Higher education increasingly emphasises the importance of learner self-regulation and autonomy. Self-regulated learners are active participants in their own learning and employ strategies for sustaining motivation, metacognitive thinking, and self-monitoring. This work identifies four central aspects which are investigated in an individual project based learning setting, namely motivation, time management, progress awareness, and monitoring. Monitoring is the key driver of learner self-regulation. Time management has proven to enhance perceived control over time, health, and academic achievement. Progress awareness supports learner self-observation and self-evaluation. Finally, monitoring is the process of generating feedback both internally (own feedback) and externally (from others). In this work, a 17-week quasi-experimental study involving 378 participants was conducted, preceded by a less successful trial. The study employed a web-based monitoring system, combined with a monitoring scheme in the context of Master of Science (MSc) summer projects in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, implementing a set of features for each learning aspect. In the monitoring scheme, monitors met with groups of students weekly to monitor project progress. Feedback was submitted online by students, monitors, and supervisors. It is shown that there are positive and significant relationships between feature use and weekly student progress and motivation ratings, and also with their dissertation mark. This suggests that some system features enhanced student self-motivation beliefs, self observation, and self-reflection. Also, features were ranked as to their impact on student self-regulated learning, and a narrative case study exploring processes behind the effects is provided. High impact features were graphical student progress visualisations, a ranking table, the virtual project page listing past feedback and providing project management tools, and weekly progress feedback. Evidence for between-monitor effects on student dissertation mark as well as system use and successful system support for information exchange is also presented. The contribution of this thesis is novel and noteworthy since it (1) shows the effects of web-based monitoring features on self-regulated learning, (2) shows how features can be used for implementing principles of good practice, and (3) draws on the effect of monitors in the context of this study.


Accurate simulation of complex biological processes is an essential component of developing and validating new technologies and inference approaches. As an effort to help contain the COVID-19 pandemic, large numbers of SARS-CoV-2 genomes have been sequenced from most regions in the world. More than 5.5 million viral sequences are publicly available as of November 2021. Many studies estimate viral genealogies from these sequences, as these can provide valuable information about the spread of the pandemic across time and space. Additionally such data are a rich source of information about molecular evolutionary processes including natural selection, for example allowing the identification of new variants with transmissibility and immunity evasion advantages. To our knowledge, there is no framework that is both efficient and flexible enough to simulate the pandemic to approximate world-scale scenarios and generate viral genealogies of millions of samples. Here, we introduce a new fast simulator VGsim which addresses the problem of simulation genealogies under epidemiological models. The simulation process is split into two phases. During the forward run the algorithm generates a chain of population-level events reflecting the dynamics of the pandemic using an hierarchical version of the Gillespie algorithm. During the backward run a coalescent-like approach generates a tree genealogy of samples conditioning on the population-level events chain generated during the forward run. Our software can model complex population structure, epistasis and immunity escape.


Much has changed over the last decade in the world of central banking. Most central banks now see low and stable inflation as their main, if not only, target and many have been granted unprecedented independence. Financial markets around the world have become considerably more integrated and, some say, prone to irrational exuberance. With more independence has come the need for more accountability and transparency. With the increased size and volatility of markets has come the need to carefully manage communication. Central bankers have delivered a high degree of price stability, but now communication is high on their list of concerns, while private bankers and the media devote ever more energy in outguessing the monetary authorities' next moves. These issues and more will be covered by this report, originally presented to a closed meeting of distinguished central and private-sector bankers, academics and representatives of major media, and revised in the light of their discussion.


Light water reactor coolant environments are known to significantly enhance the fatigue crack growth rate of austenitic stainless steels. However, most available data in these high temperature pressurized water environments have been derived using specimens tested at positive load ratios, whilst most plant transients involve significant compressive as well as tensile stresses. The extent to which the compressive loading impacts on the environmental enhancement of fatigue crack growth, and, more importantly, on the processes leading to retardation of those enhanced rates is therefore unclear, potentially leading to excessive conservatism in current assessment methodologies.
 A test methodology using corner cracked tensile specimens, and based on finite element analysis of the specimens to generate effective stress intensity factors, Keff, for specimens loaded in fully reverse loading has been previously presented. The current paper further develops this approach, enabling it to be utilized to study a range of positive and negative load ratios from R = −2 to R = 0.5 loading, and provides a greater understanding of the development of stress intensity factor within a loading cycle.
 Test data has been generated in both air and high temperature water environments over a range of loading ratios. Comparison of these data to material specific crack growth data from conventional compact tension specimens and environmental crack growth laws (such as Code Case N-809) enables the impact of crack closure on the effective stress intensity factor to be assessed in both air and water environments. The significance of indicated differences in the apparent level of closure between air and water environments is discussed in the light of accepted growth laws and material specific data.


Glycogen synthase kinase- 3beta (GSK-3beta) is well documented to participate in a complex array of critical cellular processes. This versatile protein is involved in numerous signaling pathways that influence metabolism embryogenesis differentiation migration cell cycle progression and survival. Aberrant activity of GSK-3beta has been implicated in pathologies such as type-2 diabetes bipolar disorder Alzheimer's and cancer. GSK-3beta is normally active in the cytoplasm of resting cells in an unphosphorylated state where it suppresses an assortment of transcription factors implicated in oncogenesis. Lying downstream of the PI3K/PTEN/Akt pathway GSK-3beta can be negatively regulated through phosphorylation by active Akt. Given this pathway's role in malignant transformation prevention of apoptosis drug resistance and metastasis this study was performed to elucidate the role of GSK-3beta in MCF-7 breast cancer cells. It was found that cells expressing a kinase dead (KD) form of GSK-3beta were more resistant to doxorubicin and tamoxifen as well as highly clonogenic compared to cells harboring wild-type (WT) or constitutively active (A9) GSK-3beta. However when treated with rapamycin GSK-3beta KD cells show a marked decrease in proliferation as compared to WT or A9 cells. Additionally resistance to doxorubicin and tamoxifen were alleviated in KD cells upon co-treatment with the Array MEK inhibitor. Taken together these results suggest that the loss of GSK-3beta activity in MCF-7 breast cancer cells promotes clonogenicity and drug resistance but sensitizes the cells to signaling pathway blockade. Therefore targeting aberrant activity of the PI3K/PTEN/Akt/GSK-3beta pathway may be a clinically relevant tool for both increasing efficacy of and avoiding resistance to conventional therapy.


LDPE/metal oxide nanocomposites are promising materials for future high-voltage DC cable insulation. This paper presents data on the influence of the structure of the nanoparticle coating on the electrical conductivity of LDPE/Al2O3 nanocomposites. Al2O3 nanoparticles, 50 nm in size, were coated with a series of silanes with terminal alkyl groups of different lengths (methyl, w-octyl and n-octadecyl groups). The density of the coatings in vacuum was between 200 and 515 kg m−3, indicating substantial porosity in the coating. The dispersion of the nanoparticles in the LDPE matrix was assessed based on statistics for the nearest-neighbor particle distance. The electrical conductivity of the nanocomposites was determined at both 40 and 60 °C. The results show that an appropriate surface coating on the nanoparticles allowed uniform particle dispersion up to a filler loading of 10 wt.%, with a maximum reduction in the electrical conductivity by a factor of 35. The composites based on the most porous octyl-coated nanoparticles showed the greatest reduction in electrical conductivity and the lowest temperature coefficient of electrical conductivity of the composites studied.


Abstract Dhaka City has been suffering from many environmental problems including flooding, water logging and other related problems. Urbanization, which is occurring very fast and with larger magnitude in Dhaka, is the intrinsic reason behind these problems. High rate of urbanization causes extensive urban area expansion and as a result canals, wetland and other water bodies are quickly vanishing from the landscape. This study shows the present physical condition of the canals; identifies the processes of canal encroachment; represents the consequences of canal encroachment. 13 canals of 50 were surveyed; local people were surveyed to identify the impact and processes of encroachment. According to this study, canals of Dhaka city are under serious threat of extinction and require immediate recovery actions. Canals are being encroached in various styles and this study identifies five: unauthorized land filling, illegal construction over canal, expansion of slum, solid waste dumping, taking advantage of lack of awareness of local people as well as government agencies. However, this study also discusses the grave consequences of canal encroachment: increasing flood vulnerability, wane of ground water recharge area and ground water level, collapse of natural drainage system, loss of local ecology and biodiversity.


The article reports on the findings of an experimental survey which was conducted to ascertain the level of support and perceived effectiveness of using de-radicalisation programmes to re-integrate returning foreign fighters. Public support (or the lack of opposition) for re-integration programmes can be important in ensuring the programmes have the time, resources and opportunity to be successful however we know little about what wider society thinks about re-integration programmes. The article explores the extent to which the inclusion of de-radicalisation – in name and content – changes attitudes to a re-integration programme. This is relevant in showing attitudes to de-radicalisation over disengagement and whether de-radicalisation, while perhaps not more effective at the programme-level, is or is not more effective at generating public support for re-integration (and thereby facilitating the process itself). We find that the inclusion of de-radicalisation in the name and content of a re-integration programme to a small extent increases support for re-integration over a programme that uses the terms disengagement and desistance. However, we also find that while de-radicalisation increases support, it also decreases perceived effectiveness, leading respondents to feel it makes the country less safe and less likely to reduce the re-offending rate than if the programme excludes de-radicalisation. We argue this polarising effect is reflective of wider reasons for supporting the policies (e.g. de-radicalisation may be seen as a form of ideational/normative punishment) and that the term de-radicalisation may shift the framing of the problematic to entrenched social structures, thus rendering itself ineffective as a policy treatment. In terms of policy, we argue there is a necessity for greater openness about re-integration programmes and that governments would benefit from selling the programmes to the public. We conclude our paper with a justification of focusing further research on understanding public/community attitudes to re-integration programmes and understanding the PR of counter-terrorism policies more generally.


