Unguals of sauropod dinosaurs are notable for their unusual shape and orientation, and differ from those of graviportal mammals to which they are often compared. Early in their evolution, sauropod manual unguals underwent severe reduction, being lost on all digits except digit (D)-I. In contrast, the pedal unguals become hypertrophied and laterally compressed with an unusual angled orientation. Recent workers dismissed an early suggestion of a scratch-digging function, supporting instead substrate-gripping during locomotion, although neither hypothesis has been adequately tested, and rejection of the scratch-digging hypothesis was based on inadequate comparison. Here, we show that sauropod nesting traces are morphologically consistent with being excavated by scratch-digging, and that this behaviour is also observed in extant tortoises, which possess flattened unguals with a functionally analogous orientation. In this initial qualitative study, we surveyed claw morphology and use in a range of tortoises, based on previously published accounts and observation of specimens and video footage. Our findings suggest that there is a good case for re-examining the scratch-digging hypothesis for sauropods, although further work is required. The influence of reproductive behaviours on morphology is discussed, including the suggestion that the single manus claw of sauropods may have functioned for mate-gripping during copulation.


As with most live attenuated viral vaccines, varicella vaccine comprises a mixture of variant strains. Knowledge about the pathogenic potential of individual strains in the varicella vaccine is limited. Vaccination against chickenpox causes a usually modified varicella-like rash in a small percentage of healthy children, and vaccine virus reactivates on rare occasions to cause herpes zoster (HZ). In several published studies, our respective laboratories have analyzed genomic variation among specimens from cases of postvaccination rash and HZ in vaccine recipients, focusing on polymorphisms between vaccine Oka strains and the parental Oka strain. In most respects, these studies were in close agreement, identifying the set of wild-type markers among vaccine adverse event isolates, each occurring at similar frequencies. The same 3 universally present vaccine markers, at positions 106262, 107252, and 108111, were also identified by both laboratories. One notable difference has been the observation of mostly clonal vaccine virus among isolates examined by one laboratory and mostly mixed viruses in isolates examined by the other. In addition to reviewing and comparing our combined observations, we propose possible explanations for our contrasting findings and propose future studies to reconcile them.


John Wallace Baird (1869-1919) was born and raised in southwestern Ontario, earning his undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto in 1897. He would ultimately rise to become the first Canadian-born president of the American Psychological Association at a critical turning point in the discipline's history, during World War I. He was also the director of the laboratory in the famed Clark University psychology department, led by G. Stanley Hall, and died just months before succeeding Hall into the presidency of Clark. Baird studied briefly with Wilhelm Wundt, earned his PhD from ?. B. Titchener, and taught at Johns Hopkins and the University of Illinois. When he was stricken with what would be his fatal illness, he was serving as Vice-Chair of the Psychology Committee of the U. S. National Research Council.Keywords: applied psychology, American Psychological Association, Canada, journal editing, perceptionOne of the most significant Canadians in the history of psychology has been nearly forgotten. He studied under several of the most prominent members of the early discipline-Wilhelm Wundt, Joseph Jastrow, and ?. B. Titchener. He won one of the earliest research grants for psychology from the Carnegie Foundation. He taught at some of the most prestigious universities: Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Illinois, and Clark. He conducted and published influential and controversial research on visual perception. He served in editorial positions with the American Journal of Psychology, Psychological Bulletin, and the Journal of Educational Psychology. He was a founding editor of the Journal of Applied Psychology. He ultimately rose to become president of the American Psychological Association (APA) during one of the discipline's most critical times. During his term he also served as Vice-Chair of the Psychological Committee for the U.S. National Research Council. He was within months of succeeding G. Stanley Hall as president of Clark University when his life was cut short. And yet, despite this level of accomplishment, today his name is known to few: John Wallace Baird. The aim of this article is to sketch the story of Baird's life and career, reminding Canadian psychologists of one of their most illustrious predecessors.John Wallace Baird (see Figure 1) was born on May 21, 1869 into a farming family living in Motherwell, Ontario, about 50 km north of London. His father and mother had moved there just 15 years before, purchasing land from the government to establish a farm. They then started a family of, ultimately, 12 children. John was the eighth child. It was an interesting time in Canada West,1 as the area of what is now southern Ontario was then known. Responsible government had only come to Canada West in 1848, finally breaking the grip of the Family Compact and allowing people of the non-Anglican majority to share in their own governance. Ongoing disputes between the predominantly English-speaking Canada West and predominantly Francophone Canada East led to the capital of the so-called United Province of Canada moving from QuA©bec City to Toronto and back to QuA©bec again, before finally settling in Ottawa in 1866. As is well known, the two provinces confederated with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and were renamed Ontario and QuA©bec in 1867, just 2 years before John Baird's birth.The elder Bairds' first child, Andrew Browning Baird (1855-1940) grew up to become a prominent Presbyterian minister. He is best known for having brought the church to Edmonton, then little more than a rugged trading post of about 300 people, protected by a fort, located in the lower portion of the old Northwest Territories (Alberta did not become a separate province until 1905). In 1887 he moved to Winnipeg, where he taught at Manitoba College, one of the denominational institutions that would ultimately unite to form the University of Manitoba. In 1916, Andrew would become the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Canada for 2 years. …


Glucocorticoid (GC)-induced bone loss is the most common cause of secondary osteoporosis but its pathogenesis is controversial. GCs clearly suppress bone formation in vivo but the means by which they impact osteoblasts is unclear. Because bone remodeling is characterized by tethering of the activities of the two cells, the osteoclast is a potential modulator of the effect of GCs on osteoblasts. To address this issue we compared the effects of dexamethasone on wild-type (WT) osteoclasts with those derived from mice with disruption of the GC receptor in osteoclast lineage cells and found that the bone-degrading capacity of GC-treated WT cells is suppressed. The inhibitory effect of dexamethasone on bone resorption reflects failure of osteoclasts to organize their cytoskeleton in response to M-CSF. Dexamethasone specifically arrests M-CSF activation of RhoA, Rac, and Vav3, each of which regulate the osteoclast cytoskeleton. In all circumstances, mice lacking the GC receptor in osteoclast lineage cells are spared the impact of dexamethasone on osteoclasts and their precursors. Consistent with osteoclasts modulating the osteoblast-suppressive effect of dexamethasone, GC receptor-deficient mice are protected from the steroid's inhibition of bone formation.


English plays an increasingly important role at Swedish universities but not much is known about its effects on the quality of teaching and learning. Therefore, a large research project which is collaborative and interdisciplinary, crossing language studies in humanities with education, is being planned. One of several aims of the project is to study the consequences of teaching in English on learning and study achievements. A few pre-studies have been carried out in order to develop more detailed research questions. Two of the pre-studies will be presented in this paper. In one of them, ten university teachers with Swedish as their native language have been interviewed about their experiences and perceptions of strategies, problems and consequences of teaching in English. Five of the interviewees had no experience of teaching in English and five had experience. A result was that the teachers with no experience of teaching in English seemed to anticipate and fear lower quality in their teaching. This assumption was confirmed by the teachers who had experience of teaching in English. They found it difficult to explain and talk about complicated issues in a profound way and also to use humour. Another problem concerned the big differences in international students' knowledge of English and cultural differences. In the other pre-study, observations have been conducted in lectures, seminars and group-work sessions of a course in social sciences given in English. The results of the latter study indicated that the apprehension of the contents may be inflated among students who have Swedish as their native language. Furthermore, there was empirical support that their skills in both English and their native language were influenced. A conclusion is that the pilot studies confirmed that there is a great need for further research on the effects of teaching in English at Swedish universities.


Abstract Teenage pregnancy among school-going youth is a concern worldwide, but in socially–economically challenged environments it is a result of, and contributory factor to, a complex web of social injustice. In South Africa, most of the school-based prevention interventions to date have been adult-designed and imparted, with the voice of the target audience – the youth – being ignored. The purpose of this participatory action research study was to involve school-going youth in the research and development of prevention interventions, tailored to meet their perceived needs. This article focuses on the first cycle where 24 high school participants interrogated their own and their peers' narratives about teenage pregnancy so as to determine a way forward. Findings indicate that, although the youth perceive parenthood while they are still studying to have a negative impact on their future life goals, the prevention messages mediated by educators and other adults do not take into consideration the needs and lifestyle of teenagers within their specific social context. The implications of the three themes which emerged from the thematic analysis of the interviews, open-ended questionnaires and visual data are discussed to provide guidelines for the design of more youth-friendly prevention education to inform the next cycle of the research. Since teenage pregnancy is a global problem, the findings of this study have international relevance.


BACKGROUND
The emergence of antibiotic-resistant species calls for fast and reliable phenotypic susceptibility testing to adapt clinical management as fast as possible.

OBJECTIVES
We assessed the real-life performance of EUCAST rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing (RAST) and analysed its impact on patient management.

METHODS
RAST was performed on clinical blood cultures containing Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa or Acinetobacter baumannii complex. Categorical agreement with VITEK2 was analysed. A pre-post quasi-experimental observational study was designed to compare antibiotic treatment in sepsis patients in the RAST patient group (n = 51) and a historical control cohort (n = 54).

