Introduction: It was believed that the fractures of AO types A1.2 and A1.3 are rotationally stable; but, they were found to be unstable when fixed with the dynamic hip screw. Hence we hypothesize that they must be treated as rotationally unstable patterns. Materials and Methods: dynamic hip screw with derotation screw (DHS-DRS) was done in 83 proximal femur fractures of A1, A2, and B2.1 types and followed for 24 months. Immediate assessment of reduction and fixation are found to be accurate. Collapse of fractures assessed after 6 months of surgery. Fractures were classified into 2 groups: Inevitably unstable group (IUG) A1.1, A2.1, A2.2, A2.3, and B2.1. Potentially unstable group (PUG) A1.2 and A1.3 and results were statistically analyzed. Results: Reduction achieved in 77 patients was found to be adequate and same goes for the fixation in 71 patients. All fractures healing showed a mean time of 13.5 weeks, and the fracture collapse amounted to an average of 5.8 mm. 66 patients showed equalization of the lower limbs, and 80 patients showed healthy contralateral equalization of hip motion range. One case with AO type A1.2 needed a reoperation. Insignificant differences were found when outcome of IUG and PUG was made. Conclusion: The use of DHS/DRS composite showed restoration and maintenance of the anatomical structure. Differences between the outcomes of IUG and PUG groups were insignificant and creates a reasonable need of classifying AO A1.2 and A1.3 as rotationally unstable types.


A theoretical framework is developed for the phenomenon of non-Gaussian normal diffusion that has experimentally been observed in several heterogeneous systems. From the Fokker-Planck equation with the dynamical structure with largely separated time scales, a set of three equations are derived for the fast degree of freedom, the slow degree of freedom and the coupling between these two hierarchies. It is shown that this approach consistently describes "diffusing diffusivity" and non-Gaussian normal diffusion.


In this paper we present a case study of applying combinatorial testing to test a combinatorial test generation tool called ACTS. The purpose of this study is two-fold. First, we want to gain experience and insights about how to apply combinatorial testing in practice. Second, we want to evaluate the effectiveness of combinatorial testing applied to a real-life system. ACTS has 24637 lines of uncommented code, and provides a command line interface and a fairly sophisticated graphic user interface. The main challenge of this study was to model the input space in terms of a set of parameters and values. Once the model was designed, we generated test cases using ACTS, which were then later used to test ACTS. The results of this study show that input space modeling can be a significant undertaking, and needs to be carefully managed. The results also show that combinatorial testing is effective in terms of achieving high code coverage and fault detection.


Vitamin D deficiency is a global health problem that has various adverse consequences. Vitamin D is mainly synthesized in the skin by sunlight (UV light) irradiation; therefore, vitamin D status is influenced by geographic locations, seasonal changes, and skin pigmentations. The kidney is involved in the biosynthesis of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D and the reuptake of filtered 25-hydroxyvitamin D from the proximal tubules, thus, vitamin D deficiency is highly prevalent in patients with kidney disease who have renal insufficiency. There is a growing body of epidemiological and clinical evidence in the literature that links vitamin D deficiency to cardiovascular disease. The discovery of the vitamin D hormone functioning as an endocrine inhibitor of the renin-angiotensin system provides an explanation for this association. This review will discuss the mechanism underlying the connection between vitamin D and cardiovascular disease and its physiological and therapeutic implications.


Many businesses seeking enhanced innovation have corporate research teams that engage in collaborative research projects (CRPs), with external entities such as universities, public organizations, or customers. Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests mixed outcomes of CRPs in terms of corporate research impact, which implies successful transfer of novel knowledge generated within CRPs to company-internal business networks to develop radically innovative products. We use the multiple regression quadratic assignment procedure (MRQAP) and meta-analysis to analyze six CRP networks. Our findings indicate that the network's relational characteristics (tie strength) and structural characteristics (network range) are important determinants of knowledge transfer at the fuzzy front end of innovation.


The dynamic rupture process of the 1984 Morgan Hill, California, earthquake (M = 6.2) has been investigated on the basis of a three-dimensional (3D) dynamic shear crack model, from previous waveform inversion results. For this purpose, a locking fracture criterion is introduced for rupture propagation, from which a lower bound of the peak shear stress just before rupturing, and hence of the relative fault strength, has been estimated at each fault segment. The distribution of static and dynamic stress drops has also been independently evaluated from that of fault slips by linear and nonlinear inversion procedures, respectively. The results show that large slips located from the hypocenter to about 10 km and 14 to 17 km along the strike at depths between 8 and 12 km result from local dynamic stress drops exceeding 40 and 140 bars, respectively. Negative stress drops down to 1 5 bars are required to explain very low slips over a shallow fault section. If a non-negative stress-drop condition is imposed, somewhat larger slips are obtained there than those from the waveform inversion. The above results suggest that there could be a zone of velocity-strengthening frictional behavior in the shallow crust, which may have arrested slip motion during rupture propagation. The strength excess is found to be generally small but somewhat larger at a small zone that has delayed rupture propagation. The dynamic rupture initiated from a small nucleus zone with a low stress drop, propagated southeastward, breaking the deeper fault section with high stress drop, and then broke a relatively high strength zone after a short time of arrest, with highest stress drop.


Human communication is based on verbal and nonverbal information, e.g., facial expressions and intonation cue the speaker's emotional state. Important speech features for emotion recognition are prosody (pitch, energy and duration) and voice quality (spectral energy, formants, MFCCs, jitter/shimmer). For facial expressions, features related to forehead, eye region, cheek and lip are important. Both audio and visual modalities provide relevant cues. Thus, audio and visual features were extracted and combined to evaluate emotion recognition on a British English corpus. The database of 120 utterances was recorded from an actor with 60 markers painted on his face, reading sentences in seven emotions (N=7): anger, disgust, fear, happiness, neutral, sadness and surprise. Recordings consisted of 15 phonetically-balanced TIMIT sentences per emotion, and video of the face captured by a 3dMD system. A total of 106 utterance-level audio features (prosodic and spectral) and 240 visual features (2D marker coordinates) were extracted. Experiments were performed with audio, visual and audiovisual features. The top 40 features were selected by sequential forward backward search using Bhattacharyya distance criterion. PCA and LDA transformations, calculated on the training data, were applied. Gaussian classifiers were trained with PCA and LDA features. Data was jack-knifed with 5 sets for training and 1 set for testing. Results were averaged over 6 tests. The emotion recognition accuracy was higher for visual features than audio features, for both PCA and LDA. Audiovisual results were close to those with visual features. Higher performance was achieved with LDA compared to PCA. The best recognition rate, 98%, was achieved for 6 LDA features (N-1) with audiovisual and visual features, whereas audio LDA scored 53%. Maximum PCA results for audio, visual and audiovisual features were 41%, 97% and 88% respectively. Future work involves experiments with more subjects and investigating the correlation between vocal and facial expressions of emotion.


Existing solutions for authentication and authorization in Web services make use of technologies such as SAML or WS-Security. These provide a static solution by using a set of predefined protocols. We propose a dynamic approach for the automated execution problem by developing a semantic security protocol model from which security protocol specifications are generated and automatically executed by participants. The proposed model consists of a sequential component, implemented as a WSDL-S specification, and an ontology component, implemented as an OWL specification. The correctness of the proposed model is ensured by using a set of rules and algorithms for generating it based on a protocol model given by the user. We validate our approach by generating and implementing several specifications for existing protocols such as the ISO9798 or Kerberos protocol.


This guide will help students find topics for their informative speech projects. Students will learn about keyword searching in databases. Students will learn how to evaluate sources, to credibility.


This paper provides a description of the recent decentralization reforms in Pakistan under General Musharraf. In the process, we hope to not only highlight major aspects of this reform, but also to analyze the evolution of this reform in historical context in order to better understand the potential causes behind the current decentralization. Analyzing the evolution of local government reforms in Pakistan is interesting because each of the reform experiments has been instituted at the behest of a non-representative centre using a 'top down' approach. The Pakistani experience shows that each of the reform experiments is a complementary change to a wider constitutional reengineering strategy devised to further centralization of political power in the hands of the non-representative centre. We argue here that the design of the local government reforms in these contexts becomes endogenous to the centralization objectives of the non-representative centre. It is hoped that analyzing the Pakistani experience will help shed light on the positive political economy question of why non-representative regimes have been willing proponents of decentralization to the local level.


The study looks at the persuasive power of brand taglines produced by linguistic choices and rhetoric devices in Pakistani context.Thirty taglines representing several brands and collected from different sources were analyzed in this study. The language of selected taglines was interpreted using stylistic analysis. It was discovered that when appropriate rhetorical features were combined with the effective social strategies, the consumers were enticed to purchase products or services advertised via taglines. The rhetoric devices employed in taglines were probed through rhetoric analysis. Persuasive power of taglines was ascertained through a survey, conducted with a sample of 150 members of generation Z.The findings indicated that taglines do not go unnoticed and exert a significant amount of influence on the targeted community. It reflected that the clever use of language is instrumental for the target audience's attraction to taglines.It contributes to show the extensive use of language in advertisements and various brands. A lot of the researchers focused on a particular area, like beauty product taglines, banks, educational institutions, and news channels but the present study is completely novel in this regard. As it pertained to taglines of globally recognized brands rather particular web domains.


BACKGROUND
Hereditary angioedema (HAE) is a rare autosomal dominant primary immunodeficiency with complement system defect characterized by recurrent episodes of angioedema involving the skin or mucosa of the upper respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts.

OBJECTIVE
To characterize the clinical and laboratory data of hereditary angioedema in Iran.

