The aims of this research gender are to describe; 1) The women teachers background at Muhammadiyah school – Surakarta have no ambition to be principal and 2) the relation with doubled role as house wife and teacher. The research subject is case study of women teachers at Muhammadiyah school-Surakarta. Data collection used is: in depth interview towards premmier sources and regarded to know their attitude carrier, while data analysis used Capacities and Vulnerabilities Analysis (CVA) technique. The research result showed that; 1)Women teachers background at Muhammadiyah school – Surakarta have no ambition to be principals, the reasons are; a) Carrier development system and principal candidates recruitment process is conducted by Dinas or foundation is not transparent; b) The role as house wife spend too much times and energy. 2) The conducting of doubled role of women teachers as house wife created role conflict in her profession, thus, structural carrier development did not do in good way.


The bees' spontaneous preferences toward various black-and-white patterns were studied using a multiple-choice test procedure. The patterns are presented on vertical planes, and the bees' choices at a fixed distance from the patterns are recorded. To exclude a possible influence of the bees' previous experience with natural flowers, the bees are trained to randomized checkerboard patterns prior to testing them with sets of other patterns. We find that, when the test patterns are of the same kind, but differ in their spatial frequencies, the bees prefer low over high frequencies. However, when the patterns differ in type, the bees express, regardless of spatial frequency, a positive preference for patterns containing radiating elements, and a negative preference for patterns containing circular elements or elements arranged at random. We find, in addition, that symmetrical patterns are more attractive than less symmetrical or non-symmetrical patterns. We propose that bees respond innately to some features of natural flowers, resulting in a spontaneous preference for radiating, as well as symmetrical patterns.


The battery energy storage system (BESS) is the current typical means of smoothing intermittent wind or solar power generation. Such BESS hybrid power systems require a suitable control strategy that can effectively regulate power output levels and battery state of charge (SOC); otherwise, a problematically large energy storage capacity is necessary. This paper presents the results of a wind/PV/BESS hybrid power system simulation analysis undertaken to improve the smoothing performance of wind and PhotoVoltaic (PV) power generation and the effectiveness of battery SOC control. A fuzzy-logic-based power smoothing method is presented for reducing output power fluctuations of wind/PV hybrid power generation systems and regulating the battery SOC under the typical conditions. The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified using MATLAB/SIMULINK software.


Calculations of the tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) of an epitaxial Fe/MgO/Fe tunneling junction attached to an n-type GaAs lead, under positive gate voltage, are presented. It is shown that for realistic GaAs carrier densities the TMR of this composite system can be more than 2 orders of magnitude higher than that of a conventional Fe/MgO/Fe junction. Furthermore, the high TMR is achieved with modest MgO thicknesses and is very robust to disorder at the Fe/GaAs interface and within the GaAs layer itself. The significant practical advantage of this system is that huge TMRs should be attainable for junctions with modest resistances. For a GaAs carrier density of 10(19)   cm(-3) the system is calculated to have a TMR in excess of 10,000% but its resistance is equivalent to that of a conventional Fe/MgO/Fe junction with only 6-7 at. planes of MgO.


We present a scalable weakly supervised clustering approach to learn facial action units (AUs) from large, freely available web images. Unlike most existing methods (e.g., CNNs) that rely on fully annotated data, our method exploits web images with inaccurate annotations. Specifically, we derive a weakly-supervised spectral algorithm that learns an embedding space to couple image appearance and semantics. The algorithm has efficient gradient update, and scales up to large quantities of images with a stochastic extension. With the learned embedding space, we adopt rank-order clustering to identify groups of visually and semantically similar images, and re-annotate these groups for training AU classifiers. Evaluation on the 1 millon EmotioNet dataset demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach: (1) our learned annotations reach on average 91.3% agreement with human annotations on 7 common AUs, (2) classifiers trained with re-annotated images perform comparably to, sometimes even better than, its supervised CNN-based counterpart, and (3) our method offers intuitive outlier/noise pruning instead of forcing one annotation to every image. Code is available.1


Darwin's evolutionary theory was the starting point for ethology, associated with an impact on scientific psychiatry. Psychiatry and ethology have common scientific and methodological prerequisites: inductive and deductive methods and "gestalt theory" as a basis for observing and describing behaviour patterns with subsequent causal analysis. There have been early endeavours to anchor ethological thinking in psychiatry but this tendency did not prevail for the following reasons: on the one hand, the methodology of ethology was immature or not applicable to man, whereas on the other hand the dominating experiential phenomenological school of Karl Jaspers and Kurt Schneider stressed the privileged position of human thinking, perception, and feeling. These fundamental categories of human existence did not appear amenable to any causal ethological analysis. Psychiatry and evolutionary biology were linked in an atrocious manner during the Nazi regime, both being abused for propaganda purposes and genocide. More recently, there is a "reconciliation" of both disciplines. In psychiatric nosology, operational, behaviour-oriented diagnostic systems have been introduced; ethology has opened up for theories of learning; new subsections like human ethology and sociobiology have evolved. The seeming incompatibility of (behavioural) biological psychiatry and experiential phenomenological psychopathology may be overcome on the basis of Konrad Lorenz' evolutionary epistemology. The functional analysis of human feeling and behaviour in psychotic disorders on the basis of Jackson's theory of the evolution and dissolution of the nervous system may serve as an example. The significance of an "ethological psychiatry" for diagnostic and therapeutical processes of psychiatric disorders derive from prognostic possibilities and the analysis of non-verbal communication in therapist-patient-interactions, but have not yet been systematically investigated.


A ten-year-old girl who presented with a continuous murmur was diagnosed with a right coronary to right ventricular fistula with colored Doppler echocardiography and selective arteriography. She underwent traditional treatment-ligation of the fistula by sternotomy. Afterwards, the systolic component of the murmur persisted and repeat arteriography showed a residual shunt through the fistula, with no change in the diameter of the right coronary artery. We describe the first case in which a residual fistula was treated with a detachable balloon embolization.


Welcome to the special-themed Sonic Rhetorics issue of Harlot. Putting this issue together was a thoroughly collaborative process that involved a lot of back and forth with authors about their work, creative visions, and sonic rhetorics. For months we have been sounding out, experimenting with, and synthesizing these pieces until they seemed to hit the right note. So, rather than giving an authoratative summary of individual pieces, we thought it made more sense for contributors to speak (and sound) for themselves--and together. When you press play, you will hear a mashup of the sounds and soundbites from many of this issue's authors. Think of it as a sonic sampler that helps you get a taste of what's to come. We hope you will learn from and enjoy this work as much as we have. Thanks to everyone for the countless hours of work. I'm amazed at how much time and love goes into these issues--so thanks for giving us the time to share in the love! Jon and Steph


This guide includes resources to help you pick a topic, conduct legal research, and write your paper, including organization, grammar, style and citation.


The outcomes of the present scientometric analysis of research in catalysis provide chemistry and catalysis scholars with a closer bibliometric knowledge of an old and central field of chemical research which is being reshaped by fundamental and technological advances spanning from single-atom heterogeneous catalysis to flow chemistry. Improving and widening research and education in catalysis is a strategic need for national economies. Four research policy guidelines aimed at fostering progress in catalysis research and education conclude the study.


OBJECTIVE: To document the long-term effect of surgical interventions for noncancerous uterine conditions on health-related quality of life. METHODS: The Study of Pelvic Problems, Hysterectomy and Intervention Alternatives, conducted between 1998 and 2008, was a longitudinal study of 1,503 women with intact uteri experiencing abnormal uterine bleeding with or without leiomyomas, chronic pelvic pain, or pressure resulting from leiomyomas. Baseline and follow-up questionnaires included three condition-specific measures (Pelvic Problem Resolution, Pelvic Problem Impact Overall, and Pelvic Problem Impact on Sex) and five generic measures (Short Form-12 Mental and Physical Component Summaries, Current Health Utility, Feelings about Heath, and Satisfaction with Sex). We modeled changes over time in these patient-reported outcomes stratified by the most invasive treatment undergone (hysterectomy [13.7%], uterus-preserving surgery [9.0%], or nonsurgical therapy [77.3%]). RESULTS: Participants in all three groups reported significant improvement on all condition-specific measures and two of the five generic measures (Current Health Utility and Feelings about Health) from enrollment to final interview (all P values <.01). In general, greater improvements were experienced by women who had surgery. Trajectories modeled around the dates of surgery showed dramatic improvements after hysterectomy and, to a lesser degree, after uterus-preserving surgery. Although women who underwent uterus-preserving surgery tended to show immediate improvement, women who underwent hysterectomy experienced a 6-month delay in improvement in some outcomes with trajectories converging by 4 years postsurgery. CONCLUSION: Women seeking care for noncancerous uterine conditions can expect to experience improvement over time. Those who opt for surgery may experience most improvement. Understanding health-related quality-of-life trajectories may enhance counseling for women deciding between hysterectomy and alternative interventions. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II


: The serotypic picture of rare-type salmonellas, isolated in the South region of Kazakhstan, was studied. The circulation of 31 serotypes of 17 groups was established. The circulation of serotypes 0:13, 0:38, 0:44 serogroups, was found among people (patients and bacterium-carriers). Serotypes 0:28, 0:42, 0:62, 0:66 serogroups, were isolated only from the environment. The combined circulation (patients, bacterium-carriers, environment) was registered for seroviruses 0:14, 0:35 and serogroups 0:58. The obtained data suggested that separate rare salmonella types area tied to ecology.


Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) have facilitated the interaction between most humans and computers. But they are not equally accessible to users with diminished visual capabilities. Our research proposes the addition of spatial auditory feedback to assist these users in the search for icons in GUIs. In the enhanced GUI, a unique 3-D sound is associated with each icon. As the cursor traverses the screen, the user hears the sounds of nearby icons, spatially, according to the relative position of each icon with respect to the cursor, through the dynamic implementation of Head-Related Transfer Functions that tracks cursor movements. A software prototype of the concept described was developed to evaluate the performance of users under artificially imposed visual impairments, in the search of icons within the proposed interface.


This report presents evidence showing that the pathogenetic process of the protozoan parasite Trichomonas vaginalis involves degradation of the target cell membrane skeleton; spectrin, the most representative protein within this structure, has been identified as the main molecular target. Degradation of the target cell spectrin is accomplished only upon contact with the parasite, and immunochemical and immunofluorescence studies performed with the erythrocyte as a model demonstrate that degradation of the protein takes place before target cell lysis. A preliminary characterization of the effectors involved has led to the identification of a nonsecreted 30-kDa proteinase which is characterized by a high specificity for spectrin. This molecule is suggested as the main effector responsible for cytoskeletal disruption.


The Lisbon process is aimed at laying the foundation for a dynamic, flexible and inclusive European Union (EU) economy. It is within this context, amid wider processes of restructuring and 'modernization', that traditional industries, such as steel, are engaged in transforming their skill base and creating a more diverse workforce. In this process, corporate management has a decisive role in reshaping the steel workforce, in the process exploiting the intersections between different aspects of policy. Our contention in this article is that EU policy prescriptions for transformation, aimed at fostering social cohesion and inclusion, are undone by corporate management strategies. In turn, national policy (on vocational education and training, for example) struggles to influence historically entrenched practices that operate at the sector level (such as on training and learning), which leaves some workers vulnerable to industry restructuring processes and at risk of social exclusion. Hence companies are able to restructure on their own terms, with workers' representatives seemingly unable to intervene in effective ways. The analysis that follows thus focuses on the tensions between national and supra-national policy making in the EU, and, within this context, sector policy and practice and the role of corporate management in shaping work and employment.


Tetrachloroethene (PCE) is among the most ubiquitous contaminats in aquifers and is degradable to less chlorinated ethenes by microorganisms under reductive conditions. The anaerobic bacterium Sulfurospirillum multivorans can couple the reductive dechlorination of PCE to energy conversion via chemiosmotic mechanism (organohalid respiration). In this study the influence of different alternative electron acceptors and the redox potentials on the reductive dechlorination of PCE by S. multivorans was investigated. During the growth of S. multivorans the redox potential of the cultivation media changed and was, depending on the used substrates, adjusted to values between -250 mV and -50 mV. The redox potential of the medium was adjusted by the usage of redox active compounds and by potentiostat-controlled graphite electrodes. There was only a little impact on the dechlorination of PCE when the redox potential of the media was adjusted between +400 mV and -600 mV. It could be demonstrated that S. multivorans is able to grow in the presence of O2 in the gas phase of closed cultivation vessels and pyruvate as electron donor. The optimal growth was observed with 10 % O2 in the gas phase. During growth oxygen and pyruvate are consumed. This indicates, S. multivorans is a microaerobic organism. The dechlorination of PCE was not inhibited in the presence of the alternative electron acceptors fumarate, nitrate and oxygen, respectively, in combination with pyruvate as electron donor. During long term cultivation with different substrates in the absence of PCE or trichloroethene (TCE) the activity of the PCE dehalogenase (PceA) was lost attended with a loss of pceA gene expression and protein biosynthesis of PceA after more than 60 generations. However, the PCE dehalogenase in PceA depleded (PceA–) cells was inducible with PCE or TCE. It was shown that long-term cultivated cells still contain the functional pceA gene.


Dynamic spectrum trading amongst small cognitive users is fundamentally different along two axes: temporal variation, and spatial variation of user demand and channel condition. We advocate that a spectrum secondary market, analogous to the stock market, is to be established for users to dynamically trade among themselves their channel holdings obtained in the primary market from legacy owners. We design a market mechanism based on dynamic double auctions, creating a marketplace in the air to match bandwidth demand with supply. In the analysis we prove important economic properties of the mechanism, notably its truthfulness and asymptotic efficiency in maximizing spectrum utilization. Complimentary simulation studies corroborate that spectrum utilization and user performance can be improved by establishing the spectrum secondary market.


The design and fabrication of offshore structure depend on material science and solid mechanics, such as steel processing technology and welding and materials testing and evaluation and so on. In this paper, CTOD (Crack Tip Opening Displacement) toughness test for weld joint of heavy thickness S355G10+N steel has been carried out to evaluate the fracture resistance of this weld joint under Submerged Arc Welding(SAW). The results show that (1) the weld joint of heavy thickness S355G10+N steel tested possesses excellent toughness. That is to say the materials in the weld joint possess enough capacity resisting the crack and propagation. Therefore the welding procedure specification evaluated can be applied to fabricate offshore structure. What is more, being at the case of as-weld condition for the weld joint the CTOD test was carried out herein, hence the offshore structure fabricated with the welding procedure specification evaluated can avoid the post welding heat treatment. (2) Different positions in weld joint have their special toughness. The position which is 2mm away from the fusion line (located in base metal) (FL+2) possesses best toughness (average value is 0.825mm). The fusion line position (FL) possesses slightly worse toughness (average value is 0.672mm). The weld metal position possesses worst toughness (average value is 0.553mm). This distribution character is different from other references reported and comparision has been made in this study. (3) Being a lower fracture toughness in weld metal, as a design suggestion high stresses should be avoided in this position.


John Broome has made major contributions to, and radical innovations in, contemporary moral philosophy. His research combines the formal method of economics with the philosophical analysis. Broome's works stretch over formal axiology, decision theory, philosophy of economics, population axiology, the value of life, the ethics of climate change, the nature of rationality, and practical and theoretical reasoning. Weighing and Reasoning brings together fifteen original essays from leading philosophers who have been influenced by the work and thought of John Broome.They explore Broome's works on the theory of value, and his works on practical and theoretical reasoning. This volume also includes Broome's note on his intellectual history to date.


Purpose To investigate systemic factors associated with central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC). Methods We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 113 Korean patients who were diagnosed with CSC and who underwent history taking with a specialized questionnaire for CSC. They were matched for age and gender at a ratio of 1 : 3 to 339 normal controls. Normal controls were consecutively selected from a database at the Health Promotion Center. General characteristics and medical histories were compared between the two groups. The statistical analyses used included independent t-test, Mann-Whitney test, Fisher's exact test, and multivariate logistic regression analysis. Results There were 90 men and 23 women in the CSC group, and the male-female ratio for both groups was 3.9 : 1. The mean age of the patients was 45.6 years. In multivariate analysis, hypertension (odds ratio [OR], 2.327; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.349-4.013), use of medicinal plants (OR, 2.198; 95% CI, 1.193-4.049), sleep disturbances (OR, 1.732; 95% CI, 1.096-2.739), and snoring (OR, 1.727; 95% CI, 1.058-2.820) were strongly associated with CSC. Conclusions Hypertension, sleep disturbance, snoring, and medicinal plant use were identified as factors associated with CSC. Expanded history taking, including systemic factors and culture-specific behavior related to stress or fatigue such as use of medicinal plants, will be helpful in identifying Korean patients at an increased risk for CSC.


This Article explores the questions scholars ask about comparative constitutional judicial review and critically assesses the answers they provide. Scholars ask three, interrelated questions: (i) why has judicial review (almost) conquered democracy; (ii) whether empowering courts to construe constitutions has a democratic pay-off; and (iii) how best to make sense of the variation that judicial review exhibits around the world. The Article makes two principal conclusions. First, our scholarly maps of judicial review have for too long viewed the world through the prism of the exceptional American Supreme Court. Our understanding of judicial review would be improved if our maps were to deemphasize and contextualize the American experience. Second, the questions scholars ask about comparative judicial review implicitly rest on larger questions about democracy that need to be teased out and illuminated. In short, questions about the emergence and maintenance of democracy and the problematic relationship that American constitutionalism bears to other forms of constitutionalism around the globe lie at the root of our understanding of comparative judicial review.


Violence is a phenomenon that affects human beings in different circumstances and surroundings, influencing health, the social and economic development of population groups, and health-care institutions. Method: A descriptive, correlational, cross-sectional, quantitative study was done to validate the factors of the Chappell and Di Martino model in hospitalized users, to measure the violence they perceive as being directed towards them, and to construct a scale for measuring violence in the hospital context. It featured a non-probability sample comprised of 510 hospital users in 2008, who gave prior informed consent to application of the instrument, which was designed and validated by the authors. In terms of the results, application of the violence perception scale showed 100% of the users indicated having perceived violence in various dimensions. The significant variables in violence perception were age, gender, sensation, job situation, family income, quality of care, history of violence in adulthood, alcohol consumption, aggressor agent, and human and fiscal resources. It was concluded Chappell and Di Martino's interactive model of violence at work is applicable to users in hospital environments, since the variables that comprise the factors also are found in these health-care contexts.


