The system operating noise factor of a receiving system is modeled for arbitrary impedance mismatch of the antenna to the transmission line feeding the receiver. The effect of this mismatch on the noise factors of the transmission line and the receiver is considered. The stochastic nature of the external noise factor is considered. The amount of mismatch that can be tolerated before the internal system noise factor exceeds the external noise factor is determined. Numerical results are presented for a VHF-FM radio receiving system with an electrically short monopole antenna. It is noted that a large impedance mismatch at the antenna-transmission-line interface of a radio receiving system can cause a significant increase in the system internal noise factor (more than a 50-dB increase for a voltage reflection coefficient of 0.999). >


Time series forecasting is an active research topic in academia as well as industry. Although we see an increasing amount of adoptions of machine learning methods in solving some of those forecasting challenges, statistical methods remain powerful while dealing with low granularity data. This paper introduces a refined Bayesian exponential smoothing model with the help of probabilistic programming languages including Stan. Our model refinements include additional global trend, transformation for multiplicative form, noise distribution and choice of priors. A benchmark study is conducted on a rich set of time-series data sets for our models along with other well-known time series models.


OBJECTIVE
This study was designed to assess the impact of the use of an automated bolus advisor (ABA) on glycemic control, quality of life, and satisfaction in adult patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus treated with multiple daily injections of insulin.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
A crossover, prospective, randomized, controlled, multicenter study of 36 weeks duration was conducted. Patients were randomized to start in either control phase (CP) using a traditional blood glucose meter to calculate insulin doses (Accu-Chek(®) Aviva Nano; Roche Diagnostics, Indianapolis, IN) or intervention phase (IP) using an ABA meter (Accu-Chek Aviva Expert; Roche Diagnostics) and switched to the other phase after a washout period. Each phase was 12 weeks in duration.

RESULTS
Significant glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) reduction was observed in both phases (CP, initial HbA1c of 8.05 ± 0.7%, final HbA1c of 7.59 ± 0.7% [P < 0.001]; IP, initial HbA1c of 8.13 ± 1%, final HbA1c of 7.61 ± 0.8% [P < 0.001]). Although the trend was to a higher HbA1c reduction in IP, no statistically significant differences were observed between phases (CP, HbA1c -0.39%; IP, HbA1c -0.52% [P = 0.8]). During IP, the number of daily glucose measurements was greater (4.28 ± 1.2 vs. 4.01 ± 1.1 [P < 0.006]), the rate of postprandial hypoglycemia was lower, and an improvement in quality of life and higher satisfaction were observed.

CONCLUSIONS
In this first crossover study comparing the use of an ABA with the standard usual care, the use of an ABA was effective and well accepted. Furthermore, reduction in hypoglycemic events, improvement in adherence and quality of life, and higher treatment satisfaction were observed.


The present study deals with the design, fabrication and characterization of porous scaffolds for tissue engineering made of polylactic acid (PLA) and PLA containing hydroxyapatite (HA) nanoparticles. The main novelty relies on the fact that the fabrication of the scaffolds has been achieved avoiding totally the use of toxic chemicals. In particular, the scaffolds are obtained by combining both thermal induced phase separation (TIPS) using ethyl lactate (EL) solutions and supercritical CO2 (scCO2) drying processes. Furthermore, gelatin particles have been used as a leachable porogen and combined with the previous processes to improve the control of the pore structure features of the scaffolds. The results show that the developed technique allows for the fabrication of porous PLA scaffolds with HA concentrations up to 30 wt%. Furthermore, these scaffolds are characterized by an overall porosity as high as 98% and a double scale pore structure. In particular, the appropriate control of the TIPS process and the scCO2 drying allowed for the development of nanoscale fibrous PLA and PLA–HA structures starting from PLA/EL solutions. Concomitantly, the proper selection of the size range of gelatin particles as well as their spatial distribution in the mixture allowed imprinting an interconnected network of large pores inside the scaffolds.


This essay examines the roles played by ethnographic writing and translation in Raphaël Confiant's 1994 L'allée des soupirs. This novel fictionalizes the 1959 riots in Martinique while simultaneously creating characters who debate the relative merits of modes of expression capable of capturing the linguistic, cultural, and racial hybridity of créolité in literature. Confiant translates into fictional terms important precepts on Caribbean literary production set out in Eloge de la créolité, which Confiant wrote with Patrick Chamoiseau and Jean Bernabé. By transforming the aesthetic problems taken up in Eloge into a thoroughly creolized novel that deals with the hybridized messiness of everyday life, Confiant presents a text that ethnographically allegorizes its own conditions of production. This allegorization mobilizes a process the essay calls "interdisciplinary translation," which relies on an ongoing process of conversion between ethnographic and literary modes of representation.


Railgun tribology describes the friction and wear sciences of interacting surfaces in relative motion. The novel tribological feature of railguns is the use of high-speed, high-current sliding electrical contacts for the conversion of the electrical energy in a current pulse into projectile kinetic energy. Several wear processes affect the life of components used to construct the bore of a railgun depending upon the severity of the duty cycle. Following multishot testing without refurbishment in solid-armature railguns, wear products have been observed to accumulate on the contact surfaces of rail conductors. Aluminum-alloy armatures produce wear debris that is chemically complex and structurally inhomogeneous. Because electromagnetic propulsion requires that electrical conduction take place across these debris layers, it is important to understand the factors that influence their structure. A critical question for repeatable and predictable railgun performance and for extended rail life is whether easy conduction occurs through these accumulated wear products. It is possible to control the dimensions and properties of these wear debris accumulations on rail contact surfaces using chemical and mechanical aids. Films of rapidly solidified aluminum with layered structures and high levels of gas porosity are the most common debris on copper rails. It is possible to control the structures of these films and to plow them away when they grow thick. Here, results of characterization and control of wear debris are presented and discussed


The introduction of France's "parity" law in 2000 raised fears of electing inferior women candidates via a gender quota. France has since held two legislative elections, with the proportion of women in parliament rising from 10.9% to 12.3% in 2002, and 18.5% in 2007. These rises permit an empirical evaluation of whether "quota women" measure up to those elected without a quota. New women parliamentarians are compared to their male counterparts and to women elected before 2002 to see whether there are any noticeable differences in their background (profession, age, and prior experience) and their levels of parliamentary activity (including numbers of bills, reports, and questions introduced). The findings challenge the notion that parity is producing weak politicians. The slightly different profiles of men and women politicians reflect wider barriers to women's political careers that would not have been overcome without the parity law. Once women are elected, the volume of activity shows no evidence of being gendered, suggesting that women are as effective in the job as men. These findings imply that sex is a barrier to entry but not to performance, reinforcing claims for the use of quotas to overcome entry barriers and negating claims that quotas produce second-rate parliamentarians.


Book description: The systems of innovation approach is considered by many to be a useful analytical approach for better understanding innovation processes as well as the production and distribution of knowledge in the economy. It is an appropriate framework for the empirical study of innovations in their contexts and is relevant for policy makers. This text is the result of the work within an international inter-disciplinary network or "working seminar" with the task of building a more solid and sophisticated conceptual and theoretical foundation for the continued study of innovations in a systemic context. The book has three parts. The first presents an overview and tries to work out some conceptual problems. In the second, the systems of innovation approach is related to innovation theory. Part three is devoted to increasing understanding of the functioning and dynamics of systems of innovation. There is also an introduction where the genesis and anatomy of different systems of innovation approaches are discussed and where the systems of innovation approach is characterized in nine dimensions.


The InfiniBand architecture (IBA) is a promising communication standard for building clusters and system area networks. However, the IBA specification has left out security aspects, resulting in potential security vulnerabilities, which could be exploited with moderate effort. In this paper, we view these vulnerabilities from three classical security aspects - confidentiality, authentication, and availability - and investigate the following security issues. First, as groundwork for secure services in IBA, we present partition-level and queue-pair-level key management schemes, both of which can be easily integrated into IBA. Second, for confidentiality and authentication, we present a method to incorporate a scalable encryption and authentication algorithm into IBA, with little performance overhead. Third, for better availability, we propose a stateful ingress filtering mechanism to block denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Finally, to further improve the availability, we provide a scalable packet marking method tracing back DoS attacks. Simulation results of an IBA network show that the security performance overhead due to encryption/authentication on network latency ranges from 0.7 percent to 12.4 percent. Since the stateful ingress filtering is enabled only when a DoS attack is active, there is no performance overhead in a normal situation.


