Churchyard explained to his readers the military strategy that Sir Humphrey Gilbert had used in Ireland during the suppression of the First Desmond Rebellion ten years earlier. He wrote that 'when soeuer he [Gilbert] made any ostyng, or inrode, into the enemies Countrey, he killed manne, woman, and child, and spoiled, wasted, and burned, by the grounde all that he might: leauyng nothyng of the enemies in saffetie, whiche he could possiblie waste, or consume'. Gilbert's actions have been seen as emblematic of the apparently special character of English warfare in sixteenth-century Ireland. The editors of an influential collection of essays examining conflict in early modern Ireland have written of 'a level of violence in Ireland that was more intense and vicious than elsewhere in the Tudor and Stuart kingdoms'. Other historians of early modern Ireland have made even bolder claims. For Vincent Carey, the English 'campaigns of indiscriminate killing and systematic starvation in Munster and Ulster constituted an early modern European version of total war, which in its impact on the civilian population was probably unprecedented and unmatched until the events of the Thirty Years' War some decades later'. Recently, David Edwards has reasserted the unique and brutal character of English violence in Ireland. Rather than being a product of the Elizabethan conquest, 'this type of violence', Edwards finds, was first used in Ireland during the repression of the Geraldine Rebellion in the 1530s and became especially pronounced in the 'colonial wars' that accompanied the establishment of English plantations in Laois and Offaly from the late 1540s.


Once, OGURA Takekazu, who is one of the key persons behind the Agricultural Basic Law, made the following reflection. "I was caught by the theory of Western Europe and couldn't think over the reality of Japanese agriculture profoundly. It was necessary to conduct a study on the character of Japanese agriculture and the rural community, and to plan the structural reform based on it." The theme of this paper is to consider the type of structural reform based on the reflection of OGURA. The main reason why the agricultural structural reform hasn't proceeded well in Japan is that agricultural administration disregarded the power of rural society. In a traditional Japanese rural community, i. e., each plot of arable land was a separate territory, and its property rights belonged to the family of each peasant. In such a rural community with this tradition, it is necessary for agricultural administration to declare it would insure that farmers could defend their farmland property rights in the first place, and after that, to devise a way to to separate use right from the ownership of the arable land to execute the structural reform. After the mutual agreement of the landowners' group in the rural community is completed, it is necessary to entrust the farm management to a reliable person or group who has managerial skills. However, there is a great deal of room for the invention of these methods in each region. Therefore, the types might be diversified and a long term is also required. In the above-mentioned points, Japanese type agricultural structural reform will be greatly different from the image that WTO holds. It is necessary for agricultural administration to declare these clearly inside and outside Japan.


A method for the evaluation of forces and torque in static and quasistatic problems solved by adopting hybrid formulations is presented. The examined formulations are based on the use of the equivalence theorem that allows the definition of interior and exterior problems that are coupled by the continuity interface conditions. On the surfaces where the continuity conditions are imposed equivalent sources are present. These equivalent sources produce the same fields and potentials outside the fictitious surfaces as the enclosed body does. Resultant forces and torque acting on the bodies enclosed by each surface are evaluated by using these fictitious sources. Results obtained by the proposed method applied to magnetostatic and eddy current problems are compared in terms of accuracy and CPU time with results obtained by other methods and, where available, by experimental set up.


: We report on a 44-year-old woman with a right frontal meningioma, who presented with resting tremor, rigidity and bradykinesia in the left limbs. There were no other neurologic manifestations. A computed tomography scan demonstrated a huge high-density mass in the right frontal lobe and marked surrounding edema causing compression of the basal ganglia. Cerebral angiography showed a typical sunburst tumor stain and three feeding vessels from the bilateral middle meningeal arteries and the right callosomarginal artery. The pathologic diagnosis was transitional type meningioma. Before surgery, treatment with levodopa and bromocriptine was significantly effective in controlling hemiparkinsonism, which completely disappeared after surgical removal of the tumor. This outcome supports the notion that local compression due to edema may cause a functional disorder in the basal ganglia producing reversible contralateral parkinsonism.


Optical flow is an important research area in the Computer Vision field, with the estimation of optical flow at occlusion still an open problem. Traditional approaches to this problem have either used additional terms in a regularization calculation (the flow still tends to "bleed" across occlusion boundaries) or a local least squares calculation that attempted to minimize the influence of two adjacent differently moving regions on the optical flow at points close to both regions (the flow still tends to be "corrupted" by the two regions). Ideally, optical flow for two adjacent differently moving regions should be distinct right up to the occlusion boundary. A recent approach to calculate optical flow at occlusion is to combining boundary and region segmentation with the optical flow computation. Based on the work of Sundberg et al. Arbelaez et al. and Brox et al., we implement a motion gradient (mg) edge map algorithm which detects motion information in closed regions in the image sequences. Here we utilize the motion gradient as an additional local cue in the globalized probability of a boundary (gPb) as a new boundary detector to produce a gPb + mg contour map. The next step is to apply the Ultrametric Contour Map (UCM) mechanism, which is a framework to compute closed contours in a hierarchical region tree to produce a hierarchical edge map which indicates possible boundaries, including occlusion boundaries. We implemented Sundberg et al.'s work to detect occlusion boundaries using optical flow, but, unlike Sundberg et al., we compute and display optical flow everywhere. The Sundberg et al. optical flow was generated by Brox et al's method. They used a least squares calculation on the brox flow at pixels around an occlusion boundary to determine whether a boundary computed by the gPb−UCM library developed by UC Berkeley is occluding or occluded. We extended their least squares idea to 1st and 2nd order optical flow models to generate dense optical flow inside each closed region. Finally, we analyze our optical flow fields both qualitatively and quantitatively. In particular, for quantitative analysis, we use warping error, as the correct flow is unknown. We show improved results over those of Sundberg et al., note a number of shortcomings in Sundberg et al.'s approach and point to areas of future research.


The reliable detection of SARS-CoV-2 genomic RNA and infectious virus particles from patient samples requires a good sample quality. This is especially critical when the sample has to be transported to the analysing laboratory which can take several days. To determine optimal transport conditions, we simulated oropharyngeal swab samples using defined virus amounts and stored the samples at 4 °C or at room temperature for up to four days. Moreover, we analysed the influence of dry swabs in comparison to swabs stored in transport medium. Our results show that care should be taken when analysing samples for infectious SARS-CoV-2 particles since infectivity is strongly influenced by sample storage.