ABSTRACT In order to cause disease, the food- and waterborne pathogen Campylobacter jejuni must face the extreme acidity of the host stomach as well as cope with pH fluctuations in the intestine. In the present study, C. jejuni NCTC 11168 was grown under mildly acidic conditions mimicking those encountered in the intestine. The resulting transcriptional profiles revealed how this bacterium fine-tunes gene expression in response to acid stress. This adaptation involves the differential expression of respiratory pathways, the induction of genes for phosphate transport, and the repression of energy generation and intermediary metabolism genes. We also generated and screened a transposon-based mutant library to identify genes required for wild-type levels of growth under mildly acidic conditions. This screen highlighted the important role played by cell surface components (flagella, the outer membrane, capsular polysaccharides, and lipooligosaccharides) in the acid stress response of C. jejuni. Our data also revealed that a limited correlation exists between genes required for growth under acidic conditions and genes differentially expressed in response to acid. To gain a comprehensive picture of the acid stress response of C. jejuni, we merged transcriptional profiles obtained from acid-adapted cells and cells subjected to acid shock. Genes encoding the transcriptional regulator PerR and putative oxidoreductase subunits Cj0414 and Cj0415 were among the few up-regulated under both acid stress conditions. As a Cj0415 mutant was acid sensitive, it is likely that these genes are crucial to the acid stress response of C. jejuni and consequently are important for host colonization.


Among one of the fastest growing field of materials research, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been demonstrating potentially high commercial value with proposed applications in the field of energy (such as solar energy conversion and electrical energy storage) [1], environmental sustainability (including gas storage and harmful gas removal)[2], and innovative healthcare
(drug delivery)[3]. This research study aim to contribute to the understanding of synthesis and applications of mesh-supported MOF thin films. To begin with, three types of MOF powder, namely: Cu3(BTC)2, Ni3(BTC)2, and Co3(BTC)2 were successfully synthesized using an optimized solvothermal growth method.Further research progress were made by depositing various thickness of Cu3(BTC)2 and Ni3(BTC)2 MOF thin films on copper and nickel substrates.After process optimizations, the most homogeneous coating with the highest
82 % product yield was achieved by depositing Cu3(BTC)2 thin film on copper mesh (sample denoted as Cu3(BTC)2@Cu). Subsequently, Cu3(BTC)2@Cu was used as precursor to prepare porous Cu/C@Cu through a direct pyrolytic decomposition process. The effects of different heating parameters on the
morphology, textural properties, and electrochemical properties of the as synthesized Cu/C@Cu were studied. Besides that, Cu3(BTC)2@Cu was also used as binder-free electrodes for the preparation of prototype supercapacitors
(pseudocapacitors) and hybrid lithium ion batteries. In order to evaluate the performance of Cu3(BTC)2@Cu as negatrode in supercapacitors, varies carbon material such as graphene nanoplatelet, carbon blanket, and highly electrically conductive carbon (HEC) electrodes were used as pairing material. The best performing supercapacitor device was achieved with the combination of Cu3(BTC)2@Cu negatrode and HEC positrode, with a reported energy density
of 1080 µWh/cm2 and a power density of 17.9 mW/cm2. Overall, Cu3(BTC)2@Cu is a flexible material which could be applied into many applications after proper tuning of its properties. This facile preparation method is transferable and could be applied into fabricating other supported-MOF thin films and MOF-derived porous nanostructures.


This paper considers single-stage multi-parallel machines scheduling problems. A fuzzy scheduling model is developed with objective to minimize the makespan. In the scheduling model, the uncertainty of processing time is represented by triangular fuzzy number, and the credibility theory is used to assess fuzzy number. In the optimal scheduling searching process, we introduce matching theory to model the scheduling problem consider in this paper, and two heuristic rules are used to improve searching efficiency. At last, genetic algorithm is developed for solving the scheduling problem, and numerical example shows good result.


The scalloped hammerhead Sphyrna lewini and the great hammerhead S. mokarran are typically caught as bycatch in a variety of fisheries and are listed as globally Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Due to very high at-vessel mortality for these species, research is needed on fishing methods to reduce mortality for longline-captured sharks. A series of fishing experiments were conducted employing hook timers and temperature–depth recorders on contracted commercial vessels fishing with bottom-longline gear to assess factors related to mortality. A total of 273 sets were deployed with 54 485 hook timers. Scalloped and great hammerheads had at-vessel mortality rates of 62.9% and 56.0%, respectively. Median hooking times for scalloped and great hammerheads were 3.5 h and 3.4 h, respectively, and 50% mortality was predicted at 3.5 h and 3.8 h. When these data are considered for potential management strategies to reduce the mortality of hammerhead sharks, a limitation on gear soak time would probably improve hammerhead shark survivorship. However, it may prove to be difficult for a fishery to remain economically viable if the soak time is limited to less than the median hooking time for the target species. Additional management options, such as time/area closures, may need to be explored to reduce bycatch mortality of scalloped and great hammerheads.


Complex cognitive functions such as working memory and decision-making require information maintenance over many timescales, from transient sensory stimuli to long-term contextual cues. While theoretical accounts predict the emergence of a corresponding hierarchy of neuronal timescales, direct electrophysiological evidence across the human cortex is lacking. Here, we infer neuronal timescales from invasive intracranial recordings. Timescales increase along the principal sensorimotor-to-association axis across the entire human cortex, and scale with single-unit timescales within macaques. Cortex-wide transcriptomic analysis shows direct alignment between timescales and expression of excitation- and inhibition-related genes, as well as genes specific to voltage-gated transmembrane ion transporters. Finally, neuronal timescales are functionally dynamic: prefrontal cortex timescales expand during working memory maintenance and predict individual performance, while cortex-wide timescales compress with aging. Thus, neuronal timescales follow cytoarchitectonic gradients across the human cortex, and are relevant for cognition in both short- and long-terms, bridging microcircuit physiology with macroscale dynamics and behavior.


This paper presents critical issues in the conceptualisation and positioning of applied learning (APL) in Hong Kong trials. It draws on a critical review of official documentation and interviews with participants involved in the 2003-09 developmental trials of APL policy: policy makers, APL provider leadership personnel, school leadership personnel, APL teachers and course coordinators, and APL students. Analysis of the documentation and interview data revealed five critical limiting issues of the way APL was promulgated in and through the policy development process: (1) its de-vocationalisation; (2) its under-theorisation; (3) its limited academic recognition; (4) its lack of vocational recognition; and (5) its poor standing. Those issues suggested the importance of the following considerations in APL policy development: a clear and consistent prioritisation of vocational and general education goals; a strongly theory-driven approach; academic credit equivalence into general educational qualifications; the dual recognition of APL in both general secondary and vocational education qualifications; and sensitivity to the unintended consequences of policy developments.


In this paper we present two new results for the existence of fixed points of multivalued mappings with closed values on quasi metric space. First we introduce the multivalued Fd-contraction on quasi metric space (X, d) and give a fixed point result related to this concept. Then taking into account the Q-function on a quasi metric space, we establish a Q-function version of this concept as multivalued Fq-contraction and hence we present a fixed point result to see the effect of Q-function to existence of fixed point of multivalued mappings on quasi metric space.


Thanks to their alleged better tolerability atypical or second-generation antipsychotic drugs (SGA) have gained a considerable fraction of the market at the expense of the classical antipsychotics. The massive advertising of SGA focussed the doubtful reduction of extra-pyramidal side effects (EPS) overlooking the information about the cardiovascular risk induced by SGA. This also led to extensive off-label use as the control of behavioural symptoms associated with dementia in elderly patients. Although the European Medicine Agency (EMEA) eventually warned physicians and patients of the risk associated with SGA use in this area, the regulatory system has some responsibility in this situation. No added therapeutic value is required for new drugs to be approved for the market. They are only evaluated for their own quality, efficacy and safety with no comparison with available alternative treatments. This implies that new drugs may, in fact, be potentially less effective or less safe than other drugs currently in use.


Abstract. The TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) provides a daily, spatially resolved (initially 7×7 km2, upgraded to 7×5.6 km2 in August 2019) global dataset of CO columns; however, due to the relative sparseness of reliable ground-based data sources, it can be challenging to characterize the validity and accuracy of satellite data products in remote regions such as the high Arctic. In these regions, satellite intercomparisons can supplement model- and ground-based validation efforts and serve to verify previously observed differences. In this paper, we compare the CO products from TROPOMI, the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS), and a high-Arctic ground-based FTS located at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) in Eureka, Nunavut (80.05∘ N, 86.42∘ W). A global comparison of TROPOMI reference profiles scaled by the retrieved total column with ACE-FTS CO partial columns for the period from 28 November 2017 to 31 May 2020 displays excellent agreement between the two datasets (R=0.93) and a small relative bias of -0.83±0.26% (bias ± standard error of the mean). Additional comparisons were performed within five latitude bands: the north polar region (60 to 90∘ N), northern mid-latitudes (20 to 60∘ N), the equatorial region (20∘ S to 20∘ N), southern mid-latitudes (60 to 20∘ S), and the south polar region (90 to 60∘ S). Latitudinal comparisons of the TROPOMI and ACE-FTS CO datasets show strong correlations ranging from R=0.93 (southern mid-latitudes) to R=0.86 (equatorial region) between the CO products but display a dependence of the mean differences on latitude. Positive mean biases of 7.93±0.61 % and 7.21±0.52 % were found in the northern and southern polar regions, respectively, while a negative bias of -9.41±0.55% was observed in the equatorial region. To investigate whether these differences are introduced by cloud contamination, which is reflected in the TROPOMI averaging kernel shape, the latitudinal comparisons were repeated for cloud-covered pixels and clear-sky pixels only, as well as for the unsmoothed and smoothed cases. Clear-sky pixels were found to be biased higher with poorer correlations on average than clear+cloudy scenes and cloud-covered scenes only. Furthermore, the latitudinal dependence on the biases was observed in both the smoothed and unsmoothed cases. To provide additional context to the global comparisons of TROPOMI with ACE-FTS in the Arctic, both satellite datasets were compared against measurements from the ground-based PEARL-FTS. Comparisons of TROPOMI with smoothed PEARL-FTS total columns in the period of 3 March 2018 to 27 March 2020 display a strong correlation (R=0.88); however, a positive mean bias of 14.7±0.16 % was also found. A partial column comparison of ACE-FTS with the PEARL-FTS in the period from 25 February 2007 to 18 March 2020 shows good agreement (R=0.79) and a mean positive bias of 7.89±0.21 % in the ACE-FTS product relative to the ground-based FTS. The magnitude and sign of the mean relative differences are consistent across all intercomparisons in this work, as well as with recent ground-based validation efforts, suggesting that the current TROPOMI CO product exhibits a positive bias in the high-Arctic region. However, the observed bias is within the TROPOMI mission accuracy requirement of ±15 %, providing further confirmation that the data quality in these remote high-latitude regions meets this specification.