The case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has had a crucial impact on the development of the EU law. In particular, the role of CJEU case-law has been emphasized in relation to paradigm shifts in the EU. Currently the EU is aiming to transition to a circular economy by 2050. The drive towards a circular economy is based on the recognition that currently the world's natural resources are used to excess and inefficiently. Waste management and in particular the regulation governing the transformation of waste back into raw materials plays an integral role in the circular economy. This article examines the CJEU case-law on the concept of waste and its implications towards circular economy from 1980s to the modern today. It shows that the case-law has had a crucial role in the development the concept of waste and the rules for excluding secondary materials from it. The article concludes that the CJEU's powers are emphasized when a regulatory regime is in transition. Moreover, the circular economy regulatory environment is prone to generating numerous preliminary rulings. The importance of reconciling the objectives of the waste, product and chemicals regulation will be emphasized in the future. A natural continuation in the case-law would entail a gradual transition to a single regime for the regulation of materials and their flow. The CJEU could play an important role in the transition to the circular economy.
waste, circular economy, Court of Justice of the European Union, transition, secondary raw materials, chemicals, end-of-waste, product safety


This thesis looks at the critical position of the 2004 New York exhibition "Personal Affects: Power and Poetics in Contemporary African Art" within the history of South African exhibitions locally and internationally. I argue that the exhibition's restricted selection of artists excluded craft and traditional practices, and thus overlooked the cultural diversity of the country and failed to engage with the multiple South African identities embodied in non-Western based practices.
Following the theoretical framework of world art studies, I begin by asserting the need to think about contemporary art as a temporal framework and to broaden its definition so as to include all kind of significant practices. I then look at the South African exhibitions of the 1980s and early 1990s when hope for the end of apartheid united South African curators and artists in the quest for a more representative and inclusive artistic canon characterizing the new 'rainbow nation' gave raise to exhibitions that displayed crafts and traditional arts as contemporary art. After the second Johannesburg Biennale of 1997, the national desire to re-enter the international art scene in collaboration with international curators and institutions promulgated a contemporary South African art understood in Western terms, changing the path opened by previous national exhibitions. Examining in more detail the artworks of "Personal Affects" in the last section, I aim to demonstrate that the exhibition is inscribed in the dominant discourse on contemporary art imposed by the international art scene by restricting the notion of South African identity to mostly university-trained and urban–based artists, whose works resonated with the American context of the Museum for African Art.


Mobile cloud computing is the model to ubiquitously access a shared pool of cloud computing resources, data, and services on-demand. This paper introduces the elasticity debt analytics paradigm as a solution concept for the resource provisioning problem in mobile cloud computing environments, guaranteeing the quality of service requirements. A novel green-centric, game theoretic approach to minimizing the elasticity debt on mobile cloud-based service level is proposed, investigating the mobile cloud offloading case. The decision to offload a mobile device user's task on cloud affects the level of elasticity debt minimization for the provided services. The modeling for the computation of the processing time, energy, and overhead in mobile opportunistic offloading is presented. A utility-driven elasticity debt and profit quantification approach is also examined for maximization of resource utilization, exploiting the hidden Markov model. The problem is formulated as an elasticity debt quantification game, elaborating on an incentive mechanism to predict elasticity debt, mitigate the risk of service over-utilization, achieve scalability, and optimize cloud resource provisioning. The experimental results prove the effectiveness of the equilibrium model, which allocates the mobile device user requests to high elasticity debt-level services and facilitates the elasticity debt minimization for green mobile cloud computing environments.


Purpose of the article: The paper focuses on the potentials and benefits controlling provides for companies in the transition period towards industry 4.0. Operative production controlling provides data that shall be used in the future to apply the concept of smart factories. This article proposes a controlling archtitecture based on computer-aided standardization.
Methodology/methods: The paper develops an architecture on operational production controlling based on an international literature review. Literature on controlling 4.0 are found mostly in publications in German language. While this literature has its focus on controlling as a whole or on strategic controlling, the paper has a look on operational controlling and its further usage and development towards smart factories.
Scientific aim: The aim of this article is to develop a model of an operational production controlling architecture that is able to suite the requirements of smart factories by using computer-aided standarization.
Findings: Research is working on concepts for industry 4.0 and its way towards real implementation. Competitive advantage in industry 4.0 is created through digitization and robotization. An architecture that fully complies to industry 4.0 is still waiting in real companies due to technical limitation in data storing, retrieval and processing as well as storage capacities.
Conclusions: The paper discussed the devlopment of a controlling architecture suitable for industry 4.0. Already today controlling is making use of data. Smart factories shall make use of production data. Production controlling together with the CAS, that is able to provide standardized data on all manufacturing, maintenance, and auxiliary processes, systems are able to make a step forward towards smart factories. The concept of production controlling combined with the strengths of a CAS may be seen as the basis from which to target smart factories and industry 4.0.


We consider a Software Defined Networking (SDN)-enabled edge computing domain, where networking devices also have processing capabilities. In particular, we investigate the problem of dynamic allocation of stateless computations, that we call lambda functions, and propose an architectural framework through which requests for execution of lambda functions originated by mobile nodes can be appropriately routed to specific edge devices following a serverless model. In addition, we propose a detailed emulation environment to test the architecture. Our framework supports many possible distributed algorithms to dynamically adapt the choice where requests should be executed, in order to optimize a given performance target. In the paper we consider a few such policies, to test the flexibility of the architecture. We thus present extensive performance results of the considered policies.


In his well known proposition that pleasures differ qualitatively, Mill seems to be arguing three principal points. (1) 'Mental' pleasures as a kind are intrinsically 'more desirable and more valuable' than 'bodily pleasures' (p. 12). (2) This estimation of pleasure, Mill says, is such as to rule out the claim that it 'should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.' Indeed, he continued, the 'superiority in quality' might be 'so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account' (p. 12). (3) The 'test of quality and the rule for measuring it against quantity,' Mill says, is 'the preference' of experienced judges (p. 16). '[T]he judgment of those who are qualified by knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority among them, must be admitted as final' (p. 15).


Diazapyrenium units have been incorporated into the π-electron deficient components of four [2]pseudorotaxanes, four [2]catenanes, and two [2]rotaxanes, each having a dioxyarene-based macrocyclic polyether as the π-electron rich component. A dramatic increase in the association constants that characterize the formation of diazapyrenium-containing [2]pseudorotaxanes, relative to those of their bipyridinium-based analogs, was observed in solution studies. These results indicate that the intercomponent non-covalent bonding interactions are reinforced significantly when diazapyrenium, instead of bipyridinium, recognition sites are employed in the π-electron deficient components of this kind of [2]pseudorotaxane. Not surprisingly, therefore, in two asymmetric [2]catenanes which incorporate one diazapyrenium and one bipyridinium recognition site within their tetracationic cyclophane components, the diazapyrenium unit is located inside the cavity of the π-electron rich macrocyclic component as revealed in the solid state by X-ray crystallographic analyses and by 1H NMR spectroscopic studies in solution. Variable temperature 1H NMR spectroscopic studies showed that, in the [2]catenanes, the free energy barriers associated with the circumrotation of one macrocyclic component through the cavity of the other and viceversa increase when diazapyrenium, instead of bipyridinium, recognition sites are employed, reflecting the stronger intercomponent non-covalent bonding interactions involving the former.


This study investigated whether intellectually gifted students in Australia, with different levels of giftedness and cultural orientations, had different experiences of the forced-choice dilemma—choosing between the needs for peer acceptance and academic achievement. A random sample of 231 intellectually gifted students attending secondary school completed and returned a self-report questionnaire. The data were analyzed using factor analysis and multiple regression analysis. The study found some support for the hypothesis that level of intellectual giftedness was positively related to the experience of the forced-choice dilemma. It was also shown that those with medium-level vertical allocentric orientations toward the family were likely to be the most vulnerable to the phenomenon. Intellectually gifted male adolescents, intellectually gifted students in early adolescence, and intellectually gifted students with peers of different cultural backgrounds were additional groups identified as being at risk.


This article examines the consequences of globalization on the health sector, how people see these conditions and how globalization is rejected or perhaps easily accepted as an effort in improving life. The majority of the world's population in poor and developing countries do not have access to essential health services, let alone medicines. As a product of globalization, in the health sector, the conditions with humanitarian aspects as one of the indicators of the quality of human resources have been distorted and become a tempting element of economic commodities. In the era of globalization, international relations are getting closer. This problem is often known as global conditions. Global relations certainly have an impact on social life. These impacts bring changes in people's behavior in various aspects of life. In the economic, political, social, cultural and security fields, this global impact not only affects large urban communities but also occurs in the rural communities. Along with this, the explanation in this article will be presented from an anthropological perspective.


We demonstrated the successful combination and cleanup of four laser beams via stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) using a multi-port fiber combiner and a large multimode fiber. Multiple Stokes orders were observed in the output, but loss at longer wavelengths reduced the transmission of the higher Stokes orders and limited the SRS conversion efficiency. SRS beam cleanup was also investigated using a single laser beam. The output beam had a measured M(2) better than 2 for fiber lengths from 400-1400 meters.


AIM
To evaluate the long-term outcomes of Oddi sphincter preserved cholangioplasty with hepatico-subcutaneous stoma (OSPCHS) and risk factors for recurrence in hepatolithiasis.

METHODS
From March 1993 to December 2012, 202 consecutive patients with hepatolithiasis underwent OSPCHS at our department. The Oddi sphincter preserved procedure consisted of common hepatic duct exploration, stone extraction, hilar bile duct plasty, establishment of subcutaneous stoma to the bile duct. Patients with recurrent stones can undergo stone extraction and/or biliary drainage via the subcutaneous stoma which can be incised under local anesthesia. The long-term results were reviewed. Cox regression model was employed to analyze the risk factors for stone recurrence.

RESULTS
Ninety-seven (48.0%) OSPCHS patients underwent hepatic resection concomitantly. The rate of surgical complications was 10.4%. There was no perioperative death. The immediate stone clearance rate was 72.8%. Postoperative cholangioscopic lithotomy raised the clearance rate to 97.0%. With a median follow-up period of 78.5 mo (range: 2-233 mo), 24.8% of patients had recurrent stones, 2.5% had late development of cholangiocarcinoma, and the mortality rate was 5.4%. Removal of recurrent stones and/or drainage of inflammatory bile via subcutaneous stoma were conducted in 44 (21.8%) patients. The clearance rate of recurrent stones was 84.0% after subsequent choledochoscopic lithotripsy via subcutaneous stoma. Cox regression analysis showed that residual stone was an independent prognostic factor for stone recurrence.

CONCLUSION
In selected patients with hepatolithiasis, OSPCHS achieves excellent long-term outcomes, and residual stone is an independent prognostic factor for stone recurrence.