In pentobarbital-anesthetized dogs with decentralized adrenal glands, sinoaortic baroreceptor deafferentation produced an increase in mean aortic blood pressure which reached a maximum (42 +/- 5 mm Hg, n = 6) within 5 min and then waned entirely within the subsequent 25 min. In contrast, in sham-operated dogs, the maximal pressor response due to deafferentation was of greater magnitude (63 +/- 6 mm Hg, n = 8) and of much longer duration (44 +/- 4 mm Hg, 60 min after deafferentation). Heart rate was only augmented slightly in both preparations. A marked elevation of epinephrine plasma concentration occurred 5 min after deafferentation and the magnitude of this effect was 8 times greater in dogs with innervated than denervated adrenal glands. Norepinephrine plasma concentration increased moderately and similarly in the two preparations. Administration of pergolide (30.0 micrograms/kg i.v.) 15 min before undertaking the deafferentation procedure induced a small, short-lasting increase in blood pressure and a small fall in heart rate in dogs in which the innervation to the adrenal glands was left either intact (sham-operated) or removed surgically. In dogs with adrenal gland denervated, pergolide blocked entirely the pressor response and the small elevation in plasma concentration of catecholamines evoked by sinoaortic deafferentation in the matched, saline-pretreated group. However, in sham-operated dogs (intact adrenal innervation), pergolide reduced partially (by 41%) the increase in blood pressure and plasma epinephrine concentration caused by deafferentation. The decrease in heart rate, produced by pergolide, was abolished by deafferentation in sham-operated and adrenal decentralized dogs.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


The interference of some substances with the gas chromatography-flame ionization detection and gas chromatography-Fourier transform infrared detection of toluene and ethylbenzene in volatile substance abuse poses problems. A gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method that will overcome such interference has been developed for the detection of toluene and/or ethylbenzene in the headspace of preparations and products containing these substances and in the headspace of blood samples in the cases of volatile substance abuse. The method is based on converting toluene to benzoic acid via the formation of benzotrichloride. The latter compound was obtained upon the reaction of toluene with chlorine gas under direct sunlight conditions. In the presence of water, benzotrichloride was converted to benzoic acid. Ethylbenzene was converted to benzoic acid and two phenylethanols via the formation of side chain chloro-substituted followed by reaction with water. The chloro-substituted were obtained by the reaction of ethylbenzene with chlorine under direct sunlight conditions. The benzoic acid resulting from toluene and/or ethylbenzene and the two phenylethanols resulting from ethylbenzene were detected by GC-MS as their trimethylsilyl (TMS) derivatives�9 For the method to be viable for the detection of volatile substance abuse, the chlorination reactions were effected in the gaseous state.


Ultrastructural investigations of different parts of rat brain after diazepam administration revealed benzodiazepine receptors on the neuronal surface and plasma membrane of astrocytes of the sensorimotor cortex, hippocampus and central grey substance. Subsuperficial cisternae that replenish deficit of plasma membrane required for coated vesicles formation were only seen in the neurons and were absent from the astrocytes. The fate of internalized diazepam in the nerve and glial cells were different: in the neurons, ligand is destroyed in lysosomes and multivesicular bodies, while in the astrocytes, exceptionally in lysosomes.


The study aimed  that The impact of using model of Marzano gain students the ability to configure an integrated conceptual structure in Islamic concepts the Sample included studious (120) student students the first year where of college of the educational sciences study in, two branches be organized in their choice was complete random among seven people at that the chapter, where one of the people counted experimental group and included (60) student and the random method chose in, as the group counted the other control group and included (60) student likewise. This hypothesis states that there is no statistically significant difference at the level (0.05 ? ?) in the conceptual structure of the Islamic concepts among students who learned using the Marzano model in learning and who have learned the usual way. to test this hypothesis has been calculating averages, the amount of the increase in average marks his experimental group was higher than the amount of increase in the average control group students ' marks and the study recommended to: 1. Adopting a Marzano in the teaching of religious concepts in the different grades. For being an important factor in the development of effective learning among students by having the students ability to apply knowledge in new situations and the ability to distinguish and to gain new knowledge and correcting misconceptions among students and admission basics of religion for understanding . 2. The need for training of students (teachers) in universities on how to use teaching strategies Marzano model for application in schools after graduation from University, to the importance of such strategies in teaching and the Reformation, as facilitating the process of gradual building concept, sequence in article submission and evaluation method in teaching the concepts of Islamic education. Key words : marzano , conceptual structure , Islamic concepts


Studying the phenotypic variation of organisms along environmental gradients can provide insight into the influences of specific environmental factors. Mongolia, which is distributed across three different biomes, is an ideal location for studying the mechanisms that underlie such phenotypic variation over a large range of climate. The present study examined the variation in shape and size of the body in a ball-rolling dung beetle, Gymnopleurus mopsus (Pallas), in Mongolia and investigated the effects of climate on the species' morphology. A total of 290 individuals were collected from seven sites and were analysed using multivariate and regression approaches, as well as geometric morphometrics. Body shape and size varied across the study sites and between the different biomes. Populations from the desert-steppe region had thinner bodies and longer heads than those from the steppe region, possibly to facilitate burrowing. Variation in the species' body size followed a pattern that was the converse of Bergmann's rule and, thus, might increase heat capacity and enhance thermoregulation ability in the desert-steppe region. Accordingly, the results of the present study provide novel insight into the influence of climate on the variation of dung beetle phenotypes.


In the SmartFactoryKL the intelligent factory of the future, the consortium of companies and research facilities explores intelligent future technologies. Being a development and demonstration center for industrial applications, the SmartFactoryKL is arbitrarily modifiable and expandable (flexible), connects components from multiple manufacturers (networked), enables its components to perform context-related tasks autonomously (self-organizing), and emphasizes user-friendliness (user-oriented). This paper presents the outcomes of research in different user interaction methodologies for industrial environments. Today, in industrial environments most devices have their own stationary user interface directly attached to the device. Therefore users have to learn many different user interfaces and interaction devices from different vendors. To climb the ladder of evolution regarding interaction in future factories a mobile universal interaction device has been developed that is capable of communicating with various field devices and plant modules of an industrial facility via common wireless communication standards. A mobile Human Computer Interface like that has one user interface for all purposes, is non-proprietary and can be designed individually dependent on its owner«s needs and desires. Furthermore a first approach on integrating technologies from Augmented Reality (AR) into industrial facilities recognizing natural interaction through an AR-tablet configuration is presented. Eye-tracking, awareness tools, machine learning, coordination, expertise