The primary goal of this study was to examine sleep problems in a sample of cocaine-exposed 7-month-old infants and to determine if maternal psychopathology mediated any existing association between substance exposure and sleep behaviors. We also examined the differences in sleep behaviors of cocaine-exposed infants in parental custody and cocaine-exposed infants in nonparental custody. Participants were 65 cocaine-exposed and 53 nonexposed infants and their primary caregivers who were recruited at delivery and assessed at 7 months of infant age. As expected, women who used cocaine during pregnancy had more psychiatric symptoms than nonusers. Prenatal exposure to heavier amounts of cocaine was significantly related to more severe sleep difficulties, and maternal anxiety mediated this association. Approximately 28% of cocaine mothers lost custody of their infants by 7 months of age. Nonmaternal caregivers had significantly fewer symptoms of psychopathology than the cocaine-using women who retained custody of their children. Infants who were in nonparental care at 7 months of age also had less severe sleep problems than did infants who remained in parental care.


Astrophysics = the star physics was beginning its development without a supporting of measurement data, which could not be obtained then. Still astrophysics exists without this support, although now astronomers collected a lot of valuable information. This is the main difference of astrophysics from all other branches of physics, for which foundations are measurement data. The creation of the theory of stars, which is based on the astronomical measurements data, is one of the main goals of modern astrophysics. Below, the principal elements of star physics based on data of astronomical measurements are described. The theoretical description of a hot star interior is obtained. It explains the distribution of stars over their masses, mass-radius-temperature and mass-luminosity dependencies. All theoretical predictions are in a good agreement with the known measurement data, which confirms the validity of this consideration.


The murine local lymph node assay (LLNA) is a method for the identification of skin sensitizing chemicals in which activity is measured as a function of proliferative responses induced in draining lymph nodes following topical exposure of mice to the test material. More recently, the LLNA has also been used for the determination of relative skin sensitizing potency based upon the mathematical derivation of an EC3 value, this being the estimated concentration of test chemical necessary to provoke a 3‐fold increase in lymph‐node cell‐proliferative activity compared with concurrent vehicle‐treated controls. Here we describe the use of the LLNA to determine the influence of vehicle on the skin‐sensitizing potency of methylchloroisothiazolinone/methylisothiazolinone (MCI/MI), the active ingredient of preservatives such as Kathon®CG. To this end, LLNA responses to MCI/MI were measured using the vehicles 4:1 acetone:olive oil (AOO), methyl ethyl ketone, dimethylsulfoxide, dimethylformamide, propylene glycol (PG) and acetone. It was found that the vehicle in which MCI/MI was applied had a substantial impact on activity, with derived EC3 values varying from 0.0049% with AOO to 0.048% with PG. With the other vehicles, EC3 values ranged from 0.0068 to 0.0076%. The skin sensitizing potency of MCI/MI as judged from LLNA responses is consistent with what is known of the requirements for sensitization in humans. It is proposed that the LLNA not only provides a method for determination of relative skin sensitizing potency, but is also appropriate for assessing the influence of vehicle matrix on sensitizing activity.


A clinical evaluation of two currently available toric hydrogel lens was made. The Hydron Tor ic and the Bausch and lomb Toric lenses are both front surface torics with prism ball aststahilization features. The Hydron lens also employs an inferior truncation and an aspheric back surface. First fit success rate for the Hydron lenses on 27 eyes was 40%. An increase to 72% success was achieved after one lens reorder and 76% were fit after a total of two reorders. Len::es had been worn for periods ranging from one week to six months. Of 27 eyes fit with the Bausch and Lomb lens, 71% were still wearing the initial lens fit after one to four weeks. Further data on these lenses i s forthcoming in Part II of this study. Physiological difficulties with the Hyd.rons were the primary reasons for failures, this resulted in l ens reorders, most frequently due to lens tightening, or to edema caused by the thick lenses. Stabilization was excellent for all types and magnitudes of astigmatism in the study. Bausch & Lomb offers limited parameters and some stabilization difficulties were encountered with all types of astigmatism but more frequently with against the rule types .


In New York on 20 September 2004, world leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the global fight against poverty and hunger at the Summit for Action Against Hunger and Poverty and endorsed the campaign to gather necessary funds through both traditional and innovative mechanisms to assist in that fight. (1) This initiative builds on the Geneva declaration adopted in January with leadership from the presidents of Brazil, France, Chile, and Spain and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan--the "Quintet Against Hunger." (2) Financing such efforts is always a problem; proposals have included taxation on carbon emissions, financial transactions, and arms trade along with the creation of special drawing rights (SDRs) and an international financial facility. On 20 September, the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization presented A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All, (3) which also suggested taxing greenhouse gas emissions and certain financial transactions to bankroll a U.S.$50 billion fund to fight poverty. These initiatives again bring to the fore both the need for and the problems associated with international taxation. There are many shortcomings in global governance, but none is more glaring than the lack of an independent financial base for international activities. It is therefore timely to revisit three proposals for international taxation that have been debated over the past three decades. Tobin Tax Almost ten years before he won the 1981 Nobel Prize for economics, James Tobin unveiled his proposal for a levy on international currency transactions in his Janeway Lectures at Princeton University in 1972. (4) He emphasized repeatedly that his aim was not to generate international revenues but to reduce short-term speculation in currency markets and thereby "to preserve and promote autonomy of national macroeconomic and monetary policies." (5) However, Tobin conceded that substantial revenues would be raised and could be devoted to agreed international programs. The proposal was received coolly at first, although some countries (for example, Canada) have warmed to the idea since. Most central bankers deemed it impractical, and most economists predicted that it would damage liquidity without reducing volatility in currency markets while also displacing them to tax-free jurisdictions. Tobin's proposal was confined to academic footnotes until 1989-1990, when Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Summers rekindled interest. (6) In the wake of the 1994 Mexican crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) began to discuss restrictions on speculative currency movements--"some sand in the wheels of our excessively efficient international money markets." (7) At the March 1995 social summit in Copenhagen, French president Francois Mitterrand referred to the proposal's potential to finance internationally agreed priorities. A few months later, the G7 Economic Summit in Halifax made an indirect reference to "improving the macro-economic performance of economies trapped by external financial pressures." (8) Interest in the Tobin tax resurfaced during the 1990s because of the enormous growth in foreign currency transactions. The daily turnover in foreign exchange markets was $18 billion in 1972, when most countries had fixed exchange rates, but by 1995, due to floating exchange rates, it had reached $13 trillion. The opportunities for profiting from the movement of currencies and futures trading, options, and derivatives have also expanded. In December 1995, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) invited several experts, including Professor Tobin, to carry out a "critical and scholarly study of the proposal for a foreign exchange transaction levy." (9) The five main conclusions and policy messages remain pertinent. First, today's foreign exchange markets do not always function optimally; they are marked by excessive, destabilizing volatility. Second, the Tobin tax would reduce short-term trading and strengthen the defensibility of the exchange rate regime but would only modestly, if at all, widen the scope of national policy autonomy. …


The advancement of the urban air mobility concept is heavily dependent on the public acceptance of the aircraft vehicles used for air taxis. The importance of the perception of noise by humans is crucial to the passing of legislation and proposals working to implement the new transport system. The investigation into how the noise perception can be reduced is vital to the success of the personal air travel industry. The air taxi design has been geared towards the rotorcraft models. Therefore, the investigation into the rotor blade designs is necessary because, similar to helicopters, the main component in noise generation is the rotors and its blades. The blade-vortex interaction creates noise which humans perceive as the most annoying and disruptive type of noise produced by rotorcraft. The blade-vortex interaction noise is due to the interaction between the advancing blade and the vortexes generated by the tips of the previous rotor blade. This study looks into the effect of tip twist on rotor blades. Understanding how twist in a blade will affect thrust production and noise production will aid in the progress of developing the acceptance of the urban air mobility movement. This investigation is carried out through the use of high-fidelity rotorcraft modeling software developed by Continuum Dynamics Incorporated called the Comprehensive Hierarchical Aeromechanics Rotorcraft Model (CHARM) coupled with the aeroacoustic processing package PSU-WOPWOP to produce sound data files at the wake of the rotor blades. The noise reducing parameter under investigation is the tip twist of the rotor blades. Particularly, interest is on how this change affects the frequency of sound pressure levels. The reduction of this type of noise will aid in determining the design of efficient and safe air taxis that will utilize a system of smaller porting stations as drop off zones, similar, only in concept, to those ride-sharing services.