OBJECTIVE
To examine physical activity differences between public (PUBHS) and private (PVTHS) high school students (n = 6,627).

METHODS
The 1995 SC Youth Risk Behavior Survey was utilized. Chi-square analyses compared PVTHS and PUBHS students.

RESULTS
PVTHS school students reported greater involvement in regular exercise programs (p < .001) and participation on school-based sport teams (p < .001). However, PUBHS school students reported greater participation in physical education (p < .001). PUBHS males participated in more community-based sport programs than did PVTHS males (p <.001); however, PVTHS females participated in more community-based sports than PUBHS males did (p < .001).

CONCLUSION
Significantly different physical activity behaviors exist between PVTHS and PUBHS students in South Carolina.


Enhancing supply chain resilience is of vital importance in today's business to manage and mitigate the risks, especially in the semiconductor industry challenged with intrinsic long cycle times and short product life-cycles. Transferring production from a primary site to an alternative site after a disaster is one of the strategies to ensure resilience of the supply network. In this study, different types of alternative sites with various levels of preparedness are investigated. A discrete-event simulation is used to evaluate their operational and financial impacts under four different disruption scenarios. The simulation outcomes demonstrate unexpected positive benefits of various alternative sites in terms of fast recovery and resilience building.


This article explores how Filipino women migrants in Japan have appropriated Facebook to create alternative spaces and connections for addressing their needs and concerns. Using thematic analysis of discussion threads and in-depth interviews with members of the Facebook group, Pinoy Tambayan in Japan, this study shows the nuanced aspects of the gendered dimension of online ethnic enclaves on Facebook. Facebook has allowed these migrants to create online ethnic enclaves that function as an alternative to kinship and community groups—groups that Filipinos consider an invaluable resource for managing families and strengthening ties to their identity. This social, intimate tie is epitomized in terms of endearment used by members: sis (sister), mamsh (fellow godmother), and kasodan (fellow seekers of information). These terms invoke relational ties, not by blood but by shared commonalities, between the author and group members. However, while online ethnic enclaves have become an increasingly vital source of support among Filipino women migrants, the limits of these online communicative spaces can be observed, particularly in terms of visibility. In mainstream media and the wider host society, the intimate gendered narratives of Filipino women migrants are rarely discussed, and consequently, these women are misrecognized and stigmatized.


Hollow fiber microporous membranes have been used widely in membrane distillation (MD) for seawater desalination applications due to their high surface area. The configurations of feed inlets and outlets significantly impact the performance of hollow fiber direct contact membrane distillation (HF-DCMD). An increase in feed inlets and outlets can also profoundly affect the system's performance by reducing the concentration polarization at the membrane surface and increasing the mass transfer rate. These aspects are critical when designing and optimizing HF-DCMD systems for various applications such as water desalination and wastewater treatment. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were implemented to investigate the performance of HF-DCMD for a desalination process. The effect of inlet and outlet configuration in a tubular shell filled with hollow fiber membranes is examined in modules with a 31% packing ratio. The feed solution with a concentration of 35 g/L NaCl flows in the shell side while the permeated water flows inside the hollow fibers. The Navier-Stokes, mass and energy transport equations for laminar flows are solved with a coupled boundary condition to model the desalination process in the module. Various feed inlet and outlet configurations are considered, including one with an inlet and outlet normal to the shell's axis (at the shell's end surfaces) and others with inlets and outlets parallel to the axis. The module with an inlet and outlet at each shell end parallel performs better than other configurations. The permeate flux is enhanced by approximately 153% when four feed inlets are placed at the side wall of the shell. On the other hand, the study observed a slight increase in water production when multiple feed outlets are used.


A new dormitory for engineering students "Apisseq" was built in Sisimiut, Greenland in 2010. Its purpose is not only to provide accommodation for students, but thanks to its complex monitoring system, it enables researchers to evaluate the building's energy performance and indoor air quality. Some of the installed technologies are not commonly used in the current Greenlandic building stock. Therefore, evaluation of their performance under local conditions is essential for further use and development. The first year of operation has disclosed some errors made during the design process and construction phase, which have negative effects on the energy performance and indoor air quality. The heat demand in 2011 was 26.5% higher than expected. One of the main causes of the extra heat demand is the fact that the ventilation system was over-dimensioned, and although it is running on the lowest fan power it maintains 1.1 ACH in the building. Reduction of the airflows and better frost protection of the heat exchangers are important issues to be dealt with in order to decrease the heat demand. This article describes the building and how it is evaluated after the first year of operation, and it explains some of the revealed problems.


In order to realize complex three dimensional or free standing structures on SiC substrates, an undercut, i.e. a selective isotropic etching process of SiC, is required. This was realized using an electron cyclotron resonance etching set up with pure SF6 and a SF6/Ar gas composition at elevated substrate temperatures. Above 350°C a significant lateral etch component was observed, which rose to a value of 50-70 nm/min increasing the substrate temperature up to 570°C during the etching process. Depending on substrate temperature the etching profiles and surface roughness were studied. Based on an analysis of the influence of microwave power, working pressure, bias voltage, gas flow and gas mixture on the etching behavior a novel isotropic, high selective, residue free etch process for SiC was developed, which allows for example the fabrication of piezoelectric actuated AlGaN/GaN resonators grown on SiC substrates.


Nowadays, the evolution of the educational system is mainly based on concepts like distance learning, open universities, virtual learning environments that become quite popular for teaching and learning. Anyhow, in the field of Computer Science, Technology and Engineering these learning environments are still relatively behind when discussing new technologies like distance learning. Due to their inherent necessity of providing effective skill acquisition and hands-on experience, those laboratories availability for online access is limited or restricted. The equivalent virtual laboratory can be based on remote access to real lab equipment or can be represented by a fully-software virtual replica.
The Internet of Things (IoT) concept describes the connection between various physical devices into a global network, along with their identification and information share. The growth of the IoT technology expands the communication capability to, and all the data makes it alive. Perhaps the most used educational approach sharing the same idea with IoT is the concept of a remote or virtual laboratory. In this case, things are instruments and processes involved in laboratory experiments. This virtual environment provides a connection with dedicated hardware controlled via the Internet, and it often uses other network services.
In this paper, the main research activity regards both software and hardware deployment criteria of a virtual laboratory used for educational purposes. Its applications are mainly focused, but not limited to the field of instrumentation and measurements, as well as in signal processing. The experiments are extended to the field of robotics through the remote control application of a servomotor and visualizing online its actual state.


• Physcomitrella patens is a bryophyte belonging to early diverging lineages of land plants following colonization of land in the Ordovician period. Mosses are typically found in refugial habitats and can experience rapidly fluctuating environmental conditions. The acquisition of dehydration tolerance by bryophytes is of fundamental importance as they lack water-conducting tissues and are generally one cell layer thick. • Here, we show that dehydration induced oscillations in the steady-state transcript abundances of two group 3 late embryogenesis abundant (LEA) protein genes in P. patens protonemata, and that the amplitudes of these oscillations are reflective of the severity of dehydration stress. • Dehydration stress also induced elevations in the concentrations of abscisic acid (ABA), and ABA alone can also induce dosage-dependent oscillatory increases in the steady-state abundance of LEA protein transcripts. Additionally, removal of ABA resulted in rapid attenuation of these oscillatory increases. • Our data demonstrate that dehydration stress-regulated expression of LEA protein genes is temporally dynamic and highlight the importance of oscillations as a robust mechanism for optimal responses. Our results suggest that dehydration stress-induced oscillations in the steady-state abundance of LEA protein transcripts may constitute an important cellular strategy for adaptation to life in a constantly changing environment.


Different types of bone-graft substitutes have been developed and are in the market worldwide to eliminate the drawbacks of autogenous grafting. They vary in composition, strength, osteoinductive and osteoconductive properties, mechanism and rates by which they are resorbed and remodelled. Tooth derived hydroxyapatite (THA) is a novel biomaterial. This study was performed to determine the histological properties of THA on animals. A commercial coralline HA (CHA, Proosteon 200, Interpore Cross, USA) was used as control material. 20 sheeps were used and divided into 2 groups. Human THA (Group A) and CHA (Group B) materials were implanted to the tibiae of 10 sheeps for each group. The histological examinations of surrounding bone response were done 12 weeks after implantation. There was no significant difference histologically between group A and B. All materials were found to be surrounded by new bone tissue. THA was found to be as efficient as the standard CHA on histological basis. In addition, economical production of THA should be taken into consideration. Therefore, THA may be a viable alternative on bone grafting provided that clinical trials will be completed.


This is the Final report on DARPA-sponsored development Program Pad Printer for Electronics DE-FC04-95AL87486 which was initiated in February, 1995 and intended to run 24 months to February 1997. The Program has significant value to the Thick Film processing industry, an electronic manufacturing alternative for producing functional modules integrated at the multichip level. The result is highly reliable, high volumetric efficiency, subassemblies for military applications and for commercial applications in severe environments, such as automotive, portable communications, and bio-implantable devices. The program progressed quite satisfactorily through 19 months, when it encountered severe, non-technical, difficulties. Resolving these difficulties resulted in several months of delay in completing the Program, but resulted in only a trivial increase in total program cost and no increase in cost to the sponsor. The principle Objective of the Program was the development of a printing system -- machine and appropriate inks -- compatible with existing thick-film processing but offering a 5x improvement in line density. This objective has been met. The Pad Printer is capable of printing suitable inks in traces 25 g wide on 50g centers to a fired thickness of 3 {mu}; each of these parameters is roughly 1/5 the value of the current alternative, silk-screen printing. The available inks represent an assortment of conductor, dielectric, and insulator formulations and the knowledge developed permits extending this family of inks to new and diverse functional materials. An important secondary objective was maximum compatibility with existing Thick Film processing; the printer and ink systems may be substituted directly for the silk screen printers in existing processes. The Program reached or exceeded its other Technical Objectives in almost every case and, in those few instances where the objective was only partially met, work continues under private funding.


