Prevention of HIV infection perinatal transmission with specific anti-HIV agents is at present effective and resultant. The use of retrovir and nevirapin in such cases is well known and approved. The Russian anti-HIV drug nicavir (phosphazide) also proved its high efficacy, that was evident from the results of its use in chemoprophylaxis of perinatal HIV infection transmission in HIV-infected pregnant women. The discussion of the results is presented.


Prof. Mariell Jessup, the past president (2013-14) of American Heart Association and medical director of the Penn Heart and Vascular Center in Philadelphia, is a nationally recognized expert in heart failure. At 2014 China Heart Congress, she gave an excellent report on "Heart Failure: State of the ART and Challenge" and presentation on "The Progress and the Puzzle of HFpEF". After the congress, ATM is of great honor to interview Dr. Jessup.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the safety and efficacy of a chimeric monoclonal antibody to tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF alpha) in the treatment of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

METHODS
Twenty patients with active RA were treated with 20 mg/kg of anti-TNF alpha in an open phase I/II trial lasting 8 weeks.

RESULTS
The treatment was well tolerated, with no serious adverse events. Significant improvements were seen in the Ritchie Articular Index, which fell from a median of 28 at study entry to a median of 6 by week 6 (P < 0.001), the swollen joint count, which fell from 18 to 5 (P < 0.001) over the same period, and in the other major clinical assessments. Serum C-reactive protein levels fell from a median of 39.5 mg/liter at study entry to 8 mg/liter at week 6 (P < 0.001), and significant decreases were also seen in serum amyloid A and interleukin-6 levels.

CONCLUSION
Treatment with anti-TNF alpha was safe and well tolerated and resulted in significant clinical and laboratory improvements. These preliminary results support the hypothesis that TNF alpha is an important regulator in RA, and suggest that it may be a useful new therapeutic target in this disease.


Polar cod (Boreogadus saida), a key fish species in Arctic marine ecosystems, may be particularly susceptible to changing sea-ice habitats. It has been proposed that parts of the population get entrained with the growing sea ice in autumn, but how this happens and what proportion of the population becomes ice-associated is not known. The overall goal of the Go-West expedition was to test the hypothesis that entrainment of young Polar cod into the sea-ice habitat in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas during autumn is significant, and hence sea-ice association is an important survival strategy for Polar cod. During expedition SKQ201923S with RV Sikuliaq (06 November – 02 December 2019), we sampled Polar cod and its prey in the ice-water interface layer along with high resolution profiles of sea-ice and surface water properties with a Surface and Under-Ice Trawl (SUIT). We recorded backscatter of fish and zooplankton in the water column with the Sikuliaq's EK80 echosounder, and sampled pelagic communities with two midwater trawls (Methot trawl and IKMT) and vertical zooplankton nets (CalVET and ring net). A conductivity-temperature—depth probe equipped with a rosette water sampler (CTD) sampled vertical profiles of temperature, salinity and fluorescence and was used to collect water samples for the analysis for chlorophyll a concentration, nutrient concentrations, trophic biomarkers and harmful algae (HAB). During four ice stations, we sampled the sea ice for the same parameters (except nutrients), and performed hyperspectral light measurements needed to derive ice algae biomass from hyperspectral profiles obtained from a sensor mounted on the SUIT. In addition, we performed respiration measurements on abundant zooplankton prey species of Polar cod. Altogether, we completed 11 SUIT stations (1 in open water, 10 under ice), 4 ice stations and 3 midwater trawls. All SUIT deployments were succesful, expanding Sikuliaq's capability of advanced scientific operations in ice-covered waters. Polar cod were caught at all SUIT stations, totalling 153 fish. Most fish appeared to be first-year juveniles between 6 and 8 cm in size, pending age determinations. Fish abundance increased with increasing ocean depth, sea-ice draft and abundance of the ice amphipod Onisimus spp.. The mesozooplankton community in the upper 50 m was dominated by the copepod Metridia longa. Respiration experiments indicated that Metridia and, surprisingly, Calanus glacialis from shelf stations were in an active metabolic state. Chlorophyll a concentrations were low (< 0.5 mg m-3) in the water column. Conversely, visual inspection of ice core filters indicated that ice algal biomass had already begun to accumulate in the autumn sea ice. The trophic relationships between ice algae, zooplankton and sea-ice fauna and Polar cod will be analyzed in detail based on hundreds of biological samples, including diet and trophic biomarker samples. Investigations of otolith microchemistry and population genetics studies on each sampled fish will help elucidate their origins and migration patterns. Preliminary results of this expedition support our hypothesis that juvenile Polar cod associate with sea ice in autumn and show that prey is available to sustain them at the onset of winter.


In recent years, several user-level communication systems have been developed to eliminate the gap between the performance of networking technologies used in Network Based Computing platforms and that experienced by the applications. The Virtual Interface Architecture (VIA) specification has been recently developed to standardize these communication systems and to make their features available in commercial systems. In this paper, we take on a challenge of developing a communication substrate over VIA such that applications using the popular TreadMarks DSM package can take advantage of the enhanced communication performance of VIA. We discuss various design alternatives, derive the best set of these alternatives and implement them on two enhanced implementations of VIA (M-VIA and Berkeley VIA) on two different networking technologies, Gigabit Ethernet and Myrinet, respectively. We evaluate the performance of our implementation by using several microbenchmarks and applications. We show that the communication and wait times, and therefore the total execution times of different applications can be significantly reduced by using VIA. A reduction in the overall execution time up to 2.05 on an eight node system is demonstrated in comparison with the original UDP implementation. The new implementation also demonstrates better parallel speedup as the system size increases.


Market mechanisms have increasingly been introduced into the public service regimes of many countries over recent decades. This was meant to foster competition and choice which in turn was thought to increase quality while decreasing prices. Such progressive liberalisation led to public services increasingly falling within the ambit of competition laws which in turn partly required further liberalisation in some competition law regimes. However, there are certain tensions between providing such services in a competitive market and, at the same time, allowing them to retain their public interest character including such elements as universal provision, trust based relationships or equality of access. The ASEAN countries, in which competition law is still a relatively new area of law, might face such tensions with increasing application of competition law to these areas. Yet, the application of competition law to public services in ASEAN countries has thus far received virtually no attention.The explorative case study 'Competition in the healthcare sector in Singapore' aims to make a first step in filling this gap in the research by exploring the healthcare sector in Singapore from a competition law perspective. It will leave to one side questions on medical research, pharma firms' interaction with the market and primary care. Instead it focuses its analysis on hospital care; more specifically on in-patient care (i.e. mainly secondary care). The research will explore in how far the notion of undertaking is applicable to hospital in-patient services in Singapore. Since the notion of undertaking in Singaporean competition law has received hardly any attention so far this is of relevance beyond the case study. It will then proceed to analyse in how far there might be potential issues with competition law application (s 34, 47 and 54 of the Competition Act) and if there would be recommendations beyond the legal analysis.


Evidence for the purposeful use of fire by American Indians–also termed Native Americans, Indigenous People, and First Nations/People–in many ecosystems has been easy to document but difficult to substantiate. Many researchers and ecologists discount the fact that the American Indians changed greatly the ecosystems for their use and survival (Butzer 1992; Denevan 1992; Doolittle 1992; Krech 1999; Sale 1990; Whitney 1994). Fire scientists and ecologists often find old fire scars in trees going back hundreds of years. Geographers studying lake sediments often find evidence of charcoal layers going back thousands of years, attributing the data to prehistoric fires caused by global warming and drying conditions. Since the trees and sediments cannot document how the fires started, lightning becomes the easiest "natural" explanation. However, there is a growing literature that many or most of the natural fires were intentionally caused.


Ideally, reconstruction of lower extremity soft tissue defects includes not only an esthetically pleasing 3-dimensional shape and solid anchoring to the underlying structures to resist shear forces, but should also address the restoration of sensation. Therefore, we present a prospective study on defect reconstruction of the lower leg and ankle to evaluate the role of sensate free fasciocutaneous lateral arm flap and the impact of sensory nerve reconstruction. Thirty patients were allocated randomly to the study group (n = 15) that obtained end-to-side sensate coaptation using the lower lateral cutaneous brachial nerve to the tibial nerve using the epineural window technique, or to the control group reconstructed without nerve coaptation. At 1-year follow-up the patients were evaluated for pain sensation, thermal sensibility, static and moving 2-point discrimination, and Semmes-Weinstein monofilament tests. Data from both groups were compared and statistically analyzed with the Mann-Whitney U test and the Fisher exact test. Flaps of the study group reached a static and moving 2-point discrimination and Semmes-Weinstein monofilament tests nearly equal to the contralateral leg area and significantly better than flaps of the control group. Donor damage morbidity of the tibial nerve did not occur. To our point of view resensation should be carried out by end-to-side neurorrhaphy to the tibial nerve because of the superior restoration of sensibility.


A new analytical method is developed and appropriately validated by means of a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) in reverse phase to quantify pantoprazole in pharmaceutical preparations. The HPLC determination was performed on a reversed phase column (Inertsil ODS 53m; 150 x 4.6 mm i.d) using a mobile phase (0.6 mL min-1 ) with UV-detection at 289 nm. A rectilinear relationship between mean peak area and concentration of PNT was observed in the range 25-200 μg mL-1 with a detection limit of 6.0 μg mL-1 and a quantitation limit of 20.0 μg mL-1. Intra-day and interday precision, and accuracy of the methods have been established according to the current ICH guidelines. The results were statistically compared with those of the reference method by applying Student's t-test and F-test. Accuracy, evaluated by means of the spike recovery method was in the range 97.7-102.2%, with precision (RSD) better than 2%.