What is surprising if we analyze the major transmedia universes that were created in the last 15-20 years, is that in many of the most successful cases, the narrative core originates in the medium literature. This happens especially in the novel, either by recycling the old hits (such as The Lord of the Rings , The Chronicles of Narnia , House of Cards , etc.) and by producing new ones: Harry Potter , Twilight , A Song of Ice and Fire , etc. Why is the literary medium so suitable to become the foundation of the new transmedia narrative universes? Since nowadays, when a transmedia narrative universe is designed, the relationships between the various narrative media environments are already sketched in the project; so why in many cases it is better to put the novel as a front door to this universe? It isn't predictable that the medium which starts the narration is the novel instead of other more recent media like movies or TV series or video games. How can literature still succeed in being an extraordinary laboratory for producing and testing new forms, metaphors and imagery and anticipating or simulating the future? (Much more than the cinema, for example, which seems to chase the other media). I would like to try to answer these questions by analyzing four science fiction novel series, came out in the United States between 2008 and 2014, and immediately became world-wide best sellers, especially among teenagers: The Hunger Games , Divergent , The Silo Saga and Maze Runner . The four mentioned series besides being similar in terms of narrative structure and processes of trans medializations (spin-offs, films, comics, videogames, fandoms) also have a certain homogeneity in the covered topics and in the way the dystopian future is imagined. We encounter not only a forms serialization but also one of the imaginary and therefore of collective fears that are behind this stories. It is a post-catastrophic future (nothing new), not characterized by anarchy or by a struggle all against all (like in most previous dystopias), but by a rigid functionalization of space, social roles, work tasks and even (and this is the novelty) identities, skills and emotions. A future populated by teenagers, but forced to give up all the prerogatives of adolescence.


BACKGROUND
Substance use regularly co-occurs with many types of criminality, including violent behaviour.

AIM
To review the relationships between substance abuse and criminality, which can involve violent behaviour.

METHOD
We searched the literature for meta-analyses, reviews and empirical articles about relationships between the problematic use of and addiction to psychoactive substances on the one hand and antisocial and aggressive behaviour and recidivism on the other hand.

RESULTS
In the case of both men and women there are significant relationships between substance abuse and criminal behavior. The majority of substance users, however, are not criminals and most of the offences they commit can be termed 'acquisitive offences'. The relationship between alcohol and violence is stronger than the relationship between substance abuse and violence. Furthermore, it is only in cocaine users that we find indications that psychopharmacological effects stimulate violent behaviour. A number of factors, particularly interactions, determine whether substance abusers are criminal and are violent. Violent behaviour can result from interactions between the severity of illness caused by substance abuse, individual psychological, social and neurobiological characteristics, situational factors and expectancies regarding the psychopharmacological effects of a particular substance.

CONCLUSION
Substance abuse, particularly the combination of alcohol and drugs, is a predictor of criminality and criminal recidivism.


Physical world adversarial attack is a highly practical and threatening attack, which fools real world deep learning systems by generating conspicuous and maliciously crafted real world artifacts. In physical world attacks, evaluating naturalness is highly emphasized since human can easily detect and remove unnatural attacks. However, current studies evaluate naturalness in a case-by-case fashion, which suffers from errors, bias and inconsistencies. In this paper, we take the first step to benchmark and assess visual naturalness of physical world attacks, taking autonomous driving scenario as the first attempt. First, to benchmark attack naturalness, we contribute the first Physical Attack Naturalness (PAN) dataset with human rating and gaze. PAN verifies several insights for the first time: naturalness is (disparately) affected by contextual features (i.e., environmental and semantic variations) and correlates with behavioral feature (i.e., gaze signal). Second, to automatically assess attack naturalness that aligns with human ratings, we further introduce Dual Prior Alignment (DPA) network, which aims to embed human knowledge into model reasoning process. Specifically, DPA imitates human reasoning in naturalness assessment by rating prior alignment and mimics human gaze behavior by attentive prior alignment. We hope our work fosters researches to improve and automatically assess naturalness of physical world attacks. Our code and dataset can be found at https://github.com/zhangsn-19/PAN.


Abstract:In 2005, the internationally renowned private collector of artists' books Jack Ginsberg, his assistant Rosalind Cleaver, software developer Peter Dennis, and I began creating a database of every artist's book produced in South Africa. By linking the artists' books in the Ginsberg Collection with others that I had located during my research, we began constructing a bibliographic project: a comprehensive, freely accessible online database of the output of a nation. This national output of artists' books, however, constitutes a sliver of artistic production and is little known as a genre and confusing as a form to the majority of South Africans. It comes as no surprise that one of the most well-documented problems facing the cataloging of artists' books is grappling with their hybrid nature, as each claims territory within the contested space of the book arts. It is within this challenging space that important work can be done. With the collection having been donated to a university in 2019, I unpack some of our work that aims to not only bring these local objects to greater public attention but also ensure that the cataloging of these objects accounts for their affective nature as works of art. Taking Anne Thurmann-Jajes's Manual for Artists' Publications (2010) as a point of departure, I examine the South African artist's book database as a case study. Key texts are unpacked, shedding light on particular problems associated with describing artists' books, including acknowledging their self-conscious, reflexive, and artistic character, not merely their subject matter and material elements. While working within broad bibliographic standards, we have modified these by developing our own bespoke software that liberates us from the strictures and limitations of the standard MARC record. This helps us write a set of descriptors that catalog South African artists' books' affective elements more meaningfully and richly. This work is contextualized in three examples. The first shows the refinements that were needed within the data fields in order to create an amplified record on our online database. The second shows how these refinements help to open up a space for the recording of affective content in the bibliographic record. This is done by acknowledging the work's self-conscious and reflexive elements. The third shows how such affect-rich descriptions are able to provide a reciprocal view of the idiosyncrasies of South African life.


Collaboration is on the rise, primarily leveraged by the Web 2.0 in which the quantitative difference between information producer and consumer decreases significantly. In this paper, we describe WikiCrimes, a typical Web 2.0 application that offers a collaborative environment, based on the use and direct manipulation of maps in order to register and search criminal events. WikiCrimes is driven by three goals: i) to give more transparency and publicity to criminal information, ii) to provide means for citizen prevention, and iii) to reduce the phenomena of under-reporting (crimes that are not reported to authorities). We pay particular attention to how WikiCrimes can be leveraged by semantic web by means of the use of explanation ontologies to connect people, provide information about reliable and reputable sources, and provide rich filter mechanisms for citizen information and prevention.


Some impacts of reindeer grazing on Finnmark's landscape are briefly described. Information on the impacts was gathered mostly by surveying 17 sample transects in the field, often 90 m in length; as well as by examining other localities in Finnmark, particularly the area around Ifjordfjellet. The results of the surveys along fences as well as in the open countryside are given. These show that much degradation has taken place along fences and that adjacent to the fence more than half the soil can be exposed to trampling and the weather. At Ifjordfjellet damage along 22.4 km of fence separating summer grazings from spring and winter grazings was severe or very severe (> 30% bare soil exposed) over 39% of its distance. Land alongside an 8.0 km long fence built to aid management of the reindeer herds in summer was even more degraded, with 56% of its length on the 'inner' side severely or worse damaged, and 70% on the 'outer' side. In open landscapes erosion by tracking, trampling and the weather is most likely in wet peaty hollows; on slopes steeper than 7 degrees where soils are peaty or 13 degrees where they are mineral-based; at the edge of terrace landforms or where drumlins occur; and especially where deep sandy soils occur in eskers or other fluvioglacial land-forms. Soil is being denuded at rates of 1-3 mm per year. Evidence for reindeer grazing is widespread throughout Finnmark: from the almost ubiquitious presence of dung; to the disappearance of lichens by trampling in summer grazings and by overgrazing in winter grazings; to the presence of bare soil in many localities. Where reindeer grazing is confined either by fences or topography, degradational thresholds are lowered so that, for instance, peaty and mineral soils begin to erode on slopes as low as 4 degrees. This degradation has mostly come about in the last two or three decades as reindeer numbers have increased markedly, often by a factor of 2 or 3.


MOTIVATION
Many biological processes are guided by receptor interactions with linear ligands of variable length. One such receptor is the MHC class I molecule. The length preferences vary depending on the MHC allele, but are generally limited to peptides of length 8-11 amino acids. On this relatively simple system, we developed a sequence alignment method based on artificial neural networks that allows insertions and deletions in the alignment.

RESULTS
We show that prediction methods based on alignments that include insertions and deletions have significantly higher performance than methods trained on peptides of single lengths. Also, we illustrate how the location of deletions can aid the interpretation of the modes of binding of the peptide-MHC, as in the case of long peptides bulging out of the MHC groove or protruding at either terminus. Finally, we demonstrate that the method can learn the length profile of different MHC molecules, and quantified the reduction of the experimental effort required to identify potential epitopes using our prediction algorithm.

AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION
The NetMHC-4.0 method for the prediction of peptide-MHC class I binding affinity using gapped sequence alignment is publicly available at: http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/services/NetMHC-4.0.