Bangladesh is a fish producing country from the ancient history due to its deltaic nature agro-ecologically. Accordingly fish marketing systems developed in traditional systems since long. This study was conducted in two retail fish markets located in Rajbari and Barisal Sadar Upazila in the south central region of Bangladesh focusing public health and hygiene condition of retailers. The questionnaire interview with 30 retailers and participatory rural appraisal (PRA) tools were used to get the information from the retailers and other value chain stakeholders. About 13% of the retailers had no education, however 60% had primary level and 27% had secondary level of education. Although many of them were literate, their knowledge and practice about public health, hygiene and sanitation was found to be very poor. Due to lack of knowledge on public health, they were found to be infected by various contagious diseases such as common cold (cough, coryza etc.), diarrhoea, lesion (lesion on hands, between fingers, on the tip of the fingers, between toes, on the nail and tip of the toes etc.) and skin disease. About 57% of them were affected with lesion on hands, while 33, 23, 7, 13 and 10% were affected with lesion between fingers, between toes, on the tip fingers, on the nail and tip of toes and skin disease on legs, respectively.Fish markets operated by them were ill-managed, unhygienic and unscientific. So, the hygiene and sanitation system of retail fish markets were very poor and unhealthy. Market should have adequate water supply, toilets and other sanitation facilities. Due to poor infrastructural facilities in harvest and post-harvest, landing, handling, preservation, distribution, marketing and quality assurance, the fish retailers suffered from serious health problems. Good personal hygiene management is therefore essential for the safe handling and preparation of fish and fisheries products. To ensure this, quick and proper action should be needed by the government, particularly by the local government and rural development (LGRD) authorities.


: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is currently the third leading cause of death in the world. Although smoking is the main risk factor for this disease, only a minority of smokers develop COPD. Why this happens is largely unknown. Recent discoveries by the human microbiome project have shed new light on the importance and richness of the bacterial microbiota at different body sites in human beings. The microbiota plays a particularly important role in the development and functional integrity of the immune system. Shifts or perturbations in the microbiota can lead to disease. COPD is in part mediated by dysregulated immune responses to cigarette smoke and other environmental insults. Although traditionally the lung has been viewed as a sterile organ, by using highly sensitive genomic techniques, recent reports have identified diverse bacterial communities in the human lung that may change in COPD. This review summarizes the current knowledge concerning the lung microbiota in COPD and its potential implications for pathogenesis of the disease.


Implemented January 1, 1998, Minnesota's high-BAC law mandates more severe administrative pre-conviction penalties and more severe post-conviction penalties for offenses with BACs > or = 0.20%. Most notably, the law provides for the administrative impoundment of the license plate of first-time DWI offenders with BACs > or = 0.20. During the three years after the law took effect, a large majority of first-time and repeat offenders with BACs > or = 0.20% did, in fact, receive high-BAC administrative dispositions and/or high-BAC court convictions, which carried more severe penalties. For example, in 1998 85.6% of first offenders with BACs > or = 0.20% received a high-BAC administrative disposition and/or a high-BAC court conviction; 65.0% received both high-BAC administrative and high-BAC court dispositions. The proportion of high-BAC first-time offenders who received the statutory high-BAC dispositions declined from 1998 to 1999 and 2000. Based on survival analysis, the one-year recidivism rate among first offenders arrested in 1998 with BACs > or = 0.20% was significantly lower than for offenders with BACs 0.17-0.19% (who also had relatively high BACs but were not subject to enhanced sanctions), after controlling for age and gender. There were similar, but not significant, results for first offenders arrested in 1999.


Research demonstrates that individuals with autism process facial information in a different manner than typically developing individuals. Several accounts of the face recognition deficit in individuals with autism have been posited with possible underlying mechanisms as the source of the deficit in face recognition skills. The current study proposed a new account that individuals with autism are less sensitive at perceiving configural manipulations between faces than typically developing individuals leading to their difficulty recognizing faces. A change detection task was used to measure perceptual sensitivity to varying levels of configural manipulations involving the eye and mouth regions. Participants with and without autism, matched on chronological age, verbal IQ, performance IQ, full scale IQ, visual acuity, and gender, studied upright and inverted faces in a delayed same/different face recognition test. An eye tracker recorded eye gaze throughout the experiment. Results revealed a significant group difference with respect to detection accuracy. The control group was more accurate at detecting subtle changes between upright faces than the autism group, particularly with manipulations to the spatial relation of eyes. Furthermore, an analysis of detection accuracy within groups revealed that a greater proportion of participants in the control group were better at detecting differences at subtler levels of spatial manipulations. Eye tracking results revealed a significant group difference in number of fixations to relevant vs. irrelevant areas of interest; however, both groups utilized eye information more than mouth information to detect changes in both upright and inverted faces. Furthermore, there was some indication that eye gaze differed within groups, with a small proportion of individuals in both the autism and control groups demonstrating a bias to look more toward the mouth than eyes. Results are discussed with respect to featural vs. configural processing in autism and the use of eye vs. mouth information in face processing strategies by individuals with autism.


This study investigated the effect of MMP‐13 gene knock down on cartilage degradation by injecting small interfering RNA (siRNA) into knee joints in a mouse model of osteoarthritis (OA). OA was induced in male C57BL/6 mice by destabilization of medial meniscus (DMM) surgery. Change of Mmp13 expression over time was determined by qPCR analysis from 3 days to 6 weeks after surgery. Mmp13 and control chemically modified siRNA were injected into the knee joint 1 week after surgery and expression levels were assessed in synovium by qPCR 48 h later. Cartilage degradation was histologically assessed 8 weeks after DMM surgery according to OARSI recommendations. Mmp13 expression levels were elevated 1 week after surgery and peaked at 77 fold at 2 weeks compared to expression at 3 days. A 55% decrease of Mmp13 levels in cartilage was observed 48 h after injection of Mmp13 siRNA (p = 0.05). Significant reduction in the histological score at 8 weeks after surgery was observed in the Mmp13 siRNA‐treated group compared to the control siRNA group (p < 0.001). Intra‐articular injection of Mmp13 siRNA at the early phase of OA development resulted in effective knock down of Mmp13 expression and delay in cartilage degradation in vivo. © 2014 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 32:1175–1180, 2014.


Recent neural network models have achieved state-of-the-art performance on the task of named entity recognition (NER).
However, previous neural network models typically treat the input sentences as a linear sequence of words but ignore rich structural information, such as the coreference relations among non-adjacent words, phrases or entities. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to learn coreference-aware word representations for the NER task at the document level. In particular, we enrich the well-known neural architecture ``CNN-BiLSTM-CRF'' with a coreference layer on top of the BiLSTM layer to incorporate coreferential relations. Furthermore, we introduce the coreference regularization to ensure the coreferential entities to share similar representations and consistent predictions within the same coreference cluster. Our proposed model achieves new state-of-the-art performance on two NER benchmarks: CoNLL-2003 and OntoNotes v5.0. More importantly, we demonstrate that our framework does not rely on gold coreference knowledge, and can still work well even when the coreferential relations are generated by a third-party toolkit.