Abstract In this paper, we introduce the concept of non-dominance (commonly used in multi-objective optimization) as a way to incorporate constraints into the fitness function of a genetic algorithm. Each individual is assigned a rank based on its degree of dominance over the rest of the population. Feasible individuals are always ranked higher than infeasible ones, and the degree of constraint violation determines the rank among infeasible individuals. The proposed technique does not require fine tuning of factors like the traditional penalty function and uses a self-adaptation mechanism that avoids the traditional empirical adjustment of the main genetic operators (i.e., crossover and mutation).


The purpose of this study is providing an improved mode choice model considering parameters including age grouping of prime-aged and old age. In this study, 2010 Household Travel Survey data were used and improper samples were removed through the analysis. Chosen alternative, date of birth, mode, origin code, destination code, departure time, and arrival time are considered from Household Travel Survey. By preprocessing data, travel time, travel cost, mode, and ratio of people aged 45 to 55 years, 55 to 65 years and over 65 years were calculated. After the manipulation, the mode choice model was constructed using LIMDEP by maximum likelihood estimation. A significance test was conducted for nine parameters, three age groups for three modes. Then the test was conducted again for the mode choice model with significant parameters, travel cost variable and travel time variable. As a result of the model estimation, as the age increases, the preference for the car decreases and the preference for the bus increases. This study is meaningful in that the individual and households characteristics are applied to the aggregate model. Keywords—Age grouping, aging, mode choice model, multinomial logit model.


Recent advances in breast cancer research and treatment propel a paradigm shift toward less aggressive and less invasive treatment for some early-stage breast cancer. Select patients with small, low-risk tumors may benefit from a less aggressive approach with de-escalated local therapy. Cryoablation of breast cancer is an emerging nonsurgical treatment alternative to breast-conserving surgery. Advantages of cryoablation over surgery include the use of local anesthesia, faster recovery, improved cosmesis, and cost savings. Proper patient selection and meticulous technique are keys to achieving successful clinical outcomes. The best candidates for cryoablation have unifocal invasive ductal carcinoma tumors that are low grade, hormone receptor positive, and ≤1.5 cm in size. In this review, we outline the current evidence, patient selection criteria, procedural technique, pre- and postablation imaging, and the advantages and limitations of cryoablation therapy.


Forecasts of rapid intensification (RI) within tropical cyclones continue to be a major challenge, primarily due to difficulty in determining the processes that distinguish RI and non-RI storms. In this study, the aim was to identify the most important RI/non-RI discriminatory variables in the North Atlantic basin, not only by level, but also spatial location relative to the tropical cyclone center. These important variables, identified using rotated principal component analysis on one-dimensional and three-dimensional GEFS reforecast base-state variables from 1985 to 2009, led to the identification of diagnostic fields with the largest variability between RI and non-RI events. Hierarchical clustering techniques performed on rotated PC loadings provided map types of RI and non-RI cyclones. Analysis of these composite map types, as well as composite derived fields including divergence, relative vorticity, equivalent potential temperature, static stability, and vertical shear, revealed interesting distinguishing characteristics between RI and non-RI events. Results suggested that vorticity in the mid-levels, divergence in the upper-levels, equivalent potential temperature, and specific humidity play critical roles in successfully discriminating between RI and non-RI storms. These findings give key insights to which variables should be used in developing a prognostic classification scheme to assist with operational forecasts of tropical cyclone RI.


This long-term study includes up to 13 years of follow-up on 56 patients who underwent surgical resection of nonsmall cell lung cancers (NSCLC) at the University of Texas Medical Branch. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether p53 and P-glycoprotein expression in the tumor correlates with survival. The study included 35 men and 21 women with mean age at diagnosis of 63.6 years and 58.0 years, respectively. Follow-up ranged from four to 156 months (mean, 52 mo). Actual five-year survival was 50% and 10-year survival was 22%. There were 25 patients who survived more than 60 months. Commercially available antibodies, DO-7 monoclonal antibody to p53 protein, and NCL-PGLyp polyclonal antibody to P-glycoprotein were used. p53 expression was seen in 45%, and P-glycoprotein expression was seen in 61% of the tumors, using standard immunohistochemical techniques. Expression of p53 showed correlation with Caucasian race and a better, although nonsignificant, five-year survival. P-glycoprotein expression showed a highly significant association with squamous cell carcinoma. No association was found between P-glycoprotein expression and survival. A negative association was seen between p53 and P-glycoprotein expression. Using nonparametric analysis, significant correlations were found between female sex and younger age at diagnosis of lung cancer compared with males, adenocarcinoma, and Caucasian race. Using Kaplan-Meier survival tables, significantly better five-year survival was seen with stage I tumors, negative lymph nodes at surgery, Caucasian race, and well-differentiated tumors. Stage I and negative lymph nodes at surgery showed an independent significant association with long-term (>5-yr) survival. This study indicates that p53 and P-glycoprotein may not be useful as immunohistochemical markers for guiding therapy and predicting survival in NSCLC.


Laboratory measurements and numerical modeling at low Reynolds numbers (Reθ<7700) indicate the energy‐containing turbulence of boundary layer flows comprises coherent packets of hairpin vortices. Here direct measurements in the bottom boundary layer of the coastal ocean at higher Reynolds numbers (Reθ = 266,150) show tidal flows also contain packets of large vortices separated by periods of more quiescent conditions. The 1452 vortices recorded within a 20 min period are typically aligned along stream (∼8.0° from the mean flow direction) and inclined to the horizontal (∼27.0° from the seabed), with a mean period of occurrence of 4.3 s. These results lend three‐dimensional, in situ support to an interpretation of the coastal ocean bottom boundary layer as comprising coherent packets of hairpin vortices. This demonstrates a direct linkage from low Reynolds number experiments to higher Reynolds number flows, permitting fine‐scale details of particle transport and pollutant dispersion to be inferred from lower Reynolds number data.


Beginning in the mid-1990s, the construct of historical trauma was introduced into the clinical and health science literatures to contextualize, describe, and explain disproportionately high rates of psychological distress and health disparities among Indigenous populations. As a conceptual precursor to racial trauma, Indigenous historical trauma (IHT) is distinguished by its emphasis on ancestral adversity that is intergenerationally transmitted in ways that compromise descendent well-being. In this systematic review of the health impacts of IHT, 32 empirical articles were identified that statistically analyzed the relationship between a measure of IHT and a health outcome for Indigenous samples from the United States and Canada. These articles were categorized based on their specific method for operationalizing IHT, yielding 19 articles that were grouped as historical loss studies, 11 articles that were grouped as residential school ancestry studies, and three articles that were grouped as "other" studies. Articles in all three categories included diverse respondents, disparate designs, varied statistical techniques, and a range of health outcomes. Most reported statistically significant associations between higher indicators of IHT and adverse health outcomes. Analyses were so complex, and findings were so specific, that this groundbreaking literature has yet to cohere into a body of knowledge with clear implications for health policy or professional practice. At the conceptual level, it remains unclear whether IHT is best appreciated for its metaphorical or literal functions. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm surrounding IHT as an explanation for contemporary Indigenous health problems renders it imperative to refine the construct to enable more valid research.


SUMMARY Research on the interactions between the field voles (Microtus agrestis) of Kielder Forest and their natural parasites dates back to the 1930s. These early studies were primarily concerned with understanding how parasites shape the characteristic cyclic population dynamics of their hosts. However, since the early 2000s, research on the Kielder field voles has expanded considerably and the system has now been utilized for the study of host–parasite biology across many levels, including genetics, evolutionary ecology, immunology and epidemiology. The Kielder field voles therefore represent one of the most intensely and broadly studied natural host–parasite systems, bridging theoretical and empirical approaches to better understand the biology of infectious disease in the real world. This article synthesizes the body of work published on this system and summarizes some important insights and general messages provided by the integrated and multidisciplinary study of host–parasite interactions in the natural environment.


Polyclonal antisera to 80 - 90-kDa and to 50 - 60-kDa polypeptides of tissue-culture trypomastigotes which inhibit the interiorization of trypomastigotes of the Y strain (up to 70%) and of metacyclic trypomastigotes of the CL-14 clone (up to 50%) in cultured mammalian cells, were obtained. Both sera immunoprecipitate surface polypeptides of 90 kDa, 80 kDa, 72 kDa and 58 kDa in trypomastigotes and of 80 kDa, 77 kDa and 74 kDa in metacyclic trypomastigotes. These antigens are glycoproteins with affinity for concanavalin A. The antibodies (IgG class) of the inhibitory sera are mainly directed against carbohydrate epitopes, which were identified as being beta-D-galactofuranosyl units by radioimmunoinhibition assays. The direct involvement of the beta-D-galactofuranosyl unit in the process of parasite infection was verified using the synthetic disaccharide beta-D-galactofuranose (1----3)-alpha-D-mannopyranose which promoted, at 1 mg/ml concentration, 50% inhibition of internalization.


Although mindfulness has been suggested as a means to improve athletes' performance, few studies have connected changes in mindfulness with improved performance. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of an exploratory mindfulness intervention (MI) on performance using a mixed methods design. Thirty-four female National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) soccer athletes participated in a 12-week MI. Using the Mindfulness Inventory for Sport, athletic performance and self-perceived ability during the first three games of the season compared to the final three games of the season (August–November 2019) were analyzed using paired t tests. Postintervention focus groups explored athletes' perceptions of the MI on performance. Mindfulness, shots per game, and self-perceived athletic ability increased after the MI. Six themes emerged from the focus groups: awareness, increased focus, letting-go mentality, skill acquisition, self-compassion, and team cohesion. Coaches and sport psychology practitioners may consider implementing similar MI to improve performance and overall athletic experiences.


