The dynamic adaptation of waveforms for transmission by active radar has been facilitated by the availability of waveform-agile sensors. In this paper, we propose a method to employ waveform agility to improve the detection of low radar-cross section (RCS) targets on the ocean surface that present low signal-to-clutter ratios due to high sea states and low grazing angles. Employing the expectation-maximization algorithm to estimate the time-varying parameters for compound-Gaussian sea clutter, we develop a generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) detector and identify a range bin of interest. The clutter estimates are then used to dynamically design a phase-modulated waveform that minimizes the out-of-bin clutter contributions to this range bin. A simulation based on parameters derived from real sea clutter data demonstrates that our approach provides around 10 dB improvement in detection performance over a nonadaptive system


Sport, business, politics. Milan of Silvio Berlusconi ABSTRACT: In 1986 the business man Silvio Berlusconi buys the soccer team Milan A.C. The peculiar and emblematic new updated identity of the club, even if always mentioned in the company communication, is not linked to any kind of organized structure, but its development is characterized by the insertion of the club in the Berlusconi group of societies and follows the political and industrial complex path that this man has traced. In 20 years time Berlusconi succeeded in completely identifying the football team with his industrial activity and even with himself. The culminating event of this process happens in 1994, with his entrance in the political field: we can now say that this new circuit sport-industry-society-politics characterizing the Berlusconian Milan, is a new form of marketing that can be defined meta-sponsorizzation. The Milan story brings the problem of the governance of the sport system, to be matched with the actual improvements of rules in Italy and Europe.


Morphometric parameters of neuronal metabolic activity, such as the area of neuronal nuclei and perikarya and nuclear-cytoplasmic ratio, in the nucleus basalis of Meynert (NBM), tuberomamillary (TMN) and medial mammillary (MMN) hypothalamic nuclei of human subjects belonging to four age groups were studied. Statistically significant increase in the size of neuronal perikarya and their nuclei was found in elderly people aged 60-74 years. The surge in the metabolic activity of neurons in the NBM starts earlier than in the TMN and MMN, and becomes apparent morphologically in people of middle age (45-59 years). The age-related increase in the metabolic activity of neurons in the studied structures of the human brain participating in the regulation of memory and other cognitive functions, may represent protective, adaptive and/or compensatory mechanisms of the aging process that also prevents the development of Alzheimer's disease.


We report on a new approach towards magneto-responsive hydrogels, showing a reversible gelation upon inductive heating via AC magnetic fields. An aqueous solution of a triblock terpolymer with a partially quaternized poly(2-vinylpyridine) (Pq2VP) outer block, a water soluble poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) middle block and a thermo-sensitive poly(glycidyl methyl ether-co-ethyl glycidyl ether) (P(GME-co-EGE)) end block (Pq2VP-b-PEO-b-P(GME-co-EGE)) was mixed with a solution of sodium citrate stabilized superparamagnetic maghemite nanoparticles. Due to electrostatic interactions between the oppositely charged particles, surface and the Pq2VP block of the triblock terpolymer, well-defined hybrid micelles with a superparamagnetic core were formed. The number of triblock terpolymer chains stabilizing the nanoparticles was found to be constant above a critical triblock terpolymer/maghemite ratio, i.e. for higher polymer contents hybrid micelles and free (non-bound) triblock terpolymers are present in solution. Thermo-reversible hydrogels are formed via an open association of hybrid micelles at temperatures above the cloud point of the P(GME-co-EGE) corona blocks, which form the network junctions. The superparamagnetic character of the maghemite nanoparticles enables contactless heating, and thus gelation, by applying AC magnetic fields, as demonstrated by high frequency magnetocalorimetry. The thermo-reversible gelation and the dynamic-mechanical properties of the hydrogels were studied by rheology.


Fetus papyracie in a triplet pregnancy is indeed rare and can pose serious management challenges. These challenges are more pronounced where facilities for monitoring are either inadequate or nonexistent. A 39-year-old, grand multipara multipara was referred to the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital at 27 weeks gestation with preterm contractions. Materno fetal monitoring did not reveal the cause of the preterm contractions. She was delivered via caesarean section, at 36 weeks of gestation, on account of decreased fetal movement and the products were a live female fetus weighing 2.3 kg and two male papyraceous fetuses weighing 150 g and 130 g, respectively.