Objective: To evaluate varying histopathological outcomes of oral lesions in different age groups and locations of the lesions, with special emphasis on oral cancer. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Histopathology Department, Foundation University Medical College Islamabad Pakistan, from May 2019 to May 2021. Methodology: A total of 99 cases of oral lesions which were biopsied and were adequate in size were included in the study. Biopsies were evaluated histologically for non-neoplastic, neoplastic and premalignant lesions about age, nature and location of the lesions. Data collection was through Medix Online Histopathology Reporting System (MOHRS). Results: A total of 99 cases were included in the study, out of which 41 cases (41.4%) were non-neoplastic, 56 cases (56.6%) were neoplastic, and 2 cases (2.0%) were premalignant lesions. Out of 41 non-neoplastic lesions, the majority were inflammatory (14 cases), followed by fibroepithelial polyps (5 cases), pyogenic granulomas (4 cases), and hyperplasia (3 cases). Out of 56 neoplastic lesions, 39 (69.6%) were confirmed as carcinomas, squamous cell carcinoma being the most common malignancy in 29 cases (74.3%), followed by verrucous carcinoma in 5 cases (12.8%). In addition, there were two cases (11.7%) of potentially premalignant lesions. Buccal mucosa and tongue were more predominant sites of oral pathologies than other sites. Conclusion: In our setup, most of the oral lesions evaluated histologically turn out to be neoplastic and that too malignant, mostly squamous cell carcinomas. Most of the oral lesions occur in the fifth and sixth decade. Buccal mucosa and tongue are the most sites of oral lesions. Therefore, the biopsy is a useful tool in diagnosing suspicious lesions.


OBJECTIVE
This report presents two cases of isolated cleft palate with asymmetric distribution of postsurgical scar tissue determined by laser Doppler flowmetry. To determine the effect of mucoperiosteal denudation of the bone on maxillary alveolar growth, the analysis of dentoalveolar structures compared the affected side to the unaffected side of each case.

METHOD
Two Japanese girls with isolated cleft palates were examined. Both subjects had undergone pushback operations (a modified version of the procedure of Wardill) for palatal repair at 18 months of age. Palatal blood flow was examined by laser Doppler flowmetry when the girls were 12 years old to determine the extent of postsurgical scar tissue over the denuded bone. To analyze the maxillary dentoalveolar structures three dimensionally, the whole surface of the upper dental cast was measured and recorded by an optical measuring device when the girls were 7 years old.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
Analysis via flowmetry showed that the palatal scar tissue area was limited to the anterior tooth region on the right (unaffected) side but extended posteriorly to the premolar region on the left (affected) side in both subjects. The two girls had similar dentoalveolar structures, with the dental and alveolar arches deflected lingually at the deciduous molar area on the affected side. There were no differences in the buccolingual inclination of deciduous molars or in the vertical growth of the alveolar processes between the affected and unaffected sides. In both girls, bone denudation in the premolar region appeared to result in less than 3 mm of displacement of the teeth palatally, with no change in lingual inclination. Any effects of scar tissue on the vertical development of the alveolus were not substantiated.


The thesis comprises a novel – Interpreters and a critical commentary.

Interpreters

The novel explores the notion of identity, the interpretation of the past, the secrets and lies inherent in families, the parent/child relationship and the collective and personal guilt of a generation who grew up in Nazi Germany. It is a work of fiction that has grown out of memory and imagination, informed by original research, family memoirs, and oral history. Interpreters tells the story of Julia Rosenthal, a successful anthropologist, who returns to the suburban estate of her 1970s childhood. During her journey, both actual and emotional, the unspoken tensions that permeated her seemingly conventional family life come flooding back. Trying to make sense of the secrets and half truths, she is forced to question how she has raised her own daughter – with an openness and honesty that Susanna has just rejected in a very public betrayal of trust. Meanwhile her brother, Max, is happy to forge an alternative path through life, leaving the past undisturbed. In a different place and time, another woman is engaged in a painful dialogue with an unidentified listener, struggling to tell the story of her early years in wartime Germany and gradually revealing the secrets she has carried through the century.

Critical commentary

Autobiographical fiction as a genre can be laden with moral and ethical issues, and I have made their examination the centrepiece of my critical commentary.
I have focused on the contractual understanding of the relationship between the author, reader and those written about, the issue of who "owns" memory, and issues relating to a writer's responsibility – and the limits of that responsibility – to their sources. I have examined the tension between "truth" and "fiction" and whether this is something that is particularly problematic in the writing and reading of autobiographical fiction. I have also considered what happens to the writer and the reader when the rules are broken by fake memoir, particularly fake memoir related to recent history and, most particularly, to the Second World War and its aftermath. My reflections on my own novel and its genesis are complemented throughout by discussions of other, mostly twentieth century, authors' and critics' works.


In this correspondence, we present some preliminary results on using phonetic subword units in word recognition as compared to whole word templates. The phonetic subword units are specified as either phonelike units with and without temporal structure or as diphonelike units. The determination of these subword units requires segmentation, labeling, and parameter estimation at the same time, and is performed by an iterative two-stage algorithm consisting of nonlinear time alignment and parameter estimation. Experiments were carried out, using a connected digit recognition task, to study the usefulness of the subword unit representation and the effect on recognition performance of some versions of the subword specification. The best error rates for subword units are still, by a factor of 2 or more, larger than those for whole word templates.


Background: The goal of this study was to check the exact relationship between gastrointestinal (GI) pain and dorsal spine dysfunction.
Methods: This was a case-control study. 62 patients without underlying GI problems were divided into two groups. The first group included patients with minor intervertebral dysfunction (MID+) and the second group had no MID. Spinal manipulation was performed for patients with MID and for the MID- group. The rate of recovery of GI symptoms was compared before and after the manipulation between the two groups.
Results: After the first session of manipulation, the decrease in pain intensity in the MID+ group was more than the MID- group (P < 0.001). After the second session, the pain intensity in the MID+ group decreased sharply, while no significant decrease was recorded in the MID- group one and three months after the manipulation. However, after the third manipulation session, the pain increased in the MID+ group; this was also observed one and three months after manipulation (P = 0.048).
Conclusion: The results indicate that treatment with manipulation has a temporary effect; it can improve the quality of life along with pain alleviation for at least three months.