The authors present a model of the process of designing documents. The model can he used as a joh aid for writers and as a framework for testing document design principles. The final step in this model is evaluation — testing how easily readers can understand and use the document. They then describe an audience-centered evaluation in which a traditional bureaucratic document was compared with a shortened,reorganized, and rewritten version. Subjects using the revised document answered more questions correctly, were significantly better in identifying the correct section, took less time to answer questions, and rated the revised document as much easier to use.


OBJECTIVES. The objective of this study was to develop and pretest a questionnaire to assess the practice of withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment in the NICU on the basis of the experiences of bereaved parents. METHODS. We conducted semistructured interviews with 11 parents whose infants had undergone withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment in the NICU at McMaster University Medical Centre to obtain their views on helpful practices. Interviews continued until no new items were obtained (ie, saturation point). A total of 370 items were distilled into 82 questionnaire statements on care by a multidisciplinary team and grouped for analysis into 6 domains: communication, quality of care, quality of life, shared decision-making, withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment process, and bereavement care. Respondents were asked to rank how frequently events occurred on a 7-point Likert scale anchored from 1 = never to 7 = always. A score of >5 was considered favorable. The questionnaire was distributed to a pretest sample of perinatal social workers who attended a bereavement workshop at an international conference. RESULTS. The response rate was 48%. Respondents ranked items that pertained to the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment process highest, indicating that items were done well. Items related to quality of care and bereavement care ranked lowest. Other domains ranked as follows: communication, shared decision-making, and quality of life. Consistency of items within domains was tested by Cronbach's α and split-half testing and were >0.6 for most domains. CONCLUSIONS. Parents' views on important aspects of end-of-life care in the NICU were incorporated into a quality assurance questionnaire. Pretesting assessed the performance of the instrument and the perceptions of social workers on the effectiveness of end-of-life practices. Respondents identified that parents' practical needs were met during the withdrawal process but were not consistently met in regard to the quality of in-hospital and follow-up bereavement care.


SUMMARY: A nitrate non-utilizing mutant of Gibberella zeae (Fusarium graminearum) was isolated following UV mutagenesis and filtration enrichment. In preliminary reports, this mutant was designated gdh, but it has now been renamed nnu. This mutant has a complex pleiotropic phenotype which affects most aspects of nitrogen utilization. The wild-type parent could use nitrate, nitrite, ammonium, urea, polyamines, and most amino acids and purines as sole source of nitrogen, but the nnu mutant could use only putrescine, anthranilic acid, and the amino acids asparagine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, glutamine, ornithine, proline and tyrosine. Most of these compounds could also serve as the sole source of both carbon and nitrogen. Addition of 1 mM-glutamine or 1 mM-proline to the medium resulted in a synergistic growth response if spermidine, arginine, citrulline, histidine, phenylalanine or tryptophan was present as the primary nitrogen source. Addition of 1 mM-ammonium to the medium repressed growth when putrescine, aspartic acid, asparagine, glutamic acid or tyrosine was the primary nitrogen source. The addition of ammonium did not repress growth when anthranilic acid, glutamine, ornithine or proline was the primary nitrogen source. The nnu mutant grew more rapidly than its wild-type parent in race tubes on some complex media. The complexity and diversity of the alterations in nitrogen catabolism caused by the nnu mutation suggest that this locus is important in the regulation of nitrogen catabolism by G. zeae.


A variety of approaches have been studied in the past to overcome the problems encountered with the delivery of antifungal, for effective treating of oral and vaginal candidiasis. In this study, a novel mucoadhesive tablets with pH-independent drug release characteristic was prepared by chitosan and carbopol® 71G interpolymer complex (IPC) claims for multipurpose use. Precipitation method is employed for preparation of IPC followed by characterization with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). Bucco-Vaginal Miconazole nitrate (MN) compacts were prepared by direct compression using IPC. The formulations were tested for physicomechanical properties, in vitro drug release (buccal and vaginal pH), swelling studies and mucoadhesion strength. The dissolution of MN from all the prepared tablets into the phosphate buffer (pH 6.8) and simulated vaginal fluid pH 4.2 (SVF) were controlled and followed non-fickian Release mechanism. Formulations containing IPC showed pH independent controlled Miconazole nitrate release without an initial burst release effect in both buccal and vaginal pH. Furthermore, F14 formulations showed satisfactory bioadhesive property and controlled release MN than all other formulations. However, the suitable combination of polymer with IPC exhibited the controlled release MN and satisfactory bioadhesive property with surface erosion along with swelling approached Zero-order release.


POEMS syndrome is a rare plasma cell disorder characterized by peripheral neuropathy, monoclonal gammopathy, and high levels of serum vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), the pathogenesis of which remains unclear. A unique feature of this syndrome is that the proliferating monoclonal plasma cells are essentially λ -restricted. Here, we determined complete nucleotide sequences of monoclonal immunoglobulin λ light chain (IGL) variable regions in 11 patients with POEMS syndrome. The V-region of the Ig λ gene of all 11 patients was restricted to the V λ 1 subfamily. Searching for homologies with IGL germlines revealed that two germlines, IGLV1-44*01 (9/11) and IGLV1-40*01 (2/10) were identified, with an average homology of 91.1%. The IGLJ3*02 gene was used in 11/11 rearrangements with an average homology of 92.2%. These data suggest that the highly restricted use of IGL V λ 1 germlines plays an important role in the pathogenesis of POEMS syndrome.


Is it possible to demonstrate that our energy changes with meditation? And does that in turn make us more creative and innovative? The first author has done extensive research showing that the answer to both questions is a resounding yes. Even modest success with meditation leads to a number of auditable benefits: health and wellness, improved performance, better leadership decisions, less discord and violence, and improved creativity and innovativeness.


Background. Ray marching is a technique that can be used to render images of infinite terrains defined by a height field by sampling consecutive points along a ray until the terrain surface is intersected. However, this technique can be expensive, and does not generate a mesh representation, which may be useful in certain use cases. Objectives. The aim of the thesis is to implement an algorithm for view-dependent triangulation of infinite terrains in real-time without making use of any preprocessed data, and compare the performance and visual quality of the implementation with that of a ray marched solution. Methods. Performance metrics for both implementations are gathered and compared. Rendered images from both methods are compared using an image quality assessment algorithm. Results. In all tests performed, the proposed method performs better in terms of frame rate than a ray marched version. The visual similarity between the two methods highly depend on the quality setting of the triangulation. Conclusions. The proposed method can perform better than a ray marched version, but is more reliant on CPU processing, and can suffer from visual popping artifacts as the terrain is refined.


The question of compliance arises for companies interested in sustainability. In trying to meet the expectations of its various stakeholders, a company determines the scope of its responsibilities, outlines its internal regulations and identifies the evaluative framework. Whatever standard the company uses, the compliance assessment of its practices should operate simply and consistently. However, it is interesting to note that this exercise appears generally complex to implement for most companies. Various alternative solutions are developed. Nevertheless, an examination of these tools reveals that for the most part, they only provide a partial solution, which is poorly suited to the deployment of an effective compliance management system. This paper therefore discusses the criteria for a knowledge base management tool, tailored to meet the various needs of businesses, which addresses the issue of compliance management from a more global angle. The context for the analysis is industrial maintenance in the gas sector. In this domain the issue of industrial safety compliance is particularly relevant, as it touches upon many sensitive issues (human, financial, infrastructure). Moreover, the nature and variety of the applicable requirements, and the characteristics of the population affected by the compliance assessment create a particularly suitable environment. The application of the analysis to this technical field makes it possible to verify general assumptions, which can be applied to less sensitive sectors. We first highlight the regulatory context that applies to industrial maintenance in the gas sector. We then present some criteria for the proposed tool, which include; a method to identify the scope of applicable requirements, a way to evaluate regulatory compliance, and an investigation of other possible applications for the results obtained. Finally, we explore the potential uses for a knowledge database, as a complement to a compliance assessment tool.


To the Editor. —We would like to document two cases of unilateral arcus lipoides associated with traumatic cyclodialysis in nonphthisical eyes. Report of Cases. —Case 1. —A 63-year-old man without a history of systemic illness presented with a unilateral cataract of the left eye. Ten years ealier, he had suffered a severe blunt ocular trauma from a tennis ball. On examination, visual acuity was 20/ 20 OD and light perception in the left eye. By applanation tonometry, intraocular pressure was 18 mm Hg OD and 12 mm Hg OS. Slit-lamp examination, gonioscopy, and ophthalmoscopy of the right eye revealed no abnormalities, and in particular, no signs of corneal arcus lipoides. Examination of the left eye disclosed a very marked, circular, and yellow-white arcus lipoides extending through the entire corneal thickness, separated from the limbus by a clear zone (Fig 1). There was a mature cataract. On gonioscopy, a cyclodialysis


In a model with irreversible capacity investments, we show that nancial statements prepared under replacement cost accounting provide investors with su cient information for equity valuation purposes. Under alternative accounting rules, including historical cost and value in use accounting, investors will generally not be able to value precisely a rm's growth options and, therefore, its equity. For these accounting rules, we describe the range of valuations that is consistent with the rm's nancial statements. We further show that replacement cost accounting preserves all value-relevant information if the rm's investments are reversible. However, the directional relation between the rm's equity value and the replacement cost of its assets is di erent from that in the setting with irreversible investments.