METHODS
Patients with probable diagnosis of angioedema were enrolled in this study. Demographic and clinical data were documented in the designed questionnaire including history of attacks, triggering factors and laboratory data such as C4, C1 esterase inhibitor level and function.

RESULTS
Among 63 patients who were clinically suspicious for angioedema (23 males and 40 females), 8 cases (12.7%) were diagnosed with HAE. Among these 8 HAE patients, 3 were diagnosed with HAE type 1 and five patients were diagnosed with HAE type 2. The mean ages of HAE type 1 and type 2 patients were 25.6 ± 13.5 and 22.4 ± 12.32 years. The mean age of onset in HAE type 1 group was 8 ± 5 years and in HAE type 2 group was 18.8 ± 11.84 years. The mean diagnosis delay was 17.6 years in HAE type 1 patients and 2.6 years in HAE type 2. The most common clinical manifestation was facial swelling presented in all HAE patients followed by swelling of extremities which was present in 7 patients with HAE.

CONCLUSION
The clinical criteria of the Iranian patients with HAE were consistent with the known clinical patterns of the disease.


BACKGROUND
Intravenous thrombolysis has gained widespread acceptance during the last 10 years, and is the only specific treatment approved for cerebral infarction. Haukeland University hospital introduced thrombolysis in 1998. The aim of this paper is to summarize our experience with the first 100 patients who had stroke caused by middle cerebral artery (MCA) occlusion and were treated with thrombolysis.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Patients receiving intravenous thrombolytic treatment between 1998 and 2005 were prospectively included into our database. We registered demographic data, risk factors, time aspects, short and long-term clinical results and complications.

RESULTS
Two hours after treatment, a definite clinical improvement was recorded in 30 % of patients, and after 24 hrs in 49 % of the patients. Symptomatic haemorrhages were seen in 2 % of the cases. Three patients underwent haemicraniectomy because of malignant cerebral oedema and danger of hernia. At three months follow-up, 55 % of the patients had a good outcome (independence), while 13 % were dead. Time from stroke onset to start of thrombolysis was reduced from 166 to 142 min during the study period.

INTERPRETATION
The results for the first 100 acute MCA stroke patients treated with thrombolysis in Haukeland University Hospital compare well with international data, both for clinical outcome and complications. Our results thereby support the notion that intravenous thrombolysis is effective and safe when applied as a routine treatment in a comprehensive stroke unit.


A poly(vinylcarboxylic acid) and its analogue alkyl ester exhibited significantly different thermal degradation mechanisms under pyrolysis conditions. The greatly enhanced monomer production of poly(alkylvinylcarboxylate) during pyrolysis makes possible qualitative analysis of poly(vinylcarboxylic acid) through its derivatized alkyl ester. In this study, copolymers containing poly(methacrylic acid) and methacrylic acid were used to demonstrate the pyrolysis gas chromatography qualitative analysis of derivatized polymer. The thermal decomposition mechanisms of poly(methacrylic acid), and poly(methyl methacrylate) were studied. The advantages and disadvantages of this derivatized process as related to Py-GC analysis are discussed.


This study examines (he role that moral education and values issues have played in (he teaching of history in this country from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present day. It takes as its main thesis the view that moral aims were explicitly part of the subject's rationale in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but in the decades following the Second World War these aims were to a large extent disavowed and history teaching underwent a revolution in its content, purpose and processes. In recent years the agenda of history has changed yet again and with the introduction of a national curriculum in history, once again personal, social and moral aims have been expressed as part of that subject's purpose in the curriculum. This first part of the thesis offers an overview of the teaching of moral education in. schools and examines the issues concerned and looks at definitions of the terms involved. It then looks at various theories of moral development and curricular responses to them. The second and third chapters examine the moral elements of history curricula throughout the past two hundred years and seek to identify main areas where history may with integrity be taught to further the aims of moral education. Chapter four examines the issues discussed within the framework of the National Curriculum. The fifth chapter deals with the views of academic historians on moral concerns within history and their responses to this dimension in the National Curriculum. Chapter six takes a broad survey of history textbooks and their moral assumptions and use within the classroom. It also considers some of the implications of the National Curriculum on book resources. The conclusion draws the strands of the thesis together and tries to take a common-sense stance in the 'history debate.


The housing market in the UK has seen a sustained increase in prices in recent years, in common with many international markets. The UK market has however witnessed distinct regional trends in price dynamics. This has been a common factor in the UK market as noted in the many papers that have examined the ripple effect and convergence across regional markets (e.g. Meen, 1999, 2005 and Cook, 2003). The differing dynamics of the London market has been a key element in many of these studies and it is this market that the current paper explicitly examines. In contrast to many international markets few studies have examined the rental market in the UK and its relationship to trends in residential prices. This paper builds upon the existing literature to have examined the residential market within an asset pricing framework (e.g. Ayuso, 2005, Carreras-i-Solanas et al., 2004, Chan et al., 2001, Clayton, 1996, Mankiw & Weil, 1989, Poterba, 1984, 1991, Topel & Rosen, 1988). The paper explicitly examines the London market for two reasons. Firstly, the market has quite distinct characteristics in comparison to the rest of the UK. Secondly, the capital has the largest rental market in a country with a relatively high level of owner occupation and is therefore best placed for an analysis of the price-rent relationship.


Precision ultrasonic vibration cutting (UVC) is a promising technology in field of precision and ultra-precision machining. It is a kind of the pulsing cutting process with a constant vibration frequency and sine-wave amplitude of vibration. Its practicability has been a research focus since it came into being. In this article, an precision UVC system is built by designing this system, including the selection of precision machine and ultrasonic generator, the design of ultrasonic transducer, and then many cutting experiment are been done. Different of chips under the conditions of ultrasonic and no ultrasonic are made, and deformation coefficient of chip obtained by vibration cutting is smaller. The effect of cutting parameters on roughness is discussed in precision vibration cutting, the surface roughness decreased with the increase of the amplitude and the decrease of the cutting depth or feed rate, at the same time, there is an optimum cutting speed to receive the best surface.


Chicken-based ingredients are commonly used in pet food products, but vary greatly in nutrient composition and processing conditions that may affect their protein quality and digestibility. Testing the quality of protein sources undergoing different processing conditions provides important information to pet food producers. The objective of this study was to determine the chemical composition, nutrient digestibility, protein, and AA digestibility scores, and nitrogen-corrected true metabolizable energy (TMEn) of chicken-based ingredients that had undergone different processing conditions (i.e., chicken meal, raw chicken, retorted chicken, and steamed chicken) using the precision-fed cecectomized rooster assay. True nutrient digestibility was variable among the protein sources (60% to 76% of DM, 66% to 81% of OM, 83% to 90% of AHF, 50% to 95% of AA and 73% to 85% of TMEn/GE). In general, the chicken meal had a lower (P < 0.05) nutrient digestibility than other ingredients tested, including DM, OM, and most indispensable and dispensable AA, with most having a true digestibility between 75% and 85%. The steamed chicken had the highest indispensable AA digestibilities, with all having a true digestibility greater than 88% and most being over 90%. TMEn value and digestible indispensable AA scores (DIAAS)-like values were higher (P < 0.0001) in the less processed chicken-based ingredients in comparison to chicken meal. Although animal proteins are often considered to be complete proteins, DIAAS-like values <100% suggest that ingredients like chicken meal may not provide all indispensable AA when included at levels to the meet minimal crude protein recommendation. Although raw protein sources are often touted as being the most digestible and of the highest quality, the steamed chicken had the highest (P < 0.0001) DIAAS-like values in this study. This study demonstrates the considerable variability that exists, not only in the chemical composition but also in the true nutrient digestibility among chicken-based ingredients undergoing different processing conditions. These data justify more in vivo testing and the use of DIAAS-like values that consider AA profile, in vivo digestibility, and species-specific recommendations, to evaluate protein-based ingredients intended for use in dog and cat foods.


This specification describes how to use bearer tokens in HTTP requests to access OAuth 2.0 protected resources. Any party in possession of a bearer token (a "bearer") can use it to get access to the associated resources (without demonstrating possession of a cryptographic key). To prevent misuse, bearer tokens need to be protected from disclosure in storage and in transport.


Ring spot, caused by the fungus Leptosphariea sacchari, is a disease of sugarcane that has been known to occur in Florida for over 80 years. Ring spot usually affects only the older leaves, and therefore is considered a minor disease. However, correctly identifying the disease in the field can help to reduce unnecessary chemical sprays. This 2-page fact sheet outlines the symptoms and spread of the disease, as well as how to prevent and control Sugarcane Ring Spot. Written by P. Rott, J.C. Comstock, H.S. Sandhu, and R.N. Raid, and published by the Plant Pathology Department, September 2015.
PP321/PP321: Sugarcane Ring Spot (ufl.edu)


With the growing population of online shopping, people pay more attention to online consumer reviews which influence consumer purchasing decisions. Consumer reviews are increasingly available online for a wide rage of products and services. This paper studies the impact of online reviews on the consumer purchasing decisions towards management response from four dimensions of online reviews number, review valance, review quality and management response by the method of experimental study, and builds the model of relationship between online reviews system and consumer purchasing decisions to test the moderating effect of management response in this model. The results show as follows: online review number, review valance, review quality and management response have a positive influence on consumer purchasing decisions; management response plays the significant moderating role in this process. As a result, characteristics of online review messages and management responses have a varying degree of impact on consumer purchasing decisions. We mainly discuss the implications of our findings for practice.