To the Editor .—I believe that the brief clinical note on carcinoma in a transplanted nipple by Dr Rose (Archives1980;115:1131-1132) is very significant. Almost everyone who is involved in reconstructive surgery of the breast has eliminated the idea of transplanting the nipple to the groin and then transplanting it back to the reconstructed breast. The reason for elimination of this form of nipple reconstruction is twofold. First, there have been isolated incidents, as Dr Rose reported, of carcinoma transplanting into the groin at the base of the nipple. Second, by the time the nipple has been transplanted into the groin and back to the breast, the resulting nipple areola complex is fibrotic and depigmented, and does not have a normal appearance. Most surgeons today use a full-thickness skin graft from the pigmented part of the groin where the skin pigment matches the contralateral areola in pigmentation, and a portion


This article compares the experience of people working in the area of the World Trade Centers (WTC) on September 11th to the experience of refugees. The refugee model provides a better description of survivors' experience than a diagnostic model. The author's service provision for an organization adjacent to the WTC after September 11th serves as a basis for suggesting this alternative perspective. Positive and negative aspects of diagnosing victims of disasters are discussed both in general and specifically related to post-traumatic stress disorder. Information regarding the refugee experience is presented and related to the experience of WTC survivors. Implications for framing the treatment process in similar disasters are suggested.


Over time, scientists have studied the potential of peptides as nutraceuticals by measuring their bio functionalities. The aim of this study was to ascertain the potential of isolated peptides as nutraceuticals in Nigeria using market availability. A market survey was carried out to determine the willingness of citizens who possess buying power, to purchase this product. The survey was conducted using survey monkey. 54.17% of the sample population declared unlikelihood to purchase these bioactive peptides, 20.83% of this group had no idea, of which most were men. Of the 45 and above age group, 55.5% declared high likelihood for purchase of nutraceutical peptides. On the assumption that only the aging group subscribes to nutraceutical peptides, there is little prospect of seeing these peptides being utilized to their maximum potential in Nigeria for health maintenance. Hence enlightenment of the public is necessary to increase acceptability and prospect of bioactive peptides as nutraceuticals.


Aircraft design is an example of complex engineering where dimensioning tools can be valuable for the designers and decision makers in the early stage of the development process. These tools can be in form of a database over key numbers for different components or technologies. One of the critical parts of an aircraft is the actuator system. Conventional hydraulic actuators are demanding regarding maintenance which implies high operation costs. Therefore in recent years the focus has been set on electro-hydrostatic and electro-mechanical actuators. The aim of this work is to build a platform which can make it easier for designers and decision makers to analyze, compare and optimize different technologies regarding the actuator system. For this reason a simplified quasi-static actuator model, including reactive power consumption has been developed. This model makes it possible to reduce the complexity of the actuator models to such extent that the resulting computional tool can be used for studies of the system performance during entire flight missions and/or for optimization. Power density, cost and weight of the actuator systems are some of the important key numbers for comparing purpose and as a platform for the dimensioning of the aircraft. The ambition is then to build up a database of different actuator solutions with the key technical parameters mentioned above, that can be used in modeling and dimensioning of an aircraft. In order to avoid time consuming finite element calculations when analyzing an electrical machine a reluctance network model can be used. The basic idea of the proposed network model is to divide the rotor and the stator into a grid of small reluctance elements and provide those that correspond to the permanent magnet and the air gap between the magnets with time varying reluctances. The suggested computationally approach constitute a fast way to evaluate permanent magnet electrical machines with the respect to their performance. A preferred electrical machine provided with balance teeth and concentrated windings showed good electromechanical and thermal behavior. A balance tooth is a tooth without winding between each adjacent phases that has a cooling effect on the nearest windings, resulting in less copper losses. The balance teeth increases the voltage-time area, leading to higher induced voltage and higher torque production. Another advantage of the chosen design is its redundancy and fault tolerance capabilities. The machine comprises two independent half machines that also offers a high level of redundancy with two separate power channels.


In the combustion of bio-based fuels the critically exposed burner parts in small boilers are typically uncooled and are usually made of FeCrNi alloys. These materials can suffer attack from the ashes because of the formation of alkali chromate. The reaction depletes the protective oxide in chromia, leading to accelerated corrosion. Selected "acidic" ceramic coatings based on Ti, Si, B and P have been evaluated for use as sacrificial layers to prevent the initial reaction of alkali and chromium. An accelerated oxidation test method including mild thermal shock has been utilized that previously proved useful to provide application-relevant results. A comparison of coated and uncoated specimens was performed with an austenitic high temperature steel as a substrate. The results indicate that the alkali released from the ash reacts with the respective "acidic" elements in the deposited coatings. This reaction has promoted initial formation of a thin and continuous chromium-rich protective oxide sub-layer. In addition, the oxide scale formed on the coated specimens appeared more coherent and crack-free. A significant enrichment of Ni at the steel-oxide interface also occurred that can promote high temperature corrosion resistance.


From absorption spectra obtained at high resolution by coupling a Fourier transform spectrometer to a long-path multiple reflection cell [A. Jenouvrier, M.-F. Merienne, B. Coquart, M. Carleer, S. Fally, A. C. Vandaele, C. Hermans, and R. Colin, J. Mol. Spectrosc. 198, 136-162 (1999)] the intensities of the O(2) Herzberg bands (A(3)Sigma(+)(u)-X(3)Sigma(-)(g), c(1)Sigma(-)(u)-X(3)Sigma(-)(g), A'( 3)Delta(u)-X(3)Sigma(-)(g)) have been studied at ambient temperature. The integrated cross section values are given for the lines of the (v'-0) bands in the A(3)Sigma(+)(u)-X(3)Sigma(-)(g), c(1)Sigma(-)(u)-X(3)Sigma(-)(g), and A'( 3)Delta(u)-X(3)Sigma(-)(g) transitions with v' = 0-11, v' = 2-19, and v' = 2-12, respectively. The band oscillator strengths have been deduced and transition moments have been calculated. The total absorption values in the region of the Herzberg bands together with the photoabsorption values determined previously above the dissociation limit can be modeled by a single curve, in agreement with the continuity relationship of the cross sections through the dissociation limit. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.


Long-term monitoring programs are needed to establish baseline information and demonstrate effects resulting from catastrophic events (e.g., Exxon Valdez Oil Spill). Long-term monitoring programs also provide consistent data that may resolve subtle changes in environmental quality, which may not be apparent with short-term sampling. The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS) is a large body of water, and monitoring all aspects of the sanctuary is nearly impossible. We proposed, therefore, that surveying beachcast marine birds and mammals can provide an index of ecosystem health. Marine birds and mammals are conspicuous and large predators thus are easily counted, and they are top predators, therefore, their health can be used as an indicator of the quality and quantity of prey resources (e.g. krill, fishes, and squid). Using top predators as indicators also is convenient because the public values these animals and understands the need to study, protect, and conserve them and the habitats they require. In 1997, we initiated a beach survey program called Beach COMBERS (Coastal Ocean Mammal and Bird Education and Research Surveys) using trained volunteers to survey beachcast marine birds and mammals monthly at selected sections of beaches throughout the Monterey Bay area. The program is a collaborative project between Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) and MBNMS with the specific goal of using deposition of beachcast carcasses as an index of the health of the MBNMS. We currently have 83 volunteers that survey 70 km of beaches in the MBNMS. This program has been greatly successful providing data for a number of scientific papers, contributing to the conservation of sanctuary resources, identifying and quantifying oiled wildlife, and a great many more accomplishments.