The photocatalytic degradation of phenanthrene (PHE), pyrene (PYRE) and benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) on soil surfaces in the presence of Fe2O3 using ultraviolet (UV) light source was investigated. The effects of various factors, namely Fe2O3, soil pH, and humic acid, on the degradation performance of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were studied. The results show that photocatalytic degradation of PAHs follows the pseudo-first-order kinetics. Catalyst Fe2O3 accelerated the photodegradation of PHE, PYRE and BaP significantly. In acidic or alkaline conditions, the photocatalytic degradation rates of the PAHs were greater than those in neutral conditions. Humic acid significantly enhanced the PAH photocatalytic degradation by sensitizing radicals capable of oxidizing PAHs.


In this paper, we propose a Markov movement model for mobile terminals in wireless personal communication service networks and study the location registration problem. We formulate the location registration as a Markov decision process and prove that the optimal strategies have threshold structures. To avoid solving the Bellman dynamical programming equations, we propose a single sample path-based algorithm to tune thresholds of the strategies. Since the proposed algorithm uses only one sample path of the system, it can be implemented online


The perspective of the present project can be inscribed in the so-called "Social Cognition" framework, that in the last years moved from a focus on the individual mind toward embodied and participatory aspects of social understanding. Among the topics relevant for social cognition, the aim of the thesis was to shed more light on motor resonance and joint action, by using two well-known effects of cognitive psychology: "Affordance" and "Simon".
In the first part of the project, the Affordance effect has been considered, starting from Gibson to some post-Gibsonian theorizations. Particular attention has received the notion of "Micro-affordance". The theoretical and empirical overview allows to understand how it can be possible to use the affordance effect to investigate the issue of motor resonance. A first study employed a priming paradigm and explored both in adults and school-age children the influence of a micro-affordance that can be defined dangerousness, and how motor resonance develops.
The second part of the thesis focused on the Simon effect, starting with the presentation of the "stimulus–response (S–R) compatibility effect" to introduce the "Simon effect". Particular attention has been dedicated to recent studies on the "joint Simon effect". The reviewed empirical findings have been discussed in a wider theoretical perspective on joint action. The second study was aimed at investigating whether shared representations, as indexed by the presence of the joint Simon effect, are modulated by minimal ingroup–outgroup distinctions and by experienced interdependence between participants. The third study explored to what extent prior experience could modulate performance in task sharing, combining two paradigms of cognitive psychology, the joint Simon and the joint transfer-of-learning.
In a general discussion the results obtained in the three studies have been summarized, emphasizing their original contribution and their importance within the Social Cognition research.


Manual counting of mitotic tumor cells in tissue sections constitutes one of the strongest prognostic markers for breast cancer. This procedure, however, is time-consuming and error-prone. We developed a method to automatically detect mitotic figures in breast cancer tissue sections based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Application of CNNs to hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stained histological tissue sections is hampered by noisy and expensive reference standards established by pathologists, lack of generalization due to staining variation across laboratories, and high computational requirements needed to process gigapixel whole-slide images (WSIs). In this paper, we present a method to train and evaluate CNNs to specifically solve these issues in the context of mitosis detection in breast cancer WSIs. First, by combining image analysis of mitotic activity in phosphohistone-H3 restained slides and registration, we built a reference standard for mitosis detection in entire H&E WSIs requiring minimal manual annotation effort. Second, we designed a data augmentation strategy that creates diverse and realistic H&E stain variations by modifying H&E color channels directly. Using it during training combined with network ensembling resulted in a stain invariant mitosis detector. Third, we applied knowledge distillation to reduce the computational requirements of the mitosis detection ensemble with a negligible loss of performance. The system was trained in a single-center cohort and evaluated in an independent multicenter cohort from the cancer genome atlas on the three tasks of the tumor proliferation assessment challenge. We obtained a performance within the top three best methods for most of the tasks of the challenge.


Low frequency vibration measurements in composite materials using embedded optical fiber sensors are presented in this paper. The two types of fiber sensors embedded are a polarization maintaining photonic crystal fiber (PM-PCF) polarimetric fiber sensor and a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor. A glass fibre reinforced polymer composite material sample is fabricated with both fiber optic sensors embedded in it. A comparison between the performance of both the PM-PCF polarimetric fiber sensor and the FBG sensor embedded in the composite material is also presented.


Focus of the study The study was informed by a literature review that identified similarities between the characteristic values and skills of social workers and some recent descriptions of close 'charismatic' or 'transformational' leadership, especially an account of the role of the leader as 'servant and partner'. Methodology The method adopted was to undertake a qualitative study of palliative care social work in a hospice in the south of England. Specialist palliative care social work was selected as a likely source of examples of social work practice 'at its best.' The main fieldwork activities undertaken were semi-structured interviews with social workers and other members of the hospice's multi-disciplinary team, followed by a final workshop session. Findings The study showed that social work practice in this setting was driven by an attitude of profound respect and sustained availability, which included a commitment to 'being with' people in circumstances of intractable suffering. Specific mechanisms were identified through which social workers used professional skills such as adaptive communication, sensitive risk management, systemic thinking and improvisation, to enable service users to identify and express their priority needs, to mobilise their own distinctive abilities and strengths, and to optimise their use of informal support networks. By making these insights accessible to the multi-disciplinary team, social workers promoted the ability of service users to function as effective co-experts within the distributed leadership dynamic of the multi-disciplinary team. Presentation The presentation provides a detailed analysis of the processes through which social workers supported service users to discover and exercise their own capacity to be 'leaders in our own lives'; and how this contributes a to a more practical understanding of what is involved in 'servant and partner' leadership.


MR tomography is the only imaging method that can demonstrate atrophy of the olfactory lobe of the brain in olfacto-genital dysplasia (Kallmann's syndrome). The MRT findings in five patients with Kallmann's syndrome are described. The MRT criterion for the presence of Kallmann's syndrome appears to be an interruption or total absence of the olfactory sulcus.


Abstract Orphanages harness the goodwill of volunteers, visitors and donors to generate funding. However, in recent years, evidence has emerged that in some cases children are being recruited or trafficked into orphanages in order to generate profit from this goodwill. This is known as the 'orphanage industry', and the recruitment of children into orphanages for the purpose of profit and exploitation is 'orphanage trafficking'. Australia is reported to be the largest funder of residential care for children in South East Asia. In 2017, Australia became the first government in the world to consider orphanage trafficking as a form of modern slavery. This article traces the evolution of the recognition of orphanage trafficking broadly, and then focusses on recommendations made by the Australian government following the release of its 2017 Hidden in Plain Sight Report. This article analyses the emerging policy and legislative reforms that are being undertaken by the Australian government and recommends further development to ensure that funding and finances are appropriately directed to divest from orphanages and instead support burgeoning care reform in the South Asian region. Finally, the article responds to critiques of the Australian government's standpoint on orphanage trafficking as it relates to the over-reliance on institutional care and provides clarification on why a criminal justice response to orphanage trafficking is appropriate.


Conditions for deglycosylation of a number of antibiotics belonging to the vancomycin group were studied. A two-stage process including methanolysis followed by acidolysis in a mixture of trifluoracetic acid and HC1 in the presence of nucleophile was shown optimal for formation of a biologically active aglycone of ristomycin A while for formation of the vancomycin aglycone a one-stage process (trifluoracetic acid/HC1--acidolysis) was optimal. A scheme for isolation and purification of the aglycones of ristomycin A and vancomycin is presented.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to determine the percentage of the women who call a teratology information service who take folic acid before conception.

STUDY DESIGN
A pilot-tested questionnaire was used to survey women who called a teratology information service about their use of folic acid supplementation. Frequencies were generated by pregnancy status, age, race, and parity.

RESULTS
Of the 693 pregnant callers, 42% of the women initiated folic acid use 6 weeks before pregnancy, 35% of the women initiated folic acid use during pregnancy. Thirty-seven percent of the total caller population reported taking folic acid. Forty-seven percent of pregnant white women versus 27% of pregnant black women reported preconceptional folic acid use (P =.005). Thirty-nine percent of pregnant women who were <30 years old reported preconceptional folic acid use versus 48% of women who were >30 years old (P =.018).

CONCLUSION
Most pregnant women take folic acid; however, only a minority of them start before conception. The use of preconceptional folic acid, although higher than the national average of 30%, was still low. Many women start taking folic acid in their pregnancy after the neural tube is closed.


The CB2 cannabinoid agonist LY2828360 lacked both toxicity and efficacy in a clinical trial for osteoarthritis. Whether LY2828360 suppresses neuropathic pain has not been reported, and its signaling profile is unknown. In vitro, LY2828360 was a slowly acting but efficacious G protein–biased CB2 agonist, inhibiting cAMP accumulation and activating extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 signaling while failing to recruit arrestin, activate inositol phosphate signaling, or internalize CB2 receptors. In wild-type (WT) mice, LY2828360 (3 mg/kg per day i.p. × 12 days) suppressed chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain produced by paclitaxel without producing tolerance. Antiallodynic efficacy of LY2828360 was absent in CB2 knockout (KO) mice. Morphine (10 mg/kg per day i.p. × 12 days) tolerance developed in CB2KO mice but not in WT mice with a history of LY2828360 treatment (3 mg/kg per day i.p. × 12 days). LY2828360-induced antiallodynic efficacy was preserved in WT mice previously rendered tolerant to morphine (10 mg/kg per day i.p. × 12 days), but it was absent in morphine-tolerant CB2KO mice. Coadministration of LY2828360 (0.1 mg/kg per day i.p. × 12 days) with morphine (10 mg/kg per day × 12 days) blocked morphine tolerance in WT but not in CB2KO mice. WT mice that received LY2828360 coadministered with morphine exhibited a trend (P = 0.055) toward fewer naloxone-precipitated jumps compared with CB2KO mice. In conclusion, LY2828360 is a slowly signaling, G protein–biased CB2 agonist that attenuates chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain without producing tolerance and may prolong effective opioid analgesia while reducing opioid dependence. LY2828360 may be useful as a first-line treatment in chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain and may be highly efficacious in neuropathic pain states that are refractive to opioid analgesics.