Knowledge of the mean-free-path distribution of heat-carrying phonons is key to understanding phononmediated thermal transport. We demonstrate that thermal conductivity measurements of thin membranes spanning a wide thickness range can be used to characterize how bulk thermal conductivity is distributed over phonon mean free paths. A noncontact transient thermal grating technique was used to measure the thermal conductivity of suspended Si membranes ranging from 15–1500 nm in thickness. A decrease in the thermal conductivity from 74–13% of the bulk value is observed over this thickness range, which is attributed to diffuse phonon boundary scattering. Due to the well-defined relation between the membrane thickness and phonon mean-free-path suppression, combined with the range and accuracy of the measurements, we can reconstruct the bulk thermal conductivity accumulation vs. phonon mean free path, and compare with theoretical models.


Collaborative question answering (CQA) communities rely on user participation for their success. This paper presents a supervised Bayesian approach to model expertise in on-line CQA communities with application to question recommendation, aimed at reducing waiting times for responses and avoiding question starvation. We propose a novel algorithm called RankSLDA which extends the supervised Latent Dirichlet Allocation model by considering a learning-to-rank paradigm. This allows us to exploit the inherent collaborative effects that are present in CQA communities where users tend to answer questions in their topics of expertise. Users can thus be modeled on the basis of the topics in which they demonstrate expertise. In the supervised stage of the method we model the pairwise order of expertise of users on a given question. We compare RankSLDA against several alternative methods on data from the Cross Validate community, part of the Stack Exchange network. RankSLDA outperforms all alternative methods by a significant margin.


In this paper we deal with congruence equations arising from suborbital graphs of the normalizer of Γ0(m) in PSL(2,R) . We also propose a conjecture concerning the suborbital graphs of the normalizer and the related congruence equations. In order to prove the existence of solution of an equation over prime finite field, this paper utilizes the Fuchsian group action on the upper half plane and Farey graphs properties.


ABSTRACT Maintenance of cell type identity is crucial for health, yet little is known of the regulation that sustains the long-term stability of differentiated phenotypes. To investigate the roles that key transcriptional regulators play in adult differentiated cells, we examined the effects of depletion of the developmental master regulator PTF1A on the specialized phenotype of the adult pancreatic acinar cell in vivo. Transcriptome sequencing and chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing results showed that PTF1A maintains the expression of genes for all cellular processes dedicated to the production of the secretory digestive enzymes, a highly attuned surveillance of unfolded proteins, and a heightened unfolded protein response (UPR). Control by PTF1A is direct on target genes and indirect through a ten-member transcription factor network. Depletion of PTF1A causes an imbalance that overwhelms the UPR, induces cellular injury, and provokes acinar metaplasia. Compromised cellular identity occurs by derepression of characteristic stomach genes, some of which are also associated with pancreatic ductal cells. The loss of acinar cell homeostasis, differentiation, and identity is directly relevant to the pathologies of pancreatitis and pancreatic adenocarcinoma.


Currently, the surface of Mars cannot sustain liquid water, but there is evidence suggesting that water was present in the Noachian. Although water might exist in the subsurface of Mars, it could not sustain in the present day unless it was highly saline. Thus, saline springs in polar desert environments are analogues with which to investigate martian conditions. An example of this is Axel Heiberg Island, located in a region of continuous permafrost in the Canadian High Arctic, which hosts sulfidic and highly saline springs. In this study, cultivation-dependant and independent techniques were used to investigate the microbial diversity of a sediment sample collected from a saline cold (3–8 °C) pool at Colour Peak Springs on Axel Heiberg. Both DNA and RNA were extracted from the samples, and the microbial community was characterised using the 16S rRNA gene from the extracted nucleic acids. The metabolic profile was characterised by screening DNA and cDNA for functional genes relating to the cycling of carbon (coxL, xoxF, cbbL), nitrogen (nifH, nosZ, nod) and sulfur (dsrB, soxB). The community profiles were used to inform enrichment strategies, allowing for the isolation and characterisation of several halophilic isolates including strains of Marinobacter, Halomonas, Halanaerobium and Loktanella. Through this work we have been able to develop an in-depth characterisation of the metabolic and phylogenetic diversity that is present and viable within this analogue site. This allows us to start building an understanding of the underlying mechanisms and strategies that enable organisms to persist in these environments.


THE PAPER EMPIRICALLY MEASURES THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN RISK MANAGEMENT AND UNCERTAINTY AND THE CONTEXTUAL VARIABILITY OF RISK MANAGEMENT PRACTICE. THE RESEARCH FIRST CLARIFIES THE CONCEPTS OF UNCERTAINTY, RISK AND RISK MANAGEMENT. THE RESEARCH DEFINES RISK MANAGEMENT FROM AN EMPIRICAL PERSPECTIVE I.E., FROM AN EMPIRICALLY IDENTIFIED SET OF TOOLS THAT IS ACTUALLY USED TO PERFORM RISK MANAGEMENT. THIS TOOLSET IS DERIVED FROM THE RESULTS OF AN ONGOING MAJOR WORLDWIDE SURVEY ON WHAT EXPERIENCED PRACTITIONERS ACTUALLY DO TO MANAGE THEIR PROJECTS. THIS PAPER USES A SAMPLE OF 1,296 RESPONSES FOR WHICH THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN RISK MANAGEMENT AND UNCERTAINTY COULD BE MEASURED. The results are very coherent. They verify and empirically validate many of the propositions drawn from a review of the literature. But results challenge some of the propositions found in the conventional project management literature and some commonly held views. The research shows that the use of risk management practices and tools is negatively related to the degree of project uncertainty. This somewhat counter-intuitive result is consistent with a general tendency for all project management tools and techniques to be used more intensively in better defined contexts. The dominant project management paradigm is oriented towards reducing or controlling uncertainty, but is less well adapted to unforeseeable events and high levels of uncertainty. A better understanding of the reality of the actual practice leads to a discussion about supplementing the current paradigm with new approaches to manage the uncertainty that cannot be removed or reduced by the conventional project management approach.


Cervical intraepithelial neoplasia has a high incidence in many of the world's populations, and it has been hypothesized to be a precursor of uterine cervical cancer. Cervical intraepithelial neoplasia also shares similar pathological traits with human papillomavirus infections. Various surgical treatments have been proposed over the years for the treatment of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, including conization, hysterectomy and, more recently, a loop electrosurgical excisional procedure. However, a higher recurrence rate of the disease has been observed after these procedures. Therefore, immunotherapy has been proposed as a potential treatment to be used in conjunction with surgery, or independently, as treatment for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. Currently, immunotherapy includes the application of recombinant viral proteins, vaccines, or antibody- and dendritic cell-based therapies. In this review, we summarize the development and testing of these immunotherapy approaches, particularly in regard to their application for the treatment of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia.


This study examined the phenomenon behind the increased rate of educated unemployed universitygraduates and attempted to formulate appropriate treatment programs to reduce the educated unemployeduniversity graduates rate in the society. The study was conducted in Surabaya and Sidoarjo. One hundrededucated unemployed university graduates participated in this study. The study found that many universitygraduates, in general, were not able to demonstrate independence in creating jobs and business for themselves.Being graduated from high-ranking universities and having GPA above three did not necessarily mean that theycould obtain a desired job. Many university graduates did not have a good command of English, making themlack of competence required by the job market. In addition, most university graduates also had no connectionthat could be used to find a job, and limited access to capital resources. Therefore, in the middle of increasingcompetition in searching for a job, it could be understood that some of them were eventually unemployed, eitherfor a period of less than one year or more than one year.


Nitrate is one of the evaluation indicators of water quality, which is particularly important for water quality monitoring. A real-time on-line monitoring system of nitrate in water is introduced in this paper. And the ultraviolet absorption technology (190-370 nm) with partial least squares method is used to detect nitrate concentration. The automated online system based on ultraviolet absorption spectrum is capable of analyzing samples without any sample preservation and without contamination problems. This system is fast, reliable, and sensitive enough for continuous use on monitoring stations and nitrate concentration can also be determined directly via its ultraviolet absorption spectrum. This system uses flow sample cell with 1cm optical path length, and a reference light is used to eliminate system error. The correlation coefficient for a linear function of the nitrate concentrations is 0.999 98. So the results of the system model test are in good correlation with the laboratory ones. Data collected has been analyzed statistically to determine how system model behave throughout the test, with special attention being paid to error analysis. As the average relative error is 0.65%, this system has greater stability and higher accuracy. The results of nitrate measurements by the field seawater tests in Yantai coast are obtained, which nitrate concentrations are about 0.2 mg · L⁻¹ in seawater, and the recoveries of samples for standard recovery tests are in 95%~110%, it shows that this system is accurate, reliability and practicability and could be developed for detected nitrate concentration in natural water.


The Netherlands, until the mid-1980s a country with high unemployment, has seen rising employment for some years. Currently its unemployment rate is below five per cent. Employment growth is mostly due to the expansion of part-time jobs, particularly for women. Because there are many people in disability and early retirement schemes, unemployment is, however, still high. A special feature is that the Dutch have managed to bring down unemployment in a context of a welfare system which is still relatively generous. There have been cuts, but the Dutch poverty rate is still one of the lowest in the world. The most frequently advanced explanation for this 'miracle' is the wage restraint the unions accepted for more than a decade within the framework of the Dutch corporatist institutions. Looking at other low unemployment/high employment countries, however, one can doubt that this explanation is valid. The causes of the Dutch development are probably more complex, and perhaps include sharply rising house prices and the right of tax reduction through mortgage payments, an opportunity the Dutch people have used very extensively in recent years. By doing this they have raised purchasing power more than it was reduced by wage restraint.