Background Confirmation bias is the tendency to acquire or evaluate new information in a way that is consistent with one's preexisting beliefs. It is omnipresent in psychology, economics, and even scientific practices. Prior theoretical research of this phenomenon has mainly focused on its economic implications possibly missing its potential connections with broader notions of cognitive science. Methodology/Principal Findings We formulate a (non-Bayesian) model for revising subjective probabilistic opinion of a confirmationally-biased agent in the light of a persuasive opinion. The revision rule ensures that the agent does not react to persuasion that is either far from his current opinion or coincides with it. We demonstrate that the model accounts for the basic phenomenology of the social judgment theory, and allows to study various phenomena such as cognitive dissonance and boomerang effect. The model also displays the order of presentation effect–when consecutively exposed to two opinions, the preference is given to the last opinion (recency) or the first opinion (primacy) –and relates recency to confirmation bias. Finally, we study the model in the case of repeated persuasion and analyze its convergence properties. Conclusions The standard Bayesian approach to probabilistic opinion revision is inadequate for describing the observed phenomenology of persuasion process. The simple non-Bayesian model proposed here does agree with this phenomenology and is capable of reproducing a spectrum of effects observed in psychology: primacy-recency phenomenon, boomerang effect and cognitive dissonance. We point out several limitations of the model that should motivate its future development.


Early successional landscapes along or adjacent to infrastructure installations have been highlighted as potential pollinator conservation zones that provide environmental benefits and ameliorate some of the negative impacts of wildland conversion. Habitat development and management initiatives in this field are active, but vetted support for particular techniques and strategies is lacking and technical information is diffuse. We reviewed the current scientific and technical literature relating to right-of-way and roadside management to produce an overview. Surveys and comparative studies dominate the literature, with limited manipulative experimentation and limited tests of best management practices. Local floristic diversity is shown to be a determinant of butterfly, bee, and fly patterns but data is almost entirely lacking on vertebrate pollinators. The degree to which these linear landscape corridors can promote movement and connectivity is also not well addressed, yet there is a focus in the conservation community to promote migrations and movement. Contrasting results are reported for the impact of disturbance regimes associated with management (mowing and herbicide use), and there is also only minimal attention given to the potential negative impacts that are experienced by pollinators on rights-of-way. Even with the limited literary accounts of pollinator management in these landscapes we believe infrastructure landscapes can provide substantial benefits to pollinator species and ecosystem services and encourage further management-based investigations. Please find supplementary files to this article in the menu on the left side.


Abstract: The purpose of this study is to show the requirement of industry-specific national service quality indices for measuring quality in both traditional and electronic services in various industries in a country. In this study, the literature about service and e-service quality measurements was reviewed, and a three-dimensional framework was developed. It was found out that the dimensions of each service quality measurement were all different from each other due to the different characteristics of the industries that each study has been conducted in. The study showed that there is a need for an industry-specific national service quality index and suggested that national customer satisfaction indices which have existed in the literature can be a model for industry-specific national service quality indices. An industry-specific national service quality index enables national companies to understand their unique industrial characteristics that needed to be improved continuously in order to increase service quality and gain competitive advantage. The index which was proposed to develop in the future was suggested for the first time in this study.

Keywords: Service quality; E-service quality; Service quality dimensions; National customer satisfaction indices; Turkish Customer Satisfaction Index (TCSI).


Androdioecy (mixtures of males and hermaphrodites) is distinguished by its rarity, being found in only -40 animal species. Many of these species are clam shrimp in the genus Eulimnadia. A metapopulation model for the maintenance of androdioecy is tested herein by examining male success in aquaria with a single male-producing hermaphrodite introduced into an otherwise all-hermaphrodite population. This migration experiment did allow males to persist in these populations for seven generations, although at levels below those found in other populations of these shrimp. These results suggest that the maintenance of androdioecy via 'reproductive assurance' is unlikely by way of migration of male-producing hermaphrodites.


This study was conducted to find out the incidence of Salmonella enteritidis in table eggs and chicken carcasses entering the consumer market in the city of Lusaka. Diarrhoea stool samples from humans admitted to the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) were also included in the study to investigate Salmonella enteritidis in the population. Table eggs were collected from eight randomly selected layer farms in and around the city. Specimens from the chicken carcasses were sampled from a big processing plant operating in Lusaka city. Two thousand four hundred (2400) commercially purchased table eggs and three hundred eighty two (382) chicken carcasses were cultured on suitable media for isolation of Salmonella enteritidis. The shell membranes and yolks from table eggs were pooled in units of ten and cultured. Nine (3.75 per cent) of the two hundred and forty samples of table eggs were found contaminated with Salmonella enteritidis, while eighteen (4.7 per cent) of the carcasses sampled were found positive for Salmonella enteritidis. Other Salmonella serovars isolated from the chicken carcasses were Salmonella infantis. Salmonella gallinarum and Salmonella mbadaka while Salmonella gallinarum was the only other serovar from the table eggs. A total of eighty six (86) diarrhoea stool samples from humans obtained from UTH, Lusaka were also cultured and eight of these were found positive for Salmonella typhimurium.
Phage typing of the Salmonella enteritidis isolates showed that all the isolates from the table eggs and seven from chicken carcasses belonged to the enteropathogenic invasive PT4, while three from the carcasses were PT7 and eight were untypable. Efforts were made to characterise the Salmonella enteritidis isolates by carrying out pathogenicity test, biochemical test and antibiogram test. The characterisation involving animal models of mice, embryonated eggs and seven days old chicks displayed that Salmonella enteritidis isolates from the table eggs were more virulent than the isolates from the chicken meat. Biochemical test did not reveal anything significant. Salmonella enteritidis isolates from table eggs and chicken carcasses tested for antibiotic sensitivity had several features in common. They were sensitive to amoxycillin, ampicillin, co-trimoxazole, furazolidone, gentamycin and tetracycline while Salmonella typhimurium isolates from diarrhoea cases were resistant to amoxycillin and ampicillin. Several Salmonella mbadaka isolates showed resistance to tetracycline. Salmonella enteritidis has been isolated from the table eggs and poultry meat carcasses for the first time in Zambia. The results of the study further demonstrated that poultry products from Zambia have a higher incidence of Salmonella enteritidis contamination compared to reports in other parts of the world. It warrants a planned epidemiological study of Salmonella enteritidis in the country to formulate appropriate control measures.


Life began for me at a point different from where it began for the visitor in front of me. The work started at yet another point for someone arriving later than I did. The footage may have already begun again for some early arrivals to the exhibition. That evening, Life (2017) began again for all of us, probably more than once. Drew Bacon's most recent animation started for viewers as it was constantly refreshed and reinvigorated through the sporadic recognition of his images. When I first witnessed Bacon's Life, I thought the footage ran continuously forward, taking new material for its own figuration as it swept through a limitless digital inventory.


We address the problem of transforming natural language descriptions of contracts into a form that is suitable for automating various contract management functions. We investigate two complementary methods that can be used to achieve this. One method is suitable for the contract specification phase - to specify expected behaviour of contracting parties so that they can satisfy policies stated in a contract. This method also allows for checking aspects of contract consistency as well as flexible integration of internal organisational policies with the contract policies. Another method targets the contact run-time phase - for monitoring behaviour of parties to the contract and other aspects of contract performance. When combined, these two methods provide a basis to support an increasing level of automation of many mundane contract activities, while allowing humans to be involved in ultimate decision making.


The digital preservation problem is a series of interrelated technical and organizational challenges that can only be met co-operatively by the many different stakeholders that are involved. The rise of the institutional repository paradigm backs this up with its focus on co-operation within national or subjectbased networks and the wider positioning of repositories within modular service frameworks like those devised by the Digital Library Federation's Service Framework Group (Lavoie, Henry & Dempsey, 2006). Long-term preservation is one of the areas where it is widely perceived that institutional repositories will need to co-operate. So, for example, it is assumed that not all institutions with repositories will be able to provide appropriate levels of preservation and curation infrastructure, technical support or expertise. Instead, it is expected that repositories will co-operate on preservation, e.g. within national or regional consortia or with preservation services provided by third parties. These preservation services might include both services that undertake to preserve content on behalf of repositories as well as shared services like registries of representation information that can be used to support specific preservation functions. One of the areas where co-operation is likely to be important is collection development, e.g. helping to reduce duplication of effort while also enabling coordinated decisions to be made about the scalable adoption of multiple preservation strategies. However, it is not entirely clear in all cases what would be the most appropriate levels for co-operation, the exact form that co-operation should take, or what forms of additional policy-level co-ordination might be necessary.


Rice field-based fish seed production (RFFSP) has become established in parts of Northwest Bangladesh (NWB) as part of promoting improved rice-based livelihoods. The impact of RFFSP on adopting households in terms of interactions of assets and other activities was assessed in a comparison of seed-producing (RF; n = 60) and non-seed-producing (NRF; n = 58) households that were sampled randomly and ranked as poor, intermediate and better-off. Adoption of RFFSP was not constrained by illiteracy of the household head, the size or ownership status of ponds, or lack of ownership of land or an irrigation pump. Poorer and intermediate households had smaller RF plots and lower production of fingerlings (kg per household) compared with the better-off, although production efficiency (kg ha−1) was higher. Restocking of fingerlings in RF household ponds increased productivity by 60% over NRF. Fish consumption of better-off RF households exceeded NFR by 50%. Among the poor, seasonal benefits of income from sales and subsistence consumption of fingerlings were significant. Rice production in irrigated, and income in both irrigated and rain-fed seasons was higher, and production costs lower, in riceplots producing fish than in rice-only plots. Implications for supporting the innovation networks promoting and establishing RFFSP among rice growers, are discussed.