Three-dimensional (3D) integration is a promising strategy to integrate more functions into a given footprint. In this work, we report on a convenient new strategy to grow and integrate high density Si nanowire (SiNW) arrays on the parallel sidewall grooves formed by Bosch etching, via a low temperature (<350 °C) in-plane solid-liquid-solid (IPSLS) mechanism. It is observed that both the pitch and the depth of the grooves can be reliably controlled, by tuning the Bosch etching parameters, to adjust the density of SiNWs, and the sidewall growth of SiNWs is rather stable even along the turnings. This approach has demonstrated a facile batch-manufacturing of stacked SiNWs, where the SiNWs exhibit a mean diameter of 40 nm and a spacing of 100 nm, without the use of any high resolution lithography. Prototype stacked channel transistors are also fabricated, with an impressive on/off current of >107 and a hole mobility of 57 cm2 V-1 s-1, in a unique vertical side-gate configuration. These results highlight the unique potential and benefit of combining conventional Bosch processing with high precision 3D guided growth of SiNWs for constructing more complex and functional stacked channel electronics.


The author provides an account of the legal history of copyright law in the former British colonies, seen and understood from the colonized side. He looks at the ways in which colonial copyright can be considered as an early instance of "legal transplant" and local adaptation of emerging international practice and agreement. Article by Michael Birnhack (Professor of Law, Tel Aviv University, Israel and IALS Fellow) - published in Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and its Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London.


Abstract We have previously reported that glia-like folliculo-stellate (FS) cells in the rat anterior pituitary may be involved in heterotopic differentiation of striated muscles which appear during pituitary cell culture. In the present immunocytochemical study, cytological alterations of FS cells in vitro were investigated by using antibodies to marker proteins (i.e., S-100 and vimentin) for FS cells. Expression of skeletal muscle-specific MyoD1 detected by immunocytochemistry, enabled identification of myogenic cells at a stage when they were still unicellular. Elongated myoblasts containing MyoD1-positive nuclei were found as early as the fifth day of monolayer culture of pituitary cells. The double immunostaining technique showed that some of these myoblasts reacted with antiserum to S-100. Although all of the myoblasts were immunoreac-tive to vimentin, this marker protein was unable to identify FS cells in vitro because rapidly proliferating fibroblasts were also immunoreactive to vimentin. Since the antiserum to S-100 that we used did not react with already differentiated striated muscle fibers, the demonstration of both MyoD1 and S-100-immunoreac-tive myoblasts in our pituitary cultures suggests that these myogenic cells are derived from FS cells. The present study does not rule out the possibility that fibroblasts, whose origin is presently unknown, are also involved in myogenesis in pituitary cultures.


REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY
Noncontrast magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) is widely used in human and small animal medicine. However, this technique has not yet been described in the horse, and compared to other angiographic techniques MRA could be more cost efficient and potentially safer.

OBJECTIVES
The aim of this study was to provide a comprehensive anatomical reference of the normal equine head vasculature using a noncontrast MRA technique, on both low- and high-field MRI.

METHODS
Five healthy adult horses were examined, 4 with a low-field magnet (0.23T) and the remaining one with a high-field magnet (1.5T). The magnetic resonance angiography sequence used was TOF (time-of-flight) 2D-MRA and CT images of a vascular corrosion cast were subsequently used as anatomical references.

RESULTS
The MRA imaging protocol provided good visualisation of all major intra- and extracranial vessels down to a size of approximately 2 mm in diameter on both low- and high-field systems. This resulted in identification of vessels to the order of 3rd-4th branches of ramification. The visibility of the arteries was higher than of the veins, which showed lower signal intensity. Overall, MRA obtained with the high-field protocol provided better visualisation of the arteries, showing all the small arterial branches with a superior resolution.

CONCLUSIONS
The use of a specific vascular sequence such as TOF 2D-MRA allows good visualisation of the equine head vasculature and eliminates the need for contrast media for MRA.

POTENTIAL RELEVANCE
Magnetic resonance angiography allows for visualisation of the vasculature of the equine head. Vessel morphology, symmetry and size can be evaluated and this may possibly play a role in preoperative planning or characterisation of diseases of the head, such as neoplasia or guttural pouch mycosis.


This study explored the construction of interpersonal meanings through multimodal elements of teacher talk and teachers' body language in Chinese as a second language classrooms (CSL) in Malaysian primary schools. CSL classes have increasingly grown in numbers but has yet to gain the attention of researchers in examining their discourse. The study aims to: (1) identify the semiotic resources realised in CSL classrooms; (2) study the use of linguistic and non-linguistic semiotic resources to construct interpersonal meaning in CSL classrooms; and (3) study the impact of the interpersonal meaning constructed on the teaching and learning of CSL. An integrated theoretical framework which brings together various schools of thought namely Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL), teacher immediacy and multimodal discourse analysis, was adopted to examine the interpersonal meaning constructed in CSL classrooms, a first attempt in analyzing the discourse in Malaysia. In addition, educational theories were referred to in order to systematically discuss the deployment and co-deployment of various semiotic resources in constructing interpersonal meaning via teachers' roles and teacher-student relationships. The study proposes a comprehensive framework in analyzing teacher immediacy, a realisation of interpersonal meaning. Data were obtained from four CSL teachers from four schools in Selangor, Malaysia and 63 students who attended the Level 4 CSL course in the schools through classroom observations, recording of classroom lessons and interviews with the teachers and students.
The study not only provides empirical data which is lacking in research previously carried out in Malaysia identifying resources use in the teaching of second language but also discusses the co-deployment of verbal and non-verbal resources evident in classroom discourse to create meaning. In addition, the study impresses upon the importance of time parameter and space to provide richer discussions of the semiotic resources identified. Other findings include the fact that CSL teachers were to some extent multilingual such that they can code-switch between Chinese, Malay and English, were sensitive to the cultural norms of the various races in the classes, used the lexical item ‗teacher' to refer to themselves in teacher talk, appraised students positively through the use of judgement resources and are creative in negotiating the various resources at every stage of their teaching, able to foreground and background resources wherever relevant. Strategies through the enactment of various teacher's roles were identified to realize teacher immediacy such as remembering students' names, code-switching to facilitate student's learning, smiling frequently, and establishing frequent eye contact. Such immediate behaviour of the teachers have positive impact on the teaching and learning of CSL which includes reducing learning anxiety, increasing motivation and interest in learning, developing student's confidence, instilling good behaviour and developing student's discipline. These in turn help establish a close rapport and a meaningful teacher-student relationship, creating a conducive learning environment for teaching and learning. The findings of this study will benefit teachers of not only CSL classes but teachers of other disciplines, developers of teaching programs as well as researchers in the field of multimodal discourse.


We prove Bogomolov's inequality for semistable sheaves on product type varieties in arbitrary characteristic. This gives the first examples of varieties of general type in positive characteristic on which Bogomolov's inequality holds for semistable sheaves of any rank. The key ingredient in the proof is a high rank generalization of the slope inequality established by Xiao and Cornalba-Harris. This Bogomolov's inequality is applied to study the positivity of linear systems and semistable sheaves and construct Bridgeland stability conditions on product type surfaces in positive characteristic. We also give some new counterexamples to Bogomolov's inequality and pose some open questions.


We live in an era in which scientific discovery is increasingly driven by data exploration of massive datasets. Scientists today are envisioning diverse data analyses and computations that scale from the desktop to supercomputers, yet often have difficulty designing and constructing software architectures to accommodate the heterogeneous and often inconsistent data at scale. Moreover, scientific data and computational resource needs can vary widely over time. The needs grow as the science collaboration broadens or as additional data is accumulated; the computational demand can have large transients in response to seasonal field campaigns or new instrumentation breakthroughs. Cloud computing can offer a scalable, economic, on-demand model that is well matched to some of these evolving science needs. This paper presents two of our experiences over the last year — the Terapixel Project, using workflow, high-performance computing and non-structured query language data processing to render the largest astronomical image for the WorldWide Telescope, and MODISAzure, a science pipeline for image processing, deployed using the Azure Cloud infrastructure.


Vernacular place names are names that are commonly in use to refer to geographical places. For purposes of effective information retrieval, the spatial extent associated with these names should be able to reflect people's perception of the place, even though this may differ sometimes from the administrative definition of the same place name. Due to their informal nature, vernacular place names are hard to capture, but methods to acquire and define vernacular place names are of great benefit to search engines and all kind of information services that deal with geographic data. This paper discusses the acquisition of vernacular use of place names from web sources and their representation as surface models derived by kernel density estimators.


Gene-targeting strategies based on nucleic acid have opened a new era with the develop‐ ment of potent and effective gene intervention strategies, such as DNAzymes, ribozymes, small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs), aptamers, decoys, etc. These technologies have been examined in the setting of clinical trials, and several have recently made the successful transition from basic research to clinical trials. This chapter discusses progress made in these technologies, mainly focusing on Dzs and siR‐ NAs, because these are poised to play an integral role in antigene therapies in the future.