This study provides an analysis of the fiscal treatment of pension funds compared to other savings vehicles under both the existing tax structure and the reformed one. Under the existing tax structure, pension plans do not receive a favorable tax treatment compared to the alternatives for all employees. The reform provides an incentive to the demand of pension funds by readjusting the "fiscal competition" of other savings vehicles, mainly life insurance policies; moderately increases the tax benefits that can be gained from pension schemes by employees with a long investment horizon and significantly diminishes the convenience of a lumpsum payment.


Writing is a complex process requiring visual memory, attention, phonological and semantic operations, and motor performance. For that reason, it can easily be disturbed by interfering with attention, memory, by interfering subvocalization, and so on. With 16 female third-year students (23.4 ± 0.8 yr.) from the University of Trieste, we investigated the production of errors in three experimental conditions (control, articulatory suppression, and tapping). In the articulatory suppression condition, the participants produced significantly more linguistic impairments (such as agrammatism, unrelated substitutions, sentence omissions, and semantically deviant sentences), which are similar to linguistic impairments found in aphasia. On the tapping condition there were more perseverations, deletions, and substitutions of both letters and words. These data suggest that writing is not an automatic skill. Only after many years of experience and practice of processing information (through cortical to subcortical channels) can writing be considered an automatic skill. Limited experimental conditions can disrupt the writing system of normal subjects, probably interfering with the cortical to subcortical loops, and link normality to pathology.


Nanotechnology starts at the substrate level. Engineered substrate is one of the most important innovations of the nanotechnology era driven by the vanishing boundary between substrate design and device architecture. SOI substrates, the first engineered substrate of its kind, have made possible an efficient optimization of MOSFET current drive while minimizing the leakage and reducing parasitic elements, thus enhancing the overall IC performance. Strained silicon, hybrid orientation SOI, and germanium on insulator have all added new handles to traditional scaling to further improve device and IC performance. An overview of the advances in Smart Cut engineered substrates and the impact on device performance will be given.


The aim of this article was to outline the basis for an introductory course to higher education focusing on students' approaches to learning and the role of teaching in higher education. The framework is a discussion on contemporary literature on approaches to learning. In the article experiences are also reported of developing and implementing an introductory course at the Sahlgrenska Academy, Göteborg University, Sweden. This was made within the LearnAble project, which was a two‐tier approach in which students were given an introductory course to higher education parallel with a course in pedagogy in higher education for teachers. The courses were evaluated with different instruments, which is also to some extent accounted for. The transition from upper secondary school to studies in higher education is discussed, as is the importance of a scholarship of teaching in the context of the courses mentioned above. In this article the authors argue that a well‐planned and stimulating introduction to higher education could be a natural part of the transition process, which can help students develop better prerequisites to manage their studies in higher education.


India, Technology, and Transparency Political corruption, the misuse of public office for private gain, is a global phenomenon capable of paralyzing a country's development and diverting its precious resources from the public needs of the entire nation. Corruption creates a black market immune from formal government control; indeed, it generates the "black dollars" that purchase the decision-making power of public officials. The result can be a criminalization of the entire political and bureaucratic system that further restricts the government's ability to enact well-intentioned and much-needed reform. While every nation tolerates a certain amount of corruption, the level of this abuse varies wildly across the globe. In general, the least corrupt nations are almost always the most developed as well. India, the second most populous nation in the world, is also one of the most corrupt. According to Transparency International's report for 2000, India is the 69th most corrupt country in the world, out of 90 countries surveyed. Corruption is anti-poor, anti-national, and anti-economic development. Out of a population of greater than one billion in India, 26 percent live below the poverty line. Any welfare policies addressing the needs of the poor are greatly limited by the corruption that permeates the bureaucratic apparatus involved with such redistribution. Out of the Rs. 150 million (US$3.75 million) spent in the public distribution system to provide food to the poor, 31 percent of the grains and 36 percent of the sugar were leaked into the black market. This means that nearly Rs. 50 million (US$1 million) worth of subsidies are not reaching their intended beneficiaries; in a sense, food is being snatched away from the mouths of the poor. Corruption is anti-national. In the fighting over Kashmir, the Kashmiri militants have been financed from outside the national borders of India. To get this money, the militants used the Hawala route--a method of transferring money in and out of the country outside of the official banking system. In the early 1990s, police investigating how Kashmiri militants got their funds stumbled onto the Hawala route and the diaries of Hawala operators. In the expose of the Hawala operation, many members of the power elite in India- namely politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen--were found to be involved with the redistribution of funds into the Kashmiri revolt. Finally, corruption is anti-development. According to the UN Development Project Report for South Asia in 1999, if the corruption levels in India came down to that of the Scandinavian countries, India's GDP growth would increase by 1.5 percent, and foreign direct investment would grow by 12 percent. In fact, the black market in India, according to some estimates, constitutes 40 percent of India's economic activity. That means that almost half of the wealth produced in India is unaccountable to the state, and hence untaxable; thus, the population is deprived of the revenue necessary for improvements in infrastructure, health, and educanon. Official Response The process of combating this epidemic in India has been slow in coming. The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) is the culmination of half a century of momentum to address the issue of corruption. The Indian government commissioned the CVC to ensure the effective implementation of the Prevention of Corruption Act, which focuses on the leaking of public funds via India's extensive bureaucratic system. The number of public servants in the central government is four million, but the CVC has jurisdiction only over the highest-ranking officials. The origin of the CVC can be traced to the Mundhra financial scandal in the late 1950g. In response to this scandal, the government-appointed Santhanam Committee recommended setting up a commission that would have jurisdiction over only Indian government officials. …


Nigeria is a country blessed with various natural resources and one of the countries in Africa with regular discovery of new oil fields in the past decades. Nigeria is also endowed with human and better climatic condition which has enhanced the natural resources, which include the renewable and non-renewable resources. Despite these resources, Nigeria has continued to remain poor and underdeveloped than other countries without such potentials, a problem scholars have tagged "resource curse." Scholars have attributed this paradox to a number of factors ranging from corruption, wastage, poor leadership recruitment and conflict of interest. The study sets out to investigate Oil Resource Management in Nigeria and the Paradox of Development in the Niger Delta. The main objective is to determine whether the poor management of oil revenue is responsible for the paradox of underdevelopment in the Niger Delta. The study deployed the Content Analysis and Focus Group Discussion as sources of data while mixed methods of data analysis was used. The study observed that there are various contending interests over the management and control of crude oil resources in Nigeria. The study is of the view that the underground current and the inter-play among the stakeholder are responsible for the abysmal management of the oil resource in Nigeria and have affected the development of the Niger Delta region. We recommend among others the convocation of a National Conference on Natural Resource Management in Nigeria with a view to taking a common stand on how the oil resource can be better managed for rapid socioeconomic development of Nigeria.


Structure Fatigue examines the interplay between elements in a complex urban environment which leads to certain surface details taking priority over the shape of an object. 'Noise' in its various forms acts as both a framing device and an 'attractor' in the processes of perception, with the textural details of building forms (such as the rusting subway overpasses in Astoria, New York) subverting consciousness of their overall structure, identity and associated sense of place.The visuals are structured in relation to audio in which small details (tonal pulses) similarly undermine the perception of large-scale glissandi and harmonic structures, leaving the viewer in a state of limbo between this constant movement and a feeling of stasis.


The prediction of dynamic instability remains an open and important issue in the development of gas turbine systems, particularly those constrained by emissions limitations. The existence and characteristics of dynamic instability are known to be functions of combustor geometry, flow conditions, and combustion parameters, but the form of dependence is not well understood. By modifying the acoustic boundary conditions, changes in flame and flow structure due to inlet parameters can be studied independent of the acoustic modes with which they couple. This paper examines the effect of equivalence ratio on the flame macrostructure — the relationship between the turbulent flame brush and the dominant flow structures — in an acoustically uncoupled environment. The flame brush is measured using CH* chemiluminescence, and the flow is interrogated using two-dimensional particle image velocimetry. We examine a range of equivalence ratios spanning three distinct macrostructures. The first macrostructure (ϕ = 0.550) is characterized by a diffuse flame brush confined to the interior of the inner recirculation zone. We observe a conical flame in the inner shear layer, continuing along the wall shear layer in the second macrostructure (ϕ = 0.600). The third macrostructure exhibits the same flame brush as the second, with an additional flame brush in the outer shear layer (ϕ = 0.650). Between the second and third macrostructures, we observe a regime in which the flame brush transitions intermittently between the two structures. We use dynamic mode decomposition on the PIV data to show that this transition event, which we call flickering, is linked to vorticity generated by the intermittent expansion of the outer recirculation zone as the flame jumps in and out of the outer shear layer. In a companion paper, we show how the macrostructures described in this paper are linked with dynamic instability [1].Copyright © 2014 by ASME


We tackle the difficult problem of summarizing the path/branching structure and value content of an XML database that comprises both numeric and textual values. We introduce a novel XML-summarization model, termed XCLUSTERs, that enables accurate selectivity estimates for the class of twig queries with numeric-range, substring, and textual IR predicates over the content of XML elements. In a nutshell, an XCLUSTER synopsis represents an effective clustering of XML elements based on both their structural and value-based characteristics. By leveraging techniques for summarizing XML-document structure as well as numeric and textual data distributions, our XCLUSTER model provides the first known unified framework for handling path/branching structure and different types of element values. We detail the XCLUSTER model, and develop a systematic framework for the construction of effective XCLUSTER summaries within a specified storage budget. Experimental results on synthetic and real-life data verify the effectiveness of our XCLUSTER synopses, clearly demonstrating their ability to accurately summarize XML databases with mixed-value content. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first work to address the summarization problem for structured XML content in its full generality.