The aim of the present study was to analyze the etiology, type and treatment employed in the orbito- zygomatic fractures (OZ). Also, postoperative complications are described and correlated with the type of treatment used. Fifty patients with OZ fractures were evaluated. Orbital fractures in which the zygomatic bone was not involved were excluded. Epidemiologic data and characteristics of treatment such as the type of material used for osteosynthesis, number of anatomical sites on which rigid internal fixation (RIF) was applied, surgical approaches and associated complications were recorded. The main causes of trauma were motorcycle and bicycle accidents, constituting 52% of the sample. The osteosynthesis system used was the 2.0 mm, except in four patients in whom the 1.5mm system was used for fixation at the infra-orbital rim. A total of 18% of the patients required reconstruction of the internal orbit and in all cases titanium mesh was used. 46% of the patients received RIF in three anatomical sites, most in the fronto-zygomatic suture, infra-orbital rim and zygomatic-maxillary buttress. The most frequent complication was paresthesia of the infra-orbital nerve (34 patients, 68%). Other findings were also discussed with the intent of better understanding the treatment of the OZ fractures. ˚


Accidental oil spills not only deteriorate biodiversity but also cause immediate threats to coastal environments. This study quantitatively investigates the initial dispersion of spilled oil using the environmental fluid dynamics code (EFDC) model, loosely coupled with an endorsed oil spill model (MEDSLIK-II) accounting for time-dependent advection, diffusion, and physiochemical weathering of the surface oil slick. Focusing on local contributing factors (i.e., construction activities) to oil dispersion, the current model is applied to likely oil spills occurring at three different phases of the Songdo LNG terminal construction on a reclaimed site in South Korea. Applied phases pose detailed ship collision scenarios generated based on a proposed construction plan of the terminal. The effects of permeable revetments, required for reclamation, on the currents were also investigated and applied in subsequent oil spill modeling. For each scenario, the simulated results showed distinct patterns in the advection, dispersion, and transformation of the oil slick. Oil absorption into the coast, which causes immense damage to the coastal communities, is found to be highly dependent on the tidal currents, volume of oil spilled, and nearby construction activities.


Neuroanaesthesia (Current Topics in Anaesthesia, vol 3) Merlin Marshall pp 78 £6.75 London: Edward Arnold 1979 Although this slim volume presents what is essentially a personal view of neuroanaesthesia techniques, it opens with a helpful discussion on intracranial pressure, its importance, changes during anaesthesia and its control during operation. The value of hyperventilation and avoiding straining are rightly stressed. The short chapter on monitoring does not do full justice to this subject, but it does point out the minimum requirements and those interested can look elsewhere. Chapter 6 is a particularly good description of the intrinsic management of head injuries. The general anaesthetist may perhaps have appreciated Trauma in Pregnancy. H J Buchsbaum (ed) pp 308 £15.75 Eastboume: Saunders 1979 The stimulus for the publication of this American book comes from the increasing importance of trauma in modem society, particularly from automobile accidents, accidents' in the home and criminal assault. With the decline in mortality from infectious diseases, trauma has become the commonest cause of death in Americans between the ages of fifteen and forty-four. The pregnant patient suffering from trauma is likely to be cared for by an orthopaedic surgeon and an obstetrician. They will find the chapters on penetrating injury of the abdomen, blunt abdominal trauma, bums, and fractures in pregnancy, of considerable value, since material is presented here which is not usually available in standard texts of orthopaedics or obstetrics. Of more general interest is an outstanding chapter on post-mortem caesarean section. The book, however, includes chapters on the anatomy and physiology of pregnancy and the diagnosis and early management of trauma, which should be familiar to the obstetrician and orthopaedic surgeon respectively. There are further chapters on occupational hazards and psychiatric aspects of pregnancy, which do not fall within the scope of the book and are better dealt with elsewhere. The chapter on civil liabilities for the infliction of prenatal harm, with an appendix indexing the case law in each of the United States of America, will be very valuable to North American readers but less to others. The extraneous chapters detract from the overall value of the book but there is, nevertheless, sufficient original material to recommend its. purchase by hospital libraries generally. The book is attractively published on art paper and not unduly expensive by modem standards.


Abstract Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality among patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Clustering of traditional atherosclerotic and non-traditional risk factors drive the excess rates of coronary and non-coronary CVD in patients with ESRD. Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a key disease process, present in ∼50% of the haemodialysis population ≥65 years of age. Patients with ESRD are more likely to be asymptomatic, posing a challenge to the correct identification of CAD, which is essential for appropriate risk stratification and management. Given the lack of randomized clinical trial evidence in this population, current practice is informed by observational data with a significant potential for bias. For this reason, the most appropriate approach to the investigation of CAD is the subject of considerable discussion, with practice patterns largely varying between different centres. Traditional imaging modalities are limited in their diagnostic accuracy and prognostic value for cardiac events and survival in patients with ESRD, demonstrated by the large number of adverse cardiac outcomes among patients with negative test results. This review focuses on the current understanding of CAD screening in the ESRD population, discussing the available evidence for the use of various imaging techniques to refine risk prediction, with an emphasis on their strengths and limitations.


This qualitative clinical study investigated the impact of moderate intellectual disability on family dynamics and quality of life. The data were collected using individual interviews with 15 mothers of children with intellectual disabilities, as a convenience sample, and examined with categorical thematic content analysis. The results were discussed using a comprehensive and interpretative approach. Analysis of the interviews showed that care for children with intellectual disabilities is centered on the mother, contributing to the change in family relations. Religious coping appeared as a common strategy for adjusting. Children with intellectual disabilities had less access to services and support than they needed in the areas of health, education, and leisure. Financial constraints and difficulties in community living had a negative impact on the quality of family life. Emotional and psychological support for all the family members, and practical and social support, including income distribution and access to adequate services, proved essential for the well-being of children with intellectual disabilities and their families.


Change impact analysis is required for constantly evolving systems to support the comprehension, implementation, and evaluation of changes. A lot of research effort has been spent on this subject over the last twenty years, and many approaches were published likewise. However, there has not been an extensive attempt made to summarize and review published approaches as a base for further research in the area. Therefore, we present the results of a comprehensive investigation of software change impact analysis, which is based on a literature review and a taxonomy for impact analysis. The contribution of this review is threefold. First, approaches proposed for impact analysis are explained regarding their motivation and methodology. They are further classified according to the criteria of the taxonomy to enable the comparison and evaluation of approaches proposed in literature. We perform an evaluation of our taxonomy regarding the coverage of its classification criteria in studied literature, which is the second contribution. Last, we address and discuss yet unsolved problems, research areas, and challenges of impact analysis, which were discovered by our review to illustrate possible directions for further research.


Abstract The Messinian 'salinity crisis' marked a dramatic climatic change in the Mediterranean region. The timing and extent of this event remain controversial, with conflicting models ranging from predictions of rapid and catastrophic dessication of all of the Mediterranean basin at once, to progressive draw-down of sea-level causing gradual onset of evaporite formation starting at the margins of the Mediterranean Sea. In this paper the preliminary magnetostratigraphy is described of two sections in the Neogene Caltanissetta basin, Sicily, containing the early Messinian Tripoli Formation, which pre-dates evaporite formation, and the overlying Calcare di Base shallow water carbonates that mark the first evaporite phase. The magnetisation of the sediments has been extensively overprinted by recent weathering, but primary or early diagenetic remanences which pass reversal and fold tests have been isolated. This has been possible because the sections have been tilted by Pliocene tectonic movements, thus rotating the pre-tilt remanence direction away from the later overprint direction, allowing resolution of the components by great circle analysis. The sections have been correlated with Krijsman et al.'s revision of the geomagnetic polarity time scale (GPTS) of Cande & Kent. This was achieved by comparing variations in the sediment rate derived from the alternative matches with the GPTS with the observed proportions of diatomite (relatively fast deposition) and clay (slow deposition). The proposed correlation puts the base of both sections at or close to the start of the Messinian, but predicts diachroneity in the onset of Calcare di Base deposition between the two sections, as the base of the Calcare di Base falls in opposite polarity chrons in the two sections. The sections lie in two separate sub-basins controlled by thrust anticlines of the Maghrebian thrust belt. Structural and sedimentological evidence suggests that the onset of evaporite formation in these perched basins was strongly controlled by the extent and development of the emerging anticlines. The magnetostratigraphy provides a first positive test of this prediction of tectonically controlled diachroneity of facies. Further palaeomagnetic work is in progress to assess the relative timing of evaporite formation on Sicily in more detail.


Dependencies of protection schemes on communications have been acknowledged and discussed in various papers. This paper expands this topic by examining field experiences that required protection engineers to deepen their understanding of communication technologies to interpret protection scheme behavior and perform event analysis. A deployed power system line protection application utilizing segregated phase comparison protection scheme with distance protection as a backup is described. Communication channels including interfaces, technologies and equipment are covered. Event analysis and investigations are presented. Root cause analysis and evaluation of risk mitigation options are discussed. Explanations of factors that affect protective relay behavior (including communications) and how communications can be used to improve security are provided. A broader discussion of communication parameters known to affect protection performance are considered, such as bit error rate, latency, time synchronization accuracy, specifics of communication protocols, equipment, and implementations. Field examples are used to explain these details. The paper aims at deepening communications awareness and expertise among protection engineers and showing how communication and protection can work together to improve power system's reliability.


There is little debate about the primacy of surgery in the management of classical PHPT. Rather, the question has been what to do about the many patients with nonclassical disease. A 1990 NIH consensus conference (55) clearly recommended surgery for patients with significant adverse effects of PHPT, for patients with complicating coexistent illnesses, for younger patients, and for those in whom consistent long-term follow-up could not be assured. It allowed that conscientious surveillance may be justified in patients with minimal hypercalcemia and no adverse effects, but it recognized that for many patients, the time and expense involved in rigorous follow-up would outweigh the burden of surgery. Nine years later, the demonstrated prevalence of nonclassical symptoms and their reversibility, the evidence of "asymptomatic" but harmful effects reversible by surgery, and the accumulating evidence for surgical reduction of increased long-term mortality risk substantially strengthen the argument for surgery in such patients. For these reasons, parathyroidectomy should generally be recommended for patients with a secure diagnosis of PHPT, even in the absence of classical symptoms.