Fractal geometries have shown to be attractive for antenna designers because of the unique features they ofier. In this paper, a printed fractal based slot antenna has been introduced to be used in multi-band wireless applications. The slot structure of the proposed antenna is of an octagonal shape with a Koch fractal curve of the second iteration is applied on each of its sides. The slot structure has been etched on the ground plane of a substrate with relative permittivity of 4.4 and 1.6mm thickness. On the reverse side of the substrate, a 50ohm microstrip line feed has been etched. To enhance the coupling with the slot, the feed line has been loaded with a circular stub with embedded complementary circular split ring resonator. Based on the lowest resonant frequency, it has been found that the largest dimension of the proposed antenna slot structure is less than half the guided wavelength. Parametric study shows that the resulting antenna ofiers a multi-band behavior with enhanced gain and fractional bandwidths, besides the reasonable radiation characteristics throughout the resonating bands. With appropriate dimension scaling, the proposed antenna could be a suitable candidate for use in a wide variety of multi functions wireless applications.


The nematode C. elegans responds to infection by the fungus Drechmeria coniospora with a rapid increase in the expression of antimicrobial peptide genes. To investigate further the molecular basis of this innate immune response, we took a two-dimensional difference in-gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE) approach to characterize the changes in host protein that accompany infection. We identified a total of 68 proteins from differentially represented spots and their corresponding genes. Through class testing, we identified functional categories that were enriched in our proteomic data set. One of these was "protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum," pointing to a potential link between innate immunity and endoplasmic reticulum function. This class included HSP-3, a chaperone of the BiP/GRP78 family known to act coordinately in the endoplasmic reticulum with its paralog HSP-4 to regulate the unfolded protein response (UPR). Other studies have shown that infection of C. elegans can provoke a UPR. We observed, however, that in adult C. elegans infection with D. coniospora did not induce a UPR, and conversely, triggering a UPR did not lead to an increase in expression of the well-characterized antimicrobial peptide gene nlp-29. On the other hand, we demonstrated a specific role for hsp-3 in the regulation of nlp-29 after infection that is not shared with hsp-4. Epistasis analysis allowed us to place hsp-3 genetically between the Tribbles-like kinase gene nipi-3 and the protein kinase C delta gene tpa-1. The precise function of hsp-3 has yet to be determined, but these results uncover a hitherto unsuspected link between a BiP/GRP78 family protein and innate immune signaling.


ABSTRACT Traditional sectors, such as agriculture and fishing, often receive special treatment from policymakers because such sectors are perceived to be associated with traditional cultural public good values. However, these values are often difficult to measure, and few attempts have been made to do so. The recent European Union (EU) eel management directive creates an unusually clear-cut tradeoff between eel fishing and other agents affecting the European eel population. It is possible, therefore, to directly measure the perceived public good value of the eel fishery in terms of other economic costs that policymakers are willing to incur in order to maintain eel fishing. Using Swedish data, we find that Swedish policymakers value the public good aspect of the remaining Swedish eel fishery at a minimum of SEK 34 million (approximately EUR 3.4 million) annually, which is more than the commercial eel fishery's actual production value. JEL Codes: D78, H41, Q22.


The reliability issue of probe tip/recording media interface is one of the most crucial concerns in the atomic force microscope (AFM)-based recording technology. In this work, a specialized doped silicon probe tip and a lead zirconate titanate, Pb(Zr/sub x/Ti/sub 1-x/)O/sub 3/(PZT) recording media were prepared for data recording based on ferroelectric interaction, and their tribological characteristics were assessed by performing wear tests using an AFM. The damage of the probe tip was quantitatively as well as qualitatively characterized by field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) analysis. It was found that the wear coefficient of the probe tip was in the order of 10/sup -4/--10/sup -2/, and serious contamination at the end of the probe tip was observed. As for the PZT recording media, the AFM-based scratch test using the diamond coated probe tip was performed. It was shown that the wear rate was in the order of 10/sup -8/ mm/sup 3//N cycle.


A global biofuels program will potentially lead to intense pressures on land supply and cause widespread transformations in land use. These transformations can alter the Earth climate system by increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land use changes and by changing the reflective and energy exchange characteristics of land ecosystems. Using an integrated assessment model that links an economic model with climate, terrestrial biogeochemistry, and biogeophysics models, we examined the biogeochemical and biogeophysical effects of possible land use changes from an expanded global second‐generation bioenergy program on surface temperatures over the first half of the 21st century. Our integrated assessment model shows that land clearing, especially forest clearing, has two concurrent effects—increased GHG emissions, resulting in surface air warming; and large changes in the land's reflective and energy exchange characteristics, resulting in surface air warming in the tropics but cooling in temperate and polar regions. Overall, these biogeochemical and biogeophysical effects will only have a small impact on global mean surface temperature. However, the model projects regional patterns of enhanced surface air warming in the Amazon Basin and the eastern part of the Congo Basin. Therefore, global land use strategies that protect tropical forests could dramatically reduce air warming projected in these regions.


This study documents four wild-caught, interspecific hybrids between sailfin mollies (Poecilia velifera or P. petenensis) and shortfin mollies (P. mexicana or P. orri) from the Yucatan peninsula and Isthmus of Tehuantepec regions of Mexico. In canonical discriminant analysis of morphological data all four putative hybrid males were intermediate in shape between shortfin and sailfin molly species, falling well outside 95% confidence ellipses for those putative parental species. For two of the four hybrid individuals, we used allele size differences at the nuclear Xsrc gene between sailfin and shortfin species to determine that one was a first (F1) or early generation (F2, BC1) hybrid and the other was a later generation (>F1) hybrid. Sequences of the mtDNA control region (483 bp) and Xsrc nuclear gene (636 bp) indicated that the female parent of the early generation hybrid individual was P. mexicana and the male parent was P. velifera. Thus, while rare in the wild, interspecific hybridization and introgression between sailfin and shortfin mollies does occasionally occur despite the existence of behavioral pre-mating isolating mechanisms.


Abstract Little is known about tritrophic interactions involving seed-feeding insects, parasitoid wasps, and wild fleshy fruits. Here, we examine relationships between Pseudargyrotoza conwagana (F.) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), Bracon otiosus Marshall (Hymenoptera: Braconidae), and the wild privet, Ligustrum vulgare L. (Lamiales: Oleaceae), after collecting fruits in a hedgerow habitat in northwest Spain and rearing insects indoors. No other insect species was detected in this trophic system. Each fruit contained one to four seeds, each infested fruit contained only one seedfeeding tortricid caterpillar, and each parasitized caterpillar was affected by a single braconid individual, i.e., B. otiosus was a solitary parasitoid. Almost half of the wild privet shrubs were infested by P. conwagana, and infestation ranged from 2 to 32% of fruits per infested shrub. The general effect of P.conwagana on wild privet dispersal can be considered low, as the overall rate of seed infestation was low (6% of seeds). The infestation rate was higher in wild privet shrubs with a larger number of seeds per fruit, and tortricid caterpillars that left the fruits successfully ate >80% of seeds. In total, the parasitism rate was moderate (25% of caterpillars), but varied considerably (0–75%) among shrubs where P. conwagana infestation was detected. Parasitism only occurred in shrubs showing high infestation rates (19–32% infested fruits), i.e., with high host densities; however, the parasitism rate was densityindependent in these shrubs. The wild privets benefited from the action of B. otiosus in two ways: the tortricid caterpillar population was partly eliminated, and the caterpillars were prevented from eating more than one seed per fruit. The B. otiosus sex ratio was very balanced (1 male to 1.18 females). Winter diapause and protandry were prevalent in B. otiosus.


Manipulation of social media affects perceptions of candidates and compromises decision-making. In the United States, social media sites—such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube—are currently being used by two out of three people (1), and search engines are used daily (2). Monitoring what users share or search for in social media and on the Web has led to greater insights into what people care about or pay attention to at any moment in time. Furthermore, it is also helping segments of the world population to be informed, to organize, and to react rapidly. However, social media and search results can be readily manipulated, which is something that has been underappreciated by the press and the general public.


Background The aim of this study was to measure and compare the plasma levels of the microRNA (miRNA), miR-221, in patients with acute pulmonary embolism (PE) with healthy individuals and to evaluate the potential role of miR-221 as a diagnostic biomarker for acute PE. Material/Methods In blood samples collected from 60 patients with acute PE and 50 healthy volunteers, plasma levels of microRNA were identified using a microRNA microarray, and miR-221 expression was detected using real-time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) and troponin I were measured using an automated immunoassay analyzer. D-dimer levels were measured with an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Results From the evaluation of 32 differentially expressed plasma miRNAs, miR-221 was significantly upregulated in the plasma of patients with acute PE compared with normal individuals (P<0.05). Correlation analysis showed that plasma miR-221 levels in patients with acute PE were positively correlated with levels of BNP (r=0.842, P<0.05), troponin I (r=0.853; P<0.05), and D-dimer (r=0.838; P<0.05). The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) area under the curve (AUC) for plasma miR-221 was 0.823 (95% CI, 0.757–0.906) (P<0.05), compared with the AUC for D-dimer of 0.768 (95% CI, 0.727–0.853), the AUC for troponin I of 0.713 (95% CI, 0.646–0.868), and the AUC for BNP of 0.648 (95% CI, 0.601–0.723). Conclusions Plasma levels of miR-221 were significantly increased in patients with acute PE when compared with healthy individuals.