RESULTS
In total, 436 isolates, corresponding to 2314 disc diameters, were measured; 18.4% of these measurements were in the area of technical uncertainty. For the 81.6% categorical results, which could be compared, 94.7% were in agreement, whereas 5.3% of the results were not. In the RAST group, optimal therapy was initiated on the same day as blood culture positivity, while this was the case in the historical group after 24 h. In six cases, RAST allowed for rapid antibiotic escalation. The 30 day mortality rate was lower in the RAST group, although this was not statistically significant.

CONCLUSIONS
RAST provides a reliable tool to improve clinical management of sepsis patients by providing rapid phenotypic susceptibility data. While not necessarily being an instrument for de-escalation, especially in areas of low prevalence, early detection allows for timely coverage of resistant isolates. Thus, RAST significantly adds to successful antibiotic stewardship programmes.


We report the case of a 42-year-old man with no risk factors for coronary artery disease admitted with atypical chest pain. The electrocardiogram performed after intravenous injection of nitrate revealed ST-segment elevation in leads V1 to V4. The coronary angiography showed myocardial bridges in the three coronary arteries, besides an unusual length of the left anterior descending artery (80 mm). The patient progressed well following the discontinuation of nitrate use and introduction of beta-blockers and calcium channel antagonists.


Ensuring food safety in the consumer market of the country, region, city is one of the priority activities to improve the quality of life of the population. To ensure the quality and safety of food products in the consumer market of the country needs consistent work. Necessary implementation of measures on formation of culture of healthy eating, food security, improving the nutritional status of the population and protection of health. Most businesses manufacture and sell products that comply with the requirements of the current normative-technical documentation, although this documentation, the experts have questions. But despite this, in the consumer market there is low-quality, non-standard and adulterated food products. One of the most pressing issues of concern to the public authorities, manufac- turers, retailers, public organizations and, of course, the customers, is the prevention of falsification and counterfeiting. When exercising the state control over observance of require- ments of technical regulations on food products throughout the Russian Federation the complex of measures aimed at curbing the production and trafficking of counterfeit food products. The focus is on the dairy industry, childcare, healthcare organizations, trade enterprises. And require further tightening, so as to completely solve the problem of falsifi- cation and counterfeiting is not impossible to solve. In order to prevent receipt of the consumer market of the country, the region, poor-quality food raw materials and food products necessary to intensify the work of public associations (manufacturers, distributor, wholesalers), to ensure the publicity of product quality from manufacturers, to achieve a reliable assessment of the quality of their products by manufacturers or Association.


The purpose of this report is to catalog, describe, and provide information concerning existing models of the dairy sector. Many types of dairy models are listed in this report. The models vary by geographic aggregation (e.g., farm, state, regional, national, and international levels), time dimension (e.g., comparative static, annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily specifications), principal application (e.g., Federal Milk Marketing Order, dairy price support program, operations analysis, etc.), computer requirements (mainframe vs. micro-computer, DOS vs. Apple), ease of use, i.e., "user friendliness," and other dimensions. The report should be useful for individuals interested in the dairy industry, public policy, or quantitative methods.


Web surveys are performed in a less controlled Internet environment in which survey quality is deteriorated due to unfriendly survey designs causing respondents' unpleasant mental conditions. Therefore, this paper suggests two new elements, Multimedia (MM) and Dialogue Box (DB), for designing web surveys. MM can deliver messages to respondents more effectively and DB can enrich text-only survey format. This research focuses on investigating how MM and DB influence respondents' Response Burden (RB), Content Perception (CP) and Involvement (IN). Low RB and High IN can increase user participation willingness while high CP can increase the validity of user answers. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 280 college students. Using ANOVA and T-test, the results show MM enhances CP, improves IN, and lowers RB; while DB only lowers RB.


Infusion of methyl tertiary butyl ether in bile ducts of rabbits SIR,-I was interested to read the paper from Professor Tritapepe's group (Gut 1989; 30: 206-12). 1 feel it is important to emphasise that this work has little or no bearing on previously published human in vivo studies on the use of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) to treat choledocholithiasis. The toxicity of MTBE in the extrahepatic biliary tree is directly related to the time corrected net volume exposure of the bile ducts to the chemical plus the extent of dispersal from the extrahepatic biliary tree which is itself influenced by the previously mentioned factor among others. Tritapepe's study reports continuous infusion of MTBE for 48 hours without an infusion/aspiration cycle, a technique which must maximise toxicity. My human choledocholithiasis MTBE treatment protocol results in bile duct clearance after intermittent, installation/aspiration sessions totalling eight hours (correctly expressed as 4 ml MTBE per 30 min x 4 per session x 4 sessions).' Continuous nasobiliary catheter drainage between treatment sessions also helps to control toxicity and minimises rises in the transaminases. I have now treated choledocholithiasis in 23 elderly patients using MTBE delivered intermittently via a nasobiliary catheter, and 17 patients have achieved complete clearance of their bile duct stones. Posttreatment endoscopic retrograde cholangiography has uniformly shown a reduction in the size of the bile duct and subsequent biliary imaging in six patients (>six months after MTBE treatment) has failed to reveal any evidence of bile duct dilatation.


Since the 1990s, states have received unprecedented flexibility to determine Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility and program administration. We investigate the role of state flexibility in explaining SNAP caseloads and find that state SNAP policies accounted for nearly 40 percent of the predicted caseload decline between 1993 and 2000 – primarily through the eligibility restrictions on noncitizens – and nearly one quarter of the 2000-2011 caseload increase. State economic conditions, measured by the unemployment rate, also play a strong role in caseload changes, accounting for more than half of the predicted caseload decline between 1993 and 2000 and almost two-thirds of the increase between 2007 and 2011. We then conduct a number of policy simulations, including simulations of the size of the SNAP caseload if states had not acquired flexibility over program rules between 2000 and 2011. We estimate that, if all required states to adopt policies that would be expected to restrict caseload growth, the caseload would be between 44 percent lower while if all states were required to adopt policies that would be expected to increase the caseload the caseload would be 18 percent higher.


HBO's recent breakout success TV series Westworld stars Anthony Hopkins and Evan Rachel Wood. It is set in a futuristic theme park that has commodified humanities violent impulses including rape and murder. The park allows its wealthy residents to act out their fantasies free of consequence. Westworld depicts the consequences of greed and consumerism that humanity has fallen into. Westworld turns human history and nostalgia, sadism, and women into objects to be sold to the highest bidder. The series proves that no human is impervious to this horrific violence and we all fall victim to our own consumerist desires. The classist and misogynistic overtones of the show create an atmosphere that feeds into the wealthy, elitist, male park goers. As humans continue to demand more and more soon the commodities will be humans, and we will have nothing left.


Abstract. China's cities have been undergoing rapid and intense urbanization processes in the past few decades. Shandong is a coastal province which is located in East China with big economy and population scales, and which also plays an important role in the rapid process of China's modernization. The DMSP/OLS dataset has been widely used for the urban development assessments in long time-series and large spatial scales situations. In this paper, we used a time series of nighttime light data to estimate the landscape spatial pattern changes of cities in Shandong province from 1994 to 2012. Nine landscape metrics were calculated and analyzed to figure out the spatial patterns of urban area developments of the cities in Shandong province. The landscape metrics include the number of patches (NP), the landscape total area (TA), the aggregation index (AI), the largest patch index (LPI), the mean patch area (AREA_MN), the landscape shape index (LSI), the total edge length (TE), the edge density (ED), and the mean radius of gyration (GYRATE_MN). The experimental results reveal that, in 1994–2012, the total urban area of cities in Shandong province expanded for 1.17 times, the average urban area increased by about 93.00%, the average annual growth rate of the TE metric is 2.67 %, while the ED metric decreased about 1.44 % annually. Bigger cities in this area show relative slower urbanization development processes, such as Jinan and Qingdao. Coastal cities represented much more rapid expansion velocities than inland cities. In the middle area of Shandong province, the connectivity between developed urban areas was constantly increased.


Path clustering has found many applications in recent years. Common approaches to this problem use aggregates of the distances between points to provide a measure of dissimilarity between paths which do not satisfy the triangle inequality. Furthermore, they do not take into account the topology of the space where the paths are embedded. To tackle this, we extend previous work in path clustering with relative homology, by employing minimum homology area as a measure of distance between homologous paths in a triangulated mesh. Further, we show that the resulting distance satisfies the triangle inequality, and how we can exploit the properties of homology to reduce the amount of pairwise distance calculations necessary to cluster a set of paths. We further compare the output of our algorithm with that of DTW on a toy dataset of paths, as well as on a dataset of real-world paths.


We present an analysis of the formation and eruption of a filament and fast coronal mass ejection associated with a flare that occurred in active region 11429 using observations in the ultraviolet, extreme ultraviolet, X-ray, and radio wavelength bands. Precursor activity began as an interaction between two filaments, F1 and F2, that are identified as having twisted magnetic flux ropes (MFRs). Transient brightenings in all wavelengths are observed as a result of this interaction, likely the result of magnetic reconnection between the two filaments. This interaction results in a reconfiguration of the two filaments into a long overlying filament and a shorter low-lying filament. The upper filament subsequently undergoes a partial confined eruption. Plasma flows originating near the east footpoint of F1 lead to an extension of the upper filament into the filament channel to the west, resulting in a new active region filament (ARF). This new filament begins a slow rise and expansion. During its slowly rising phase, the MFR in which the filament is embedded becomes visible, with both the filament and flux rope rising and expanding simultaneously. The twist of the magnetic rope is determined as four turns. The erupting configuration changes from a twisted arch shape to a reversed γ shape within ∼75 s at the beginning of the fast-rise phase, representing a transformation from twist to writhe. The observations provide a clear example of filament formation via the tether-cutting reconnection of two nearby filaments. A helical kink instability may be the trigger of the ARF eruption.