The recent wave of AI and automation has been argued to differ from previous General Purpose Technologies (GPTs), in that it may lead to rapid change in occupations' underlying task requirements and persistent technological unemployment. In this paper, we apply a novel methodology of dynamic task shares to a large dataset of online job postings to explore how exactly occupational task demands have changed over the past decade of AI innovation, especially across high, mid and low wage occupations. Notably, big data and AI have risen significantly among high wage occupations since 2012 and 2016, respectively. We built an ARIMA model to predict future occupational task demands and showcase several relevant examples in Healthcare, Administration, and IT. Such task demands predictions across occupations will play a pivotal role in retraining the workforce of the future.


OBJECTIVE
To develop a simplified Chinese version of the 32-item Quebec sleep questionnaire (QSQ) and to examine the reliability and validity.

METHODS
A cross-sectional sample of 141 patients [22 simple snorers and 119 obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS)] and a longitudinal sample of 55 patients [35 in uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (UPPP) group and 20 in control group] completed the simplified Chinese version of QSQ for assessment of its feasibility, reliability, validity and responsiveness.

RESULTS
QSQ had good feasibility. All internal consistency coefficients exceeded 0.65. Intraclass correlation coefficients of five domains for test-retest reliability ranged from 0.82 - 0.91. There were significant differences in four domains (daytime sleepiness, diurnal symptoms, nocturnal symptoms and social interactions) among patients with different severity of apnea hypopnea index (AHI) and lowest saturation of arterial oxygen (LSaO2, P < 0.01 or < 0.05). Correlations between QSQ scores and five domains and Epworth sleepiness scale (ESS) were statistically significant (P < 0.01). Correlations between QSQ scores and three domains (daytime sleepiness, nocturnal symptoms and social interactions) and polysomnography (PSG) indices (AHI and LSaO2) were statistically significant (P < 0.05). There were significant differences in scores of five domains of patients between at baseline and after UPPP. There were significant differences in change scores of five domains between patients who were treated and those who were not.

CONCLUSION
The simplified Chinese version of QSQ offers good reliability, validity and responsiveness and can be used as a OSAHS-specific instrument to assess impact of illness and treatment effectiveness in OSAHS patients.


This paper is focused on the capability of the Acousto-Ultrasonic (AU) technique and the non-contact technique to provide diagnostic information useful to detect defect in composite. An acousto-ultrasonics (AU) is to simulate stress wave that resemble acoustic emission waves but without disrupting the material. One launched inside the material sample, the wave are modified by stochastic processes like those that affect spontaneous acoustic emissions from internal sources during stressing, deformation, etc. Moreover, acousto-uloasonic waves are launched periodically at predetermined times and with predetermined reparation rates. A fiber reinforced composite materials should be inspected in fabrication process in order to enhance quality by prevent defects such as delamination and void. In conventional ultrasonic technique for the evaluation of FRP, the transducer should be contacted on FRP. Therefore, in this study, advanced conventional contacting method (AU) and non-contact technique using air-coupled transducer can make contact and noncontacting ultrasonic technique available in evaluation of FRP. This paper demonstrates first results using an acousto-ultrasonic technique.


Adequate glycemic control in type 2 diabetes remains a difficult but achievable goal. The development of new classes of glucose-lowering medications, including in particular the incretin-based therapies, provides an opportunity to utilize combinations of medications which target multiple physiologic abnormalities in type 2 diabetes. Complementary combination therapy with sitagliptin–metformin lowers glucose via enhancement of insulin secretion, suppression of glucagon secretion, and insulin sensitization. Use of this combination in diabetes management will provide a greater degree of glycosylated hemoglobin-lowering than that seen with the use of either drug as monotherapy, is unlikely to cause significant hypoglycemia, and is generally associated with weight loss. The effectiveness, tolerability, and potential cost savings associated with the use of sitagliptin–metformin combination therapy make this an attractive option in diabetes management. The possible beneficial effects of this therapy on beta cell function, as well as its cardiovascular impact, remain inadequately explored but are of significant interest.


In Victorious Wives, Mulaika Hijjas uses tools drawn from literary criticism and gender studies to look at a previously neglected corpus of Malay literature in a new light. The relatively equal gender relations in Southeast Asia have long been presented as a defining characteristic of the region, but there are few detailed case studies of pre-modern women or women's literature to illustrate this point, and studies of women in traditional literature have of necessity relied on texts that expressed masculine viewpoints. The syair of the Riau Archipelago that are the basis of this book, six nineteenth-century Malay narrative poems, are a unique exception in that they allow access to women's imaginative worlds, and they provide a significant historical backdrop to anthropological accounts of gender in the Malay world in modern times. Victorious Wives engages with these poems not as historical documents to be mined for data but as complex literary works. In the story lines, the heroine disguises herself as a man in order to rescue a male relative, reversing and subverting the assignation of passion (nafsu) to women and reason (akal) to men that was commonplace of religious discourse at the time. The book develops a nuanced textual analysis of this material, and explores the interplay between social reality and literary fiction.


Language and gender research has, in recent years, emphasised the importance of examining the context-specific ways in which people 'do gender' in different situations. In this paper, we explore how women involved in drug offences, specifically methamphetamine manufacture offences, are constructed within the language of the courts. Thirty-six sentencing transcripts from the New Zealand courts were examined to investigate how such offences, committed by women, are understood. In order to explore the representation of female offenders, a critical discourse analytic approach was adopted. Such an approach recognises that linguistic modes not only create and legitimise power inequalities but also embody a specific worldview. Three gendered discourses were identified in the sentencing texts: (i) the discourse of femininity, reinforcing the socially prescribed female role; (ii) the discourse of aberration, concerning women who breach traditional gender role expectations and, (iii) the discourse of salvation, presenting aberrant women with an opportunity to become 'good' women once again. The findings illustrate the ways in which processes of gendering take place within a specific community of practice: the courtroom.


The article mainly introduced how the land auction in our country impacted the sell price of land, and through analysising the influence of the policy in 2006 and 2010 which called "limit house price , compete land price" to land auction, got that this policy may control house price and land price in a short time. But in the long run, selling the land through auction had some problems, and this policy had difficulty in setting the price and the quality of the house couldn't be guaranteed. According to the above questions, it proposed that it should through transforming government's function, reasonably determining house price and strengthening the quality supervision of "limited price house" to solve the present situation of overpriced.


This paper aims for generic instance search from a single example. Where the state-of-the-art relies on global image representation for the search, we proceed by including locality at all steps of the method. As the first novelty, we consider many boxes per database image as candidate targets to search locally in the picture using an efficient point-indexed representation. The same representation allows, as the second novelty, the application of very large vocabularies in the powerful Fisher vector and VLAD to search locally in the feature space. As the third novelty we propose an exponential similarity function to further emphasize locality in the feature space. Locality is advantageous in instance search as it will rest on the matching unique details. We demonstrate a substantial increase in generic instance search performance from one example on three standard datasets with buildings, logos, and scenes from 0.443 to 0.620 in mAP.


Laser-induced photoelectric and photoemission optogalvanic effects in a Ne-Nd hollow cathode discharge have been studied using a continuous wave laser source. The potential barrier for photoinduced electron emission from the cathode decreases as the applied voltage is increased. Owing to secondary electron emission in the plasma, the photocurrent is greater than that without discharge. The multiplication of secondary electrons and the quantum efficiency are also investigated.


Rhodococcus is a soil microbe known for its metabolic versatility. Cyanide is one of many compounds that Rhodococcus can detoxify. This work identified several inducers which affect the activity of two cyanide-metabolizing enzymes produced by R. rhodochrous DAP 96253, cyanidase and β-cyanoalanine synthase-like enzyme. Chemical inducers were added to growth media and cells were tested for the ability to transform cyanide to ammonia or hydrogen sulfide as a quantifiable measure of cyanidase or β-cyanoalanine synthase-like activity, respectively. Urea-supplemented YEMEA-grown R. rhodochrous DAP 96253 has been shown to inhibit germination of selected fungal spores. By varying supplements in growth media, several new compounds were identified which also enable Rhodococcus to inhibit germination. This inhibition is achieved through non-contact co-culture between organisms. Properties of antifungal activity were studied for each supplement. It was shown that supplemented R. rhodochrous DAP 96253 is able to inhibit germination of single or mixed cultures the selected fungi, Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus fumigatus, and Penicillium sp. Depending on the supplemental compound added to growth media, spores were unable to recover after a maximum 48 hour exposure to R. rhodochrous DAP 96253. Rhodococcus effectively inhibits germination of spores when actively growing on agar or when removed from the plate. Lastly, the effects of co-culturing three strains of YEMEA-grown Rhodococcus sp. with supplemented, YEMEA-grown R. rhodochrous DAP 96253 were examined to determine if supplemented R. rhodochrous DAP 96253 affected unsupplemented Rhodococcus sp. When cocultured with cobaltand urea-supplemented or just urea-supplemented YEMEA-grown R. rhodochrous DAP 96253, the three strains tested, R. rhodochrous DAP 96253, R. rhodochrous 96622, and R. erythropolis 47072 exhibited cyanidase enzyme levels comparable to those seen in directly induced cells. Additionally, after co-culture with urea-supplemented YEMEA-grown R. rhodochrous DAP 96253, YEMEA-grown cultures became inhibitory to germination of spores of A. niger. Overall, these findings showed that, with proper supplementation, R. rhodochrous DAP 96253 can be inhibitory to selected fungal species and is simultaneously able to stimulate antifungal activity in other, unsupplemented Rhodococcus sp. INDEX WORDS: Rhodococcus, Cyanide, Cyanidase, β-cyanoalanine synthase, Fungal inhibition, rhododoccal volatiles INDUCTION OF CYANIDE METABOLIZING ENZYMES AND PRODUCTION OF ANTIFUNGAL COMPOUNDS BY RHODOCOCCUS SPECIES.