This article seeks to examine, quantitatively and qualitatively, one week of official media releases of the Islamic State (IS). Due to the breadth of IS official media releases, this provides a snapshot upon which to better understand the different styles and messaging streams IS releases on a weekly basis. The article shows that IS produces much more material, and on a broader range of topics, than what gets reported in the mainstream media. Execution videos make up just a fraction of the overall output and are dwarfed by the number of IS productions on military affairs, governance, preaching, moral policing, and other themes. The analysis also shows that IS relies very heavily on visual as opposed to text-based propaganda, and that most of its military activities take place in Iraq, not Syria.


Automation of highly precise microassembly steps will make it easier to realize low cost microsystems. For this, a microrobot-based microassembly desktop station is being developed at the University of Karlsruhe. In this paper, we suggest a common microassembly model for a computer-aided microassembly planning-which is based on geometric reasoning-and discuss its components in detail. The feasibility criteria for the generation of feasible assembly sequences and the optimization criteria for selecting the optimal assembly plan are described. For both these planning steps, the algorithms for an automatic procedure have been developed and implemented. For stations employing several microrobots, a method for decomposition and allocation of an assembly plan is suggested. Finally, we discuss the structure of the station's planning system.


: Increasing demands by society in the United States for better, more efficient, and readily available health care have led to development of numerous categories of health practitioners. After a decade of vigorous growth, the emergence of new kinds of specialized health personnel raises questions of legal authority and quality of care. The multiplicity of health care professions often results in duplication of effort, fragmentation of services, and overlapping of job responsibilities, which contribute to ineffective regulation of health care personnel. Historically, credentialing has been the hallmark of professional accountability. All forms of credentialing are intended to provide the public with safe and effective care, but unfortunately the current system has led to ineffective regulation of health care personnel. Respect for professionalism has diminished in the public eye as consumers are questioning whether the elaborate, multiple, and costly mechanisms of current credentialing really protect society. Three types of credentialing currently in use are accreditation of institutions and educational programs, licensure of practitioners, and certification or registration of practitioners. These mechanisms of credentialing are not adequately assuring the competency of health practitioners; therefore, proposed alternatives such as institutional licensure, administrative regulation, national certification, and proficiency examinations should be explored.


The association of natural polymers with silica is a fruitful strategy to design novel hybrid structures with potential applications in the fields of biotechnology, medicine, and environmental sciences. Here we illustrate the principles of formation, the structure, and the properties of such biohybrid systems by the specific example of silica–pectin porous materials. The influence of the silica source, i.e., aqueous silicates and tetraethoxysilane (TEOS), was more specifically addressed. The alkoxide precursor may be associated with the polysaccharide in a wide range of concentrations. In contrast, the high initial viscosity and fast condensation rate of silicates limits the range of accessible compositions. Owing to weak interactions between the mineral and organic components, silicification does not improve the thermal stability of the polymer but has a strong impact on the water stability of the materials, which depends on the silica source. It is shown that the stability of the silica–pectin hybrid materials during enzymatic degradation is optimum for low carbohydrate content and high silica content, independently of the inorganic precursor.


Seven pyridoxal dioxime quaternary salts (1–7) were synthesized with the aim of studying their interactions with human acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE). The synthesis was achieved by the quaternization of pyridoxal monooxime with substituted 2-bromoacetophenone oximes (phenacyl bromide oximes). All compounds, prepared in good yields (43–76%) and characterized by 1D and 2D NMR spectroscopy, were evaluated as reversible inhibitors of cholinesterase and/or reactivators of enzymes inhibited by toxic organophosphorus compounds. Their potency was compared with that of their monooxime analogues and medically approved oxime HI-6. The obtained pyridoxal dioximes were relatively weak inhibitors for both enzymes (Ki = 100–400 µM). The second oxime group in the structure did not improve the binding compared to the monooxime analogues. The same was observed for reactivation of VX-, tabun-, and paraoxon-inhibited AChE and BChE, where no significant efficiency burst was noted. In silico analysis and molecular docking studies connected the kinetic data to the structural features of the tested compound, showing that the low binding affinity and reactivation efficacy may be a consequence of a bulk structure hindering important reactive groups. The tested dioximes were non-toxic to human neuroblastoma cells (SH-SY5Y) and human embryonal kidney cells (HEK293).


White pine blister rust (WPBR), caused by Cronartium ribicola, is a devastating disease in five-needle pines. Genetic resistance is an important component of integrated strategies to control WPBR. The major resistance gene Cr2, discovered by Kinloch et al.(1999), is also effective against British Columbia (BC) isolates of WPBR (Hunt et al. 2004). Pyramiding Cr2 gene with other resistance genes is being pursued as a strategy in BC white pine breeding. To facilitate this strategy, we have recently identified a few RAPD markers linked to Cr2 at one side (Liu et al. 2006). The objective of the present study was to identify amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers linked to both sides of Cr2 for its more precise apping. Use of the AFLP technique combined with bulked segregant analysis (BSA) and haploid segregation analysis allowed the identification of five AFLP markers. Of these five AFLP markers in the Cr2 linkage, markers EacccMccgat-365, EactgMcccac- 290, and EacagEacag-750 were linked in coupling and EacagMcccag-160r and EacccMccgat-180r in repulsion. Following cloning and sequencing of the AFLP and RAPD markers, specific PCR primers were designed and used in the amplification of sequence characterized amplified region (SCAR) markers at both sides of Cr2. EacccMccgat- 365 and RAPD marker U570-843 reported previously were converted into SCAR markers. These two SCARs segregated in a 1:1 (presence:absence) ratio and the scoring cosegregated with their respective AFLP or RAPD marker. The SCAR marker EacccMccgat- 365-scar was positioned at 3.1 Kosambi cM from one side of Cr2 and U570-843-scar localized at 1.4 Kosambi cM from other side. Both SCAR markers can be useful in breeding programs with marker-assisted selection procedure to screen for resistance. This study represents the first report of the development of PCR-based sequence-specific markers linked to blister rust resistance in five-needle pines. These findings may improve the precision of molecular breeding for blister rust resistance and could be the staging point for isolating the Cr2 gene.


Summary A new approach for converted wave prestack migration and velocity analysis has been developed. That is based on the consideration of prestack migration by equivalent offset and common scatter points (CSP). During the process, a converted wave velocity Vc was estimated from the hyperbolic moveout on CSP gathers. Moveout (MO) correction and stacking complete the prestack migration. The intent of this paper is to see what additional uses can be made with Vc. Converted wave CSP are formed by summing all input traces at the equivalent offset migration. Vc can be quickly and accuracy estimated by gotten a limited converted wave CSP (LCCSP) gather. This Vc is valid only for zero offset data, however we can extend its application when there is an acceptable small error in the estimated traveltime. For a given trace with and acceptable time error, there may be still considerable trace energy to form a reasonable LCCSP.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the effects of hemodynamic, respiratory and metabolic changes on intracranial pressure in a model of acute lung injury and abdominal compartment syndrome.

METHODS
Eight Agroceres pigs were submitted to five different clinical scenarios after instrumentation: 1) a baseline condition with low intra-abdominal pressure and healthy lungs; 2) pneumoperitoneum with 20 mmHg intra-abdominal pressure; 3) acute lung injury induced by pulmonary lavage with surfactant deactivation; 4) pneumoperitoneum with 20 mmHg intra-abdominal pressure with lung pulmonary injury and low positive end-expiratory pressure; and 5) 27 cmH2O positive end-expiratory pressure with pneumoperitoneum and acute lung injury. Respiratory and hemodynamic variables were collected. A multivariate analysis was conducted to search for variables associated with increased intracranial pressure in the five scenarios.

RESULTS
Only plateau airway pressure showed a positive correlation with intracranial pressure in the multivariate analysis. In the models with acute lung injury, plateau airway pressure, CO2 arterial pressure, end tidal CO2 and central venous pressure were positively correlated with increased intracranial pressure.

CONCLUSION
In a model of multiple organ dysfunction with associated clinical conditions causing increased intra-thoracic and abdominal pressure, increased intracranial pressure triggered by elevated intra-abdominal pressure is apparently caused by worsened respiratory system compliance and a reduced brain venous drainage gradient due to increased central venous pressure.