This symposium provided an opportunity for global experts to discuss the challenges posed by the introduction of biosimilars. The impact of the manufacturing process on clinical outcomes, maintaining treatment responses over the long term, and issues surrounding patient management in a changing environment were addressed.

The symposium was opened by Prof Panaccione describing the evolution of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) treatment in the last 20 years and how biologics have improved outcomes. Prof D'Haens provided an explanation of the complexity surrounding biologic drug development and the hurdles facing drug manufacturers when ensuring high quality and consistently performing products over time. Prof Panaccione discussed the clinical challenges in balancing the transition from induction to maintenance therapy in order to provide a clinically relevant and sustained response to therapy. He also discussed the evidence for long-term outcomes with adalimumab for IBD. Prof Feagan highlighted the issues faced by clinicians treating patients with biologics, including the ability to switch between biologics without loss of efficacy or impact on safety, and the need to consider interchangeability between biologic therapies and the potential risk and impact of immunogenicity.


DOI: 10.7764/RDLC.17.1.72 Cement mortar is a broadly used construction material. Adding fibres into the fresh mortar is an effective reinforcing technique to overcome the drawbacks related with the little tensile and flexural strength. Using natural fibres (mostly vegetal) is environmental sustainable and competitive. In particular, alfa fibre, which is produced in Mediterranean area, is herein considered. The main objective of this paper is analysing the mechanical performance of strengthening mortars using alfa fibre. Flexural and compressive tests have been performed and the experimental results showed a significant increase of the flexural strength and the toughness factor, whereas the compressive strength was slightly reduced when adding alfa fibres. The methodology used for measuring the toughness factor has been successfully adapted for this research and, thus, it might be applied to other materials. Different fibre dosages and lengths have been tested and the influence of these parameters have been analysed concluding that adding short fibres is the best option because of the better workability and the greater flexural performance.


Talcosis/ Talcpneumoconiosis is one of the rarer forms of magnesium silicate induced lung disease, It usually occurs in the fourth decade and affects people working in talc related industries like roof, shingle, pharmaceutical companies, talcum powder industries, electric ceramics, rubber industry etc. We report a case of talc pneumoconiosis/talcosis in a 51yr old male who presented with breathlessness and dry cough for the past 5 yrs and progressively worsening for the past 5 days. Who was working in a talcum powder manufacturing company for >28yrs in the packaging section. The diagnosis was possible by history, clinical examination, Chest X-ray, PFT/DLCO, HRCT chest, Bronchoscopy & Trans bronchial lung biopsy showing interstitial fibrosis.


We experimentally demonstrate emission of two quantum-mechanically correlated light pulses with a time delay that is coherently controlled via temporal storage of photonic states in an ensemble of rubidium atoms. The experiment is based on Raman scattering, which produces correlated pairs of spin-flipped atoms and photons, followed by coherent conversion of the atomic states into a different photon beam after a controllable delay. This resonant nonlinear optical process is a promising technique for potential applications in quantum communication.


It is widely acknowledged now, by many financial and macroeconomists, that in the past, only little attention has been paid to "systemic risk" and "financial contagion". Rochet and Tirole point out that the "anxiety about systemic risk is perhaps strongest among bank executives and regulators". Galati and Moessner state that "there has been a fundamental lack of understanding of system-wide risk". Battiston et al. confirm the latter statement by saying that the "recent financial crisis has shown that systemic risk has been dramatically underestimated". Fouque and Langsam emphasis this fact when they say that the "[r]ecent history has shown us not only the enormous cost of a systemic crisis but also how woefully unprepared and ill-equipped governments and private markets have been to prevent systemic crisis or minimize its impact". According to Geanakoplos et al. Macroeconomists were completely surprised by the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Up until then they had concentrated on macroeconomics with a capital M: global imbalances, interest rates, monetary policy". Therefore, as Martınez-Jaramillo et al. put it, the "understanding of systemic risk is of central importance for maintaining financial stability".


Inexpensive, reproducible, and high-throughput fabrication of nanometric apertures in metallic films can benefit many applications in plasmonics, sensing, spectroscopy, lithography, and imaging. Here we use template-stripping to pattern periodic nanohole arrays in optically thick, smooth Ag films with a silicon template made via nanoimprint lithography. Ag is a low-cost material with good optical properties, but it suffers from poor chemical stability and biocompatibility. However, a thin silica shell encapsulating our template-stripped Ag nanoholes facilitates biosensing applications by protecting the Ag from oxidation as well as providing a robust surface that can be readily modified with a variety of biomolecules using well-established silane chemistry. The thickness of the conformal silica shell can be precisely tuned by atomic layer deposition, and a 15 nm thick silica shell can effectively prevent fluorophore quenching. The Ag nanohole arrays with silica shells can also be bonded to polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic channels for fluorescence imaging, formation of supported lipid bilayers, and real-time, label-free SPR sensing. Additionally, the smooth surfaces of the template-stripped Ag films enhance refractive index sensitivity compared with as-deposited, rough Ag films. Because nearly centimeter-sized nanohole arrays can be produced inexpensively without using any additional lithography, etching, or lift-off, this method can facilitate widespread applications of metallic nanohole arrays for plasmonics and biosensing.


Purpose
Food tourism and events are often prefaced as tools for sustainability within national and intra-national food and agricultural policy contexts. Yet, the realities of enhancing sustainability through food tourism and events are problematic. Sustainability itself is often conceived broadly within policy proclaiming the benefits of food tourism and events, with a need for further deconstruction of the ways each dimension of sustainability – economic, environmental, social and cultural – independently enhances sustainability. The lack of clarity concerning the conceptual utilisation of sustainability works to compromise its value and utilisation for the development of food tourism and events in peripheral areas. In recognition, this paper aims to turn attention to social sustainability within the context of a local food festival, to ask the following: in what ways is social sustainability enhanced through a local food festival, who benefits from this sustainability, and how?

Design/methodology/approach
The paper examines the development of a local food festival in a rural coastal community on Scotland's west coast. The concept of social capital is used to examine the unfolding power relations between committee members, as well as the committee and other social groups. Observant participation undertaken over a 10-month period, between December 2015 and September 2016, renders insights into the ways event planning processes were dependent on the pre-existing accruement of social capital by certain individuals and groups.

Findings
Local food festivals have the potential to enhance social sustainability, in offering opportunity to bridge relations across certain diverse groups and foster an environment conducive to cohabitation. Bridging, however, is dependent on preconceived social capital and power relations, which somewhat inhibits social integration for all members of a community. The temporally confined characteristics of events generates difficulties in overcoming the uneven enhancement of social sustainability. Care, thus, needs to be upheld in resolutely claiming enhancement of social sustainability through local food events. Further, broad conceptualisations of "community" need to be challenged during event planning processes; for it is difficult to develop a socially inclusive approach that ensures integration for diverse segments without recognising what constitutes a specific "community".

Originality/value
This paper is situated within the context of a peripheral yet growing body of literature exploring the potential of events to develop social sustainability. In extending work examining events and social sustainaility the paper turns attention to the gastronomic – examining the extent to which social sustainability is enhanced through a local food festival, for a rural coastal community – Mallaig, on Scotland's west coast.


It has been controversial among economists about the impacts of globalization on growth, and the debate over the issue has intensified in recent years. In this study, we employ reliable panel data and an empirical growth model derived from production theory to investigate the effects of globalization on economic growth. The estimation results strongly suggest that economic globalization has a significant positive effect on economic growth for all countries. However, China and India would gain the most, followed by developed countries, and other developing countries would gain the least. Other important determinants of economic growth include capital, human capital, and technology.


Sequential video understanding, as an emerging video understanding task, has driven lots of researchers' attention because of its goal-oriented nature. This paper studies weakly supervised sequential video understanding where the accurate time-stamp level text-video alignment is not provided. We solve this task by borrowing ideas from CLIP. Specifically, we use a transformer to aggregate frame-level features for video representation and use a pre-trained text encoder to encode the texts corresponding to each action and the whole video, respectively. To model the correspondence between text and video, we propose a multiple granularity loss, where the video-paragraph contrastive loss enforces matching between the whole video and the complete script, and a fine-grained frame-sentence contrastive loss enforces the matching between each action and its description. As the frame-sentence correspondence is not available, we propose to use the fact that video actions happen sequentially in the temporal domain to generate pseudo frame-sentence correspondence and supervise the network training with the pseudo labels. Extensive experiments on video sequence verification and text-to-video matching show that our method outperforms baselines by a large margin, which validates the effectiveness of our proposed approach. Code is available at https://github.com/svip-lab/WeakSVR.


In this paper, I examine the role of a wealth tax in the context of the UK's existing taxes on wealth. First, I discuss several ways in which the UK could be said to tax wealth already, and I set out two possible directions for reforming these taxes, highlighting policies that are merited under either approach. Second, I consider whether and under what circumstances a broad-based tax on the ownership of wealth – a 'wealth tax' – could be justified instead of or in addition to these reforms. Third, I address how a wealth tax should interact with other taxes, focusing on concerns regarding 'double taxation' and (conversely) proposals for an alternative minimum tax based on wealth. I conclude that there is a large degree of consensus amongst existing proposals to reform our current taxes on wealth, and that most of these reforms would be required whether or not a wealth tax is introduced as well.