53 seed samples collected from harvested seed loads of irrigated wheat fields in Markazi province in the central of Iran was used for this study. Isolation and identification of seed-borne fungi were conducted according to standard tests described by the International Seed Testing Association (ISTA). A total of 15 fungal species including Tilletia laevis, Tilletia tritici, Ustilago tritici, Fusarium graminearum, Fusarium culmorum, Microdochium nivale, Bipolaris sorokiniana, Alternaria alternata, Curvularia sp., Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus candidus, Aspergillus flavus, Penicillium sp., Mucor sp. and Rhizopus sp . were identified in three wheat cultivars of Backcross Roshan, Alvand and C-78-14. The average of infection level in tested samples to both T. laevis and T. tritici was estimated as much as 7.1% in the province and the minimum and maximum infection levels were found in Lilian (Khomein) and Jirya regions (Arak), respectively. The average of infection rate by U. tritici in seed samples was 1.3% while it was as much as 17.4% for both F. culmorum and B. sorokiniana in the province. The frequency of A. niger and Penicillium sp. was predominant with an infection range of 37.8 and 29.1%, respectively. For the first time, the incidence and infection level of seed-borne fungi in wheat seeds have been determined in the central part of Iran. Key words : Infection rate, seed-borne fungi, seed quality, wheat.


Green roofs provide ecological benefits to the urban environment and the selection of suitable vegetation and growing substrates are keys for achieving green roof functionality and reducing management costs. For plants, roofs are relatively stressful and drought-prone environments and the use of species from different functional groups can confer resilience to the vegetation. The aim of the study was to evaluate paper mill sludge as a growing substrate for drought-tolerant herbaceous vegetation. Paper mill sludge pellets (P), compost (C) and pumice (V) were mixed in order to obtain three substrates with similar organic content: VC, VP, VPC. The experimental trial was set up in 12 1×1 m2 boxes, filled with the 3 different substrates and planted with 30 native herbaceous species, different in functionality (forbs, graminoids, CAM, N-fixers) and in life forms (hemicryptophytes, geophytes, terophytes and chamaephytes). Measured substrate parameters were: pH, total nitrogen (N(tot)), organic carbon (C(org)), cation exchange capacity (CEC), electrical conductivity (EC), and substrate moisture. The vegetation properties (total canopy cover, plant composition, species richness) were recorded during the growing season. The substrates showed differences in N(tot): in VC it was higher as well as the substrate moisture resulting in a higher development of plant biomass compared to other treatments. In May, the vegetation in VC and VPC dried out, whereas in VP the low amount of biomass was stable. The presence of compost led to the dominance of CAM species, resulting in lower plant richness. The substrates containing paper mill sludge pellets resulted in limited development of biomass, conferring to the vegetation a higher drought-tolerance and reduced competition.


Hyperfast GC/MS below 60 s of measurement time has been used for the measurement of explosives. The new flow-field thermal gradient GC (FF-TG-GC) utilizes a modified transport process of the explosives at lowered temperatures. In combination with the focusing effect of the gradient, high-resolution chromatograms are obtained even in very short time intervals. The reduction of the elution temperature by applying a thermal gradient along the chromatographic column is demonstrated by the simulation of the migration of analytes through the column. The simulation shows an interesting effect of the difference between maximum temperature and elution temperature of analytes during their separation with the spatial gradient. The results show the benefit of the gradient elution both from a modeling perspective and by measurements of explosives with low limits of detection (LOD) in the range from 0.1 to 20 μg/mL (0.5 to 150 pg of analyte mass on column). Results were compared to state-of-the-art vacuum outlet GC/MS as a reference method. A correlation between the reduction of elution temperatures and lower LODs are found for thermal labile nitrate ester explosives (EGDN, NG, ETN, and PETN), while no significant influence of the reduced elution temperature on LODs of more stable explosives, like DNT and TNT, was found.


Several theoretical analyses of the dynamics of particle swarms have been offered in the literature over the last decade. Virtually all rely on substantial simplifications, including the assumption that the particles are deterministic. This has prevented the exact characterisation of the sampling distribution of the PSO. In this paper we introduce a novel method, which allows one to exactly determine all the characteristics of a PSO's sampling distribution and explain how they change over any number of generations, in the presence stochasticity. The only assumption we make is stagnation, i.e., we study the sampling distribution produced by particles in search for a better personal best. We apply the analysis to the PSO with inertia weight, but the analysis is also valid for the PSO with constriction.


The features used for speech recognition should emphasize linguistic information while suppressing speaker differences. For speaker recognition, features should have more speaker individual information while attenuating the linguistic information. In most studies, however, the identical acoustic features are used for the different missions of speaker and speech recognitions. In this paper, we propose a new physiological feature extraction method which emphasizes individual information for speaker identification. For the purpose, physiological features of speakers were analyzed from the point of view of speech production. It is found that the speaker individual information is encoded in different frequency regions of speech sound. The speaker discriminative information was quantified using Fisher's F-ratio in each frequency region. Based on the F-ratio, we proposed a non-uniform sub-band processing strategy to extract new feature which can emphasize or refine the physiological aspects involved in speech production. We combined the new feature with GMM for speaker identification task and applied on NTT-VR speaker recognition database. Compared with MFCC feature, by using the proposed feature, the identification error rate was reduced 20.1%.


The overall aim of this article-based thesis is to develop the knowledge base of public service innovations as a way of understanding established technology innovation in municipal caring services. More precisely, the objective is to increase our understanding of the complex reality of technology in use in caring practices by focusing on the interactions between the technology and humans involved. Policy documents describe a demand for increased technology innovations in community care services to meet perceived challenges in the services caused by a "silver tsunami" and to facilitate independent living. However, the integration of technologies has proven to be difficult, and many projects never integrate into regular use after the pilot stage. Research in the wake of these pilots seeking to identify drivers and barriers to technology innovations in caring practices does not capture the technology innovations that are actually integrated and used in regular caring practices, and what it takes to make them work. To understand these public service innovations we need a knowledge base incorporating the complex and diverse experiences with established technologies, and an understanding of the interactions between people and the technology involved. This thesis contributes towards a more comprehensive understanding of the "workings" of technology innovations when exploring the social alarm, which is a widely established and adopted technology innovation in caring practices. Public service innovation is a developing field of exploring public services. More recent public service innovation has mainly studied public innovations on an organisational level. However, this thesis utilises the concept of co-production to explore the practice of the social alarm in use on a micro level. The concept of co-production is further developed by utilising aspects of science and technology studies as theoretical tools for exploring public service innovations. A systematic integrated review was conducted aiming to scope the research history of the social alarm in use from a user perspective. Furthermore, a combination of participant observations, 22 in-depth interviews and a study of documents related to the use of the social alarm were conducted within the home care service in two municipalities in Norway. Consequently, the thesis is based on descriptive and explorative qualitative designs. The empirical data were analysed using a stepwise, deductive, inductive method. Through empirical analysis, the overall findings indicate the need to add theoretical tools for understanding these innovations. By utilising the metaphor of script and domestication from science and technology studies, this thesis contributes a theoretical framework for exploring the co-production of expectations and experiences related to technology in use in caring practices. Thereby it further develops the understanding of the field of public service innovation within caring practices. This thesis demonstrates empirically how people involved with the social alarm utilise the technology. The results describe complex and multiple caring practices with divergent results related to its use. This promotes an increased understanding of how even rather simple and well-established technologies are unpredictable and work differently in different contexts when interacting with different people. The focus is directed to efforts to make it work and to enable older people to live independently and safely at home. The study also illustrates how technology innovations change the dynamics between the people involved, rearranging caring practices, and opening up for bricolages as an integrated part of established technology innovations.


Summary 1. Recently, ecologists have shown interest in examining antioxidant protection in wild animals; carotenoids in particular have received attention as antioxidants that play an important role in mediating health, life-history trade-offs and sexual selection. However, we know almost nothing about the relationships among levels of different antioxidants in wild animals or whether variation in antioxidants can be viewed as a single coherent system. 2. Here we use a data set of 903 individuals from 99 bird species to examine covariation among concentrations of three types of antioxidants (uric acid, vitamin E and four carotenoids), and their relationship to a summary measure, Trolox-equivalent antioxidant capacity (TEAC), both inter- and intraspecifically in 30 species. 3. Three axes were necessary to adequately describe variation in nine antioxidant measures, and these axes corresponded to the basic categories of antioxidant measured: uric acid, vitamin E and carotenoids. There was substantial heterogeneity in the correlations across species. 4. TEAC covaried strongly with uric acid levels, both interspecifically and in 23 of the 30 species. Concentrations of different carotenoids covaried both inter- and intraspecifically, but there was also substantial variance explained by each carotenoid independent of the others. Vitamin E concentration did not robustly correlate with any other antioxidant parameters. 5. Overall, we show that although antioxidants tend to covary with those of similar type, these correlations demonstrate evolutionary lability and/or ecological heterogeneity. Even the most general associations are absent in some species, suggesting that conceptualization of a single antioxidant system is oversimplified and that ecological studies attempting to examine antioxidant function should use multiple measures.