Meson spectroscopy aims to study the masses and decay processes of mesons to better understand the mechanics of Quantum Chromo Dynamics in the strong coupling (non peturbative) regime. The Edinburgh group are spokespersons on a major new proposal at the Thomas Jefferson National Laboratory called MesonEx. This experiment will make use of the newly upgraded 12 GeV electron beam and detector systems to produce and measure the properties of mesons of interest for study. Edinburgh also leads the development of a fast timing Hodoscope, part of the new Forward Tagger detector system that will be essential to the success of this experiment. The primary focus of this thesis is the development process of the Foward Tagger Hodoscope, from its inception up to its installation at Jefferson Lab. The second part of the document will discuss the first measurement of the γp → ωππp decay channel, with data from the g11a run of the CLAS (CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer) in Hall B of Jefferson Lab. The analysis presents evidence for resonant contributions to the dataset decaying directly to ωππ, via b1(1235)π or via ωρ. These include a2(1320), π1(1600), ω3(1670) and π2(1670).


INTRODUCTION
Hereditary myosin myopathies are muscle disorders caused by mutations in myosin heavy chain genes. The MYH2 gene encodes the fast 2A skeletal muscle isoform, and mutations manifest as joint contractures, muscle weakness, and external ophthalmoplegia. Muscle biopsy shows decreased type 2A fibers, and vacuoles are sometimes present in adults with progressive disease.

PRESENTATION OF CASE
This case describes a full term baby boy with hypotonia, dysmorphic features, dysphagia, and aspiration. Whole genome sequencing detected a novel heterozygous variant in the MYH2 gene. Muscle biopsy showed decreased type 2A fibers and vacuoles in myofibers.

DISCUSSION
Hypotonia and dysphagia are common in infants with a MYH2 myopathy. However, dysmorphic features and vacuoles on biopsy have not previous been described in infants with MYH2 myopathies.

CONCLUSION
This case reports an unusual phenotype of a rare neonatal-onset congenital myopathy associated with a novel heterozygous variant in MYH2.


Any given day, thousands of teenagers enter the nearly 17,000 United States public libraries dotting the nation. With this dissertation, I ask, "How does the public library spark and sustain the voluntary learning of adolescents with the affordances of space, resources, and people?" I answer this through an ethnographic case study of public library services for teens in a community with a high percentage of immigrant residents. Over 18 months, I observed library activities involving youth, interviewed library staff and adolescent patrons, and led teen volunteers in a participatory research project. Data was analyzed in a constant comparative method within a sociocultural-historical framework. Through attention to practices of the youth and library staff within the space, I saw how the physical layout, guiding policies, and activities offered, the public library embodied the values of access, intellectual freedom, and service. The librarian's professional questioning skills served to scaffold youth's experiences with resources. Through one-to-one interactions and a variety of library programs, librarian and adolescents established trust and engaged in deliberative discourse, preparing youth for collaborative work in future contexts. The legitimate peripheral participation of the most engaged adolescents pulled them further into the situated learning context of the public library. In ways that matched her individual needs and preferences, each girl took up identities related to the public good, education and lifelong learning, and social responsibility that goes with them across contexts as well into their future. This is how the public library's affordances of space, resources, and people operate interdependently to enact the values of diversity and democracy. Within the public library space, diverse adolescents, many of whom struggle in more formal contexts, find a multitude of ways to learn through resources and in relationship with people. Such experiences prepare them for participation in democratic processes with cultural capital as well as resilience for difficult times in the future. In summary, the public library sparks and sustains the voluntary learning of adolescents though embodied values, contextualized literacies, and developing identities.


A hierarchical NiO-based nanostructure, constructed from multi-dimensional building blocks, was fabricated by a synthesis method based on electrospinning and solution phase reaction. Fe was incorporated into the NiO nanostructure with highly uniform distribution via ion exchange reaction. A series of Fe2O3/NiO composites with different compositions were successfully synthesized with the hierarchical architecture well preserved. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) were used to characterize the structure and to confirm the formation mechanism of the synthesized products. The gas sensing properties of the Fe2O3/NiO hierarchical composites were systematically investigated. The optimized composition of Fe2O3/NiO shows superior sensing performance towards ethanol, such as high sensitivity, fast response/recovery speed and good selectivity. The high gas sensing performance of the sensing material was mainly due to the completeness of the heterojunction assembly between n-type Fe2O3 and p-type NiO, as well as the amplification effect caused by assembling the heterojunctions on the nanoscale.


Using reasonableness, we examine the U.S. Catholic bishops' opposition to provisions of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Weaving contributions from theology, philosophy, and jurisprudence, we emphasize the reasonable importance of mental health therapy for women within a relevant Catholic/Christian dialogue, particularly in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on healthcare. We principally identify socially imbedded factors that contribute to ending unwanted pregnancies, and argue that freedom of conscience is indeed freedom of choice within which women's reproductive needs lie under protections of the U.S. Constitution. We recognize that Catholic tradition originates in the words and behaviors of Jesus. Examining closely these actions toward women, we find no reasonable justification for the bishops' position against women's freedom of conscience. We also discovered that revelation does not belong exclusively to the bishops; truth continues to be revealed to all human consciences, and true freedom does not allow for coercion/castigation of dogmatic import. We advocate for women's ability to openly discuss their struggles to meet their reproductive condundra and to deconstruct their sexual stereotypes in mental health therapy. We provide crucial recommendations to augment choices for women's reproduction condundra, and incite the need for new epistemic frameworks to address the complexity of female sexuality.


COVID science is being both done and circulated at a furious pace. While it is inspiring to see the research community responding so vigorously to the pandemic crisis, all this activity has also created a churning sea of bad data, conflicting results, and exaggerated headlines. With representations of science becoming increasingly polarized, twisted, and hyped, there is growing concern that the relevant science is being represented to the public in a manner that may cause confusion, inappropriate expectations, and the erosion of public trust. Here we explore some of the key issues associated with the representations of science in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these issues are not new. But the COVID-19 pandemic has placed a spotlight on the biomedical research process and amplified the adverse ramifications of poor public communication. We need to do better. As such, we conclude with 10 recommendations aimed at key actors involved in the communication of COVID-19 science, including government, funders, universities, publishers, media, and the research communities.


The life-span in vitro and other proliferative characteristics of a strain of endothelial cells cloned from the aorta of a fetal calf were examined. Cultures of these cells had a replicative life-span of approximately 80 cumulative population doublings. Growth rates in the logarithmic phase and plateau densities decreased as the cumulative population-doubling level increased. After approximately 65 percent of the life-span of a culture was completed, the percentage of cells that incorporated [3H]thymidine during a 24-hour labeling period began to decrease rapidly. The cells expressed factor VIII antigen and their intercellular borders were stainable with silver nitrate throughout the life-span of each culture. Average cellular attachment size increased more than threefold between cumulative population-doubling levels 41 and 80. The facility with which cloned strains of endothelial cells can be isolated should encourage further exploitation of this important cell culture model.


In a double-blind study, the effect of high doses of methylprednisolone on the cerebral edema induced by cerebral infarction was evaluated in 76 Mongolian gerbils. The incidence of experimentally induced cerebral infarction following carotid artery ligation is high in these animals because they lack a posterior communicating artery. One hour after the left common carotid artery had been ligated, 34 animals were given 30 mg per kilogram of the adrenocorticosteroid and the dose was repeated 24 and 48 hours later. Thirty-four animals were given normal saline on the same treatment schedule. Eight animals with sham operations were not treated. The animals were observed for ten days for signs of stroke. Surviving animals were killed on the tenth day and all brains were examined macroscopically and microscopically. Stroke developed in 41% of all animals; 31% died within ten days. Of the steroid-treated animals, stroke developed in 38% and 26% died. Of the saline-treated animals, stroke developed in 44% and 35.5% died. The differences were not significant by chi square analysis and the authors concluded that large doses of methylprednisolone given one hour after carotid ligation failed to prevent or influence the course of experimental stroke.


Based on self-regulation theories of stress processes, the current study proposed a model to examine the within-person mediation relationship between morning commuting stressors and self-regulation at work via morning commuting strain. In addition, the study examined the moderating roles of daily task significance, daily family interference with work, and commuting means efficacy in this mediation model. Results from 45 bus commuters' daily diary data over a period of 15 workdays indicated that the amount of morning commuting stressors experienced by the bus commuters was positively related to their morning commuting strain, which in turn had a negative impact on self-regulation at work. At the within-person level, daily task significance buffered the negative indirect relationship between morning commuting stressors and self-regulation at work via morning commuting strain, whereas daily family interference with work in the morning exacerbated this negative indirect relationship. Further, at the between-person level, commuting means efficacy buffered this negative indirect relationship such that the negative indirect effect was weaker for workers with higher (vs. lower) commuting means efficacy. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

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This study implements a plasticity tool to predict the nonlinear shear behavior of unidirectional composite laminates under multiaxial loadings, with an intent to further develop the tool for use in composite progressive damage analysis. The steps for developing the plasticity tool include establishing a general quadratic yield function, deriving the incremental elasto-plastic stress-strain relations using the yield function with associated flow rule, and integrating the elasto-plastic stress-strain relations with a modified Euler method and a substepping scheme. Micromechanics analyses are performed to obtain normal and shear stress-strain curves that are used in determining the plasticity parameters of the yield function. By analyzing a micromechanics model, a virtual testing approach is used to replace costly experimental tests for obtaining stress-strain responses of composites under various loadings. The predicted elastic moduli and Poisson's ratios are in good agreement with experimental data. The substepping scheme for integrating the elasto-plastic stress-strain relations is suitable for working with displacement-based finite element codes. An illustration problem is solved to show that the plasticity tool can predict the nonlinear shear behavior for a unidirectional laminate subjected to multiaxial loadings.