ABSTRACT

Educators in a multicultural-environment face complex-tasks in teaching for diversity. The objective of this study was to determine the educational environment in a Malaysian medical school, aimed to face the diversity. This cross-sectional study was conducted utilising "Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure", a validated instrument that contained 50 items rated 0-4 with a maximum 200 score under five sub-scales. Sub-scales were perceptions of: learning, teacher, academic-self, atmosphere and social-self. Respondents were 193 year-5 medical students of session 2011-2012, comprised of Malays, Chinese, Indians and Other ethnic-group. The overall mean score perceived by all ethnicity was 130/200 (65%). All sub-scales perceived >60% scores except social-self and atmosphere. The social-self sub-scale perceived the lowest score (53.57%) by the Other ethnic group while interestingly social-self also perceived highest (75%) by the Indians. Atmosphere sub-scale perceived a score of 58.33% by Other ethnic-group. Positive perceptions of educational enviornment among the students of diverse ethnicity reflects that educational environment at the medical school is well equiped to meet the challenges of diversity. However, there is opportunity to increase further positivity in general and social-self and atmosphere sub-scales in particular. Educators in a multicultural-environment must work to avoid monocultural instructional methodoligies to promote a multicultrul society.


The arctic-boreal treeline ecotone in Siberia is formed by monospecific stands of three species of larch, Larix sibirica, Larix gmelinii and Larix cajanderi. This area is currently under severe climatic pressure, and changes in forest density and extent are expected. Along with this, the respective ranges of the treeline forming species are projected to shift to the Northeast, which is only possible through migration and displacement of existing populations. Fluctuations in forest extent are known to have previously occurred during the Holocene, and investigations of these processes can aid our understanding of the dynamics of larch forests and the factors governing the distribution of the three species. While pollen records of Larix do not achieve a taxonomic resolution below the level of genus, this can be accomplished using genetic markers.
We used sedimentary ancient DNA to analyze lake sediment cores spanning most of the Holocene from the southern Taymyr peninsula, where the ranges of L. sibirica and L. gmelinii come together. Changes of the complete vegetation were revealed by DNA metabarcoding and pollen analyses, while diagnostic mitochondrial haplotypes traced the temporal dynamics in distribution of the two closely related larch species. Additionally, we incorporated these two species into our larch population dynamics model LAVESI to understand the influence of competition between these species. Simulations were forced with regional climate series at locations in the vicinity of the sampled lakes. These analyses offer a high degree of resolution and shed light on the complicated ecological processes leading to a change in overall vegetation.


Interaction of lymphocytes with S. aureus peptidoglycan treated with normal human serum and its fractions was studied on the basis of luminol-dependent chemiluminescent reaction. Treatment with whole serum led to the considerable increase and acceleration of lymphocytic reactions. The opsonic effect mainly depended on antibodies and complement, the contribution of other opsonins (which could be partially attributed to fibronectin) did not exceed 30%. IgG and fibronectin in concentrations, similar to their concentration in normal human plasma, enhanced the reactions 3.4 +/- 0.3 (p less than 0.05) and 1.5 +/- 0.005 (p greater than 0.05) times, respectively. The problem of the intrapopulation profile of opsonic-lymphocytic reactions and their role in the system of cell-mediated and humoral interactions is discussed.


The anti-inflammatory effect of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) has been reported in several models for autoimmune diseases. It was considered in those studies that IL-10 induced by LAB might have been involved in such anti-inflammatory activity. We therefore examined the IL-10-inducing activity of LAB in detail by using an in vitro culture system of DO11.10 splenocytes. Most strains of LAB tested in this study increased IL-10 production. A further study using one of the tested strains with potent immune-regulatory activity, Lactobacillus plantarum NRIC1832, showed that the enhanced IL-10 was mainly produced by T cells. However, this enhancement required several types of cells other than T cells. NRIC1832 enhanced IL-10 production after short-term exposure to T cells, but this effect diminished after long-term exposure, indicating that the enhancement of IL-10 production by NRIC1832 was temporary, in contrast to the enhancement of IFNproduction which was still apparent after long-term exposure.


The navigation structure of Web sites can be regarded as metadata that can be used for interesting applications in User Interface (UI) design and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), as well as for Information Retrieval (IR) tasks. However, there currently is no established format for site metadata, which makes it hard for Web sites to publish their structure in a machine-readable way, which could then be used by HCI and/or IR applications. We propose a model and a format for site metadata that is built on top of an existing format and thus could be deployed with little overhead by publishers as well as consumers. Making site metadata available as machine-readable data can be used for improving user interfaces (informing user agents about the context of the page they are displaying) and better information retrieval (allowing search engines to use sitemap information for better ranking and display of the results).


The aim of this study was to evaluate the use of the online data collection method to survey adolescents about their psychological characteristics in a follow up-longitudinal study on positive youth development in order to test the psychometric equivalence of two assessment methods. 1030 participants (17–19 years old) completed paper-and-pencil questionnaires in schools (505 boys and 525 girls), 132 (28 boys and 104 girls) completed Internet-based questionnaires, and 47 (15 boys 32 girls) completed both, measuring positive development indicators. The findings suggest that adolescents report less socially desirable behaviour and active citizenship in Internet-based questionnaires, but generally Internet-based administration does not have any differences in the means values of positive development indicators as compared to paper-and-pencil administration. Internet-based questionnaires have higher or similar internal consistencies as compared with paper-and-pencil questionnaires and are highly correlated with each other when administered using Internet-based and paper-and-pencil assessment. There is no interaction effect of the Internet versus paper-and-pencil assessment and the sex of adolescents on the positive development indicators. Limitations of this study are discussed.


Experiments on white mice showed that in combined administration of LD16, LD50 or LD84 of aminazin, triphtazine or haloperidol with the same doses of lithium carbonate, chloride or hydroxybutyrate, the lethal dose exceeded the total lethal dose in the event the drugs were administered alone. Non-lethal doses of the lithium salts produced no effect on LD16, LD50 and LD84 of triphtazine and haloperidol, but non-lethal doses of these neuroleptics potentiated the action of lethal doses of the lithium salts. Haloperidol is an exception to the rule since it did not exert such action with respect to lithium chloride. Aminazin and lithium salts increased also each other's toxicity in instances where one of the drugs was administered in a non-lethal dose, whereas the other in a lethal one.


Managing the transition from low stress to high stress underground environments is becoming an important issue for underground mining in Western Australia, particularly as ore bodies are being proven up at deeper levels. Cosmos Nickel Operation (CNO) is a deep nickel sulphide orebody located near Leinster, Western Australia.
The friction bolt (or split set) is the rockbolt of choice for many underground operations in Western Australia. CNO used the split set with mesh or shotcrete as its only form of ground support for many years. However, with development occurring at greater depth, the ground started to behave in a different manner to before and the split set could no longer sustain the deformation associated with this transition. The serpentine altered, ultramafic host rocks began showing classic signs of squeezing rock conditions, with delamination in the walls and drive closure a common problem. The ultramafic also started to unravel and self-mine immediately after development. The footwall felsic volcanics lie at the other end of the spectrum, where the high strength and brittle nature of these rock types showed a propensity to generate strain bursting and seismic activity.
This paper discusses the trial and implementation of several new types of ground support at CNO to manage the deformation associated with a higher stress environment and challenging ground conditions. The ground support systems addressed in this paper include de-bonded cable bolts, D-bolts, Omega and resin encapsulated cable bolts.
As part of the trial and implementation process, we recognised the need to have a systematic approach to ground support selection and trial. This paper provides a basic methodology and framework for site based engineers to undertake ground support trials in a safe and efficient manner and also to aid with compliance to the change management process.


Fractional mixed skeletal muscle protein synthesis (FMPS) was estimated in 10 postabsorptive healthy men by determining the increment in the abundance of [13C]-leucine in quadriceps muscle protein during an intravenous infusion of L-[1-13C]leucine. FMPS in our subjects was 0.046 +/- 0.003%/h. Whole-body muscle protein synthesis (MPS) was calculated based on the estimation of muscle mass from creatinine excretion and compared with whole-body protein synthesis (WBPS) calculated from the nonoxidative portion of leucine flux. A significant correlation (r2 = 0.73, P less than 0.05) was found between MPS (44.7 +/- 3.4 mg.kg-1.h-1) and WBPS (167.8 +/- 8.5 mg.kg-1.h-1). The contribution of MPS to WBPS was 27 +/- 1%, which is comparable to the reports in other species. Morphometric analyses of adjacent muscle samples in eight subjects demonstrated that the biopsy specimens consisted of 86.5 +/- 2% muscular as opposed to other tissues. Because fiber type composition varies between biopsies, we examined the relationship between proportions of each fiber type and FMPS. Variation in the composition of biopsies and in fiber-type proportion did not affect the estimation of muscle protein synthesis rate. We conclude that stable isotope techniques using serial needle biopsies permit the direct measurement of FMPS in humans and that this estimation is correlated with an indirect estimation of WBPS.