The paper investigates issues of Linux file system driver testing. Linux file system drivers are implemented as kernel modules, which works in the same address space as kernel core. For that reason, the driver should be very reliable. It should react adequately to incorrect file system images, to faults in operating system, etc. Also drivers should free all resources it requests as far as kernel have to work for long time without restart. Another important feature of file system drivers is that they are programs with multiple entry points, which may be executed simultaneously in respect with each other and with other kernel code. Most of existing test systems verify only driver's behavior in normal situations by calling system calls, which are eventually dispatched by the kernel into the driver's functions. Some of them also check driver in concurrent scenarios but only at very basic level. Some test systems also verify driver's behavior under faulty environment, when request for memory allocation or disk read/write may fail. But fault scenarios used in those systems are probabilistic, which leads to problems with tests' reproducibility and requires to repeat tests many times to achieve better coverage. There is one test system, which checks for memory leaks in the driver under test. The paper concludes by statement of requirements for more throughout file system driver testing. According to the requirements a test system have to cover the following aspects: Normal scenarios on system calls level. Parallel scenarios with additional checks for data races. Fault scenarios with insufficient memory and faulty block devices using such techniques as fault injection. Handling of incorrect file system images. Driver testing on system calls with invalid arguments. Check leaks of memory and other resources requested by driver under test.


The paper reveals results of satellite system users' devices testing in dynamic mode using signal simulator STR4500. Testing was made in the laboratory with metallized window glass and in reflectionless camera SAC3. Testing results have shown the possibility to determine parameters of user devices and dependence of accuracy of user device parameters and movement mode. For accuracy parameters estimation in dynamic mode we used 4 GPS receivers of the different kind: Graymark GPS-101, Garmin GPS-72, Garmin eTrex, Holux GR-213. The movement was simulated with two different velocities – 180 km/h and 800 km/h. It was also simulated in two orthogonal directions – to the North and to the East from Riga (total 4 scenarios). The following parameters were estimated: fix position error in horizontal plane (radial error), its mean value and Root Mean Square (RMS) deviation, as well as current velocity error, its mean value and RMS. Ill. 10, bibl. 3 (in English; abstracts in English, Russian and Lithuanian).


In this paper, an advanced content-based broadcasted sports video retrieval system, SportBR, is proposed. Its main features include event-based sports video browsing and keyword-based sports video retrieval. The paper first defines the framework of our system, and then introduces a novel approach that integrates multimodal analysis, such as visual streams analysis, speech recognition, speech signal processing and text extraction to realize event-based video clips selection. The experimental results for sports video of world cup football games indicate that multimodal analysis is effective. The system is proved to be helpful and effective for understanding the sports video content.


The socioeconomic and political climates influencing biomechanical engineering research in the United States are discussed. The many factors that influence the research environment, strategies, and directions in the United States are also discussed. The roles of the National Institutes of Health (NIM) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in supporting biomedical engineering are reviewed. Since the strategies of such agencies have an impact on the directions individual investigators take in their own research programs, some of the specific areas identified as priorities by NIH and NSF are examined.<<ETX>>


The My Lai Massacre was the most publicized incident subjected to military law during the Vietnam War, but military lawyers in all the service branches had their hands full with less-publicized desertions, drug use, rapes, fraggings, black marketeering, and even small claims. William Allison reveals how the military justice system responded to crimes and infractions both inside and outside the combat zone and how it adapted to an unconventional political, military, and social climate as American involvement escalated. In taking readers to war-torn Vietnam, Allison's study depicts a transitional period in the history of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which was revised in 1968. Reflecting American beliefs in discipline and efficiency in military operations, the Code and its implementation were viewed as an integral facet of pacification and counterinsurgency programs. As Allison makes clear, military law and justice in Vietnam were not intended merely as behavioral controls but were also promoted to the Vietnamese as American ideals: respect for the rule of law and an example of the best that democracy had to offer. American military law and lawyers made near - daily contact with the Vietnamese people, and those interactions open an unusual window on the war and also shed light on contemporary military operations and nation-building missions. Based on deep research into wartime archives and interviews with participants in that conflict (including his own father, a Marine Corps lawyer who served in Vietnam), Allison offers a reflective and well-rounded picture of daily life for military lawyers in Vietnam. That portrait also illuminates the complexities of trying to impose military law and justice on a foreign culture not accustomed to Western-style democracy. As Allison shows, while the difficulties were great and military justice may have fallen short of its goals, as in the My Lai case, military lawyers conducted themselves with honor in Vietnam. And as military crimes in Iraq dominate today's news and military justice in a combat zone continues to challenge our democratic ideals, his book provides critical insight into the historical process that underlies American military law today.


To drink excessively for long time would damage human genital system seriously, nevertheless there is still less researches on the effect of ethanol to granule cells. Here we adhibit means of TUNEL coloration and flowcytometry examination and treat ex vivo granule cells with ethanol at different chroma and time. The result shows that ex vivo granule cells treated with ethanol at different chroma and time can be observed distinctly the morphologic character of cell apoptosis, and the percentage of apoptosis of ex vivo granule cells induced by ethanol would increase in a certain bound of chroma and time as the increasing of the chroma and time, indicating that ethanol can produce dysgenesia by inducing the apoptosis of granule cells of ovaries. The damage of ethanol for granule cells arouses people to control drinking and nip drinking evil in the bud, which is a world of practical importances for human's procreate and health.


This review article aims to present a feasibility guideline for the design of the model of the structure of the art program of art as therapy activities for self-esteem enhancing in children from dysfunctional families. As these children are suffered from dysfunctional family problem, i.e. domestic violence, the broken family problem which affects their mental condition and projected into possible disturbed characteristics and attitudes; these maybe later a cause of a social problem. Since unhealthy issues from this problem are arisen, and searching for an opportunity to flourish children sustainably should be accounted for promptly. Self-esteem is accounted to be an essential key to exalt these children to be valued spiritually. Whiles, art as therapy is considered to be a tool for detracting what hidden in mind without a need for the psychotherapy procedure in order to open their mind to a happiness fulfilment by positive psychology. The programming structure is segregated into four phases as a journey through the program, which are the introduction, past thinking, present thinking and future thinking. The introduction guided participants to the program by offering self-adjustment and working within a group. The past thinking presented a projection of inspired experiences and impressive memories that influences a self-values realization by identifying participants' strengths in the present thinking phase. Finally, the future thinking motivated the participants to set their life goals and the ability of achievement. The program was designed to avoid the reference of participants' trauma. However, the possibility of unpredictable affect can occur at any time during the program attendance, so directive supervision from specialists was needed for applying this structure to further utilization.


In this paper, analytical and experimental studies into the behavior of a new hysteretic damper, designed for seismic protection of structures is presented. The Multidirectional Torsional Hysteretic Damper (MTHD) is a recently-patented invention in which a symmetrical arrangement of identical cylindrical steel cores is so configured as to yield in torsion while the structure experiences planar movements due to earthquake shakings. The new device has certain desirable properties. Notably, it is characterized by a variable and controllable-via-design post-elastic stiffness. The mentioned property is a result of MTHD's kinematic configuration which produces this geometric hardening, rather than being a secondary large-displacement effect. Additionally, the new system is capable of reaching high force and displacement capacities, shows high levels of damping, and very stable cyclic response. The device has gone through many stages of design refinement, multiple prototype verification tests and development of design guidelines and computer codes to facilitate its implementation in practice. Practicality of the new device, as offspring of an academic sphere, is assured through extensive collaboration with industry in its final design stages, prototyping and verification test programs. Analytical and experimental progress made so far in this on-going research is summarized in this paper.


Extracts of dormant microcysts of Polysphondylium pallidum demonstrate pH optima for the hydrolysis of casein at 3.5 and 6.0. During germination the intracellular pH 6.0 caseinolytic specific activity does not change significantly. The pH 6.0 protease is also active on azo-albumin, revealing the same developmental pattern with this substrate. Both acid protease activities are excreted during the germination process. Addition of purified nonspecific protease to cultures speeds up germination, suggesting that the excreted protease may play a role in removal of the microcyst wall. When cycloheximide is added to cultures, complete germination (emergence) is stopped whereas the pH 6.0 protease activity still accumulates to between 50 and 60% of the maximum control activity. Although this suggests that post-translational controls might mediate the accumulation of a portion of the pH 6.0 protease increase, mixing and dilution experiments with cell extracts do not reveal the differential presence of soluble activators or inhibitors of this activity at different developmental stages. The presence of tightly bound enzyme-inhibitor complexes for protease B in dormant microcysts has not been ruled out and is currently under study.