Soil and water conservation practices are being promoted in Ghana as a way of sustainably managing the environment to support agricultural production. Despite the important role the adoption of the practices plays in conserving the environment, very few studies have been conducted to analyse the factors influencing their intensive adoption. This study analyses the determinants of intensity of adoption of soil and water conservation practices using data from a cross-section of smallholder producers in Northern Ghana. Count data models are used for the analysis. The empirical results show that access to information, social capital, per capita landholding and wealth play an important role in smallholder producers' decision to intensively adopt soil and water conservation practices.


Ian Hunter, in the New Rural Arts Strategy, provides us with a framework for thinking about regeneration by drawing deeply from rural culture, both its traditions as well as the challenges that are posed by social, cultural and environmental change. He proposes that artists could be key to this regeneration process. Working as an artist through the agency of Littoral, he has created the circumstances within this conference and its painstaking preparation, as well as through a long track record of work in this field, to lead a focused discussion on the development of rural cultures. Our work has also been rooted in rural cultures. In this presentation we want to pick up on two interrelated issues that Littoral ˜s work has clearly focused " ¢ the artist working in the sphere of social, cultural and environmental change and ¢ the artist as leader But we remain concerned about the terminology of ˜industry and the focus on an urban model of regeneration. The 19th and 20th century idea of industry is framed by material profit and commodity. We would ask: Where is the discourse and criticality within this industry' and 'Should we be developing a different terminology that speak to an ethos of responsible economics? Let us turn to our research with those questions in mind. Within our current research, we are specifically concerned with exploring the issues of artists working directly with other sectors in society. We might summarise our understanding at this point as follows: ¢ Artists are increasingly interested in creating the conditions in which the challenges, desires and tensions of changing social, environmental and cultural circumstances become exposed or revealed. ¢ By immersing ourselves in or inhabiting these ˜created conditions for a while (within artistic processes and projects as discrete experiences), we have the means as individuals to gain a heightened awareness of the circumstances of our particular lives. ¢ In leading, the artist does not set out in the first instance to solve problems.


Animals live in highly complex sensory environments that are repres- ented across multiple sensory-modalities. These multi-sensory neural representations allow animals to successfully navigate in space and to form relevant associative memories critical to survival. The remembered location of a plentiful food source or a predator could mean the difference between life and death.
To form survival relevant associative memories across multiple sensory modalities animals must be able to sense, encode, and integrate information from their immediate environment. The Information gathered across multiple sensory systems must therefore be temporally correlated and converge within the brain.
The mammalian hippocampus is one such structure where sensory information converges. Hippocampal place cells are known to fire at a particular location within an animal's environment (place field). As the animal moves through a place field action potentials proceed in phase with respect to hippocampal theta oscillations (phase precession).
Place fields encode specific positions in the animal's environment, and therefore provide a suitable substrate for the integration of diverse sensory inputs with spatial information. Such association would position sensory landmarks within the environment and would thus be crucial for successful spatial orientation and navigation.
To better understand how multisensory information is integrated for the formation of a neuronal place map, I performed in-vivo extracellular recordings in the hippocampus of behaving Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus). Specifically, I sought to understand the relative contribution of visual and locomotor inputs to place cell activity. Recordings were performed in a virtual reality behavioural setup in which animals ran along a virtual linear corridor. Animal locomotion was determined via a tracking-ball treadmill. By altering the gain factor between the movement of the ball and the speed of the visual projection on a single trial basis I could decouple visually perceived movement from the animal's locomotion.
Through these experiments I showed that place cells in Cornu Ammonis area 3 (CA3) responded differentially to closed loop manipulation. One subset of place cells formed its place field based on visual information within the virtual environment, independent of the distance travelled by the animal. Such visually driven place fields predominantly occurred at visual texture changes within the virtual corridor. A second subset of place cells relied predominantly on locomotor inputs, as place fields remained at the same running distance on a single trial basis. This was also confirmed in dark trials during which the projection was switched off. This meant that animals had to rely on internal cues such as path-integration and proprioceptive/motor efference information. A third subset of cells exhibited two place fields, with each field being driven by one of the two different inputs.
As a population both types of place fields formed input-specific maps that were simultaneously represented in the hippocampus. This notion is corroborated by the fact that place field firing was adjusted on a single trial basis without adaptive processes required.
Furthermore, I investigated whether overlapping input-specific place maps are integrated in a common processing frame. To this end I analysed phase precession of overlapping place fields, which is thought to be crucial for encoding time ordered events that are compressed within a theta cycle.
I found that theta-scale timing correlations shift with gain changes, which argues against mechanisms based exclusively on recurrent CA3 connections for memory formation.
My results therefore indicate that the hippocampus preserves information from distinct processing streams to form coexisting space representations. These coexisting input-specific maps could then be associated on a population level in order to form multimodal memories. Such association is likely to be formed from sensory information, fed-forward via the hippocampus, rather than via recurrent hippocampal connections.
Thus, the hippocampus provides animals with several maps of their environment, each specified for a specific sensory-input. Animals could therefore rely on the most appropriate map such that locomotor information would be more precise than visual information when the animal is navigating in darkness.


Ovarian aging is a major detrimental factor of pregnancy achievement and it is related to other issues of women's health. The purpose of this review is to present an update on ovarian aging risk factors followed by contemporary methods of its assessment and an overview of its current management strategies in assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Ovarian aging is a multifactorial trait governed by several factors including medical, lifestyle, genetic, autoimmune and idiopathic. There are several established risk factors and many others that are still being revealed. Heritability has a major influence on ovarian aging. Different genetic strategies and approaches for ovarian aging evaluation have been rapidly expanding; however the mission is far from complete. Genome-wide association studies seems to be the most applicable to advance this research. Although anti-Müllerian hormone and antral follicle count (AFC) biomarkers seems to be the most reliable predictors of ovarian aging, none has demonstrated conclusive evidence to predict pregnancy achievement in an ART setting. The debate continues which of the two predictors is the most suitable in ART as well as non-ART settings. Although multivariate models have been shown to be equally predictive to AFC, latest data support the notion that chronological age and genetic markers inclusion may increase their reliability. Several strategies have been suggested to manage ovarian aging in ART settings. None of the stimulation protocols or ART interventions has been shown to be convincingly beneficial to ovarian aging women and individualization of treatment is still recommended. Ovarian priming by different androgen preparations has been shown to be promising but more randomized controlled studies are required to substantiate these findings. Except for oocyte donation other ART strategies have not shown a persuasive evidence for advanced ovarian aging infertility patients. The new development of oocyte vitrification may well introduce opportunities for fertility preservation to woman at risk. It is concluded that proper assessment and detection of ovarian aging, employing current or developing biomarkers of ovarian reserve, may enable health providers to recommend, at appropriate biological time, early pregnancy achievement or fertility preservation in women at risk.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Carotid blowout is a serious late complication of prior treatment of advanced head and neck cancer. We evaluate the efficacy of CTA in the diagnosis of impending carotid blowout syndrome in patients with head and neck cancer, and its capability to predict clinical outcome. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The clinical data of 29 patients with impending carotid blowout who underwent CTA were collected and analyzed. Imaging signs included tissue necrosis, exposed artery, viable perivascular tumor, pseudoaneurysm, and contrast extravasation. DSA was obtained in 20 patients. One-year outcomes were compared based on management. RESULTS: The most common CTA finding was necrosis (94%), followed by exposed artery (73%), viable tumor (67%), pseudoaneurysm (58%), and contrast extravasation (30%). Exposed artery, pseudoaneurysm, and contrast extravasation were the 3 CTA findings related to outcomes. All of the pseudoaneurysm and contrast extravasation cases were associated with an exposed artery. An exposed artery was the most important prognostic predictor and could not be diagnosed on DSA. Patients without the 3 findings on CTA (group 1) had the best survival rate at 1-year follow-up, followed by patients with the 3 findings treated immediately by permanent artery occlusion (group 2). Patients with the 3 findings who had no immediate treatment (group 3) had the worst outcomes (P < .001 in group 1 vs group 3 and group 2 vs group 3; P = .056 group 1 vs group 2). CONCLUSIONS: CTA, with its ability to diagnose an exposed artery compared with DSA, may offer important management and prognostic information in patients with impending carotid blowout.