The first part of this paper provides a brief survey of the recent literature that employs survey data on household finance and consumption. Given the breadth of the topic, it focuses on issues that are particularly relevant for policy, namely: i) wealth effects on consumption, ii) housing prices and household indebtedness, iii) retirement income, consumption and pension reforms, iv) access to credit and credit constraints, v) financial innovation, consumption smoothing and portfolio selection and vi) wealth inequality. The second part uses concrete examples to summarise how results from such surveys feed into policy-making within the central banks that already conduct such surveys. JEL Classification: C42, D12, D14


When the Civil War broke out, women answered the call for help. They broke away from their traditional roles and served in many capacities, some of them even going so far as to disguise themselves as men and enlist in the army. Estimates of women disguising themselves as men and enlisting range from 400 to 700 and records indicate that approximately 60 women soldiers were known to have been killed or wounded. More than sixty women who fought or who served the Union or Confederacy in other important ways are featured in this work. Among those included are Sarah Thompson, the Union spy and nurse who brought down the famous raider John Hunt Morgan; Elizabeth Van Lew, the Union spy who was instrumental in the success of the largest prison break of the Civil War; Sarah Malinda Blalock, who fought for the Confederacy as a soldier and then for the Union as a guerrilla raider; Dr. Mary Walker, a doctor for the Union and the only woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for her service during the Civil War; and Jennie Hodgers, who had the longest length of service for any woman soldier, was the only woman to receive a soldier's pension and the first woman to vote in Illinois.


SUMMARY

Experiments on the uptake of boron by some clays from artificial sea-water solutions at room temperatures show that the uptake is proportional to the concentration in solution, and takes place in relatively short time. The uptake process can be described by the Freundlich adsorption equation, with the constants in the equation, k and b, varying from one clay to another. Additional factor which apparently promotes the boron adsorption by clays is the occurrence of a sodium-borate complex in saline waters. The boron concentrations in a sequence of marine Cretaceous sediments derived from a fairly localized source area show variation much greater than can be accounted for by a model which assumes (1) nearly constant boron concentration in illitic-montmorillonitic clays prior to their deposition in the sea, and (2) changes in the boron concentration in solution as may be expected under slight variations in sea water of near "normal" salinity. Differences in the properties of clay-mineral polymorphs, in predepositional histories of the clays, and possible adsorption from interstitial waters, render inconsequential the estimates of the boron concentrations in the waters at the time of deposition.


The evaluation of the patient who falls requires an assessment of proprioception. Proprioception is traditionally tested in the great toes. Ankle proprioception, which is more relevant to falling, has been poorly, if ever, tested. A pedal apparatus was designed to improve the clinical assessment of ankle proprioception. Language: en


Understanding the drivers of exploited fish abundance distributions is key to successful natural resource management, but it is costly to obtain this information at large spatio-temporal scales relevant to management. We used small programmable automated cameras (POTBots) deployed in commercial rock lobster fisher's pots, during normal fishing activities, across ∼750 km of the west coast of Australia (10–120 m deep), to test for relationships between the relative abundance of fishes and both environmental (habitat composition, swell, depth and water temperature) and anthropogenic factors (recreational and commercial fishing effort). Among the six most frequently observed fishes, the abundances of two targeted species, Choerodon rubescens and Epinephelides armatus, were negatively correlated with an index of recreational effort, although this was confounded by the natural abundance distribution of these species along the west coast. For example, a unimodal abundance distribution with latitude was observed for C. rubescens, matching its known distribution. In contrast, the abundances of the commercially important Chrysophrys auratus and Lethrinus miniatus were positively correlated with an index of commercial effort, reflecting the expectation that commercial fishers typically would target areas of greatest abundance that produce higher catches per unit effort. The abundances of two non-target species, Coris auricularis and Neatypus obliquus, were correlated with expected environmental variables (water temperature, depth, habitat composition and swell) but neither recreational nor commercial fishing effort. All but one of these reef species had a strong positive relationship with reef cover, as expected, and three species exhibited a negative relationship with swell. We have developed a highly cost-effective fisheries-independent monitoring tool to understand relationships between species abundance distributions and major environmental and anthropogenic factors. It is easily deployed using existing pot or trap fishery infrastructure and is therefore highly applicable to both developed and developing countries.


Chronic arthritis management is complicated by patient administered unproven treatments. Disease, patient, and physician characteristics all contribute to this problem. Physicians must understand the complex cultural, sociological and psychological variables which encourage the use of unproven treatments. Part of any therapeutic regimen for chronic arthritis should include physician awareness and patient education regarding unproven treatments.


In Morocco, goat keeping is one of the most ancient economic activities in communities of the High and Middle Atlas Mountains. Goats may be the main all year round source of income and contribute to the satisfaction of primary nutritional requirements of rural livelihoods. Studies on the technical, environmental, social, economic, and policy aspects of the goat sector are scanty. A case study analysis of the goat production systems in Ait Bazza community in the Middle Atlas has revealed interesting insights on goat farmers' management practices, their marketing behaviour and constraints. One of the lessons learned is the complexity of the goat production sector. Goat farmers' socio-economic conditions and perceptions are complicated by layers of environmental and market limitations. The study concludes by demonstrating the necessity for research along disciplinary lines as well as multidis ciplinary research in major goat producing areas of Morocco. The latter can help with developing a better understanding of the multifaceted nature of sustainable goat production systems.


Abstract Although few studies have been conducted to directly quantify ichthyoplankton mortality at hydroelectric installations, there is a considerable body of literature on examinations of the various stresses (i.e., pressure changes, blade contact, shear) that could affect turbine-entrained eggs and larvae. A review of these studies suggests that turbine-passage mortality of early life stages of fish normally would be relatively low at the low-head, propeller-type turbine installations (e.g., bulb or STRAFLO turbines), for which relevant design information is available. The shear forces and pressure changes in low-head bulb turbines are unlikely to cause ichthyoplankton mortality. Probability of contact with turbine blades is related to size of the fish; less than 5% of entrained ichthyoplankton would be affected. Potential additional sources of mortality related to the design and operation of hydroelectric facilities, and thus mitigable, include withdrawal of deep water and cavitation.


The primary focus of autonomous driving research is to improve driving accuracy. While great progress has been made, state-of-the-art algorithms still fail at times. Such failures may have catastrophic consequences. It therefore is im- portant that automated cars foresee problems ahead as early as possible. This is also of paramount importance if the driver will be asked to take over. We conjecture that failures do not occur randomly. For instance, driving models may fail more likely at places with heavy traffic, at complex intersections, and/or under adverse weather/illumination conditions. This work presents a method to learn to predict the occurrence of these failures, i.e., to assess how difficult a scene is to a given driving model and to possibly give the human driver an early headsup. A camera- based driving model is developed and trained over real driving datasets. The discrepancies between the model's predictions and the human 'ground-truth' maneuvers were then recorded, to yield the 'failure' scores. Experimental results show that the failure score can indeed be learned and predicted. Thus, our prediction method is able to improve the overall safety of an automated driving model by alerting the human driver timely, leading to better human-vehicle collaborative driving.


Thermoplastic elastomers are a relatively new group of engineering materials and are increasingly used in various technical applications (i.e., seals, gaskets, damping elements, and membranes) where the fatigue resistance plays an important role. The fracture behavior of elastomers is often characterized using the tearing energy concept, T. However, hardly any data are available for these types of materials. Hence, an unfilled and a filled thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) type were investigated under cyclic loading conditions. The pure shear specimen configuration was used in the experimental part of this study. Crack growth kinetics curves were determined and the cycle number and the tests frequency dependence of these curves investigated. While a stable crack growth process was observed at 2 Hz the crack growth became unstable above specific test amplitude at 10 Hz.


Recently, large amount of data is collected by various organizations. Generally, data consists of various attributes such as name, address, medical term, etc. Related to the same person, different organizations often possess data with different attributes. If we can integrate data kept in different organization related to the same person without violating privacy, detailed analyzes such as cause investigation or relations among attributes could be realized. In such a scenario, we do not need personal information while it should be protected securely. Importantly, the data exactly integrates data associated with the same person. In this paper, we classify attributes in data into three of matching attributes, analyzing attributes, and others. Then, we propose a privacy preserving data integration protocol while handling data privacy appropriately according to classification of matching, analyzing attributes, and others.


In this paper, we present a keyphrase generation approach using conditional Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN). In our GAN model, the generator outputs a sequence of keyphrases based on the title and abstract of a scientific article. The discriminator learns to distinguish between machine-generated and human-curated keyphrases. We evaluate this approach on standard benchmark datasets. Our model achieves state-of-the-art performance in generation of abstractive keyphrases and is also comparable to the best performing extractive techniques. We also demonstrate that our method generates more diverse keyphrases and make our implementation publicly available1.


A precise production of sheet metal parts has always been a main goal in press shops. Highest quality demands are required especially in automotive production. Unfortunately, even today, the production is not optimal due to an ineffective approach to the springback compensation. Springback results in geometrical shape inaccuracies of the obtained product. Based on the current approach, excessive time and financial costs emerge due to corrections on the press tools. However, these corrections do not always lead to a better accuracy of the stampings. The main objective of the research is to design a modified solution of the current approach. The modified solution is designed as a methodology with a focus on the analysis and compensation of the springback with a help of a numerical simulation. To achieve the main goal, smaller sub-goals are employed. These sub-goals, or rather experiments, mainly focus on parameters, which, more or less, influence the springback phenomenon. The designed methodology is verified with real car body parts and is carried out with a help of the department of the press tools design in ŠKODA AUTO, a.s. There, the methodology is used for improving the accuracy of the stamping process of the car body parts and for improving the quality of the final product.