Crataegus species (Rosaceae), known as "Howthorn" have found special medicinal use for the treatment of mild heart diseases. This work aims to measure the antioxidant capacities of various Crataegus species growing in Turkey. In this study, the flowers and leaves from 52 samples belonging to 17 taxa of 14 Crataegus species naturally growing in Turkey have been investigated for their antioxidant activity/capacity. Four different methods (CUPRAC, FRAP, ABTS/Persulfate and Folin: FCR assays) were used for determination of the antioxidant capacities of the samples. The leaves and the flowers of the plants were studied separately. Samples representing the same species collected from different locations were studied separately. The results have indicated that the samples differing by some minor morphological characteristics exhibit considerably different antioxidant capacities. Among the flower samples, the most effective species was C. × sinaica Boiss. nothosubsp. sinaica and among the leaf samples C. pentagyna Waldst and Kit. ex. Willd. were the most active. Generally, C. monogyna Jacq. samples have exhibited markedly high antioxidant activity. Moreover, the species collected from Bolu district (surrounded by several forests and lakes) have shown significantly high activity regardless of the species differences among the samples.


Social mobility is almost always measured in
terms of income, job status or educational
attainment. When measured as such, Moroccan
first generation women in the Netherlands
are socially immobile. However, in the
narratives of the women collected during 1,5
years of qualitative study among 50 women
between the ages of 25 and 45, alternative
defitinitions and expectations of social mobility
surfaced. Acquiring better social positions
in formal definitions is not a goal that these
women can reach. However, learning Arabic,
learning how to read, moving to a better
house and emancipating from certain gender
norms, can be seen as forms of 'moving up'.
Also, because these women cannot reach the
'formal' attainment goals, they want their
sons and daughters to gain a better position.
It is thus crucial to take alternative definitions
and expectations of social mobility into account
when studying groups like Moroccan
migrant women and the second generation.


In this paper, we describe a conceptual design methodology to design distributed neural network architectures that can perform efficient inference within sensor networks with communication bandwidth constraints. The different sensor channels are distributed across multiple sensor devices, which have to exchange data over bandwidth-limited communication channels to solve, e.g., a classification task. Our design methodology starts from a user-defined centralized neural network and transforms it into a distributed architecture in which the channels are distributed over different nodes. The distributed network consists of two parallel branches of which the outputs are fused at the fusion center. The first branch collects classification results from local, node-specific classifiers while the second branch compresses each node's signal and then reconstructs the multi-channel time series for classification at the fusion center. We further improve bandwidth gains by dynamically activating the compression path when the local classifications do not suffice. We validate this method on a motor execution task in an emulated EEG sensor network and analyze the resulting bandwidth-accuracy trade-offs. Our experiments show that the proposed framework enables up to a factor 20 in bandwidth reduction with minimal loss (up to 2%) in classification accuracy compared to the centralized baseline on the demonstrated motor execution task. The proposed method offers a way to smoothly transform a centralized architecture to a distributed, bandwidth-efficient network amenable for low-power sensor networks. While the application focus of this paper is on wearable brain-computer interfaces, the proposed methodology can be applied in other sensor network-like applications as well.


CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels are the largest sources of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one of the better options to mitigate these emissions and thereby limit global warming even while continuing the use of fossil fuels for power generation. As CCS increases the energy consumption of the power plant itself, there will be an increased use of fuel and therefore also increased environmental impacts connected to this. To calculate these impacts it is important to include the entire supply chain and life cycle of the power plant. This thesis involves a tiered hybrid life cycle assessment of natural gas- and coal power plants with chilled ammonia process (CAP) and sorption enhanced water-gas shift (SEWGS) capture technologies. These novel capture technologies are two of the least studied when it comes to environmental assessments. The results from this assessment are compared to two of the more studied capture technologies, post-combustion capture by monoethanolamine (MEA) and oxyfuel combustion capture. Both the CAP capture alternative and the SEWGS alternative have been shown to decrease the global warming potential (GWP) in a natural gas plant by 70%. For the coal-fired power plants, the CAP technology managed a decrease in GWP of 77% while the SEWGS technology showed a decrease of 77.5%. This decrease comes at a cost of other impact categories where for example the freshwater ecotoxicity potential (FETP) has an increase of 87-88% for both the CAP and SEWGS capture technologies in NGCC plants. This impact category has an increase of 25 and 22% for the CAP and SEWGS technologies in the coal-fired power plants. Compared to post-combustion capture by MEA and oxyfuel combustion capture, the results were clear on MEA being the least preferable option in an environmental perspective for both coal- and natural gas-fired power plants. Oxyfuel combustion capture, on the other hand, was shown to be the most preferable option.


According to a life history framework, variability across an organism's lifespan necessitates trade-offs between behaviors that promote survival and those that promote reproduction. Adopting this perspective, the current work investigates how social acceptance or rejection can influence the differential priority placed on mating and survival motivations. Because social acceptance is an important survival-related cue (i.e., group living provides protection from predators and sharing of resources), we predicted that recent experiences of social acceptance should increase people's motivation to mate. In support of this prediction, Study 1 found that participants who were included in an electronic ball-toss game showed more interest in mating (regardless of the potential mate's attractiveness) than excluded and control participants. In Study 2, participants who recalled an experience of social acceptance viewed sexual affiliation as more important than did participants in rejection and control conditions. Collectively, these results suggest an adaptive trade-off such that interest in mating increases upon satiation of affiliative needs. Furthermore, these findings demonstrate that the experience of social acceptance can have unique effects and should not be treated as the sole comparison condition when studying social rejection.


Abstract: Sleep is vital for living organisms. Disruption of sleep is a hallmark of natural
aging. A growing body of evidence suggests that sleep serves roles in nervous
system-specific functions as well as general cell physiological functions related
to aging. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the connection
between sleep and aging are still poorly understood.
In this study, I have focused on starvation-induced sleep in larval C. elegans, and
aimed to figure out the sleep functions and the mechanism that connect sleep,
starvation, survival, and aging. First, I found that the sleep-promoting neuron RIS
is activated by starvation through sirtuin signaling and PTEN by further
activating the longevity regulators AMP kinase and FoxO, respectively. Next, I
discovered that the potential functions of sleep are involved in several
fundamental physiological mechanisms such as proteostasis, apoptotic cell death,
and autophagy as well as the aging process in starved larval C. elegans. Lastly, I
identified a novel protective anti-aging mechanism of sleep in arrested L1 larval
worms, which interacts with the mitochondrial respiratory chain, TOR signaling
and the unfolded protein response in regulating survival and aging during food
deprivation.
The discoveries in this study suggest that sleep is required to ensure the survival
by counteracting aging processes of larval C. elegans during prolonged
starvation, and sleep acts as a predictor for the longevity of the starvation-induced
developmental arrest. As a fundamental process, sleep presents a
beneficial strategy to protect living organisms against aging and starvation in the
larval period. These findings indicate that the functions of sleep have been
selected for early in evolution and might be conserved in humans.


Objectives: To develop transvaginal ultrasound scan (TVS) based ''soft markers'' to improve the definition of a normal scan in women undergoing diagnostic laparoscopy for chronic pelvic pain (CPP). Materials and methods: 120 consecutive patients had TVS 1–2 weeks before diagnostic laparoscopy for CPP. Anatomical abnormalities (hard markers) were documented; the presence of ''soft markers'' (reduced ovarian mobility, site-specific pelvic tenderness and free fluid) was also assessed. Results: Average age of the patients was 31 years (18–50), the average duration of pain was 45 months (6–180). 24 (20%) had hard markers for pelvic pathology (18 endometriomas, 6 hydrosalpinges). 96 (80%) had a normal conventional scan, of which 53 (55%) had soft markers for pelvic pathology while 43 (45%) did not. At laparoscopy, 51 had endometriosis, 7 endometriosis/pelvic adhesions, 6 pelvic adhesions, 1 hydrosalpinx/endometriosis and 5 hydrosalpinx/pelvic adhesions. The sensitivity and specificity of TVS to detect pathology based on hard markers was 68.5% and 100% respectively. The positive and negative predictive value of was 100%, and 49.3% respectively. The sensitivity and specificity of TVS to detect pathology based on soft markers was 87.5% and 78% respectively. The positive and negative predictive value of was 75.7% and 80% respectively. Conclusion: 80% of women who have a normal scan will have a normal laparoscopy. A pelvic scan should report on the presence of site-specific pelvic tenderness and ovarian mobility. This novel approach improves the predictive value of transvaginal ultrasound and reduces the need for unnecessary laparoscopy in women with chronic pelvic pain.


Background. PA movements are frequently used to assess and treat patients with neck pain, but little is known about their relationship to patient symptoms or the mechanism of their effect. Objectives. To determine the relationship between changes in stiffness of unilateral posterior-anterior (PA) movements, active range of movement (AROM) and indicators of sympathetic nervous system (SNS) function in patients with non-acute neck pain were measured immediately before and after manual therapy treatment. Methods. One symptomatic and one asymptomatic location were selected in 20 patients with non-acute neck pain. AROM, PA stiffness at each location and indicators of SNS function were measured before and after each of three manual therapy interventions and a control intervention. Results. Following treatment to the symptomatic location, there was a significant correlation between decreased mean PA stiffness at that location and increased total AROM (R = -0.596). The only individual axes of AROM that demonstrated a significant correlation was lateral flexion (R = -0.459). All regions of PA stiffness above 8 N demonstrated significant correlations with total AROM (R = -0.466 to -0.628). Although some changes in SNS measures were found following treatment, no correlations were found with changes in AROM. Conclusions. Increased posterior-anterior stiffness at locations deemed to be symptomatic is related to reduced AROM of the cervical spine in patients with non-acute neck pain. The therapeutic effects of treatment on PA stiffness are localized to the treated location and no indication was found of the effect being mediated through the SNS.