The classification of electron systems according to their topology has been at the forefront of condensed matter research in recent years. It has been found that systems of the same symmetry, previously thought of as equivalent, may in fact be distinguished by their topological properties. Moreover, the non-trivial topology found in some insulators and superconductors has profound physical implications that can be observed experimentally and can potentially be used for applications. However, characterizing a system's topology is not always a simple task, even for a theoretical model. When translation and other symmetries are present in a quadratic model the topological invariants are readily defined and easily calculated in a variety of symmetry classes. However, once interactions or disorder come into play the task becomes difficult, and in many cases prohibitively so. The goal of this paper is to suggest alternatives to the topological invariants which are based on the entanglement spectrum and entanglement entropy. Using quadratic models of superconductors we demonstrate that these entanglement properties are sensitive to changes in topology. We choose quadratic models since the topological phase diagram can be mapped using the topological invariants and then compared to the entanglement entropy/spectrum features. This work sets the stage for learning about topology in interacting and disordered systems through their entanglement properties.


Today, the need for marine education has been declared for the conservation of marine life and the marine environment. Understanding the diversity of marine life is essential, especially since there are many organisms that live in the sea. The first step in understanding biodiversity is to follow your interest in exploring many different kinds of life. However, there are many opportunities for marine life education centered on fish, but few on decapodiform cephalopod education. Decapodiforms are morphologically diverse. However, the squid is generally recognized as a decapodiform, and little recognition of other types of decapodiforms is expected in marine education. To teach marine biodiversity more effectively, it is necessary to raise awareness of decapodiform diversity. In this study, we conducted a summer course for children using many specimens of different decapodiform species to understand decapodiform diversity. In addition, in order to examine students' degree of recognition of decapodiform diversity, we asked students to draw decapodiform illustrations before and after the course. As expected, all participants drew a squid before the course. On the other hand, after the course, 58.3% of the students drew other decapodiform species. In the questionnaire survey about the course, more than 80% of students showed a high evaluation of impression and understanding. It seems that giving lectures on various types of decapodiforms is an effective way of raising awareness of decapodiform diversity.


The Floridan aquifer system (FAS) consists of the Upper Floridan aquifer (UFA), an intervening confining unit of highly variable properties, and the Lower Floridan aquifer (LFA). The UFA and LFA are primarily composed of Paleoceneto Oligocene-age carbonate rocks that include, locally, Upper Cretaceous rocks (Miller, 1986; Krause and Randolph, 1989). The FAS extends from coastal areas in southeastern South Carolina and continues southward and westward across the coastal plain of Georgia and Alabama, and underlies all of Florida. The thickness of the FAS varies from less than 100 feet (ft) in aquifer outcrop areas of South Carolina to about 1,700 ft near the city of Brunswick, Georgia (Williams and Kuniansky, 2015). Locally, in southeastern Georgia and the Brunswick– Glynn County area, the UFA consists of an upper water-bearing zone (UWBZ) and a lower water-bearing zone (LWBZ), as identified by Wait and Gregg (1973), with aquifer test data indicating the upper zone has higher productivity than the lower zone. Near the city of Brunswick, the LFA is composed of two permeable zones: an early middle Eocene-age upper permeable zone (UPZ) and a highly permeable lower zone of limestone (LPZ) of Paleocene and Late Cretaceous age that includes a deeply buried, cavernous, saline water-bearing unit known as the Fernandina permeable zone (Krause and Randolph, 1989). Maslia and Prowell (1990) inferred the presence of major northeast–southwest trending faults through the downtown Brunswick area based on structural analysis of geophysical data, northeastward elongation of the potentiometric surface of the UFA, and breaches in the local confining unit that influence the area of chloride contamination. Pronounced horizontal and vertical hydraulic head gradients, caused by pumping in the UFA, allow saline water from the FPZ to migrate upward into the UFA through this system of faults and conduits. Saltwater was first detected in the FAS in wells completed in the UFA near the southern part of the city of Brunswick in late 1957 (Wait, 1965). By the 1970s, a plume of groundwater with high chloride concentrations had migrated northward toward two major industrial pumping centers, and since 1965, chloride concentrations have steadily increased in the northern part of the city (fig. 1). In 1978, data obtained from a 2,720-ft-deep test well (33H188; fig. 2) drilled south of the city showed water with a chloride concentration of 33,000 milligrams per liter (mg/L), suggesting the saltwater source was located below the UFA in the Fernandina permeable zone (FPZ) of the LFA (Jones and others, 2002). All U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) data collected for this study, including groundwater levels in wells and water-chemistry data, are available in the USGS National Water Information System (U.S. Geological Survey, 2016).


Late in 2020 in California, two giant rideshare operators, Uber and Lyft, spearheaded a USD200 million campaign to overturn state legislation providing employment entitlements to their workers. This article exposes the way these enterprises employ legal drafting to disguise the reality of their relationships with workers; and we consider the rhetorical arguments they use to justify these strategies. We conclude that it is time for Australian regulators to adopt an alternative approach to ensuring basic protections for workers which focusses on the nature of the work being undertaken, rather than on the legal form of the contract between enterprise and worker. We focus on the Australian road transport industry, and particularly on rideshare and food delivery workers, because despite assertions that their labour is part of a shiny new 'digital economy', this kind of work has been important in societies since medieval times, or earlier.


How does the informal economy affect financial inclusion and entrepreneurial activity of consumers? We investigate the impact of informal lending on the types and terms of contracts offered by formal lenders, considering factors that facilitate informal lending activity such as social ties between consumers. The density of the connections between consumers represents the degree to which those with and without wealth mix, indirectly capturing the degree of inequality in a society. We develop a model which relates the density of social connections to the availability of informal lending activity. We show that a low to moderate degree of informal activity in a market can help unwealthy entrepreneurs because it motivates the bank to compete by cutting down the interest rate of unsecured loans offered to these consumers. In turn, the bank faces an overinvestment problem when financial inclusion is higher. As informal borrowing opportunities increase further, lenders' benefit from increased access to credit diminishes. It earns higher rents by increasing the rates on wealthy low-risk consumers who can informally lend to their social contacts. As a consequence, the overinvestment problem is replaced by an underinvestment problem and creditworthy entrepreneurs are deprived of loans from banks. We argue that although the entrepreneurial investment shrinks, only those projects with the best return are awarded financing, implying that the average investment in the market is now more attractive.


The overall aim of this thesis was to gain knowledge of how Registered Nurses (RN) are able to work together with family members of older people living in community elder care facilities.A questionnaire was distributed to all RNs (N= 314) with permanent appointments in community elder care in one province, and 67 percent (n = 210) answered after two reminders (I, II). The age of the participants was from 23 to 64 years and half of the participants worked in urban areas. About half of the participants had experience of work in elder care of five years or more.Study I focused on the RNs view of co-operation with family members of the old person and what influenced that co-operation. The working situation for RNs in community elder care showed that nearly half, 46 % of the RNs were not satisfied with their working situation. It was the nurses with more than five years of working experience that were unhappy with their working situation. The limited organisational and personnel resources influenced their ability to co-operate with the family members. The RNs expressed dissatisfaction and frustration when they could not spend enough time caring for the old people or communicating with their family members. The RNs believed that it was important for family members to show their involvement in the care of the old person. The results showed that cooperation would be more complicated if there was a conflict of interest between the RN and the family member. Furthermore, the RN pointed out the importance of family members taking care of the older person's interest.Study II focused on what the RNs described as positive, negative or problematic in their cooperation with family members of old people. Content analysis was used in the analysis of the three open-ended questions. Three themes emerged from the answers of the three open-ended questions, namely Problems within the system, Interaction with families and Caring in nursing work. The co-operation between the RN and the family member was especially important when the old person was suffering from dementia. An exchange of information about the person before illness was especially important as it was then possible to provide better care and understanding for the old person.The development of community elder care will put increasing demands on the RNs in community elder care in the future and there is a need for further support and guidance. Her working situation involves both working alone and being a part of a team. Informal care giving is also expected to increase as the elder population increases and by that the registered nurse will be even more important in community elder care as more persons are dependent on her competence. Conclusions drawn imply that the RN in community elder care is dependent on the organization of elder care and the organization is dependent on RNs competence.


Many commonly used velocity estimation procedures assume that the reflectors are horizontal. Because of this, their performance tends to degrade as the reflectors become curved or discontinuous. Much of this degradation can be traced to the fact that data recorded over nonhorizontal reflectors need not resemble in detail the subsurface in the area where they were recorded. Diffraction and scattering are the major complicating factors.Beginning with the scalar wave equation and using a small dip assumption, approximate wave equations which quite accurately model both near- and wide-angle reflections generated by one or more sources can be found. Finite difference formulations of these equations can be used to demonstrate that surface recorded seismic reflections which have been downward continued to the depth of their source reflectors must resemble those reflectors in detail.This property of downward continuation can be exploited to improve velocity estimates by using downward continuation as a preprocessor for velocity estimation techniques. Both synthetic and field data examples show that estimates based on downward continued data do not exhibit diffraction effects and are not dependent upon reflector dip. Synthetic data examples also illustrate that the use of downward continuation allows accurate velocity estimates to be made from no record data recorded over an earth in which the reflectors are random functions of the horizontal and vertical coordinates. For reasonable data parameters, theoretical considerations indicate that the coherence of properly downward continued random reflector data measured along the true velocity hyperbolic should be greater than a similar measure on the corresponding surface data. This coherence increase should make velocity estimates based on downward continued random reflector data less susceptible to noise than estimates based on surface recorded data.