This study seeks to examined and generate findings on financial performance of agricultural enterprises and their determinant factors in Hadiya zone, Ethiopia. The study was performed the financial performance of agricultural enterprises and the determinant factors of 212 MSAEs selected by multi-stage sampling techniques. In addition to these 18 focus group participants and 5 key informants stakeholders were used to sharpen and summarized the data collected from sample to fill the identified research gaps and to address the research objectives of the study. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and econometric models including profitability ratio analysis and multiple liner regression analysis techniques. According to the result obtained from profitability ratio analysis 42(67%) of MSAEs found in the study area profitable whereas 70(33%) were incurred loss. The result of multiple liner regression analysis showed that From the independent variables included in the model age of MSAEs, amount of initial capital and access to training were statistically significant at less than 1% significance level; number of employee, experience of manager, access to market, access to premises and access to credit were statistically significant at less than 5% significance level as hypothesized and educational level and entrepreneurial skill were also statistically significant at less than 10% significance level. All statistically significant explanatory variables found in the model had positive relationship with the financial performance of the MSAEs. Recommendations emanating from the study are very important to build up the financial performance of MSAEs to become profitable in the business and also to transform them into higher level of enterprises. To improve the financial performance of enterprises beyond the impact of challengeable constraints, all concerned bodies should give high attention to update and initiate entrepreneurial skill by applying innovative training, ensure experience and best practice sharing system, allocate proper capital and employee, upgrade education level attained and create alternative market access, facilitating sufficient premises and credit access, monitoring and evaluation of all benefit generated and costs incurred as well as effective utilization of employees to ensure successful financial performance of the MSAEs. Keywords : MSAEs, profitability ratio analysis, multiple liner regression


Interneurons comprise a minority of the striatal neuronal population of roughly 5%. However, this heterogeneous population is of particular interest as it fulfills an important relay function in modulating the output of the only type of striatal projection neurons, i.e., the medium spiny neuron (MSN).One subtype of this heterogenous group, the cholinergic interneuron, is of particular scientific interest as there is a relevant body of evidence from animal models supporting its special significance in the disease process. The development of protocols for directed differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells (PSC) into striatal interneurons provides a unique opportunity to derive in vitro those cell types that are most severely affected in dystonia.In this review we first aim to give a concise overview about the normal function of striatal interneurons and their dysfunction in dystonia in order to identify the most relevant interneuronal subtype for the pathogenesis of dystonia. Secondly we demonstrate how knowledge about the embryonic development of striatal interneurons is of particular help for the development of differentiation protocols from PSC and by this depict potential ways of deriving in vitro disease models of dystonia. We furthermore address the question as to whether cell replacement therapies might represent a beneficial approach for the treatment of dystonia.


The credibility of a regulator could be threatened if stakeholders perceive that assessments of performance made by its inspectors are unreliable. Yet there is little published research on the reliability of inspectors' assessments of health care organizations' services. Objectives We investigated the inter-rater reliability of assessments made by inspectors inspecting acute hospitals in England during the piloting of a new regulatory model implemented by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) during 2013 and 2014. Multi-professional teams of inspectors rated service provision on a four-point scale for each of five domains: safety; effectiveness; caring; responsiveness; and leadership. Methods In an online survey, we asked individual inspectors to assign a domain and a rating to each of 10 vignettes of service information extracted from CQC inspection reports. We used these data to simulate the ratings that might be produced by teams of inspectors. We also observed inspection teams in action, and interviewed inspectors and staff from hospitals that had been inspected. Results Levels of agreement varied substantially from vignette to vignette. Characteristics such as professional background explained only a very small part of the variation. Overall, agreement was higher on ratings than on domains, and for groups of inspectors compared with individual inspectors. A number of potential causes of disagreement were identified, such as differences regarding the weight that should be given to contextual factors and general uncertainty about interpreting the rating and domain categories. Conclusion Groups of inspectors produced more reliable assessments than individual inspectors, and there is evidence to support the utility of appropriate discussions between inspectors in improving reliability. The reliability of domain allocations was lower than for ratings. It is important to define categories and rating levels clearly, and to train inspectors in their use. Further research is needed to replicate these results now that the model has been fully implemented, and to understand better the impact that inspector uncertainty and disagreement may have on published CQC ratings.


This study investigated the effect of atmospheric circulation and meteorological parameters on the surface atmospheric extinction coefficient (SEC) in Chengdu and Chongqing of southwest China during the winters of 2001–2016. Four predominant circulation types (CT) were first identified, representing a high-pressure system in the north (CT 1), a low-pressure system in the north (CT 2), a weak high-pressure system (CT 3) and a local low-pressure system (CT 4) at a geopotential height of 850 hPa. In Chengdu, variation in the SEC between the CTs was dominated by meteorological factors, such as wind, subsidence, inversion and planetary boundary layer height (PBLH), whereas the variation within each CT was mainly controlled by dispersion-related parameters (such as wind speed and PBLH for CTs 1, 2 and 4, which were associated with strong weather systems) or chemistry-related parameters (such as RH and T for CT 3, which was associated with a weak system). In Chongqing, dispersion and chemical processes were equally important due to the weaker impact of the atmospheric circulation. A new method for discriminating between synoptic and non-synoptic signals in SEC time series was proposed to estimate the effect of the circulation intensity by considering multiple influential meteorological parameters. Atmospheric circulation heightened the interannual SEC variations by ~23% in both Chengdu and Chongqing in more than half of the years but reduced them by 44.79% and 8.02% in Chengdu and Chongqing, respectively, in the remaining years. Synoptic changes were estimated to contribute 5–10% of the decreasing SEC trend but less than 1% of the increasing trend.


CdTe Schottky diodes for X- and γ-ray detection exhibit excellent spectroscopic performance, even though these are not stable under operative voltages. Improvements require the comprehension of the main carrier transport mechanisms, presently unclear. We address this issue by correlating the internal electric field and the flowing current. Depending on the temperature and applied voltage, different mechanisms become dominant where the deep levels always play a central role. Indeed, the partial ionization of deep levels directly controls the electric field distribution. Transient measurements show how, under high voltages, the field at the contacts controls the current flowing through the detector.


BACKGROUND
The success of US Air Force Critical Care Air Transport Teams (CCATT) in transporting critically ill and injured patients enabled changes in military medical force deployment and casualty care practice. Even so, a subset of casualties remains who exceed even CCATT capabilities for movement. These patients led to the creation of the Landstuhl Acute Lung Rescue Team (ALeRT) to close the "care in the air" capability gap.

METHODS
The ALeRT Registry was queried for the period between November 1, 2005, and June 30, 2010. Additionally, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center critical care patient transfers to host nation medical centers were reviewed for cases using extracorporeal lung support systems.

RESULTS
For the review period, US Central Command activated the ALeRT on 40 occasions. The ALeRT successfully evacuated patients on 24 of 27 missions launched (89%). Three patients were too unstable for ALeRT evacuation. Of the 13 remaining activations, four patients died and nine patients improved sufficiently for standard CCATT movement. The ALeRT initiated pumpless extracorporeal lung assistance six times, but only once to facilitate evacuation. Two patients were supported with full extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support after evacuation due to progressive respiratory failure.

CONCLUSIONS
ALeRT successfully transported 24 casualties from the combat zones to Germany. Without the ALeRT, these patients would have remained in the combat theater as significant consumers of limited deployed medical resources. Pumpless extracorporeal lung assistance is already within the ALeRT armamentarium, but has only been used for one aeromedical evacuation. Modern extracorporeal membrane oxygenation systems hold promise as a feasible capability for aeromedical evacuation.


The service provision problem described in this paper comes from an application of distributed processing in telecommunication networks. The objective is to maximize a service provider's profit from offering computational based services to customers. The services are built from software applications called subservices. The service provider has limited capacity of some resources and therefore must choose from a set of software subservices those he would like to offer. He maximizes profit which depends both on the number of requests met and fixed charges for installing the subservices. A fixed charge is positive when it is charged by the service provider and negative if it is an amount the service provider must pay for example to license the subservice. Our main interest in this problem comes from it being a subproblem in a scenario decomposition of the service provision problem with stochastic demand. We assume stochasticity is represented in terms of scenarios from a discrete probability distribution. The fixed charges can be interpreted as dual prices on the linking constraints in a variable split that makes the stochastic problem separable in its demand scenarios. The main contribution of the paper is to give a pseudo-polynomial time algorithm to solve the fixed charge problem and describe how this algorithm can be used in a fully polynomial time approximation scheme. It is also indicated how the results from this paper are used in a decomposition scheme for the stochastic service provision problem.


In conclusion, we believe that ventricular dysfunction occurs infrequently during liver transplantation, except for the very short period of "cardioplegia" of the heart on reperfusion in some patients. There is no evidence that prolonged cardiac dysfunction is a common problem during liver transplantation. Understanding the physiologic changes that occur during liver transplantation should allow the anesthesiologist to correct many factors that might otherwise cause hemodynamic instability.


Objectives: This study was aimed to compare the retention among 3 types of orthodontic aligners according to their thickness and according to the presence of beveled attachments. Materials and methods: An impression was taken for the upper arch of a patient, poured with die stone and scanned using CS 3600 intraoral scanner. The treatment plan was done using blue sky plan software and 6 models with attachments and 6 without attachments were exported. The first two models of each group were printed using Micro play 3D printer, and 3 thermoplastic materials were used in this study. Total 10 samples for each material were thermoformed over each of the 4 printed casts to make aligners. Retention tests were done on the 2 original models; one with the attachment and another without the attachment using the tensile test in the universal testing machine to measure the maximum forces required to remove the aligner from the model. Results: Leone 0.8 mm was higher than clear aligner (0.5 mm) in the retention tests of all the groups. Leone (0.8 mm) was higher than Duran (1 mm) in 2 groups (aligner number 1 groups). The presence of attachments led to an increase in the retention means of all the 3 brands when compared to the non-attachments group. Conclusion: Clear aligner (0.5 mm) is the least retentive aligner. Leone (0.8 mm) has the highest retention value in both attachments and non-attachments groups regarding aligner number 1. Adding beveled attachments lead to the significant increase in the retention of all aligners regarding the aligner number 1.


INTRODUCTION
Drug overdoses have reached a historic milestone of over 100,000 deaths in a single year, 75,673 related to opioids. The acceleration in opioid-related deaths coupled with stark health inequities demands a close examination of opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment barriers and swift consideration of policy changes.

DESIGN
The aim of this buprenorphine policy analysis is to summarize existing buprenorphine barriers and present policy solutions to improve access and actualize the contributions of Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs).