Bacterial cells lysogenic for D3112, a transposable Pseudomonas aeruginosa phage restrict the growth of a related heteroimmune B39 phage. The lysogens are divided into two different types PAO(D3112). In the lysogens of the type I the efficiency of B39 growth only decreases slightly, the lysogens of the type II restricting completely the growth of this phage (e.o.p. is less than 10(-7). As shown by the results of Southern hybridization experiments, lysogens of the type I are monolysogens, while those of the type II are double or polylysogens. Restriction of B39 in PAO(D3112) is caused by expression of a locus in the D3112 genome. The locus has been termed as cip (control of interaction of phages). The cip locus was mapped at the interval 1.3-2.45 kb of the D3112 physical map using different deletion derivatives of D3112. Expression of cip only takes place in the prophage state and not during the phage lytic development. When expressed, cip affects the early steps in the growth of B39 lowering the level of integration and transposition processes; the effect is not dependent on the way of initiation of the lytic cycle (through prophage induction or infection).


The influence of polymer coating on the shrinkage of cement-based materials is comparatively analyzed in this paper. First of all, the relationship between cement-based materials shrinkage and water loss is discussed. Furthermore, some surface topography differences and pore structure changes of cement-based materials causing by polymer coating are investigated. At last, the affecting mechanism of polymer coating on reducing cement-based materials shrinkage is investigated. The results show that polymer coating can significantly reduce the shrinkage of cement-based materials. A more thick coating gets a higher shrinkage reducing ratio. There is a close relationship between cement-based materials water loss ratio and shrinkage ratio. Polymer coating can make the micro-crack on cement-based materials surface disappear. The cement-based materials coated with polymer have a lower surface layer cumulative average porosity than blank control group. The evaporation of capillary water and the development of negative capillary pressure in cement-based materials are controlled by polymer coating, thus the shrinkage becomes small.


Author(s): Bateman, Nicoleta | Advisor(s): Rose, Sharon | Abstract: This dissertation presents both a descriptive and a formal account of palatalization patterns as identified in a balanced sample of 117 languages. I distinguish between two palatalization types, one involving a primary place of articulation change (full palatalization, e.g. t--g tS), the other involving the acquisition of a secondary palatal articulation (secondary palatalization, e.g. t--g tj). The focus is on similarities/differences in palatalization patterns due to the place of articulation of target consonants, and on palatalization triggers. I develop a formal analysis which uses Articulatory Phonology (AP) and Optimality Theory (OT), making crucial reference to the oral articulators (lips, tongue) that produce the sounds involved in palatalization and their interaction during speech production. Two main patterns are identified regarding palatalization triggers: (i) if lower front vowels are triggers, so are higher front vowels; (ii) if high back vowels are triggers, so are high front vowels. Regarding palatalization targets, I identify a striking dependency of labial palatalization on the palatalization of coronal and dorsal consonants: while coronal and dorsal palatalization can be independent or co-occurring in a given language, labial palatalization is always dependent on the palatalization of coronals and dorsals. Furthermore, labials do not undergo full palatalization. The few cases where this appears attested are explained via diachronic changes which did not involve palatalization of the labial itself. Historical evidence indicates that a palatal glide following the labial hardened to a palatal consonant, and that the labial ultimately deleted. The proposed account explains the occurrence of palatalization, as well as the general palatalization patterns and labial palatalization. Paltalization is viewed as the result of temporal overlap of articulatory gestures produced with the two major articulators, tongue and lips. Full palatalization results from great overlap of tongue gestures, and secondary palatalization results from minimal overlap of tongue/tongue or lips/tongue gestures. The formal OT implementation relies on constraints that have an articulatory motivation and also capture the dependency of labial palatalization on the palatalization of coronal and dorsal consonants. The results of the crosslinguistic study and the formal analysis demonstrate that phonetic articulation must be incorporated in the explanation of phonological patterns.


Recently, ultra-small Si devices utilizing a quantum-size and/or Coulomb blockade effect have been received much attention to open a new Si device stream. This paper describes a fabrication technology of Si nanodot nanowire memory transistors with side gates. For the first time, an inorganic EB resist process was applied to fabricate Si nanowires. The Si nanodevice has a Si nanowire, Si nanodots, and a poly-Si nanogate and works as a single electron memory transistor.


Interleukin‐21 (IL‐21) is a cytokine with potent regulatory effects on different immune cells. Recently, IL‐21 has been contemplated for use in the treatment of cancers. However, the molecular mechanisms regulating human IL‐21 gene expression has not yet been described. In this study, we initially studied the promoter region and identified the transcription start site. We thereafter described the essential region upstream of the transcription start site and showed the in vivo binding of NFATc2 and SP1 transcription factors to this region, in addition to their positive role in IL‐21 expression. We also studied the role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in regulating IL‐21 expression. We, thus, established the miRNA profile of CD4+CD45RO+ versus CD4+CD45RA+ isolated from healthy volunteers and identified a signature composed of 12 differentially expressed miRNAs. We showed that miR‐302c is able to negatively regulate IL‐21 expression by binding directly to its target site in the 3′‐untranslated region. Moreover, after using fresh human CD4‐positive T cells, we observed the high acetylation level of histone H4, an observation well in line with the already described high expression of IL‐21 in CD4+CD45RO+ versus CD4+CD45RA+ T cells. Altogether, our data identified different molecular mechanisms regulating IL‐21 expression.


We present a comprehensive study on how well gravitational-wave signals of binary black holes (BBHs) with nonzero eccentricities can be recovered with state of the art model-independent waveform reconstruction and parameter estimation techniques. For this we use BayesWave, a Bayesian algorithm used by the LIGO–Virgo Collaboration for unmodeled reconstructions of signal waveforms and parameters. We used two different waveform models to produce simulated signals of BBHs with eccentric orbits and embed them in samples of simulated noise of design-sensitivity Advanced LIGO detectors. We studied the network overlaps and point estimates of central moments of signal waveforms recovered by BayesWave as a function of e, the eccentricity of the binary at 8 Hz orbital frequency. BayesWave recovers signals of near-circular (e ≲ 0.2) and highly eccentric (e ≳ 0.7) binaries with network overlaps similar to that of circular (e = 0) ones, however it produces lower network overlaps for binaries with e ∈ [0.2, 0.7]. Estimation errors on central frequencies and bandwidths (measured relative to bandwidths) are nearly independent from e, while estimation errors on central times and durations (measured relative to durations) increase and decrease with e above e ≳ 0.5, respectively. We also tested how BayesWave performs when reconstructions are carried out using generalized wavelets with linear frequency evolution (chirplets) instead of sine-Gaussian wavelets. We have found that network overlaps improve by ∼10–20 percent when chirplets are used, and the improvement is the highest at low (e < 0.5) eccentricities. There is however no significant change in the estimation errors of central moments when the chirplet base is used.


According to the United Nation's (UN) universal declaration of human rights, men and women of full age can marry, without force, and formulate a family with no consideration towards race, nationality and religion of the partners, as highlighted in the article 16. In doing so, they are entitled to equal rights with regards to marriage and its dissolution, if required. This and other relevant statements indicate that they can't marry before the age of maturity. This also indicates that both male and female have equal rights while marrying. It means that as the male is free to choose or marry a female spouse, so is the female. The declaration also points out that both male and female have the equal rights to dissolve the marriage. In total, there are thirty articles in this declaration which deal with a variety of areas including education, marriage, status of people in society and other aspects. However, the focus of our research is the article 16. In this paper, we have accordingly analyzed this article in the light of Islamic teachings and its potential implications on Muslim societies across the world.


This paper proposes a method for adaptive identification and predictive control using an online sequential extreme learning machine based on the recursive partial least-squares method (OS-ELM-RPLS). OL-ELM-RPLS is an improvement to the online sequential extreme learning machine based on recursive least-squares (OS-ELM-RLS) introduced in [1]. Like in the batch extreme learning machine (ELM), in OS-ELM-RLS the input weights of a single-hidden layer feedforward neural network (SLFN) are randomly generated, however the output weights are obtained by a recursive least-squares (RLS) solution. However, due to multicollinearities in the columns of the hidden-layer output matrix caused by the presence of redundant input variables or by a large number of hidden-layer neurons, the problem of estimation the output weights can become ill-conditioned. In order to circumvent or mitigate such ill-conditioning problem, it is proposed to replace the RLS method by the recursive partial least-squares (RPLS) method. The identification methodology is proposed for two application problems: (1) construction of a inferential model, and (2) the learning of a model for the Generalized predictive control (GPC) algorithm. The integration of the proposed adaptive identification method with the GPC results in an adaptive predictive control methodology. To validate and demonstrate the performance and effectiveness of the proposed methodologies, they are applied on modeling of two public regression data sets and on control of the flow through a simulated valve.