In complex humanitarian emergencies, infants and young children are exposed to a higher risk of malnutrition, morbidity, delayed development and mortality. As shown by earlier research, maternal mental health and capacity for nurturing are of fundamental importance in child health and development. Since 2006, the international nongovernmental organisation, Action Contre la Faim, has been implementing a holistic approach to interventions for pregnant and lactating women and their young children to prevent child mortality and developmental delay in contexts affected by war and natural disasters. The experience presented here of 'Baby Friendly Spaces' refers to a programme in Cameroon, implemented with Central African refugees. The activities comprised in this model are focused on maternal mental health, parental skills, early child stimulation and infant and young child feeding practices. Results show a positive and significant (p < 0.01) impact on maternal wellbeing, breastfeeding practices and mother–child relationships. These findings reinforce previous evidence highlighting the necessity of implementing programmes, within complex humanitarian contexts, to reinforce the mother's psychological wellbeing and increase capacity to provide nurturing care to guarantee the child's health status and development.


Of special interest to coin and bill collecters, as well as history buffs and students, is this clear, concise and intriguing explanation of the various coins and currencies used in Canada between 1600 and 1900. Covering the French, British, and Canadian periods of our history, the wide range of currencies used is explained: livres, pounds, playing cards, louis d'ors, eagles, shillings and dollars among others. Divided into geographical sections, each area of Canada from Newfoundland to the West is covered in detail tos how the ever-changing conditions of money and exchange. The concluding chapter brings together each of these threads and weaves a unified picture of the early Canadian monetary system. Aided by a generous selection of illustrations, figures and tables, A.B. McCullough has written a comprehensive guide to our monetary history that is both useful and interesting.


This work assumes that various linguistic forms in different languages are related to common cognitive functions and semantic properties. A cognitive function - presumably universal - is information transmission. The notion of interest is transitivity, which contains a set of semantic properties such as agentivity, dynamism, affectedness, boundedness and givenness, and the explicit forms are verb aspect and object definiteness. As aspect and definiteness are seen as manifestations of function, their domains are not only verbs and objects but the discourse at large. This is tested in (modern) Greek, Polish and Swedish. Current research is presented on transitivity and on verbal and nominal properties, seen against the background of information structure, especially grounding. The connection between semantic properties and language-specific forms is tested in an empirical study of the three languages. Over 6,000 transitive clauses from narrative fiction were analysed. First, the correlation between aspect and definiteness marking was tested, both in general and together with other grammatical categories. This was done intralinguistically for the three languages, for Polish and Swedish also via translations. Second, the semantic properties for each clause were coded and compared with the morphological marking of aspect in Greek and Polish and definiteness in Greek and Swedish. This gives a rich body of quantitative evidence for the assumed connection between form and function. The data display prototypical clusters of transitivity properties characteristic either of foregrounding or back-grounding, sometimes contrary to claims in the literature. Cases of ?mixed1 combinations, e.g. with verb aspect from one prototype and object definiteness from the other, are explained against the background of discourse or information structure. Clauses with conflicting properties are few, but when they appear, some properties are systematically more decisive than others in determining transitivity. Finally, the three languages are analysed on a functional-typological basis. Greek and Polish are compared according to aspect marking and Greek and Swedish according to definiteness marking. The results indicate that the idea of universal cognitive functions behind linguistic forms is a plausible assumption.


Cognitive functions require the integrated activity of multiple specialized, distributed brain areas. Such functional coupling depends on the existence of anatomical connections between the various brain areas as well as physiological processes whereby the activity in one area influences the activity in another area. Recently, the Synchronization Likelihood (SL) method was developed as a general method to study both linear and nonlinear aspects of coupling. In the present study the genetic architecture of the SL in different frequency bands was investigated. Using a large genetically informative sample of 569 subjects from 282 extended twin families we found that the SL is moderately to highly heritable (41–67%) especially in the alpha frequency (8–13 Hz) range. This index of functional connectivity of the brain has been associated with a number of pathological states of the brain. The significant heritability found here suggests that SL can be used to examine the genetic susceptibility to these conditions. Hum Brain Mapp, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


This article derives and simulates a neural-like network architecture that adaptively controls a visually guided, two-jointed robot arm to reach spot targets in three dimensions. The architecture learns and maintains visual-motor calibrations by itself, starting with only loosely defined relationships. The geometry of the architecture is composed of distributed, interleaved combinations of actuator inputs. It is fault tolerant and uses analog processing. Learning is achieved by modifying the distributions of input weights in the architecture after each arm positioning. Modifications of the weights are made incrementally according to errors of consistency between the actuator signals used to orient the cameras and those used to move the arm. Computer simulations show that errors in the intended arm acutator signals after learning are an average 4.3% of the signal range, across all possible targets.


In the following paper we present an innovative approach to coupling gaming, telematics, machinima, and opera to produce a hybrid performance art form and an arts+technology education platform. To achieve this, we leverage a custom Minecraft video game and sandbox mod and pd-l2ork real-time digital signal processing environment. The result is a malleable telematic-ready platform capable of supporting a broad array of artistic forms beyond its original intent, including theatre, cinema, as well as machinima and other experimental genres.


Texas High Plains (THP) is a major cotton producing region in the US with low rainfall and decreasing irrigation water availability. Hence stochastic rainfall poses considerable production risk in the region and developing strategies to maximize the average profit and minimize the year to year variability in profits is an important concern. In this study, Cotton2K, which is a process based cotton growth simulation model, was used along with an economic optimization model to identify the optimal strategies for temporal allocation of irrigation water for center pivot irrigated cotton in THP. The study analyzed different strategies to allocate irrigation water during one growing season among three different growth stages of cotton (planting to first bloom, first bloom to first open boll, and first open ball to 60% open boll) at four different sub-optimal levels for irrigation water availability (6, 9, 12, and 15 acre-inches). The results showed that the profit and utility maximizing strategy was to apply all available irrigation water during stage II when six, nine, and twelve acre-inches of irrigation water were available. When fifteen inches of irrigation water was available, the optimal strategy was to use 90% of the available irrigation water in stage II and the rest in stage III. The sensitivity analysis indicated that these optimal decisions were not sensitive to variations in price of cotton lint and farmer's attitude towards risk.


This essay reads Philip Larkin's letters to his lifelong companion, Monica Jones, in order to present an alternative to the 'easy misogynist' and 'crusty' Tory caricatured and condemned by critics for more than two decades. Exploring Larkin's textual construction of selfhood in these letters, the essay looks at the apolitical nature of the correspondence, its subtly-gendered experience of the everyday, and its surprisingly subversive view of sex and sexuality. Anti-essentialist in his approach to gender, Larkin projects a feminine, almost lesbian sensibility. However, by adopting a text-centred approach to the correspondence, this essay also highlights the way in which Larkin's constructed persona obscures and conceals – against the grain of the critical response so far, which has privileged the letters as exceptional in their vulnerability and revealing intimacy.


Post traumatic fractures involving the lower extremity are often difficult to manage because of the limited options for soft tissue coverage and the increased susceptibility for infection to ensue. One particular anatomic landmark that poses such difficulties is the distal tibia. Currently, there is very limited literature regarding a universal treatment protocol and outcomes related to such defects. This review focuses on some of the promising methods used to describe and define a systematic orthoplastic approach towards diagnosing, managing and treating both osseous and soft tissue defects involved with post traumatic distal tibial fractures.


A computational investigation of the structures and interaction energies of complexes formed by Fe2+, Co2+, Ni2+, Cu2+, and Zn2+ binding with benzene (Bz) molecules is performed employing high level ab initio quantum chemical methods, such as the second-order perturbation theory (MP2), coupled-cluster singles and doubles (CCSD), and coupled-cluster singles and doubles with perturbative triples [CCSD(T)] methods, along with the 6-311++G(2d,2p) and 6-311++G(d,p) basis sets. As far as we know, the present work is the first to study the structures and energetics of Bz-M2+ and Bz-M2+-Bz type complexes (M = Co, Ni, Cu, and Zn). Relativistic effects are also investigated via Douglas-Kroll-Hess second-order scalar relativistic computations for the complexes considered. Our results demonstrate that there are strong bindings between transition metal cations and benzene molecules. The computed interaction energies, including relativistic energy corrections, for the Bz-M2+ type complexes at the CCSD(T)/6-311++G(2d,2p) level are -131.9 (Bz-Fe2+), -172.6 (Bz-Co2+), -189.8 (Bz-Ni2+), -181.1 (Bz-Cu2+), and -158.2 (Bz-Zn2+) kcal mol-1. Similarly, interaction energies for the Bz-M2+-Bz type complexes at the CCSD(T)/6-311++G(d,p) level are -206.4 (Bz-Fe2+-Bz), -213.4 (Bz-Co2+-Bz), -249.7 (Bz-Ni2+-Bz), -258.6 (Bz-Cu2+-Bz), and -235.2 (Bz-Zn2+-Bz) kcal mol-1. Further, our results also demonstrate that the relativistic effects are very important in accurate computations of interaction energies. The predicted relativistic energy corrections to interaction energies, using the ωB97X-D functional, are between -1.9 and -7.7 kcal mol-1. The transition metal cation-π interactions investigated in this study prove significantly larger binding energies compared to arbitrary π-π interactions and main group cation-π interactions. We believe that the present study may open new avenues in cation-π interactions.