Most of the literature about the effects of portfolio capital inflows to developing countries focuses on how macroeconomic stability is affected. Very little has been said on the long-run consequences that temporary booms in portfolio capital flows may bear by affecting the productive structure, particularly manufacturing development, of developing countries. The present paper tries to partially fill this gap. We first build a simple theoretical model to show how booming portfolio inflows may interact with domestic speculation at home, giving rise to a climate of financial euphoria featuring an appreciating exchange rate and rising prices of domestic speculative assets. We also discuss that such euphoria hardly lasts forever, but rather ends up in a phase of heightened financial turmoil and volatility. As for the long run, we maintain the Kaldorian perspective according to which manufacturing plays a crucial role for the development process of backward economies.


Analogues of clinical tuberculosis drug (6S)-2-nitro-6-{[4-(trifluoromethoxy)benzyl]oxy}-6,7-dihydro-5H-imidazo[2,1-b][1,3]oxazine (PA-824), in which the OCH(2) linkage was replaced with amide, carbamate, and urea functionality, were investigated as an alternative approach to address oxidative metabolism, reduce lipophilicity, and improve aqueous solubility. Several soluble monoaryl examples displayed moderately improved (∼2- to 4-fold) potencies against replicating Mycobacterium tuberculosis but were generally inferior inhibitors under anaerobic (nonreplicating) conditions. More lipophilic biaryl derivatives mostly displayed similar or reduced potencies to these in contrast to the parent biaryl series. The leading biaryl carbamate demonstrated exceptional metabolic stability and a 5-fold better efficacy than the parent drug in a mouse model of acute M. tuberculosis infection but was poorly soluble. Bioisosteric replacement of this biaryl moiety by arylpiperazine resulted in a soluble, orally bioavailable carbamate analogue providing identical activity in the acute model, comparable efficacy to OPC-67683 in a chronic infection model, favorable pharmacokinetic profiles across several species, and enhanced safety.


Abstract The synthesized Schiff base polymers were investigated for humidity and chloroform response characteristics. The crystal structure of polymers were analyzed using X-ray diffraction (X-RD) method. We used the QCM (quartz crystal microbalance) method for the analyses of the water steam adsorption and desorption ratio of polymers. The experimental results showed that Schiff base polymers were very sensitive to humidity and chloroform at room temperature and it was possible to use it as a sensing element in moisture sensor applications.


Using a comprehensive dataset from German banks, we document the usage of sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) during the European sovereign debt crisis of 2008-2013. Banks used the sovereign CDS market to extend, rather than hedge, their long exposures to sovereign risk during this period. Lower loan exposure to sovereign risk is associated with greater protection selling in CDS, the effect being weaker when sovereign risk is high. Bank and country risk variables are mostly not associated with protection selling. The findings are driven by the actions of a few non-dealer banks which sold CDS protection aggressively at the onset of the crisis, but started covering their positions at its height while simultaneously shifting their assets towards sovereign bonds and loans. Our findings underscore the importance of accounting for derivatives exposure in building a complete picture and understanding fully the economic drivers of the bank-sovereign nexus of risk.


Introduction. Functional magnetic resonance (fMR) with BOLD contrast has been shown to be a useful tool for clinical investigation. It is still uncertain which is the best way to establish the measures of activation for subsequent comparisons and their physiological significance. Objective. To explore the activation expressed as a function of different parameters. Patients and methods. We did fMR with BOLD contrast at 3T and a motor paradigm in 14 healthy persons. The activation was expressed as the number of voxels activated within each area; theirpercentage in relation to the total number ofvoxels activated; z value; laterality index, speed and degree of temporal variation in the signal of these voxels. Results. Somatomotor area (SM) activated 121% more voxels than supplementary motor area (SMA), but their variation expressed with their standard variation was very large. The percentage of voxels activated was 163.6% greater in SM than in SMA. The laterality index increased at the expense of activation outside SM. The variation of the two relative measurements was less than the total number of voxels. The z value did not correlate with the degree of activity. The time course of the SMA signal was slightly different to SM. Conclusions. Very high field fMR is very sensitive to changes in signal. The number of voxels activated varies considerably, so its use as a measurement of activity should be limited. Relative value, such as the index of laterality of the percentage of voxels may show less variability. The centre of mass and z value are stable figures but the physiological significance of the latter is not clear. The study of the temporal variation of the signal seems to be a potentially useful parameter with a certain degree of physiological significance, although better understanding and further analysis is necessary.


With the enactment of the 2005 Collective Settlement of Mass Damage Act (WCAM 2005) the Dutch legal system and indeed Dutch society has taken a significant step towards a more efficient resolution of mass damage claims. The WCAM 2005 seems especially promising for attaining relatively swift settlement of mass securities claims in the Dutch context. Since, however, stock traded on the Amsterdam exchange is not exclusively owned by shareholders resident in The Netherlands, the obvious question is to what extent settlements under the WCAM 2005 have cross-border effect. Against this background, this paper has a twofold purpose. First, we aim at providing a general outline of the Dutch legal system concerning the collective settlement of mass damage claims. Secondly, we discuss issues of international jurisdiction, cross-border recognition, res judicata and enforcement of opt-out securities settlements under the WCAM 2005. Have the Dutch found a new export product with the enactment of the WCAM 2005?


3D printing is gaining more and more momentum to build customized product in a wide variety of fields. We conduct an exploratory study of Thingiverse, the most popular Website for sharing user-created 3D design files, in order to establish a possible connection with software product line (SPL) engineering. We report on the socio-technical aspects and current practices for modeling variability, implementing variability, configuring and deriving products, and reusing artefacts. We provide hints that SPL-alike techniques are practically used in 3D printing and thus relevant. Finally, we discuss why the customization in the 3D printing field represents a challenging playground for SPL engineering.


From postcards and paintings to photography and film, tourism and visual culture have a long-standing history of mutual entanglement. For centuries art has inspired many an intrepid traveller, and tourism provides an insatiable market for indigenous art, authentic or otherwise. This book explores the complex association between tourism and visual culture throughout history and across cultures. How has tourism been linked to images of colonial expansion? Why are we so intrigued by lost places, such as Tutankhamun's tomb or Machu Picchu, South Americas lost city of the Incas? What is the relationship between art, tourism and landscape preference? What role did commercial tourist photographers play in the imagination of Victorian Britain? Drawing upon examples from across the globe, this exciting new contribution to a popular subject illustrates how tourism and visual culture intersect with one another and in the process become contested ground.
Table of Contents
Introduction Part 1: Sites and Images 1. From 'Women's Lib' to 'Palestinian Women': The Politics of Picture Postcards in Palestnie / Israel, Annelies Moors 2. Algeria In and Out of the Frame: Visuality and Cultural Tourism in the Nineteenth Century, Deborah Cherry 3. Henri Chapu's Provincial Monuments to Jena-Francois Millet: Legitimizing the Peasant-Painter through Tourism, Bradley Fratello 4. Open-Air Museums and the Tourist Gaze, Stephen F. Mills 5. British Photographers and Tourism in the Nineteenth Century: Three Case Studies, Robin Lenman 6. Artists as Drivers of the Tour Bus: Landscape Painting as a Spur to Tourism, Peter Howard 7. North to South: Paradigm Shifts in European Art and Tourism, 1880-1920, Nina Lubbren 8. Picture Essay: Souvenir Bangkok, Davide Derio Part 2: Practices and Encounters 9. Unlosing Lost Places: Image Making, Tourism and the Return to Terra Cognita, Roger Balm and Briavel Holcomb 10. Holocaust Tourism: Being There, Looking Back and the Ethics of Spatial Memory, Griselda Pollock 11. Joe's Bar, Douglas, Isle of Man: Photographic Representations of Holidaymakers in the 1950s, Duog Sandle 12. Straight Ways and Loss: The Tourist Encounter with Woodlands and Forests, Simon Evans and Martin Spaul 13. tourist:pioneer:hybrid: London Bridge, the Mirage in the Arizona Desert, Daniel Jewesbury 14. Frightening and Familiar: David Lynch's Twin Peaks and the North American Suburb, Renee Tobe 15. Mountains and Landscapes: Towards Embodied Visualities, Eeva Jokinen and Soile Veijola


Large deviation functions contain information on the stability and response of systems driven into nonequilibrium steady states, and in such a way are analogous to free energies for systems at equilibrium. As with equilibrium free energies, evaluating large deviation functions numerically for all but the simplest systems is difficult, because by construction they depend on exponentially rare events. In this first paper of a series, we evaluate different trajectory-based sampling methods capable of computing large deviation functions of time integrated observables within nonequilibrium steady states. We illustrate some convergence criteria and best practices using a number of different models, including a biased brownian walker, a driven lattice gas, and a model of self-assembly. We show how two popular methods for sampling trajectory ensembles, transition path sampling and diffusion Monte Carlo, suffer from exponentially diverging correlations in trajectory space as a function of the bias parameter when estimating large deviation functions. Improving the efficiencies of these algorithms requires introducing guiding functions for the trajectories.