The use of antimicrobial agents and antibiotics as remedial measures against fish diseases has been questioned. The huge amounts of antibiotics used in animal husbandry has exerted a very strong selection pressure on the resistance among bacteria, which have adapted to this situation, mainly by a horizontal and philandering flow of resistance genes. Prebiotics, probiotics and symbiotics have been proposed as strategic means to enhance feed utilization, growth and immunity in fish production. In the present trial, a total of 180 fish was divided into 4 groups of 3 replicates each. Each replicate contained 15 fish. The formulated diets were supplemented with prebiotic (Sargassum muticum), probiotic (Parkia biglobosa) and symbiotics (a combination of Parkia biglobosa and Sargassum muticum). Efficiency of the inclusion of prebiotics, probiotics and symbiotics in formulated diets was evaluated in African catfish, Clarias gariepinus fingerlings (mean weight 2.53±0.05g). Formulated diet was fed 5% body weight to a group of 15 fish (in 3 replica) for 12 weeks, compared to fish fed control pellet containing similar ingredients but was not supplemented. Results showed on the skin of fish fed probiotics diet recorded improved GST and SOD activity and less CAT activity whereas in the liver fish fed prebiotic and symbiotic diet showed improved GST and CAT activity relative to the control. There were significant (p<0.05) differences between fish fed the control diet and all treatments (prebiotic, probiotic, symbiotics). It may be concluded based on the results recorded in this study that prebiotics, probiotics and symbiotics supplementation in diets has positive effect on antioxidant enzyme activity in African catfish, Clarias gariepinus to improve resistance against bacterial infections.

 Key words: African catfish, antioxidant enzyme, feed utilization, growth, diets.


Machine Aided Indexing and the NASA Thesaurus Machine Aided Indexing (MAI) is a Web-based application program for aiding the indexing of literature in the NASA Scientific and Technical Information (STI) Database. MAI was designed to be a convenient, fully interactive tool for determining the subject matter of documents and identifying keywords. The heart of MAI is a natural-language processor that accepts, as input, any user-supplied text, including abstracts, full documents, and Web pages. Within seconds, the text is analyzed and a ranked list of terms is generated. The 17,800 terms of the NASA Thesaurus serve as the foundation of the knowledge base used by MAI. The NASA Thesaurus defines a standard vocabulary, the use of which enables MAI to assist in ensuring that STI documents are uniformly and consistently accessible. Of particular interest to traditional users of the NASA Thesaurus, MAI incorporates a fully searchable thesaurus display module that affords word-search and hierarchy-navigation capabilities that make it much easier and less time-consuming to look up terms and browse, relative to lookup and browsing in older print and Portable Document Format (PDF) digital versions of the Thesaurus. In addition, because MAI is centrally hosted, the Thesaurus data are always current. This program was written by Bill von Ofenheim for Langley Research Center. For further information, access http://mai.larc.nasa.gov. LAR-17110-1


Introduction: Using template is a very fast and reliable way for diagnosing and treatment planning in orthodontics. The aim of this study, which was done for the first time in Iran, was to prepare lateral and frontal cephalometric templates for men with normal occlusion to be used for diagnosis and treatment planning of patients who need orthodontic and ortho-surgical services. Materials and Methods: 31 male students of Islamic Azad University with normal occlusion, aged 19 to 25 with the mean age of 21.3 years, were selected. After preparing files and taking impressions, lateral and frontal cephalograms were taken in NHP and cephalometric analyses were done. Data were analysed using SPSS software (student t-test). Results: 2 templates were extracted, one lateral and one frontal or posterio-frontal. Conclusion: Using template is a very fast and reliable way for diagnosis and treatment planning in orthodontics. The templates of this study, which are available and will be submitted on request, can be used for patients of the above-mentioned age group.


A deep learning (DL)-based power control algorithm that solves the max-min user fairness problem in a cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system is proposed. Max-min rate optimization problem in a cell-free massive MIMO uplink setup is formulated, where user power allocations are optimized in order to maximize the minimum user rate. Instead of modeling the problem using mathematical optimization theory, and solving it with iterative algorithms, our proposed solution approach is using DL. Specifically, we model a deep neural network (DNN) and train it in an unsupervised manner to learn the optimum user power allocations which maximize the minimum user rate. This novel unsupervised learning-based approach does not require optimal power allocations to be known during model training as in previously used supervised learning techniques, hence it has a simpler and flexible model training stage. Numerical results show that the proposed DNN achieves a performance-complexity trade-off with around 400 times faster implementation and comparable performance to the optimization-based algorithm. An online learning stage is also introduced, which results in near-optimal performance with 4-6 times faster processing.


Polymeric alternating multilayer laminates have been prepared by coextrusion, utilizing a specially designed feedblock to combine the two incoming materials from different extruder. Layer multiplying elements (LME) were used to split the melt stream, divide it, and then bring the two polymeric melt streams together, increasing the number of layers, while decreasing the thickness of each layer. Polycarbonate (PC) and polypropylene (PP) were extruded to form alternating structures by repeated layer multiplications. The materials were characterized by optical microscopy (OM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) to study layer instabilities. Zig-zag type instabilities were found at the interfaces, predominantly in the center of the samples, which originated from the interfaces near the walls. Instabilities could be reduced by increasing the temperature of the LMEs and decreasing the total flow rate of both materials. ra†unoao : multilayer, interfacial instabilities, coextrusion, feedblock, AFM, layer multiplying element.


In this work, poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) were crosslinked using sodium tetraborate decahydrate (borax) to improve the mechanical and thermal properties of the neat PVA. The results showed that the CNCs affected the crystallization behavior of the crosslinked PVA. The crystallization temperature of the crosslinked PVA with CNCs increased considerably from ∼152 to ∼187 °C. The continuous improvement of the thermal stability was observed with the increasing content of CNCs in the crosslinked PVA films. Additionally, the strong interaction between the CNCs and PVA was theoretically estimated from the Young's modulus values of the composites. Thermodynamic mechanical testing revealed that the crosslinked PVA composite films with CNCs could bear higher loads at high temperature compared to the films without the CNCs. At 60 °C, 2.7 GPa was reported for the storage modulus of the crosslinked composites with 3 wt % of CNCs, twice as high as that for the crosslinked films without CNCs. Moreover, creep results were improved when CNCs were added in the crosslinked nanocomposites. The materials prepared in this work could broaden the opportunities for applications in a wide range of temperatures. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017, 134, 45710.


Abstract Fourteen indices of spontaneous movement activity of mail NIH-Swiss mice were measured. All examined non-concurrent antagonists of NMDA receptors were found to stimulate locomotion and inhibit (or not change) the vertical activity component. Karbamazepin and diphenylgidantoin closed to them by structure and effect stimulated locomotion and rearings. Concurrent CPP antagonist and endogenous antagonist of receptor glycine sub-unit, kinurenic acid slightly inhibited locomotion. Phencyclidin and disocilpin induced stereotypy. Supposedly, increasing dopaminergic postsynaptic excitation forms the basis of stimulating effect.


Diatom-derived polyunsaturated aldehydes (PUAs) are secondary metabolites acting as teratogens against grazers, allelochemicals by inhibiting the growth of closeby phytoplankton species, and also as signal molecules to determine the cell fate of diatom populations. The work presented here focuses on Nitric Oxide (NO) and Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) production in response to PUAs in Skeletonema marinoi, a cosmopolitan, bloom forming and PUA-producing diatom species. In the first part of the thesis I addressed the problem of whether PUA-producing species might have evolved different stress response mechanisms with respect to non-PUA producing ones and if this may r underlie their different ecological success. S. marinoi was exposed to different PUAs: DECA, which is not produced by S. marinoi, OCTA and HEPTA, which are PUAs commonly produced by this diatom and a mixture of these last two (MIX). A reduction in NO production was observed in response to all PUAs tested, probably due to consumption of physiological levels of NO, possibly indicating that this messanger acts as a growth regulator under optimal growth conditions. In the second part, a comparison with the non-PUA producing diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum revealed different reactions to the same PUAs (i.e. DECA), with an increase in NO production in DECA-exposed P. tricornutum, whereas in response to OCTA a reduction in NO production was evident. Thus, NO production in response to PUAs appears to be both PUA-specific and species-specific. Additionally, S. marinoi cells exposed to the photoinhibitor DCMU presented an increase in NO production, indicating that NO production in S. marinoi is likely to be also stress specific.
 In terms of ROS production, S. marinoi showed a sharp increase in ROS production upon exposure to all PUAs except for DECA that is not produced by this diatom. In addition, an enhanced synthesis of xanthophylls in OCT A-exposed S. marinoi cells was observed, likely to act as antioxidants against ROS production thereby assuring the maintenance of the photosynthetic performance at intermediate concentrations of PUAs. Additionally, in the congeneric species Skeletonema tropicum, PUAs induced an overexpression of a gene coding for a death specific protein (ScDSP), thought to be involved in an autocatalytic-type of cell death, also linked to a concentration-dependent increase in ROS production. This points to a key role of ROSs in mediating the response to PUAs leading to resistance or cell death, as for instance during the final stages of blooms. Altogether, the data show a differential reaction of cells to PUAs, depending on the diatom species, the PUA type and concentration and the stress factor applied. This suggests a role of PUAs as signal molecules at the cellular and population levels. This is likely to underlie the ecological differences and evolutionary success of PUA and nonPUA producing species.


A distinguished and revered elder of the British Psycho-Analytical Society, Dr William Gillespie is one of the few British psychoanalysts who began training in the Vienna of the early 1930s. Later he became well known in England for his pioneering studies of sexual perversion, and for his views on female sexuality, regression in old people facing death, and on instinct theory. William Gillespie is celebrated not only for his scientific contributions but also for his administrative skill, integrity and tact in managing the International Psycho-Analytical Association and the British Psycho-Analytical Society, where he was trusted and respected by both Melanie Klein and Anna Freud. In a biographical introduction the editor, Dr Michael Sinason, looks back on the productive 90 years of Gillespie's life, writing movingly of his early life in China and Scotland and showing his development as a psychoanalytic thinker, organizer and administrator, husband and father. Dr Charles Socarides, an American psychoanalyst eminent in the field of perversion and its treatment, discusses the innovations introduced by each of the papers in the collection shows how Gillespie's ideas influenced by his own contributions and affected the field as a whole.