Background Outcome quality management requires the consecutive registration of defined variables. The aim was to identify relevant parameters in order to objectively assess the in-patient rehabilitation outcome. Methods From February 2009 to June 2010 1253 patients (70.9 ± 7.0 years, 78.1% men) at 12 rehabilitation clinics were enrolled. Items concerning sociodemographic data, the impairment group (surgery, conservative/interventional treatment), cardiovascular risk factors, structural and functional parameters and subjective health were tested in respect of their measurability, sensitivity to change and their propensity to be influenced by rehabilitation. Results The majority of patients (61.1%) were referred for rehabilitation after cardiac surgery, 38.9% after conservative or interventional treatment for an acute coronary syndrome. Functionally relevant comorbidities were seen in 49.2% (diabetes mellitus, stroke, peripheral artery disease, chronic obstructive lung disease). In three key areas 13 parameters were identified as being sensitive to change and subject to modification by rehabilitation: cardiovascular risk factors (blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, triglycerides), exercise capacity (resting heart rate, maximal exercise capacity, maximal walking distance, heart failure, angina pectoris) and subjective health (IRES-24 (indicators of rehabilitation status): pain, somatic health, psychological well-being and depression as well as anxiety on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale). Conclusion The outcome of in-patient rehabilitation in elderly patients can be comprehensively assessed by the identification of appropriate key areas, that is, cardiovascular risk factors, exercise capacity and subjective health. This may well serve as a benchmark for internal and external quality management.


Grenache Noir and Syrah are two of the grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) cultivars used to a great extent worldwide.  They have very different leaf morphologies from an ampelographic (botanical) point of view. This might also be related to differences in the anatomy and micro-morphology of their leaves. The goal of the present work was to compare these cultivars' leaf anatomy and morphology. Adult leaves from both cultivars were characterised using a range of microscopy techniques. Grenache Noir had a significantly smaller leaf surface area, but a significantly thicker leaf blade, than Syrah. It also had significantly larger stomata and a larger stomatal index than Syrah. The distribution of mesophyll tissues was similar in both cultivars, but the upper epidermis was significantly thicker in Grenache Noir, and the palisade parenchyma cells were longer in Syrah. The mesophyll tissues of both cultivars contained abundant idioblasts carrying crystals of calcium oxalate and mucilage. This work reveals quantitative and qualitative differences in the anatomy and morphology of mature Grenache Noir and Syrah leaves. Further work is needed to determine how these anatomical and morphological differences may be connected with different responses at the functional level.


A recently developed Flexible Track System Model integrated with a multibody dynamics software tool was used to simulate the dynamic interaction between a vehicle and two innovative slab track designs, comparing their performance with respect to conventional ballasted track. The design concepts are presented and the modelling assumptions are given. Simulations are then carried out to quantify, for example, the impact of ballasted track degraded state using the case of a hanging sleeper. In comparison, the benefit of the two innovative track designs is highlighted as they prevent this type of localised defect from occurring. The alternative track designs were also shown to be capable of carrying a vehicle safely and with less impact on the system over a localised weakened formation support, by simulating a washout event.


Healthcare advertising is an area of particular interest to verify the balancing proposed in the national and EU law between these two complementary dimensions of the health profession which, by recalling different and sometimes opposing values, allow us to shed light on the dangers of policies and interpretations of law not able to put the human nature and the protection of human dignity before the economic reasons. The present contribution, inspired by the recent intervention of the legislator in the field of healthcare advertising, intends to analyze the regulation of advertising within the health professions both from an exquisitely deontological and legal point of view, focusing on the problem of the functionality of the limits provided by the professional organization with respect to the protection of fundamental human rights and their compatibility with the protection of competition.


Deepfake Generation Techniques are evolving at a rapid pace, making it possible to create realistic manipulated images and videos and endangering the serenity of modern society. The continual emergence of new and varied techniques brings with it a further problem to be faced, namely the ability of deepfake detection models to update themselves promptly in order to be able to identify manipulations carried out using even the most recent methods. This is an extremely complex problem to solve, as training a model requires large amounts of data, which are difficult to obtain if the deepfake generation method is too recent. Moreover, continuously retraining a network would be unfeasible. In this paper, we ask ourselves if, among the various deep learning techniques, there is one that is able to generalise the concept of deepfake to such an extent that it does not remain tied to one or more specific deepfake generation methods used in the training set. We compared a Vision Transformer with an EfficientNetV2 on a cross-forgery context based on the ForgeryNet dataset. From our experiments, It emerges that EfficientNetV2 has a greater tendency to specialize often obtaining better results on training methods while Vision Transformers exhibit a superior generalization ability that makes them more competent even on images generated with new methodologies.


The energetics of Pb(II) ion binding to DNA was determined from their binding isotherms by equilibrium dialysis and atomic absorption spectroscopy at different ionic strengths. Two types of binding of Pb(II) ions to DNA at different NaCl concentrations were observed.


ABSTRACT:Using data from the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System compliance and the Clean Water State Revolving Funds (CWSRF) for wastewater treatment plants in nine states between 2010 and 2018, we examine (1) the effect of noncompliance on the distribution and size of awarded CWSRF loans, and (2) the effects of the CWSRF provision and award size on postfunding compliance. We observe that funded facilities have poorer compliance records than the unfunded ones and that funded facilities decrease violations within two years after receiving financial support. On average, a $50 million CWSRF loan decreases violations by one count within two postfunding years.


Despite the fact that financial institutions have identified the SME sector as a fast growing sector in the country, there are several constraints serving as bottlenecks to SMEs in accessing finance from financial institutions. This study examines difficulties SMEs face in accessing loan, difficulties financial institutions face in lending to SMEs and the impact of loan on the profitability of SMEs. In conducting this study, questionnaires were administered to SMEs. Credit officers in the selected banks were interviewed. The following major findings came to the fore; Interest rate on loan to the SMEs is extremely high, Repayment periods on loans to SMEs are too short making it very difficult to embark on any developmental or expansion projects, most SMEs, do not understand terms and conditions, and also oblivious of the interpretation of the percentage charged on the loans. It was also found out that small business owners normally give false information when accessing loan from financial institutions. The study suggested that government should institute some form of tax incentives to financial institutions involved in SME lending and formulate regulatory laws to help loans recovery. SME associations must be established to unite them and serve as guarantors whenever loans are accessed.