In order to examine the effects of different rest intervals between the sets on acute growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-I) responses, ten recreationally resistance trained men served as subjects (Mean ± SD, age=22 ± 2 years, body mass= 84 ± 8 kg). Subjects performed two heavy-resistance training protocols that were similar with regard to the total volume of work (sets x reps x loads), but differed with regard the length of rest between sets (1vs.3-minutes). Both protocols included 5 sets of 10 RM bench press and squat that performed on two randomized separate sessions. Blood samples were collected before, immediately after and 1-hour after the protocols for determination GH, IGF-I and blood lactate concentration. Postexercise values for lactate and GH were significantly (P£0.05) elevated above preexercise, but did not for IGF-1 concentrations. However, IGF-1 serum concentrations were significantly (P£0.05) increased during 1-hour postexercise. Postexercise serum GH and blood lactate concentrations were significantly (P£0.05) higher in SR than LR protocol, but IGF-1 did not change. These data
suggest that the duration of the rest interval between sets of dynamic resistance exercise influence GH serum concentration, it must be noted that short rest period between sets induced greater acute GH responses than the long rest period. Given that GH concentration is an anabolic hormone, this finding may have implications regarding hypertrophy in resistance training. Keywords : Growth hormone; Insulin-like growth factor-1; Resistance training; Rest between sets. South African Journal for Research in Sport, Physical Education and Recreation Vol. 30 (2) 2008: pp. 31-38


Cognitive radio is an emerging technology that enables the flexible development, construction, production, shipping, and deployment of highly adaptive radios that are built upon software defined radio technology. This contribution starts with a brief section that underlines the paramount importance of the mobile radio communications channel. Then, spectrum issues are discussed to emphasize the reasons for spectrum scarcity as well as the importance of dynamic spectrum allocation. Some remarks about the development of software defined radio from digital radio lead to a discussion of the most important engineering aspects of CR, for example, location and spectrum awareness, transmission power control, and signal analysis. Because usually papers about CR are somewhat visionary, we first describe practical steps to an implementation of helpful CR properties into a mobile communication base station, as well as user terminal equipment. The article concludes with a short summary.


Generally, training neural networks with the global extended Kalman filter (GEKF) technique exhibits excellent performance at the expense of a large increase in computational costs which can become prohibitive even for networks of moderate size. This drawback was previously addressed by heuristically decoupling some of the weights of the networks. Inevitably, ad hoc decoupling leads to a degradation in the quality (accuracy) of the resultant neural networks. In this paper, we present an algorithm that emulates the accuracy of GEKF, but avoids the construction of the state covariance matrix-the source of the computational bottleneck in GEKF. In the proposed algorithm, all the synaptic weights remain connected while the amount of computer memory required is similar to (or cheaper than) the memory requirements in the decoupling schemes. We also point out that the new method can be extended to derivative-free nonlinear Kalman filters, such as the unscented Kalman filter and ensemble Kalman filters.


The quantity of clinical information (scientific articles, videos, podcasts, and so on) available, and ways to access this information are increasing exponentially—far more rapidly than one can differentiate valuable information (signal) from non-useful or even misleading information (noise).1 Your job is to select information that is both accurate and useful, and to convert it into knowledge to make a quality decision.

Making a quality decision in practice should involve three key steps: (1) systematically searching and assessing the quality of published literature, (2) combining quality research evidence with quality clinical evidence, and (3) considering the feasibility of use in the practical setting. When reviewing the research evidence, you might choose to consult systematic reviews (SRs)—expected to be a high-quality and comprehensive summary of the body of research regarding a particular intervention, technique, procedure or technology. However, while you might expect that a SR is accurate, remember that the glittering thing is not always gold.2 Some poorly conducted SRs use complex data pooling to synthesise articles with high risk of bias, creating a publication with a tantalising title while the results and discussion/conclusion are misleading and confusing.2 The number of SRs being produced is growing rapidly, but many of these are redundant, misleading or unnecessary.3 This raises the question: How do you make sense of conflicting SR research evidence? How do you know which one to trust?

You are the team clinician and your star player sustains a time-loss injury—tendinopathy, hamstring strain, shoulder dislocation, ACL rupture—the injury specifics are not important here. But what is important is what you do next. How do you gather and synthesise quality information to help the player make an informed choice about treatment? You are not short of information to help inform a decision, but how do you make sense of it? What should …


A popular regularized (shrinkage) covariance estimator is the shrinkage sample covariance matrix (SCM) which shares the same set of eigenvectors as the SCM but shrinks its eigenvalues toward its grand mean. In this paper, a more general approach is considered in which the SCM is replaced by an M-estimator of scatter matrix and a fully automatic data adaptive method to compute the optimal shrinkage parameter with minimum mean squared error is proposed. Our approach permits the use of any weight function such as Gaussian, Huber's, or t weight functions, all of which are commonly used in M-estimation framework. Our simulation examples illustrate that shrinkage M-estimators based on the proposed optimal tuning combined with robust weight function do not loose in performance to shrinkage SCM estimator when the data is Gaussian, but provide significantly improved performance when the data is sampled from a heavy-tailed distribution.


The paper examines the size and productivity of total intangible capital relative to total tangible capital for a large panel of Italian Manufacturing firms. In the analysis, we decompose total intangibles in two different ways: in intangibles expensed in firms' current accounts (as usually considered in empirical studies) versus intangible capitalized in firms' balance sheets (usually not considered); and in "intellectual capital" (i.e. R&D expenditures, and patenting and related costs) versus "customer capital" (i.e., advertising expenditure, and trademarks and related costs). We systematically assess the robustness of our results by using different specifications of the production functions implying different elasticities of substitution between tangible and intangible capital, and comparing different panel data estimates. Our results underscore that firms' accounting information on intangible investments is genuinely informative, showing that intangible capital and its different components are at least as productive as tangible capital.


According to a 2018 survey, 89 percent of "white-collar" workers at least occasionally work as members of global virtual teams. The percentage has likely increased during the COVID-19 pandemic as bans on international travel and the shifts to telework prompted more online collaboration. Collaboration among people from different countries, cultures, organizations, and institutional environments presents numerous advantages; the diversity of perspectives and knowledge pools greatly enhances the team's creativity and decision-making. However, such workgroups often have to deal with time-zone differences, limited in-person contact substituted by communciation online, and the differences stemming from culture and institutional diversity, which presents challenges not experienced by traditional collocated teams. Based on a wealth of research and personal experiences, contributors to The X-Culture Handbook of Collaboration and Problem Solving in Global Virtual Teams review known challenges and recommend evidence-based best practices for working in global virtual teams. The book provides practical advice not only to members of global virtual teams, but also for team managers, coaches, counselors, and educators.


The fact that English language is a universal language, so it is necessary to propose a computerized ways to recognize the texts written in English language, which will simplifies the reading of any text, treat it, and deal with it in a least possible time. The BAM (Bidirectional Associative Memory) network was used to recognize the printed English letters, because it process the small size images of letters in an easy way, also BAM is working in two ways (forward and backward) and store the weights without any amendment, therefore BAM is considered as one of the networks of education controller (Supervised learning). The recognition of the printed English text was done using the network BAM, while the printed English text was entered to the computer using the scanner, also BAM network used to recognize the letters that have some noise and after training; it gives successful results of recognition about 84.6%. The aim of this research is to segment and recognize the printed English text, wither it is clear or it have some noise, Matlab R2008a language is used to accomplish this work.


Assembling artificial collagenous tissues with structural, functional, and mechanical properties which mimic natural tissues is of vital importance for many tissue engineering applications. While the electro-mechanical properties of collagen are thought to play a role in, for example, bone formation and remodeling, this functional property has not been adequately addressed in engineered tissues. Here the electro-mechanical properties of rat tail tendon are compared with those of dried isoelectrically focused collagen hydrogels using piezoresponse force microscopy under ambient conditions. In both the natural tissue and the engineered hydrogel D-periodic type I collagen fibrils are observed, which exhibit shear piezoelectricity. While both tissues also exhibit fibrils with parallel orientations, Fourier transform analysis has revealed that the degree of parallel alignment of the fibrils in the tendon is three times that of the dried hydrogel. The results obtained demonstrate that isoelectrically focused collagen has similar structural and electro-mechanical properties to that of tendon, which is relevant for tissue engineer-


ABSTRACT In this study, bentonite originating from Turkey (Eskişehir province) and activated carbon obtained from grapeseed were used as adsorbents for the removal of lead (Pb2+) and copper (Cu2+) ions from aqueous solutions. Experiments were performed in single- and binary-ion systems at constant temperature of 298 K and pH value of 5. In order to describe the adsorption mechanism Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin isotherms were used. The total adsorption capacity values of adsorbents were compared. It was observed that the total adsorption capacity values were changed depending on the type of adsorbent used, type of metal ion and interaction between metal ions.


In caulonemal filaments of the moss Physcomitrella patens red light (fluence rate 85 µmol m(-2) s(-1)) triggers within 2-15 s a transient membrane depolarization, and 3 d later the development of side branch initial cells. Both the rapid electrical events at the plasma membrane and the morphological response are Ca(2+)-dependent, phytochrome-mediated and effectively inhibited by the cation channel blocker TEA (10 mM) and the anion channel blocker niflumic acid (1 µM). This suggests that both responses are connected. Current voltage analyses of the red light-induced current combined with ion flux measurements revealed that Ca(2+), K(+) and anion-permeable channels are open at the peak of the depolarization. While Ca(2+) influx and anion efflux coincide with the depolarizing phase, K(+) entry occurs during the first 30 s only and is followed by a dramatic transient K(+) efflux leading to repolarization. Patch clamp studies have revealed the presence of a class of depolarization-activated outward rectifying cation channel with a likely role in the rapid repolarization. Furthermore, the channel has a small permeability for Ca(2+) and could provide an additional mode of Ca(2+) entry. The sequence of events which underlie the red light-induced membrane potential transient is discussed with respect to ion channel interaction during phytochrome signalling.