METHODS
The policy analysis follows five sequential steps: (1) defining the problem, (2) identifying key stakeholders, (3) assessing the landscape of relevant policies, (4) describing viable policy options, and (5) making final recommendations.

RESULTS
Although there are laudable efforts to improve buprenorphine access, such as the new buprenorphine guidelines issued in April 2021, without larger-scale changes to federal, state, and scope of practice laws, overdose rates will continue to rise. We recommend a multipronged policy approach to improve buprenorphine treatment access, including eliminating the DEA X waiver, improving OUD education, and adopting full practice authority for APRNs in all states.

CONCLUSION
Incremental change is no longer sufficient to address opioid overdose deaths. Bolder and coordinated policy action is possible and necessary to empower the full clinical workforce to apply evidence-based life-saving treatments for OUD. The critical contributions of nurses in advancing equitable access to OUD care are emphasized in the National Academy of Medicine's Report, Future of Nursing: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity. Nurses are named as instrumental in improving buprenorphine access. Policy changes that acknowledge and build on evidence-based treatment expansion strategies are sorely needed.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE
One of the most robust tools to combat opioid overdose deaths is buprenorphine, a partial opioid agonist, and gold standard medication treatment for OUD, but only 5% of the prescribing workforce possess the required Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) X waiver. A growing body of evidence demonstrates that Advanced Practice Registered Nurses are accelerating the growth in waiver update and buprenorphine use, despite the considerable barriers and limitations described in this policy analysis.


Catholic schools in this country have long-maintained high standards of academic excellence. They perform strongly in national examinations (at the age of 11, pupils in Catholic schools outperform national average English and maths SATs scores by 6 per cent) and receive overwhelmingly positive ratings from Ofsted (74.7 per cent of Catholic primary schools have Ofsted grades of good or outstanding, compared with 64 per cent nationally).

Whilst this may be viewed as 'success' in secular terms, it is often achieved whilst schools attempt to fulfil their individual Catholic missions, and that of the Catholic Church itself, namely the Common Good. Alongside this, there should also be a strong commitment to the world's poor, a theme that has been significantly reinforced by the recent words of Pope Francis who declares that the Roman Catholic Church must 'strip itself of all vanity, arrogance and pride and humbly serve the poorest in society.'

However, secular excellence and Catholic integrity can often be at odds with one another. The pressure, and indeed the challenge, for today's Catholic school leaders, is to remain truthful to the mission of the Church whilst yielding to the demands of local and national government. At the heart of any Catholic school, and central to its wider mission, is an understanding that every child is a child of God. On his visit to these shores in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the good Catholic school providing a 'rounded education for the whole person so that all students can become saints.'

This dissertation will explore whether this particular notion can be successfully achieved in one primary school, where the number of Catholic teaching staff are fewer in number than those of other faiths and none; and will attempt to answer one specific question in particular: Can a Catholic primary school sustain its broader mission with a minority of committed Catholic teaching staff?


ABSTRACT The concept of digital game-based learning (DGBL) evolves rapidly together with technological enhancements of virtual reality (VR) and smart phones. However, the mental workload (MWL) that VR-training applications demand and motivational qualities originating from user experience (UX) should be identified in order to create effective and enjoyable training/learning challenges that fit with individual users' capabilities. This study examined the effects of reality-based interaction (RBI) and VR on measures of student motivation and MWL, in a mental arithmetic game for secondary school pupils. In a randomised controlled trial with sixty school children, a mental arithmetic game was tested with three different interaction and two different presentation methods – VR RBI, VR head-mounted-display tapping and tablet flick-gesture. Results found a significant effect of RBI on MWL but no differences in enjoyment of training were found between VR-experience and tablet training-experience. In fact, adding the gaming-context to the mental arithmetic task created an enjoyable, motivating experience regardless of presentation or interaction-style.


AIM
To assess the validity of glycated haemoglobin A(1c) (HbA(1c)) as a screening tool for early detection of Type 2 diabetes.

METHODS
Systematic review of primary cross-sectional studies of the accuracy of HbA(1c) for the detection of Type 2 diabetes using the oral glucose tolerance test as the reference standard and fasting plasma glucose as a comparison. RESULTS Nine studies met the inclusion criteria. At certain cut-off points, HbA(1c) has slightly lower sensitivity than fasting plasma glucose (FPG) in detecting diabetes, but slightly higher specificity. For HbA(1c) at a Diabetes Control and Complications Trial and UK Prospective Diabetes Study comparable cut-off point of > or = 6.1%, the sensitivity ranged from 78 to 81% and specificity 79 to 84%. For FPG at a cut-off point of > or = 6.1 mmol/l, the sensitivity ranged from 48 to 64% and specificity from 94 to 98%. Both HbA(1c) and FPG have low sensitivity for the detection of impaired glucose tolerance (around 50%). CONCLUSIONS HbA(1c) and FPG are equally effective screening tools for the detection of Type 2 diabetes. The HbA(1c) cut-off point of > 6.1% was the recommended optimum cut-off point for HbA(1c) in most reviewed studies; however, there is an argument for population-specific cut-off points as optimum cut-offs vary by ethnic group, age, gender and population prevalence of diabetes. Previous studies have demonstrated that HbA(1c) has less intra-individual variation and better predicts both micro- and macrovascular complications. Although the current cost of HbA(1c) is higher than FPG, the additional benefits in predicting costly preventable clinical complications may make this a cost-effective choice.


Outsourced storage such as cloud storage can significantly reduce the burden of data management of data owners. Despite of a long list of merits of cloud storage, it triggers many security risks at the same time. Data integrity, one of the most burning challenges in secure cloud storage, is a fundamental and pivotal element in outsourcing services. Outsourced data auditing protocols enable a verifier to efficiently check the integrity of the outsourced files without downloading the entire file from the cloud, which can dramatically reduce the communication overhead between the cloud server and the verifier. Existing protocols are mostly based on public key infrastructure or an exact identity, which lacks flexibility of key management. In this paper, we seek to address the complex key management challenge in cloud data integrity checking by introducing attribute-based cloud data auditing, where users can upload files to cloud through some customized attribute set and specify some designated auditor set to check the integrity of the outsourced data. We formalize the system model and the security model for this new primitive, and describe a concrete construction of attribute-based cloud data integrity auditing protocol. The new protocol offers desirable properties namely attribute privacy-preserving and collusion-resistance. We prove soundness of our protocol based on the computational Diffie-Hellman assumption and the discrete logarithm assumption. Finally, we develop a prototype of the protocol which demonstrates the practicality of the protocol.


Summary: Changes in cell size and shape associated with bacterial starvation and resuscitation were used as a technique to enhance oil recovery. Injection of starved bacteria followed by nutrients into rock cores produced deep bacterial plugs. This work reports on an investigation of the dispersion and resuscitation of ultramicrobacteria (UMB) produced by starvation of Pseudomonas sp. FC3. Initially, the UMB were injected into one-dimensional sandcores; in other words, flow was from the inlet to the outlet in one direction. To provide closer simulation of oil well conditions, the UMB were injected into a three-dimensional reservoir simulator, 45 cm in diameter by 38 cm in length. Sample probes strategically positioned within the sandpack detected the UMB as they dispersed throughout the pack. After 24 d of nutrient stimulation, the sandpack was dismantled and analysed. Scanning electron microscopy and carbohydrate assays of the sandpack sections showed glycocalyx (polymer) production in every section. The three-dimensional model confirmed the findings of the unidirectional core models in that the UMB penetrated the sandpack, resuscitated and grew in situ to form a confluent bacterial plug when nutrient-stimulated.


Hellstr⊘m, B., and Lange Andersen, K. (1972).Brit. J. industr. Med.,29, 255-263. Vibration injuries in Norwegian forest workers. A free medical examination with compensation for lost earnings was offered to the forest workers in three areas of eastern Norway. Sixty-six per cent attended (413 workers, of whom 296 used chain saws). The prevalence of Raynaud's phenomenon (RP) was 47% in chain saw operators, 14% in forest workers not exposed to vibration, and 9% in 302 indoor workers not exposed to vibration. The high prevalence of RP in chain saw operators was attributed to a traumatic vasospastic disease (TVD). The average time of latency was eight years. The standard symptoms of TVD were attacks of blanching and numbness. Cyanosis and pain occurred rarely. In subsamples, measurements of tactile two-point discrimination and maximal isometric muscle strength (hand grip and finger pressure) as well as x-ray examinations of the wrists and the hands gave no evidence of vibration injury to peripheral nerves, muscles, bones, or joints.


In this paper, we analyze the sub-fidelity and super-fidelity of an arbitrary pair of n-mode Gaussian states. Particularly, an explicit formula for the sub-fidelity and super-fidelity between any two-mode Gaussian states is obtained.


The pastoral mode has historically been dismissed for what some scholars see as its aestheticization of the brutal realities of agricultural labor and rural life. This essay, however, complicates what critics have considered the inherently conservative ideology of the pastoral. I contend that contemporary Irish poets such as Seamus Heaney and John Montague mobilize the literary mode's generic conventions to critique the processes of modernization at work in postwar Ireland that displaced their rural communities. In and , the pastoral opens up a language of socioeconomic critique unavailable in political discourse, dominated as it often was by proponents of modernization who derided the rural community as a bastion of backward nationalism or by conservative politicians who idealized it as a sanctuary of traditional values. These poets are acutely aware of the multiple ironies embedded within the pastoral, the discursive power of which can reveal the contradictions in politico-economic ideology and cultural expression in modern Ireland.