Gastric ulceration after fundoplication for gastroesophageal reflux is relatively uncommon, occurring in 1% to 3% of cases. During the period 1974 to 1979, approximately 100 modified Belsey fundoplications were performed at McMaster University Medical Centre. In four patients gastric ulceration developed after the surgery. In all cases the ulcers were located in the proximal stomach, an unusual site. Published reports of gastric ulceration after fundoplication were reviewed, special attention being given to the cause. The authors conclude that local ischemia and mechanical trauma are important in the development of ulceration, which can occur as early as one week after fundoplication. The detection of ulcers requires awareness of the condition and special attention to the symptoms. Because the gastric anatomy is altered by the fundal wrap, the area can be visualized more easily by double-contrast barium studies than by endoscopy.


Abstract Talent Management is found to significantly impact the organizational competitive performance and thus, has received increased research and practitioners' attention over the past two decades. The shortage of talent has pushed the corporates to a war for talent which focuses on attracting, engaging and retaining the right talent over competitors. The strategies of attracting the right talent therefore have become the vital first step in Talent Management. The existing literature suggests Corporate Social Performance (CSP) to facilitate attracting the right talent. However, the literature emphasizes the need for context specific research to identify factors influencing talent attraction. Meantime, if and how CSP assists talent attraction in Sri Lankan context has received very limited attention. Against this backdrop, this paper focuses on understanding the role of CSP on talent attraction in the Sri Lankan context. The paper aims to develop a conceptual framework which will bring meaningful insights to investigate the relationships between organizations' CSP, and their ability to attract the right talent. Drawing from the literature the paper first identifies different factors influencing talent attraction, the dimensions of CSP and the level of impact CSP has had on talent attraction in other contexts. Second, the conceptual framework is presented. Third, the paper suggests an experimental design which can be used in empirical studies along with recommendations for future research. Keywords: Corporate Social Performance, (CSP), Talent Attraction, Talent Management


Neurobehavioral defects have been reported in human imprinting disorders such as Prader–Willi syndrome and Angelman syndrome and imprinted genes are often implicated in neurodevelopment processes. Beckwith–Wiedemann syndrome (BWS) is a classical human imprinting disorder characterized by prenatal and postnatal overgrowth and variable developmental anomalies. As neurodevelopmental aspects of BWS have not previously been studied in detail, we undertook a questionnaire based neurobehavioral survey of 87 children with BWS. A greater than expected proportion of children demonstrated abnormal scores on measures of emotional and behavioral difficulties. In addition, 6.8% of children had been diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). 4/6 BWS children with ASD had normal chromosomes and ASD occurred in children with UPD and imprinting center 2 defects. These findings suggest a potential role for the 11p15.5 imprinted gene cluster in ASD and indicate a need for further investigations of neurobehavioral phenotypes in BWS. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Breast cancer is the fifth most common cause of cancer death in the world and the second most common fatal cancer in women. Epidemiological studies and clinical data have indicated that hormones, including estrogen, progesterone, and prolactin, play important roles in the initiation and progression of breast cancer. Bisphenol A (BPA) is one of the most commonly used and thoroughly studied endocrine disruptors. It can be released from consumer products and deposited in the environment, thus creating potential for human exposure through oral, inhaled, and dermal routes. Some recent reviews have summarized the known mechanisms of endocrine disruptions by BPA in human diseases, including obesity, reproductive disorders, and birth defects. However, large knowledge gaps still exist on the roles BPA may play in cancer initiation and development. Evidence from animal and in vitro studies has suggested an association between increased incidence of breast cancer and BPA exposure at doses below the safe reference doses that are the most environmentally relevant. Most current studies have paid little attention to the cancer‐promoting properties of BPA at low doses. In this review, recent findings on the carcinogenic effects of low‐dose BPA on breast cancer and discussed possible biologic mechanisms are summarized.


The mAb RK7, previously shown to recognize keratin 19, was also found to cross-react with a biologically unrelated 102 kDa protein, which becomes associated with the poles of the mitotic apparatus. This newly identified protein, called cytocentrin, is a stable cellular component, may be at least in part phosphorylated, and displays a cell cycle-dependent cellular localization. In interphase cells, it is diffusely distributed in the cytosol and shows no affinity for cytoplasmic microtubules. It becomes localized to the centrosome in early prophase, prior to nuclear envelope breakdown, separation of replicated centrosomes, and nucleation of mitotic apparatus microtubules. During metaphase, cytocentrin is located predominately at the mitotic poles, often appearing as an aggregate of small globular sub-components; it also associates with some polar microtubules. In late anaphase/early telophase cytocentrin dissociates entirely from the mitotic apparatus and becomes temporarily localized with microtubules in the midbody, from which it disappears by late telophase. In taxol-treated cells cytocentrin was associated with the center of the miniasters but also showed affinity for some cytoplasmic microtubules. Studies employing G2-synchronized cells and nocodazole demonstrated that cytocentrin can become associated with mitotic centrosomes independently of tubulin polymerization and that microtubules regrow from antigen-containing foci. We interpret these results to suggest that cytocentrin is a cytoplasmic protein that becomes specifically activated or modified at the onset of mitosis so that it can affiliate with the mitotic poles where it may provide a link between the pericentriolar material and other components of the mitotic apparatus.


We present a video compression algorithm which performs well on generic sequences at very low bit rates. This algorithm was the basis for a submission to the November 1995 MPEG-4 subjective tests. The main novelty of the algorithm is a matching-pursuit based motion residual coder. The method uses an inner-product search to decompose motion residual signals on an overcomplete dictionary of separable Gabor functions. This coding strategy allows residual bits to be concentrated in the areas where they are needed most, providing detailed reconstructions without block artifacts. Coding results from the MPEG-4 Class A compression sequences are presented and compared to H.263. We demonstrate that the matching pursuit system outperforms the H.263 standard in both peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and visual quality.


With the use of tow-tank experiments, data may be generated for ships of various classes using comprehensive instrumentation. This data gives the ability to determine the response of ships to various sea-state conditions far in advanced of their construction and launch. However, this data does not indicate the effects of those sea-states to the individuals aboard that ship. In order to define these effects a sea-state simulator must be designed and built. Once construction is completed a series of test must be conducted to determine the response of the simulator. This response allows the comparison to actual tow-tank data to determine if the simulator is capable of performing the desired research.


The accurate estimation of the time delay is very important for obtaining good classification results when range profiles are used as feature vectors for radar target recognition. The inverse Fourier transform of the data in the frequency domain, which is classically used to obtain the target range response, is limited in resolution by the available frequency band. Two other approaches are then discussed in this paper in order to overcome the limitations of the Fourier method and to estimate the range profile peak locations with superior accuracy: a wavelet packet decomposition based technique and a class of subspace eigenanalysis based methods. The main features of the two approaches are highlighted through computer simulations on noisy synthetic and real data.


It is widely recognized that market failure prevents efficient risk sharing in natural disaster insurance, leading to several public-private partnership arrangements across the globe. We argue that risk selection, a situation where the public partner insures the majority of high risk agents, is potentially an important issue. To illustrate our concerns we build a simple model of reinsurance in a natural disaster insurance market. We show that risk selection is a likely equilibrium outcome and discuss the policy options available. The model is based on the French institutional setup and describes well the stylized facts. The policies implemented by the French government correspond to the ones we identify to alleviate risk selection. We also present two alternative public-private partnership setting that deal effectively with risk selection; hurricane insurance in Florida and catastrophe insurance in Spain.


The objective of this study is to evaluate the performance of Islamic mutual funds compared to conventional mutual funds. Comparison of the two types of mutual funds is measured by return, risk, fund performance, and the ability of the Investment Manager of the two types of mutual funds. Research conducted on the types of shares mutual funds in the period 2008-2012. Fund performance measured by return and risk (portfolio beta and standard deviation), Sharpeindex, Treynor index, index of Jensen's Alpha, Modigliani and Modigliani (MM)model, and Treynor and Treynor (TT) model. The ability of the Investment Manager is evaluated in terms of security selection and market timing ability as measured by Henriksson-Merton and Treynor-Mazuymodel.The statistical method used to test the hypothesis is Independent T Test. The results showed in general there are nosignificant differences between Islamic mutual funds with conventional mutual fund.


Due to its compatible oxygen-transporting abilities, hemoglobin (Hb) is a protein of interest in the development of artificial oxygen therapeutics. Despite continuous formulation attempts, extracellular Hb solution often exhibits undesirable reactions when applied in vivo. Therefore, protein engineering is frequently used to examine alternative ways of controlling the unwanted reactions linked to cell-free Hb solutions. In this study, three mutants of human fetal hemoglobin (HbF) are evaluated; single mutants αA12D and αA19D, and a double mutant αA12D/A19D. These variants were obtained by site-directed mutagenesis and recombinant production in E. coli, and carry negative charges on the surface of the α-subunit at the designated mutation sites. Through characterization of the mutant proteins, we found that the substitutions affected the protein in several ways. As expected, the isoelectric points (pIs) were lowered, from 7.1 (wild-type) down to 6.6 (double mutant), which influenced the anion exchange chromatographic procedures by shifting conditions toward higher conductivity for protein elution. The biological and physiological properties of HbF could be improved by these small modifications on the protein surface. The DNA cleavage rate associated with native HbF could be reduced by 55%. In addition, the negatively charged HbF mutant had an extended circulation time when examined in a mouse model using top load Hb additions. At the same time, the mutations did not affect the overall structural integrity of the HbF molecule, as determined by small-angle X-ray scattering. In combination with circular dichroism and thermal stability, modest structural shifts imposed by the mutations could possibly be related to changes in secondary structure or reorganization. Such local deformations were too minor to be determined within the resolution of the structural data; and overall, unchanged oxidation and heme loss kinetics support the conclusion that the mutations did not adversely affect the basic structural properties of Hb. We confirm the value of adding negatively charged residues onto the surface of the protein to improve the global functions of recombinant Hb.