The aim of this work was to evaluate the biologic properties of polar fox ( Alopex lagopus L.) semen collected during the reproductive season. In 126 ejaculates manually collected from 18 foxes at 10- to 12-day intervals, semen parameters (such as the sperm concentration, volume, pH, sperm morphology, and activity of acid and alkaline phosphatase) were determined. The seminal plasma acid and alkalin e phosphatase activity correlated positively with the sperm concentration (r = 0.5676; r = 0.6302; P < 0.01) and negatively with the ejaculate volume (r = -0.3456; r = -0.2783, P < 0.01). A significant correlation also existed between acid and alkaline phosphatase activity (r = 0.7043, P < 0.01).


Abstract: Media portrayals of stepfamilies influence societal views of stepfamilies and individuals' expectations for remarriage and stepfamily life. This study examines portrayals of stepfamilies in films released in 1990 through 2003. Using content analysis to understand how stepfamilies are portrayed and to identify film clips appropriate for use in remarriage education programs, we found that stepfamilies were typically depicted in a negative or mixed way. In addition, stepparent-child relations, remarried couple relationships, and issues related to former partners were frequently portrayed. Film clips illustrating themes of stepparent-child relationships, prior marriage, conflict with former partner(s), couple relations, couple conflict, stepsibling relations, and stepfamily strengths are discussed, as well as their use in educational programming. Key Words: media portrayals, remarriage, remarriage education, stepfamilies. The most current statistics on remarriage in the United States, which are from the late 1980s, indicate that about 46% of marriages are remarriages for one or both members of the couple (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000). About 75% of divorced adults remarry (Furstenberg & Cherlin, 1991) or cohabit with new partners (Bumpass, Raley, & Sweet, 1995), and remarriages bring unique challenges for which many couples are not prepared. Because remarriage or cohabitation typically occurs within months after beginning the relationship, many remarried couples are simultaneously developing couple relationships and negotiating stepparent-stepchild relationships (Coleman, Ganong, & Fine, 2000). This process may be challenging because remarriage is considered an "incomplete institution" (Cherlin, 1978) that lacks clear social norms or guidelines for role performance or resolving problems. Further, cultural beliefs perpetuated by media and folk tales either stigmatize stepfamilies (e.g., the wicked stepmother stereotype) or foster unrealistic expectations, such as the myth of instant love exemplified in the television show The Brady Bunch (Ganong & Coleman, 1997). These cultural beliefs may influence individuals' behaviors, perceptions, and expectations with regard to remarriage and stepfamily relationships (Segrin & Nabi, 2002). The present study has two primary goals: to examine film portrayals of stepfamilies and to identify media images that can be used in remarriage education programs to foster realistic expectations about stepfamily life. We attempted to integrate empirical and applied perspectives in this study because we believe that this integration strengthens the work of both practitioners and researchers. Others (Pasley, Dollahite, & Ihinger-Tallman, 1993) have recommended that clinicians who work with stepfamilies should have a sound understanding of empirical work; we believe that the same is true for family life educators. In addition, it is helpful for researchers to understand the complexity of the challenges that stepfamilies face. Thus, we included an empirical content analysis of film portrayals of stepfamilies to provide a broad view of the media environment affecting stepfamilies, and a more detailed discussion of specific film clips portraying stepfamily dynamics and their potential use in remarriage education programs. We argue that media are an important part of the family's ecological context; thus, understanding the media context in which families are embedded increases understanding of families for both practitioners and researchers. We chose to focus on film portrayals of stepfamilies because exposure to films is so widespread in contemporary American culture, and images portrayed in films are likely to play a role in the creation and transmission of cultural beliefs (Signorielli & Morgan, 2001). Films are described as "symbolic creations which signify social values and meanings through their narratives, plots, and characters" (Levy, 1991, p. …


Motivation: Antibodies or immunoglobulins are proteins of paramount importance in the immune system. They are extremely relevant as diagnostic, biotechnological and therapeutic tools. Their modular structure makes it easy to re-engineer them for specific purposes. Short of undergoing a trial and error process, these experiments, as well as others, need to rely on an understanding of the specific determinants of the antibody binding mode. Results: In this article, we present a method to identify, on the basis of the antibody sequence alone, which residues of an antibody directly interact with its cognate antigen. The method, based on the random forest automatic learning techniques, reaches a recall and specificity as high as 80% and is implemented as a free and easy-to-use server, named prediction of Antibody Contacts. We believe that it can be of great help in re-design experiments as well as a guide for molecular docking experiments. The results that we obtained also allowed us to dissect which features of the antibody sequence contribute most to the involvement of specific residues in binding to the antigen. Availability: http://www.biocomputing.it/proABC. Contact: email@example.com or firstname.lastname@example.com Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


We present a detailed functional renormalization group analysis of spin-1/2 dipolar Heisenberg model on square lattice. This model is similar to the well known $J_1$-$J_2$ model and describes the pseudospin degrees of freedom of polar molecules confined in deep optical lattice with long-range anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions. Previous study of this model based on tensor network ansatz indicates a paramagnetic ground state for certain dipole tilting angles which can be tuned in experiments to control the exchange couplings. The tensor ansatz formulated on a small cluster unit cell is inadequate to describe the spiral order, and therefore the phase diagram at high azimuthal tilting angles remains undetermined. Here we obtain the full phase diagram of the model from numerical pseudofermion functional renormalization group calculations. We show that an extended quantum paramagnetic phase is realized between the N\'{e}el and stripe/spiral phase. In this region, the spin susceptibility flows smoothly down to the lowest numerical renormalization group scales with no sign of divergence or breakdown of the flow, in sharp contrast to the flow towards the long-range ordered phases. Our results provide further evidence that the dipolar Heisenberg model is a fertile ground for quantum spin liquids.


In mid-January, WHO published two reports analysing the current development of new antimicrobial agents. In relation to the clinical pipeline one of the reports highlighted insufficiencies in tackling the challenge of increasing emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance. The second report acknowledges that the pre-clinical pipeline is looking better, but underlined that it will still take years before these developments will reach patients.

The publication on 'Antibacterial agents in preclinical development' outlined the diversity of the pipeline, with more than 250 antimicrobial agents seeking to target pathogens on the priority list. However, despite these positive advancements WHO also noted that these are still in a very early stage, meaning that effectiveness and safety still needs to be proven. In relation to the 50 antibiotics that are currently in the clinical phase, it was pointed out that these products are going to bring little benefit over existing treatments and that only half of these are going to be effective against WHO's priority pathogens. The report on "Antibacterial agents in clinical development—an analysis of the antibacterial clinical development pipeline" also brought forward evidence showing a worrying gap in activity against the highly resistant NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase 1). Out of the 50 products in the pipeline only three are seeking to target NDM-1.

The joint task force of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the Heads of Medicines Agencies (HMA) on Big Data has moved to phase two and released recommendations for the European medicines regulatory network. Their work tries to shed light on the changing data landscape which requires regulators to look at new mechanism for accessing, managing and analysing data.

In the first phase the group looked at the landscape of Big Data and identified opportunities which included for example filling knowledge gaps. The report "Evolving Data-Driven Regulation" provides further …


Introduction: The long-term success and complications of horizontal eyelid shortening surgery in the treatment of involutional entropion was investigated. Materials and Method: Medical records of 54 patients with involutional lower eyelid entropion that underwent surgical repair between January 2001 and 2009 were retrospectively reviewed. Results: Patients were divided into three groups based on surgical procedures performed. Group 1 patients (n= 20) underwent the Wies procedure, Group 2 patients (n=23) underwent the Quickert procedure, and Group 3 patients (n=19) underwent a combined procedure of lateral tarsal strip (LTS), transvers blepharotomy and everting suture. The mean ages of groups were 77.35±5.98, 80.47±6.20, and 79.26±4.56 years, respectively. Recurrence rate of group 1 was 5% (n=1). No recurrence was seen in group 2 or 3. Ectropion was encountered in two patients in group 1. In group 2, one patient developed a granuloma and two patients had corneal epithelial erosions. No complication was detected in group 3. Conclusion: In the treatment of involutional entropion, horizontal eyelid shortening, especially surgical procedures combined with LTS, not only increase the success rate but also reduce the postoperative development of consecutive ectropion and other complications.


This paper examines a century of contentious politics in South Korea. I argue that there have been three distinctive eras of contention in modern Korea. The first two eras saw institutional arrangements limit the success of contentious campaigns. However, expanded repertoires in the third era allowed movements to succeed. I end by examining the role of social media in future movements.


Imago et similitudo Dei : the meaning of humans being God's image and likeness investigated from a Christianphilosophical perspective This investigation is an effort to determine the meaning of the Biblical revelation that human beings were created in the image and likeness of God and to do so from a Christian-philosophical perspective. The following steps are taken: The introduction is a reminder that one's view of reality (ontology) and of being human (anthropology) is decisive in terms of how one will understand the meaning of "imago Dei". It is illustrated, firstly in the older essentialistic (or ontological) viewpoints, which explained the image of God in man analogically, in other words as similarity and difference between the divine and human natures. Next, it is indicated that the more recent relational viewpoints on the image of God also cannot really indicate its full richness. The next section provides an exposition of how a few reformational philosophers understood this mysterious Biblical expression about the human being. It is indicated how their viewpoint about human beings can solve many misconceptions connected with the "imago et similitudo Dei" and also open new, wider perspectives. The concluding part will summarise the results of the investigation.