The core claim of educational neuroscience is that neuroscience can improve teaching in the classroom. Many strong claims are made about the successes and the promise of this new discipline. By contrast, I show that there are no current examples of neuroscience motivating new and effective teaching methods, and argue that neuroscience is unlikely to improve teaching in the future. The reasons are two-fold. First, in practice, it is easier characterize the cognitive capacities of children on the basis of behavioral measures than on the basis of brain measures. As a consequence, neuroscience rarely offers insights into instruction above and beyond psychology. Second, in principle, the theoretical motivations underpinning educational neuroscience are misguided, and this makes it difficult to design or assess new teaching methods on the basis of neuroscience. Regarding the design of instruction, it is widely assumed that remedial instruction should target the underlying deficits associated with learning disorders, and neuroscience is used to characterize the deficit. However, the most effective forms of instruction may often rely on developing compensatory (non-impaired) skills. Neuroscience cannot determine whether instruction should target impaired or non-impaired skills. More importantly, regarding the assessment of instruction, the only relevant issue is whether the child learns, as reflected in behavior. Evidence that the brain changed in response to instruction irrelevant. At the same, an important goal for neuroscience is to characterize how the brain changes in response to learning, and this includes learning in the classroom. Neuroscientists cannot help educators, but educators can help neuroscientists.


Ascertaining the cause/s of differences in performance between units of the public administration is at least as important as quantifying the very level of individual performance. We identify two causes: inefficiency and con- gestion. Inefficiency might be due to the fact that inputs are of relatively low quality (e.g, temporary workers) and/or, for a given quality, to the fact that inputs do not have incentives to exert their maximum level of effort. Congestion arises when the number of new cases is above the number that can be solved when full efficiency is achieved. This decomposition is ap- plied to the universe of Catalonian first instance courts for the period 2005-13 applying a fixed-effect panel stochastic frontier model (Wang and Ho, 2010). In this particular case, we conclude that poor performance is not due to inefficiency on the courts' side, but to an increase in the litigation demand, that is, to congestion, while inefficiency tends to decrease along time and is correlated with the presence of temporary judges.


Papillomavirus is an oncogenic virus which infects mucosal and cutaneous epithelia where it induces benign hyperproliferative lesions. Few studies have been conducted on the causative factors associated with the development of cancer. Infections by highrisk human papillomaviruses (HPVs) have been implicated as causative agents in a variety of cancers such as anogenital, and head and neck cancers. HPVs appear to have evolved mechanisms resulting in escape from host immune surveillance and delay of resolution of infection. The HPV E5 oncoprotein is one of the possible effectors that allows the virus to escape from host immune system through the downregulation of surface classical major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC I) and not the nonclassical MHC I. Lack of classical MHC I in infected cells expressing E5 would allow evasion of cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) killing and thus establishment and persistence of viral infection. In this chapter we discuss the process of immunomodulation by HPV and review our recent discoveries on the association of HPV with cancers and its implication in medicine.


Correlation of serum lipid profile with serum iron, TIBC & ferritin levels in beta thalassemia major patients. BackgroundBeta thalassemia major, a common disorder, causes severe anemia. This is treated by regular blood transfusion, leading to iron overload and increased serum ferritin. There is considerable variation between studies as to the serum lipid levels in these patients. AimsThe study was carried out to observe the alteration of serum lipid levels and also whether the alteration could be correlated with ferritin and other hematological indices. Methods and materials-The study was carried out on 50 beta thalassemia major patients and 47 controls. Estimation of serum lipid profile, iron, ferritin, TIBC (Total iron binding capacity), hemoglobin and hematocrit was done. Statistical analysis-Data analysis was performed using standard methods. Results-Compared to controls, the cases had significantly higher ferritin and significantly lower HDL-C (high density lipoproteincholesterol) levels. There was inverse correlation between high ferritin and low HDL-C levels. Conclusion-Taken together, high ferritin and low HDL-C levels might be important predictors for mortality in thalassemia.


Similar to many developing countries, Oman recognizes the importance of e-learning and Information Communication Technology (ICT) to enhance the higher education standards and compete in the global education markets. Many higher education organizations today expect e-learning to add value to their organization and hence improve the economy by extending their educational services to students and other students who are not able to access them due to geographical distance limitation. His Majesty the Sultan Qaboos speech in 2008 adds further motivation for the development of the Information systems and technology in Oman by saying "Information technology and communications have now become the main elements that move forward the development process in this third millennium; therefore, we have afforded our attention to finding a national strategy to develop the skills and abilities of citizens in this domain with the aim of further developing e-government services". The Omani government has supported this process substantially through the development of telecom infrastructure and establishment of Information Technology Authority (ITA) to implement national IT infrastructure and supervise the implementation of digital Oman strategy. Although, there is high consensus in the higher educational literature that e-learning acceptance is vital for the competitive advantage of our organizations. Yet, there are still considerable gaps in our e-learning acceptance and understanding of a range of issues concerning both the conceptual and practical as the higher education in Oman is far behind in the development of e-learning acceptance. The lack of e-learning acceptance in the higher education has created problems for most organizations. Hence, this paper focuses on the investigation of the key factors that influence e-learning acceptance in Omani Universities. The study covered a sample of 800 respondents and applied structural equation modelling approach in the analysis. The findings indicated that the students are intending to use e-learning services. On the other hand, the findings revealed that the main variable that influence their behavior are perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use.


Considering the fact that altitude could significantly affect the quality of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) seeds, biological viability of seed tubers and cultivar Desiree originating from three sites in Serbia, Kotraua (700 m a.s.l.), Sjenica (1300 m a.s.l.) and Golija (1600 m a.s.l.), were evaluated at two different temperatures in the light phase of sprouting - commonly at 12°C and raised 18°C, continously during five weeks, in the two-year period to establish efficient and confident sprouting method. Examined seed tubers had the highest number (8.37) of sprouts and developed the longest (21.24 mm) sprouts, because of heat accumulation at higher sprouting temperature of 18°C. High sprout vigor score (4.54) also was observed at 18°C, while at 12°C the lowest (2.27) score was calculated. Sprouting capacity increased with the increased altitude and it was highest at the 1600 m a.s.l. (0.30 to 0.85%), while the lowest one was obtained at 700 m a.s.l. (0.17 to 0.64%). Sprouting capacity of tubers was greater at lower sprouting temperature (0.33 to 0.74%).


Introduction & Aims Performance evaluation of technical surgical skill is done by direct observation by expert surgeons. This is time intensive, costly, and requires training of assessors. Motion tracking could complement direct observation to provide immediate feedback during training and to support objective performance assessment. A recent study by Ahmed et al. (2017) showed that expert feedback combined with validated metrics resulted in greater performance improvement for novices. However, current motion tracking methods are expensive, non-portable, or very sensitive to disturbances from the environment. We hypothesize that combining technologies solves these limitations. The goal of the current study was to design a wireless, low-cost motion tracking system to support 1) real-time individual performance feedback and 2) objective assessment of technical surgical skills. Description An iterative, research-based design process with rapid prototyping was followed. First, we performed a needs assessment with a literature review and survey to a broad range of surgeons to identify relevant motion parameters. Second, various prototypes using an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and a Leap motion sensor were tested in an authentic surgical environment for 1) robustness and 2) accuracy. Outcomes Twelve surgeons (experience range = 2 - 27 years) from five different hospitals and a range of surgical specialties completed the survey and rated 'precision of movement' and 'minimizing unnecessary movements' as most important motion parameters of surgical skill. Furthermore, unnecessary or excessive movements and secondary tissue damage were reported as most common errors. The final prototype can be seen in Figure 1. The IMU is embedded in a sleeve and detects fine motor skills such as small hand movements, tremors, and strokes. The Leap Motion sensors complement this with infrared tracking of the hand in 3D space and time. The devices proved robust under changing lighting and gowning conditions. Accuracy of motion tracking was however influenced by instrument use. Discussion Our device offers the possibility for immediate performance feedback aiding trainees' self-assessment during training. By discriminating good from poor performers in training early on, training can be adapted to an individual trainee's needs and facilitate deliberate practice. Future research includes expert benchmarking and parameter selection. Motion tracking analysis complements subjective assessment that is prone to bias and reduces assessors' workload. Novelty of methodology Motion tracking to support surgical skill assessment is not yet common practice. The device offers a robust, affordable, and wearable alternative to current motion tracking devices.


This paper deals with the social implications of ethanol expansion in Brazil. The evolution of the labor market in sugar cane production in the country is analyzed together with its regional patterns of expansion, to illustrate how the changes in the recent expansion are modifying the traditional pattern of labor demand in the activity. At the same time, the distributional effects of sugar cane expansion, as well as it´s impacts on food security and land use change was approached with the aid of general equilibrium simulation models. The analysis shows that both the average earnings and the average years of schooling in sugar cane production are actually higher than in general agriculture in Brazil, and that this is linked to the fast increase in production in Southeast and Center-west. Sugar cane production in those regions is more capital intensive and has much higher productivity than in other traditional regions in Northeast Brazil. The study concludes that the expansion in sugar cane production in the actual patterns is poverty friendly, and has small impacts on food prices and deforestation. The increase in the regional economic imbalances inside the country seems to be the problem to deserve attention.