This study focuses on the business environment of IT – enabled service companies in the business process outsourcing industry in Cebu. The result of the environmental scanning activity presents high sustainability of suppliers and being highly profitable in terms of performance, however,BPO companies should be more adept with the latest trends in providing outsourced services and be ready with the uncertainties particularly in competitor's strategies. Government supports the BPO Industry sub sectors. Government developmental plans should match with of the private sector to ensure collaboration of efforts to tap opportunities. This improves the economic situation of the country. The dominant factors affecting these businesses are socio-cultural and demographic factors, however they also highly affected by Technological factors despite the availability of infrastructure in Cebu, since most of the BPO companies are relying on the Internet access to operate. External environmental factors are perceived to vary depending upon the nature of the sub sector and the location of the business within the province. Growth of this BPO Industry can have a significant impact on employment and eventually on the purchasing power of people. However, participation of the academe is crucial in improving human capital to address the shortage of manpower pool for the industry. Keyword - Environmental scanning, business outsourcing, business environment


During the last three decades we have witnessed progress
in the marine fisheries sector, particularly in the introduction of
mechanised fishing crafts, use of synthetic material for gear and
development of infrastructure facilities. The traditional fisheries
sector, still using indigenous crafts such as catamarans and
canoes, has taken advantage of nyion in fabricating their fishing
gear. On an average, our annual marine fish production is about
1.3 million tonnes, of which nearlyOO per cent is accounted for by
traditional fishing methods from a narrow belt along our coast.
In spite of this importance, hardly any serious study has been
carried out on the economics of operation of the artisanal fisheries
in the country. The present report by Shri A. Noble and Shri
V. A. Narayanankutty of this Institute on the economics of the
indigenous fishing units at Cochin is a case study on some aspects
of the small-scale fisheries of the Cochin area. The study is based
on several years data collected by the Institute and is but a small
step towards understanding the problems of traditional fisheries.
The Institute has programmed to take up similar studies in other
regions along our coast. The issue of this Number on the
occasion of the Seminar on "The Role of Small-scale Fisheries
and Coastal Aquaculture in Integrated Rural Development" is
considered timely as it focuses attention on an area needing
intensive studies and critical evaluation of available information
to assist in coastal rural development.
E.


The relation between cognitive processing and sleep is examined in three areas: the effect of sleep in producing deficits in memory for events that take place immediately before sleep, the effect of naps on performance following sleep, and the capacity of individuals to process information presented while asleep. A review of the literature and discussion of practical implications lead to the conclusions that sleep does produce a form of amnesia for events taking place immediately before sleep and that sleep inertia can produce detrimental effect. on subsequent performance, particularly if individuals have been sleep deprived. Nevertheless, naps have been found to improve subsequent performance during critical work periods if time for recovery from sleep inertia is provided. In the area of cognitive processing during sleep, con- siderable evidence exists for some forms of cognitive processing. However, elaborated processing of semantic information during sleep has rarely been demonstrated in the absence of...


The recent emergence of plasmid-mediated colistin resistance (1) highlights a new problem in the development of bacterial antimicrobial resistance. Colistin, while an old antibiotic, is increasingly turned to as a "drug of last resort" for many recalcitrant Gram-negative infections. With the efficacy of this drug now compromised, the spread of pan-resistant organisms is a very real threat. To meet this challenge clinicians are seeking new treatment options, however with a drug development pipeline that is virtually dry, an urgent rethinking of how we employ our existing arsenal of antibiotics is required to deal with this problem. Un-orthodox combinations of existing antimicrobial drugs are increasingly being used, often with little rationale on how such combinations are selected beyond the thinking that 'more is likely to be better' (2). There is a clear need for a precision medicine approach that combines robust laboratory testing methods with effective dosing strategies for individual patients.


Although PONV is usually self-limiting or is treated without sequelae, the incidence of PONV could be as high as 70% to 80% in high-risk populations such as female sex, obese patients, age younger than 40 years, nonsmoker patients, history of PONV or motion sickness.

 The study aimed to investigate whether dextrose 10% decreases the incidence of postoperative nausea and vomiting in female patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy

 This prospective, double-blind randomized placebo-controlled study comprised 130 ASA physical status I and II nonsmoker female patients, 20-40 years of age, scheduled for laparoscopic cholecystectomy at Ain Sham University – Assembled operating theater from August 2018 to October 2018.
 Patients were arbitrarily divided into two study groups of 65 patients each. Group LR received lactated Ringer's solution and group D received 10% dextrose.
 The primary objective of this study was to compare the incidence of PONV in the study treatment groups.
 The secondary outcomes included measurement of antiemetic medication consumption as well as blood glucose changes between groups.

 50 from a total of 65 participants (76.9%) in Lactated Ringer (LR) group experienced nausea. On the other hand, 30 participants only (46.2%) in dextrose (D) group were nauseated. This dissimilarity was statistically highly significant (P= 0.0003).

 In this study, dextrose 10% administration resulted in improved postoperative emesis management as explained by the lower incidence of nausea and rescue antiemetic consumption.


The Puentemocha pegmatite, located in the Tormes Dome of the Central Iberian Zone (Salamanca, Spain), is a beryl–phosphate granitic pegmatite hosted by a Variscan anatectic leucogranite. It shows a zonal internal structure with a wall zone, an intermediate zone, and a prominent quartz core. The essential minerals of the pegmatite are quartz, K-feldspar, plagioclase, muscovite, biotite and beryl. Phosphates, pyrite, arsenopyrite and rutile occur as accessory minerals associated with greisen zones developed in the intermediate zone. The gradational contact and mineral association attest to the intimate petrogenetic relation between the Puentemocha pegmatite and its host granite. Petrographic, mineralogical and chemical data suggest a crystallization from the border inward at temperatures in the range of 700–500°C, under f (O2) conditions at ΔFMQ = ~−0.5, and H2O contents of 6–7.5 wt% at the level of emplacement. As there is no evidence of residual melt extraction, the in situ fractionation of a peraluminous granitic melt is presumed to be sufficient to attain beryl saturation. The greisen bodies developed under subsolidus conditions, at the expense of the intermediate zone. A later episode of Na-metasomatism affected unevenly the primary zones of the pegmatite and the greisen bodies.