Background
HIV therapy reduces the CSF HIV RNA viral load (VL) and prevents disorders related to HIV encephalitis. However, these brain disorders may persist in some cases. A large population of antiretroviral-treated patients who had a VL > 1.7 log 10 copies/mL in CSF with detectable or undetectable VL in plasma associated with cognitive impairment was studied, in order to characterize discriminatory factors of these two patient populations.

Methods
Blood and CSF samples were collected at the time of neurological disorders for 227 patients in 22 centres in France and 1 centre in Switzerland. Genotypic HIV resistance tests were performed on CSF. The genotypic susceptibility score was calculated according to the last Agence Nationale de Recherche sur le Sida et les hépatites virales Action Coordonnée 11 (ANRS AC11) genotype interpretation algorithm.

Results
Among the 227 studied patients with VL > 1.7 log 10 copies/mL in CSF, 195 had VL detectable in plasma [median (IQR) HIV RNA was 3.7 (2.7-4.7) log 10 copies/mL] and 32 had discordant VL in plasma (VL < 1.7 log 10 copies/mL). The CSF VL was lower (median 2.8 versus 4.0 log 10 copies/mL; P  <   0.001) and the CD4 cell count was higher (median 476 versus 214 cells/mm 3 ; P  <   0.001) in the group of patients with VL < 1.7 log 10 copies/mL in plasma compared with patients with plasma VL > 1.7 log 10 copies/mL. Resistance to antiretrovirals was observed in CSF for the two groups of patients.

Conclusions
Fourteen percent of this population of patients with cognitive impairment and detectable VL in CSF had well controlled VL in plasma. Thus, it is important to explore CSF HIV (VL and genotype) even if the HIV VL is controlled in plasma because HIV resistance may be observed.


There is limited research to support our understanding of values implementation in New Zealand schools. This article draws on findings from a recent Teaching and Learning Research Initiative project into the effect of the values statement in The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) on teaching and learning. Key findings explore teaching and assessment strategies, together with the challenges facing both teachers and students as they seek to interpret each others' understanding of values. The article concludes by presenting research implications for the consideration of school stakeholders.


The most popular form of user authentication on websites is the use of passwords. When entering a password, it is crucial that the website uses HTTPS (for the entire content). However, this is often not the case. We propose PassSec - a Firefox Add-On to support users to detect password fields on which their password might be endangered. In addition, PassSec displays a non-blocking warning next to the password field, once users click into the password field. The user is provided with possible consequences of entering a password, recommendations and further information if wanted.


One feature of the growing levels of cultural diversity in Aotearoa New Zealand has been the growth of cultural festivals. These originated primarily for Pacific groups to maintain and sustain cultural performance and traditions, but increasingly such festivals reflect the growing ethnic minority groups present in most of New Zealand's large urban centres. Specific cultural festivals for school-aged young people are attended by thousands of young New Zealanders annually, yet to date have rarely been a feature of research. This study aimed to explore the role that cultural festivals may play in contributing to the identity, belonging and citizenship experiences of ethnic minority youth growing up in Aotearoa New Zealand.  The thesis draws on ethnographic data obtained at three cultural festivals (Polyfests) for school-aged young people in 2018 (ASB Auckland Polyfest, Tu Tagata, Wellington and Northern Regional Polyfest, Porirua). Employing ethnographic participant observation, coupled with approaches drawn from ethnomusicology and dance ethnography, data collection included observation of speeches, public announcements and performances, dance moves and music, as well as on-the-fly discussions with festival performers and analysis of associated media (brochures, media reports, online articles).  The festivals performances and their potential to enable spaces of possibility for identity-formation were analysed through Bhabha's (1996) notion of 'third-space'. The study drew attention to the way young performers strategically employed fusions of traditional and contemporary music and dance genres within their performances to articulate new ways of seeing themselves. These performances also served to maintain and validate ethnic and school-based identities, as well as to gain status and recognition by creating symbolic representations of the way that performers wished their cultural group to be viewed by audiences. Festival spaces also allowed cultural groups to consolidate homogenous (ethnic) solidarities as well as articulate new ways of seeing themselves as belonging through heterogenous (inter-ethnic) and school-based solidarities. The study underscores the significance of festival spaces as 'counter-spaces' in New Zealand society in which ethnic minority youth could experience (and create) identity-affirming, counter-hegemonic experiences outside of the dominant discourses frequently projected on them by White New Zealand.


May 2002 Japan's interest rates have been compressed toward zero because of pressure coming through the foreign exchanges. Twenty years of current account surpluses have led to a huge build up of claims – mainly dollars – on foreigners. Because of ongoing fluctuations in the yen/dollar exchange rate, Japanese financial institutions will only willingly hold these dollar claims if the nominal yield on them is substantially higher than on yen assets. In the 1990s to 2002 as U.S. interest rates have come down, portfolio equilibrium has been sustained only when nominal interest rates on yen assets have been forced toward zero. One consequence is the now infamous liquidity trap for Japanese monetary policy. A second consequence is the erosion of the normal profit margins of Japan's commercial bank leading to a slump in new bank credit and an inability to grow out of the overhang of old bad loans. Working Papers Index


Management of massive tears of the rotator cuff tears is one of the most difficult problems an upper limb surgeon encounters. Patients with similar tears can present with mini mal discomfort through to a flail shoulder. There are a bewildering number of options available, many with published outcomes not always borne out in clinical practise. These range from rehabilitation, simple arthroscopic surgery, attempts at repair, complex ten - don transfers and ultimately a reverse total shoulder replacement. More recently further options of patch augmentation and balloon arthroplasty have been added. This paper attempts to provide a critical assessment of the evidence available. of and for xenografts, allografts,


Research problem: Gamification is a concept that originates from the digital media domain. It includes a process of enhancing a service using game design elements in nongame contexts. Although much research exists on gamification, very few studies focus on the application of gamification in the enterprise.  Research questions: (1) How do managers currently use and experience gamification as a communication medium? (2) Why is it that few instances of gamification exist in enterprise management? (3) Is gamification's own branding somehow cannibalizing itself in enterprise applications?  Literature review: We reviewed gamification literature in the workplace and looked at the applicability of game design elements within the enterprise culture. Enterprise gamification is still considered uncharted territory, and more research on gamification in the enterprise is needed. But existing research studies support our claims that there is high potential for enterprise gamification that needs to be explored. Methodology:  Observations were made during fieldwork with an exploratory interview research approach. These observations were put to test via an online psychological single-blind controlled quantitative experiment conducted with 198 survey respondents to investigate the effect of branding on gamification and its perception in the enterprise context. Results and conclusions: The results show that using the "gamification" brand clearly drives lower rates of perceived acceptance of the concept, whereas using an "unbranded" version of the same gamification concepts results in comparatively higher rates of perceived acceptance and a general willingness to adopt within the enterprise context. The results also confirm that "interest" and "branding" are interrelated, and that gamification faces higher rates of resistance, lower rates of adoption, and lower success rates in the enterprise compared to other fields. Thus, enterprise gamification may not be correctly branded, and our research recommends the use of a set of procedural, prepackaged best practices, in the form of an implementation framework, to guarantee optimal design and implementation.


Australian and New Zealand environmental economists have played a significant role in the development of concepts and their application across three fields within their subdiscipline: non-market valuation, institutional economics and bioeconomic modelling. These contributions have been spurred on by debates within and outside the discipline. Much of the controversy has centred on the validity of valuations generated through the application of stated preference methods such as contingent valuation. Suggestions to overcome some shortcomings in the work of environmental economists include the commissioning of a sequence of non-market valuation studies to fill existing gaps to improve the potential for benefit transfer.


The role of education in socializing the individual to fit in the society cannot be gainsaid. This is because education empowers people to improve their well being and participation in nation building. But recent research has shown that the spate of school drop-out among primary school pupils is worrying. This is happening in Kenya despite the inception of Free Primary Education programme in 2003. Practically pupils' drop out poses a serious threat to gains in education despite the Government's emphasis on Education for All by the year 2015. In Nandi North District, the problem is more pronounced among the primary pupils. The study therefore was conceived as a result of the increased pupil dropout rate in public primary schools causing wastage and affecting curriculum implementation. The study sought to establish the causes of drop out among pupils and strategies that institutions of learning can adopt to address this problem.  The study adopted descriptive survey design. It targeted 6322 standard eight pupils, 2569 class teachers and 286 head teachers. Out of this target population, a sample size of 1970 standard eight pupils, 769 class teachers and 86 head teachers was selected. Data were collected using class teachers' and pupils' questionnaires and head teachers' interview guide to gather information on the causes of school dropout. Data were analyzed by use of descriptive statistics and the findings presented in form of figures and tables. The study findings indicated that teenage pregnancy, chronic repetition, family size, lack of motivation for schooling, parental negligence, influence from peers, lack of trained teacher counsellors and early marriages were the main causes of school dropout. It further pointed out that the factors leading to the dropout of girls are different from those for boys. The study therefore recommends that the government and other stakeholders should address the issue of school dropout rate and come up with measures to curb it to avoid wastage of school curriculum resources and facilities and above all, wastage of them would be future leaders full of discovery knowledge for this current era of information and technology. In addition, the government should strengthen policies on the expenditure of the FPE set aside to benefit all children for quality education. Keywords: Drop Out, Pupils, Rural Primary Schools, Kenya, Nandi North District, Kenya