Hypotension during pregnancy must be taken seriously. This complication is definitely serious enough to merit treatment. However, examinations have been lacking so far proving the advantages or possible risks of antihypotensive therapy. A short while ago the authors reported on favourable results obtained with dihydroergotamin (DHE) in hypotensive patients. It was the aim of the present study to test this finding, which had been obtained with a relatively small group of patients, by employing a large group. The evaluation was based on the statistical data from 400 hypotensive pregnant women who had delivered during the time between 1.1. 1982 and 31.8. 1983 in the obstetrical department of the Berlin-Neukölln Hospital Pregnant women were considered to be hypotensive if they had appeared for examination at least three times up to the 28th week of pregnancy with a maximum systolic blood pressure of less than or equal to 110 mmHg and diastolic pressure of less than or equal to 60 mm Hg. In relation to the total number of births of 4763, the proportion of hypotensives was 8.4%. 204 (4.3%) hypotensive women were subjected to DHE treatment; 156 of these took regularly 2 X 2.5 mg DETMS retard, whereas compliance was irregular with the remaining 50 patients. 196 (4.1%) refused treatment. The fact that the percentage of women willing to undergo treatment was relatively low (39%) is attributed partly to pregnant women being afraid of taking drugs, and partly to the attitude adopted by gynaecologists who are often hardly convinced that hypotension is a grave sign.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Purpose: The purpose of the study is to develop recommendations for the creation of systemic, open, interactive data on innovative energy clusters, allowing cluster managers to build inter-cluster relationships, to assess the impact of clusters on economic development. Design/Methodology/Approach: The methodology is based on the conceptual provisions of the works of foreign and Russian scientists on the research topic. Using the methods of grouping and comparative analysis of statistical data, we analyzed the volume of electricity production and production of alternative energy in calculation on one inhabitant of the leading energy powers in the world. We also conducted a comparative analysis of databases Clustered Russia map, Cluster map of the US and European cluster maps, were studied the dynamics of the development of innovative energy clusters. Data are from the Global Energy Statistical Yearbook, government statistics, data of the Russian Cluster Observatory, the US Cluster Mapping and the European Cluster Observatory. Findings: Innovative energy clusters are mainly created on the basis of large generating and transmission energy companies. These clusters specialize in the production of bioenergy, introduce energy-saving technologies, increase energy efficiency, diversify the national energy system, and ensure the economic growth of the territories. The development of innovative energy clusters depends on the solution of a number of problems. In the study it has formulated the following ways of solving problems. Creation of an interactive cluster map that accumulates a complete database of cluster entities. Clarification of specialization groups of Russian clusters used in the course of cluster mapping, taking into account comparable groups of specializations of American and European clusters. Development of recommendations for the creation of an interactive resource of systemic, open, data on cluster formations. Practical Implications: The results and recommendations are addressed to developers of regional cluster policy, strategic planning documents, and cluster managers, and can also be used in the process of creating an interactive cluster map of Russia. Originality/Value: Recommendations were developed for the development of innovative energy clusters that ensure an increase in bioenergy production and economic growth.


The likelihood function represents the basic ingredient of many commonly used statistical methods for estimation, testing and the calculation of confidence intervals. In practice, much application of likelihood inference relies on first order asymptotic results such as the central limit theorem. The approximations can, however, be rather poor if the sample size is small or, generally, when the average information available per parameter is limited. Thanks to the great progress made over the past twenty-five years or so in the theory of likelihood inference, very accurate approximations to the distribution of statistics such as the likelihood ratio have been developed. These not only provide modifications to well-established approaches, which result in more accurate inferences, but also give insight on when to rely upon first order methods. We refer to these developments as higher order asymptotics. One intriguing feature of the theory of higher order likelihood asymptotics is that relatively simple and familiar quantities play an essential role. The higher order approximations discussed in this paper are for the significance function, which we will use to set confidence limits or to calculate the p-value associated with a particular hypothesis of interest. We start with a concise overview of the approximations used in the remainder of the paper. Our first example is an elementary one-parameter model where one can perform the calculations easily, chosen to illustrate the potential accuracy of the procedures. Two more elaborate examples, an application of binary logistic regression and a nonlinear growth curve model, follow. All examples are carried out using the R code of the hoa package bundle.


Th is article explores how the theoretical framework of "counter-narrative" can be a resource for the analysis of spoofi ng videos. Using spoofs deployed by activist organizations to critique Western aid appeals and "voluntourism," we 1) investigate the intertextual mechanisms of spoof videos as counter-narrative and how spoofers borrow generic conventions and use them to create alternative narratives, and 2) discuss the consequences of their cultural depictions, for example for the discourse of volunteering, which we examine here, particularly in light of tendencies toward self-refl ecting campaigns identifi ed by Chouliaraki (2013). Th rough these understandings, we draw lessons about the counter-narrative potential of spoofs used as critique and edifi cation and their ambivalent status as counter-narratives. As critiques, they may hold a mirror to viewers' self-perceptions and motivations. Yet, this self-refl exive strategy carries the risk of self-congratulatory complicity with the genres they seek to critique and the discourses and power relations upon which they depend.


Background: Cervical cancer caused by human papilloma virus (HPV), is the second most common cancer for women. This cancer is distributed worldwide, with ~80% of cases are found in the developing countries. In Indonesia, data of HPV genotypes are still limited and do not represent all regions of the country. Thus, here we report genotyping of HPV samples collected from the Dr. Soetomo Hospital Surabaya Indonesia patients, in 2013.
Materials and Method: A cross sectional study was performed using 68 paraffin blocks of low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (LSIL), high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (HSIL), and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) cervix.
Result: This study showed that HPV genotypes found in LSIL samples are HPV 16, 18, 6/33 or 68/72. Furthermore, those in HSIL are HPV 16, 18, 52, 59, 67, 6/18, 6/45, 16/67, 26/61, or 52/67, while in SCC are HPV 16, 18, 45, 52, 56, 16/18 or 16/45. Single-genotype infection, i.e. by HPV 16, 18, 45, 52, 56, 59, or 67, was observed in 86.77% (59/68) of samples, whereas multiple-genotype infections, i.e. by HPV 6/18, 6/33, 6/45, 16/18, 16/45, 16/67, 26/61, 52/67, or 68/72, was found in 13.23% (9/68) of the samples.
Conclutions: The mostly HPV genotype identified in this study is HPV 16 (62.68%), then followed by HPV 18 (20.9%), HPV 45 (5.97%), 52 (5.97%), and 67 (4.48%). HPV 16 and 18 have used as vaccine, and HPV 45 has cross reaction with HPV 18, then HPV 52 and 67 should be considered as the second-generation HPV vaccines.


The level of LTB4 and LTC4 in blood plasma of patients with familial mediterranean fever is significantly higher than in healthy donors: 53 + 10 pg/ml for LTB4 (normal - 25 + 5 pg/ml) and 175 + 22 pg/ml for LTC4 (normal 67 + 19 pg/ml). The more increase of the LTB4 and LTC4 content in plasma is observed during attacks of fever - 107 + 21 pg/ml (LTB4) and 249 + 34 pg/ml (LTC4). Hyperbaric oxygenation of patients, used to relieve pain and fever, reduces the level of leukotrienes.


Abstract  Background: Blood transfusion with cardiac surgery accounts for 20% of transfusions in the United States. The effect of perioperative transfusion on cardiac surgery outcomes is unknown. We hypothesized that cardiac surgery with perioperative blood transfusion was associated with worse outcomes. Methods: A prospectively maintained (Society of Thoracic Surgeons) institutional database was analyzed from 2000 to 2005. All patients undergoing coronary artery bypass and/or valve operations were evaluated for the association of preoperative and intraoperative risk factors with blood transfusion. The association of transfusion with postoperative complications and mortality was evaluated. Results: During the study period, 2691 patients met inclusion criteria. Sixty‐four percent received transfusions. Preoperative risk factors associated with transfusion (p < 0.05) were lung disease, elevated creatinine, peripheral vascular disease, and previous cardiac interventions. Patients requiring transfusion were older (mean 65.2 vs. 61.2 years, p < 0.001). Transfusion was associated with longer cross‐clamp (median 78 vs. 88 minutes, p < 0.001) and perfusion times (median 114 vs. 128 minutes, p < 0.001). Perioperative blood transfusion was associated with increased postoperative complications (53.5% vs. 30.5%, p < 0.001). Significant transfusion‐associated complications were renal failure, prolonged ventilation time, pneumonia, cardiac arrest, gastrointestinal complications, atrial fibrillation, stroke, myocardial infarction, and bleeding requiring reoperation. Blood transfusion was associated with an increased operative mortality (3.4% vs. 1.7%, p = 0.005) and length of stay after surgery (median 6 vs. 5 days p < 0.001). Conclusion: Identification and management of risk factors associated with transfusion may reduce the transfusion requirement, minimize perioperative complications and improve outcomes. Bloodless cardiac surgery is associated with a decreased morbidity and mortality.


As forest companies in Canada are snuggling to come through a period of record low commodity prices, US exchange rate challenges, and worldwide recession, it is unlikely that a carbon strategy would be a top priority. This paper explores the reality that even as a company operates in a harsh business environment, a carbon strategy is helpful in moving to a more sustainable and financially competitive future. In the context of stakeholder theory and competitive forces both inside and outside the company's industry, there is evidence to show that moving toward a low carbon future is in their best interest over the long term. Considering this, the study looks at the possibility of direct investment in forestry carbon projects from a financial perspective. Specifically, the analysis is based on hypothetical afforestation, fertilization, and select seed projects with harvesting treatments based in the interior of British Columbia. The results indicate that due to the substantial uncertainty and poor expected retums, forest carbon projects may not be a wise investment for forest companies at this time. However, there are various steps that companies can make to transition themselves to a low carbon future. These include carbon footprinting and the development of green programs, targets, and goals within the company' s operations. These actions can lead to first mover advantages within the forest industry and prepare the firm for more onerous demands in the future. These demands would include regulatory emission constraints or preparing for the implementation of a cap and trade system.