A combination of O3S2-macrocycles incorporating different sulfur-to-sulfur separations (S-(CH2)n-S, L1: n = 2, L2: n = 3) and copper(ii) nitrate afforded new types of both monocopper(ii) and dicopper(ii) complexes, respectively. L1 gave a 1D coordination polymer [Cu2(L1)2(NO3)4]n (1) based on a convergent exo-coordination mode while L2 resulted in the formation of a divergent exo/exo-coordinated dicopper(ii) complex, [Cu2(L2ox)4(μ-Cl)](NO3)4 (2), whose shape resembles a four-bladed waterwheel in which in situ oxidized macrocycles (L2ox) act as the blades and a CuII-(μ-Cl)-CuII entity corresponds to the axle shaft. The chloro-bridging ligand is derived from the dichloromethane solvent and its arrangement is held together by C-HCl- H-bonds. Compound 2 shows a weak antiferromagnetic property via the CuII-(μ-Cl)-CuII entity.


ABSTRACT
 A colony of the cactus moth, Cactoblastis cactorum Berg, suffered a die-off that involved 100% larval mortality in selected rearing containers. Preliminary microscope examination of wet mounts prepared from dead larvae revealed the presence of numerous uniform, highly refractive particles reminiscent of bacterial spores. Utilizing a combination of bacteriological, molecular, and chemical methods the causal agent responsible for this die-off was found to be a strain of the insecticidal Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki. Significantly, larvae that were killed supported bacterial growth and sporulation. The gregarious feeding habit of this insect combined with the ability of this bacterium to amplify in dead larvae explains in part the observed rapid spread of sepsis in the rearing containers. Screening the various diet ingredients demonstrated that the cannellini bean flour harbored a variety of heat resistant bacilli including both Bacillus cereus and B. thuringiensis implicating it as the likely source of toxicity.


A new fundamental solution based finite element method (HFS-FEM) is presented for analyzing three-dimensional (3D) elastic problems with body forces in this paper. It begins with deriving formulations of 3D HFS-FEM for elastic problems without body force and then the body force term is handled by means of the method of particular solution and radial basis function approximation. In our analysis, the homogeneous solution is obtained using the proposed HFS-FEM and the particular solution associated with the body force is approximated by radial basis functions. Several standard tests and numerical examples are considered to assess the capability and performance of the proposed method and elements. It is found that, comparing with conventional FEM (ABAQUS), the proposed method can achieve higher accuracy and efficiency when same element meshes are used. It is also found that the elements associated with this method are not very sensitive to mesh distortion and can be employed for problems involving nearly incompressible materials. This new method seems to be promising to deal with problems involving generalized body force, complex geometry, stress concentration and multi-materials.


Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization (1961) offers a comparison between two types of answers to the same social problems: unemployment, poverty and crime. In the earlier centuries exclusion was the answer. The French Hopital General (1656) replaced it by containment. The institution was a combination of a hospital and jail and offered a solution by isolating insane, unemployed and criminal people at the expense of the society. The 20th century welfare state has a different answer to the same questions. This is, however, challenged by financial limitations. Foucault offers a solution by combining social security and individual autonomy, which was not considered to be important before.


A study of flow and frequency characteristics of the leading-edge vortices over a delta wing undergoing pitching up-stop motions is presented. The experiments with the dynamic delta wings were conducted in a water channel and a wind tunnel respectively. Among them, the test of the flow visualization was completed in the water channel with the delta wing with pitching up-stop motions. The result shows that in the case of pitching up-stop movement the vortex breakdown position is dependent on the range of incidence at which the wing is subject to pitching up-stop and the reduced frequency k (k=c/2U∞). Analysis of the pressure signal measured in the wind tunnel shows when the delta wing is subject to pitching-up the nondimensional spiral wave frequency at nominal incidence in post-breakdown is higher than that at corresponding static state and the bigger the k is, the higher the nondimensional spiral wave frequency is. The same conclusion is fitted with different sweep delta wing.


We derive analytical bright and dark solitons of the modified nonlinear Schrödinger equations with variable coefficients. Under constraint conditions between system parameters, the optical soliton transmission in the dispersion-decreasing fibers can be exactly controlled by proper dispersion management. The analytical description of the interactions between the bright and dark solitons are first obtained.


We compare the performance of several algorithms for signal separation based on actual mobile cellular radio data. The data were collected by basestations in two different environments: using an eight element linear array on a hillside overlooking a suburban area, and using a four element square array at the top of a ten story building in a dense urban area. Calibration data were available for one of the arrays used for the suburban data, allowing for performance comparisons between DOA-based and blind signal separators. Experiments were conducted with three different types of signal waveforms: sinewaves, simple FM waveforms, and nI4-DQPSK signals, each of which necessitated the use of a different performance metric. We focus here on the results obtained for cases where the data were approximately low rank, with little delay spread (although not all data sets from the urban environment were of this type).


The Salvation Army operates internationally and is an evangelical part of the universal church, they
provided help to over 30 million individuals in 2008. Their main focus is to build community, provide
fellowship, rebuild lives, and provide comfort and support to those in need. They also provide
disaster relief, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and activities for the elderly, among many other social
services. The international headquarters, the administration centre, is based in London. The Salvation
Army USA, based in Virginia, has a national commander and national chief secretary who
work to coordinate the national efforts. There are 4 geographical territories, south, east, west and
central and each territory is a separately registered nonprofit entity. The southern territory is further
divided into 9 divisions and has historically been very successful at planned giving fundraising.
Planned giving success had been attributed to the territories personal approach. However, with the
noticeable changes in the attitudes of seniors the planned giving has significantly declined in
2008/2009. Seniors, who had been considered the most suitable donor prospects had developed a
sense of fear and distrust of the government and the banking system. They were resisting personal
meetings with planned giving staff that had been so successful for the Salvation Army. As a consequence
the planned giving strategy had to be adapted.


We investigate the orientational dynamics of water molecules solvating phenolate ions using ultrafast vibrational spectroscopy and density functional theory-based molecular dynamics simulations. To assess the roles of the hydrophobic and hydrophilic parts of the anion, we also perform experiments and simulations on solutions of phenol. The experiments show that phenolate immobilizes ( t or 4 10 ps) 6.2 (cid:2) 0.5 water molecules beyond the first solvation shell of its oxygen atom, whereas phenol immobilizes only B 2 water molecules, including the water molecules in its first solvation shell. The simulations reproduce the experiments very well, and show that phenolate causes a local ordering of the hydrogen-bond structure that extends beyond the first solvation shell, thus explaining the experimental observations. The comparison with phenol solution shows that the solvation interaction of phenolate beyond its first solvation shell is due to the high charge density of its negatively charged oxygen atom. and hydrophilic parts of the anion, we also perform experiments and simulations on solutions of phenol. The experiments show