Newly developed materials such as engineered nanomaterials are produced in increasing amounts and applied in a growing number of products. Once released to the environment, they can pose a hazard to ecosystems and human health. To assess potential risks, the exposure of the material to humans and the environment has to be determined. For many materials such as engineered nanomaterials, a quantitative measurement of environmental concentrations is not feasible. Material flow models can be used to determine these concentrations indirectly by predicting material flows in the environment. Several modelling approaches can be applied to represent existing knowledge about the flows of materials into and between environmental media or compartments and to consider the uncertainty and variability of the input parameters. In this study we evaluate four existing approaches with regard to their capabilities for indirect exposure assessment, focusing on their ability to treat uncertainty. We first explain how we preselected the four most promising modelling approaches: material flow analysis, system dynamics, material flow networks, and probabilistic material flow modelling. We then define a set of evaluation criteria based on the requirements of environmental exposure assessment and develop a simplified example system that is designed to test these criteria. Based on the comparative modelling and implementation of the example system, we discuss the capabilities and limitations of the approaches and indicate what is missing for a reliable environmental exposure prediction using material flow modelling.


This 1994 Position Statement was developed by the Joint Committee on Infant Hearing. Joint committee member organizations that approved this statement and their respective representatives who prepared this statement include the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (Allan O. Diefendorf, PhD, Chair; Deborah Hayes, PhD; and Evelyn Cherow, MA, ex officio); the American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery (Patrick E. Brookhouser, MD, and Stephen Epstein, MD); the American Academy of Audiology (Terese Finitzo, PhD, and Jerry Northern, PhD); the American Academy of Pediatrics (Allen Erenberg, MD, and Nancy Roizen, MD); and the Directors of Speech and Hearing Programs in State Health and Welfare Agencies (Thomas Mahoney, PhD, and Kathie J. Mense, MS).
 The Joint Committee on Infant Hearing endorses the goal of universal detection of infants with hearing loss as early as possible. All infants with hearing loss should be identified before 3 months of age, and receive intervention by 6 months of age.
 I. BACKGROUND
 In 1982, the Joint Committee on Infant Hearing recommended identification of infants at risk for hearing loss in terms of specific risk factors and suggested a follow-up audiologic evaluation until an accurate assessment of hearing could be made (Joint Committee on Infant Hearing, 1982; American Academy of Pediatrics, 1982). In 1990, the Position Statement was modified to expand the list of risk factors and recommend a specific hearing screening protocol.
 In concert with the national initiative Healthy People 2000 (US Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, 1990), which promotes early identification of children with hearing loss, this 1994 Position Statement addresses the need to identify all infants with hearing loss.


Glycosylation is one of the most common post-translational modifications and generates an enormous amount of proteomic diversity; changes in glycosylation are associated with nearly all disease states. Intact glycoproteomics seeks to determine the site-localization and composition of glycans along a protein backbone via mass spectrometry. Following data acquisition, raw files are analyzed using search algorithms to define peptide sequence, glycan composition, and site localization. Glycoproteomics is rapidly expanding, creating the pressing need to establish bioinformatic community standards. Recently, several new search algorithms were released, many of which vary in terms of search strategy, localization system, score cutoffs, and glycan databases, thus warranting a comprehensive comparison of these new programs along with existing programs. Here, we analyzed three common samples: an enriched cell lysate, a mixture of 6 glycoproteins, and a mucin-domain glycoprotein. All raw files were searched with comparable parameters among software and the results were extensively manually validated to compare accuracy and completion of the output. Our results highlight the continued need for manual validation of glycopeptide spectral matches, especially for O-glycopeptides. Despite this, O-Pair outperformed all other programs in correct identification of O-glycopeptides and its localization system proved to be useful. On the other hand, Byonic and pGlyco performed best for N-glycoproteomics; the former was best for proteome-wide searches, but the latter identified more N-glycosites in less complex samples. Overall, we summarize the strengths, weaknesses, and potential improvements for these search algorithms. TOC Figure


There is a place in Minnesota, a magical place, where everyone is beautiful. It's not the moonlight, which scatters across obsidian northern lakes and filters down through tall, leafy trees into fractals of glimmer. It's not the sounds, of the loon or of the sweet humid night breeze or of the quiet lapping of lake water against sand and smooth pebbled stone, trailing wayward bits of sea grass. It's the shadowy figures, darting joyously, deviously between trees. It's the two figures silhouetted against the night, rocking on a woodslatted swing facing the darkened, sleeping lake. It's the heads tilting together and the shoulders encircled by a bandaged arm. It's the laughter punctuating the love song drifting out from inside a wooden cabin after lights-out.


Of the phrase "affordable housing" were a piece of luggage, the range of issues the two simple words encompass would burst the hinges. The meaning of the words "affordable housing" depends on the income, the age, the geographic location, and the ethnic group or race of the people involved. At one extreme it translates into the affordability for the first-time homebuyer of a traditional single-family house with a traditional mortgage. At the other, it translates to having any kind of roof over one's head. Nature of problem. The issue of affordable housing has been studied to death, yet the challenge remains. Indeed, in the massive federal study "Not In My Back Yard": Removing Barriers to Affordable Housing, a small section recounts a series of ten major federally sponsored task forces and conferences, going back to the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, that focused at least partially on affordable housing issues. In its broadest sense, the issue truly dates to the beginning of the human race, as there have always been people who could not find or afford, or were displaced from, some reasonable form of shelter. The "NIMBY" study, released in mid-1991 by the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Advisory Commission on Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing, recounted many of the same obstacles reviewed in the past. "The Commission's disturbing conclusion," wrote HUD Secretary Jack Kemp in a transmittal letter to President Bush, "is that exclusionary, discriminatory, and unnecessary regulations constitute formidable barriers to affordable housing, raising costs by 20% to 35% in some communities." The report attacks a wide variety of regulatory barriers. In the suburbs, it cites zoning and other land-use policies that limit housing opportunities. Measures that require large minimum lot sizes drive home prices beyond the reach of many families. Population limits discourage multifamily housing. In theory, such rules arise from concerns that additional homes and multifamily construction will place a burden on municipal services, such as sewer systems and schools. However, "the unstated rationale is that [affordable housing candidates] have lower incomes than 'we' do and 'we' don't want them living near us," says Anthony Downs, a member of the commission and a senior fellow specializing in housing issues at The Brookings Institution, Washington. The report likewise criticizes rent control laws, which the commission believes hurt the poor in the long run by discouraging development of new multifamily housing stock. The NIMBY report is somewhat critical of federal tax policies, pointing out, for example, that the Tax Reform Act of 1986 increased the costs of investment in multifamily housing. However, a more fundamental argument regarding taxes can be found in other literature. One example is in a mid-1992 report called A Decent Place to Live: Revisited; The State of Housing in America, published by The Enterprise Foundation, Columbia, Md. In the report, the foundation argues that federal spending on housing should be looked at not only in the form of direct spending, as is typical, but also in the form of "spending" through tax benefits. The federal government is found to spend four times what it spends on all low-income housing programs on tax deductions for homeowners. These include deductions for home mortgage interest, property taxes, and capital gains made when a home is sold. Many of the households benefiting from these breaks, the report states, are affluent. Taxpayers may see the broad need, but are understandably not willing to surrender what they have to solve it. Multifamily Housing In the minds of many, "affordable housing" is synonymous with "singlefamily homeownership." "There's a recent emphasis on affordable single-family issues because of rising single-family home prices and because the lower-middle-income group is being squeezed," observes Thomas W. …


Abstract The British Museum has in its collections a magnificent Byzantine ivory panel. However, the panel has become warped over time and there is a join on the left side, where it has suffered a break in the past. It has been connected with two metal pins and adhesive in a previous conservation treatment but there is now concern that these could be having an adverse influence on natural movements within the ivory. Given the importance of the panel, the decision was made to leave the pins in place and monitor the stability of the panel. As the geometry of the panel is complex, it was felt that microscopic imaging would not be suitable and 3D laser scanning was used instead. This engineering metrology technique is increasingly used in cultural heritage and conservation to record minute three-dimensional changes with high spatial accuracy. The resulting dataset is a detailed metric 3D record of the object surface in-the-round and comparison of subsequent scans with a reference scan can indicate dimensional changes. As part of a monitoring campaign, the ivory panel was first scanned in January 2012 to provide a reference scan. It was then scanned again in autumn 2012 (no significant movement was detected) and will be scanned at regular intervals in the future. This case study demonstrates the potential of 3D laser scanning to monitor the dimensional stability of complex artefacts.


We have developed a comprehensive inversion scheme to analyze traveltime data collected through GPS‐acoustic observations on a campaign basis. Our method uses a quantity called the "nadir total delay" (NTD), which is analogous to the zenith total delay in Global Navigation Satellite Systems analyses, to represent the time variation of the sound speed. The observation equation using the NTD is an approximated formulation. We examine its applicable scope using numerical experiments and demonstrate that the approximation holds well enough in practice. Traveltime data from all our observation campaigns were utilized together for inversion calculation to determine the following: (1) the positions of individual precision acoustic transponders at the time of a particular reference campaign, (2) the displacement from these positions of a rigid array at the time of each campaign, and (3) the time variation of the NTD during each campaign. We applied this method to actual data to fix the array geometry more precisely. Also, we have made a first step in detecting vertical motions as well as horizontal motions, though further enhancement of the accuracy will be required. In performing linear regression of array displacements obtained from the inversion, their error covariance has a significant effect on the resulting velocities. When the covariance is taken into account, nearly the same velocities are obtained no matter what campaign is taken as reference in the inversion.