ABSTRACT Meloidogyne enterolobii (=M. mayaguensis) is an emerging plant pathogen capable of inducing root galls and yield reduction in a wide range of host species. This pathogen has also been reported as a global threat for tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) crop production mainly due to its ability to overcome the resistance meditated by the Mi-1 gene. Despite the potential importance of this nematode, sources of resistance to M. enterolobii are not yet available for breeding purposes. The main objective of the present work was to evaluate a large Solanum (section Lycopersicum) germplasm (comprising nine species and one botanic variety) aiming to identify useful sources of resistance to M. enterolobii. In the first screening assay, 101 accessions and the susceptible standard S. lycopersicum 'Santa Cruz' were inoculated and evaluated under controlled conditions. The phenotypic criteria used for evaluation were the number of root galls, gall index, number of eggs, and the reproduction factor. Plants of the 20 selected accessions were cultivated in 0.4 L pots filled with sterile soil. Inoculation procedures were identical to the first assay, but with higher inoculum pressure (3,300 eggs per plant). Three accessions with superior tolerance levels to M. enterolobii were identified viz. S. lycopersicum 'Yoshimatsu', S. lycopersicum 'CNPH 1246' and S. pimpinelifolium CGO 7650 (= CNPH 1195). These accessions were re-evaluated against a distinct M. enterolobii population as well as against two other root-knot nematode species (M. javanica and one M. incognita race 1). Under higher inoculum pressure, 'Yoshimatsu' was found to be resistant to M. javanica and M. incognita race 1, but susceptible to M. enterolobii from guava. The other two sources displayed susceptibility to all three nematodes. Additional germplasm screening is needed since no source of stable genetic resistance to M. enterolobii was found so far.


Abstract. A global increase in the strength of the hydrologic cycle drove an increase
in the flux of terrigenous sediments into the ocean during the
Cenomanian???Turonian Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (OAE2) and was an important
mechanism driving nutrient enrichment and thus organic carbon burial. This
global change is primarily known from isotopic records, but global average
data do not tell us anything about changes at any particular location.
Reconstructions of local terrigenous flux can help us understand the role of
regional shifts in precipitation in driving these global trends. The
proto-North Atlantic basin was one of the epicenters of enhanced organic
carbon burial during OAE2, so constraining terrigenous flux is
particularly important in this region; however, few local records exist.
Here, we present two new OAE2 records from the Atlantic Coastal Plain of
North Carolina, USA, recognized with calcareous nannoplankton
biostratigraphy and organic carbon isotopes. We use carbon??? / ???nitrogen ratios
to constrain the relative contribution of marine and terrestrial organic
matter; in both cores we find an elevated contribution from vascular plants
beginning just before OAE2 and continuing through the event, indicating a
locally strengthened hydrologic cycle. Terrigenous flux decreased during the
brief change in carbon isotope values known as the Plenus carbon isotope
excursion; it then increased and remained elevated through the latter part of
OAE2. Total organic carbon (TOC) values reveal relatively low organic carbon burial in the inner
shelf, in contrast to black shales known from the open ocean. Organic carbon
content on the shelf appears to increase in the offshore direction,
highlighting the need for cores from the middle and outer shelf.


Metallic radionuclides provide target-specific radiolabeled probes for molecular imaging in radiochemical yields sufficient for administration to subjects without purification. However, unlabeled ligands in the injectate can compete for targeted molecules with radiolabeled probes, which eventually necessitates postlabeling purification. Herein we describe a "1 to 3" design to circumvent the issue by taking advantage of inherent coordination properties of technetium-99m (99mTc). A monovalent RGD ligand possessing an isonitrile as a coordinating moiety (CN-RGD) was reacted with [99mTc(CO)3(OH2)3]+ to prepare [99mTc(CO)3(CN-RGD)3]+ in over 95% radiochemical yields. This complex exhibited higher integrin αvβ3 binding affinity than its unlabeled monovalent ligand, primarily due to its multivalency. This compound visualized a murine tumor without removing unlabeled ligands, while a 99mTc-labeled monovalent probe derived from a monovalent ligand could not. The metal coordination-mediated synthesis of radiolabele...


PURPOSE
Flavor capsule cigarettes are rapidly gaining global market share, particularly in Latin America. This paper compares profiles and perceptions of smokers who prefer flavor capsule cigarettes and those who do not in Mexico.

METHODS
We analyzed data from six online surveys of adult Mexican smokers (n=4488) from 2018-2020. Participants identified their preferred brand variety characteristics (no capsule; one capsule; two capsules), and reported perceptions of their brand varieties' flavor, smoothness, harmfulness, and whether they smoke to control their appetite. Separate multinomial logistic models regressed preferred cigarette type on sociodemographic and smoking-related variables, as well as perceived benefits on preferred cigarette type, adjusting for covariates.

RESULTS
Most participants preferred capsule cigarettes (single capsule=47.5%; double capsule=12.9%). Flavor capsule users reported that their preferred varieties mostly tasted like menthol/mint (59% of single capsule users and 23% of double capsule users), cucumber (12% and 27%, respectively) or berries (10% and 22%, respectively). Females were more likely than males to prefer either single or double capsule cigarettes (AOR=2.26 and 2.01, respectively). Preference for flavor capsules was also higher among younger smokers, e-cigarette users, those who smoke less frequently, and those who recently tried or plan to quit. Smokers who preferred capsules were more likely than non-capsule smokers to perceive their cigarettes as smoother, less harmful, and to smoke to control their appetite.

CONCLUSIONS
The high prevalence of capsule use and widespread perceptions of the benefits of capsules over traditional cigarettes may help explain why tobacco control policies have not reduced smoking prevalence in Mexico.


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Current network file system protocols rely heavily on a central server to coordinate file activity among client workstations. This central server can become a bottleneck that limits scalability for environments with large numbers of clients. In central server systems such as NFS and AFS, all client writes, cache misses, and coherence messages are handled by the server. To keep up with this workload, expensive server machines are needed, configured with high-performance CPUs, memory systems, and I/O channels. Since the server stores all data, it must be physically capable of connecting to many disks. This reliance on a central server also makes current systems inappropriate for wide area network use where the network bandwidth to the server may be limited. In this paper, we investigate the quantitative performance effect of moving as many of the server responsibilities as possible to client workstations to reduce the need for high-performance server machines. We have devised a cache protocol in which all data reside on clients and all data transfers proceed directly from client to client. The server is used only to coordinate these data transfers. This protocol is being incorporated as part of our experimental file system, xFS. We present results from a trace-driven simulation study of the protocol using traces from a 237 client NFS installation. We find that the xFS protocol reduces server load by more than a factor of six compared to AFS without significantly affecting response time or file availability.


Two of the main pillars of the EU waste collection policy are the Proximity Principle and Self-Sufficiency Principle. According to those, waste should be disposed as close as possible to where it has been produced. The effect of such provision is to increase the market power of local disposers, with possible undesirable consequences for other firms in the vertical chain. We show through a simple spatial model that one effect of the Proximity Principle and Self-Sufficiency Principle is to provide an incentive to collectors and waste producers to increase the amount of separated waste.


This paper analyzes the persistence of fragility in some sub-Saharan African states and the multiple dimensions of state weakness that are simultaneously at play. This study also provides an overview of the analytics of fragility, conflict, and international engagement with fragile states before turning to an assessment of the current state of affairs and the areas in which there has been progress in building resilience. The paper also looks at the role of fiscal policies and institutions and analyzes growth accelerations and decelerations. Seven country case studies help identify more concretely some key factors at play, and the diversity of paths followed, with an emphasis on the sequencing of reforms. The paper concludes with a summary of the main findings and policy implications.


OBJECTIVE
To measure the predictive effect of patient-perceived family stress for health-related outcomes.

DESIGN
Prospective study of patients whose social stress and support were measured by self-report at baseline with the Duke Social Support and Stress Scale and used as predictors of outcomes during an 18-month follow-up period.

SETTING
Rural primary care community health clinic.

PATIENTS
Convenience sample of ambulatory adults.

INTERVENTION
None.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Follow-up (one or more follow-up visits), frequent follow-up (more than six visits), referral and/or hospitalization (one or more), high follow-up severity of illness (upper-tertile mean Duke Severity of Illness Checklist scores), and high follow-up total charges (> or = $268).

RESULTS
There were 413 patients with a mean age of 40.4 years. Of these, 58.6% were women; 47.2%, African American; 52.8%, white; 56.7%, married; 77.2%, wage earners or housekeepers; and 52.3% had more than one health problem. At baseline, patients with high self-reported family stress (upper-tertile Duke Social Support and Stress Scale scores) had lower quality of life, functional health, and social support scores and higher dysfunctional health and social stress scores than other patients. High baseline family stress scores (scale of 0 to 100) predicted follow-up (odds ratio [OR] = 1.014), frequent follow-up (OR = 1.021), referral and/or hospitalization (OR = 1.018), high severity of illness at follow-up (OR = 1.016), and high follow-up charges (OR = 1.018) after controlling for the effects of social support, age, gender, and race. Family stress scores were stronger predictors of these outcomes than the other social stress and support variables.

CONCLUSION
The finding of patient-perceived family stress as a risk factor for unfavorable health-related outcomes suggests the need for early detection and treatment of family stress by family physicians.


Mary Shelman discusses forces driving higher food prices and some of the changes which are impacting the global food supply chain. Shelman coordinates Harvard Business School's premier Agribusiness Seminar attended annually by more than 200 CEOs and top managers from global firms. She also organizes and teaches similar programs in Europe, Latin America and Asia. Her research focuses on the forces shaping global agribusiness. Her experience bridges academia, as an author and teacher of dozens of case studies on strategic change and challenges in global agribusiness firms, with industry experience.