In the late spring and summer of 2000, the author, a State University of New York employee, served as expert witness for the Cayuga Indian Nation in their land claims suit against New York State. He wrote a historical narrative on the dispossession of the Cayu-gas and what had happened to these Indians since 1795, gave a deposition, and testified in federal district court in Syracuse. Despite working off state time and carefully following state laws and SUNY9s procedures of financial disclosure, he soon found himselfsub-jected to repercussions caused by his testimony. When the federal district court decision awarded the Cayugas $247.8 million, the fallout from the case intensified. The present memoir has relevance not just to State University of New York employees but to all federal, state, county, and municipal employees. The issue goes beyond one professor9s academic freedom to speak out to tell the truth, but to the First Amendment rights of all government-employed historians.


Purpose: To review treatments for osteoarthritis of the knee (OAK) received by patients across five European countries, and to obtain patients' perceptions and willingness to pay for current treatments. Patients and methods: A prospective, internet-based, double-blind survey of adults with OAK was conducted in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The questionnaire included questions about diagnosis, treatment history, and perceptions of OAK treatments, followed by a discrete choice-based conjoint exercise to identify preferred attributes of OAK treatments, evaluating 14 sets of four unbranded products. Results: Two thousand and seventy-three patients with self-reported OAK completed the survey; 17.4% of patients rated their knee pain as drastically affecting their ability to perform normal daily activities, and 39.3% of employed patients reported that they had lost work time because of OAK. The most common treatments were exercise (69.7%), physical therapy (68.2%), and nonprescription oral pain medication (73.9%). Treatments perceived as most effective were: viscosupplement injections (74.1%), narcotics (67.8%), and steroid injection (67.6%). Patient co-pay, duration of pain relief, and type of therapy exhibited the largest impact on patient preference for OAK treatments. The average patient was willing to pay € 35 and € 64 more in co-pay for steroid and viscosupplement injections, respectively, over the cost of oral over-the-counter painkillers (per treatment course, per knee) (each P , 0.05). Conclusion: OAK is a debilitating condition that affects normal daily activities. In general, treatments most commonly offered to patients are not those perceived as being the most effective. Patients are willing to pay a premium for treatments that they perceive as being more effective and result in longer-lasting pain relief, and those that can be administered with fewer visits to a physician.


BACKGROUND
Skeletal muscle lipid is associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes and may be altered by diet, physical activity, and weight loss.

OBJECTIVE
We explored the utility of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for quantifying the lipid concentration of muscle tissue in vivo.

DESIGN
Fat-selective MR images of the lower leg were taken in 8 normal-weight [body mass index (in kg/m(2)) < or = 24.9] and 8 obese (body mass index > 29.9) subjects to obtain spatial maps of lipid signal intensity within muscle tissue. Fast-spiral-sequence (echo time = 5.6-13.8 ms, repetition time = 1 s, 8 interleaves) MRI scans were conducted at 3.0 T by using an extremity transmit-receive coil. Lipid concentrations within muscle were determined from manually drawn regions of interest in the tibialis anterior (TA), soleus, and medial head of the gastrocnemius (MHG) muscle groups.

RESULTS
There was extremely good agreement (mean R(2) = 0.985) between the fat signal intensity and the actual lipid concentration of standards containing 2.5, 5.0, and 10.0 g lipid/dL, which were placed on the subject's leg during each scan. The lipid content of both the soleus (2.99 +/- 0.37 g/dL) and the MHG (3.80 +/- 0.68 g/dL) was higher (P < 0.05) than that of the TA (1.83 +/- 0.28 g/dL). Lipid content was more than two-fold higher (P < 0.05) in the MHG of obese subjects (5.48 +/- 1.18 g/dL) than in the MHG of normal-weight subjects (2.54 +/- 0.47 g/dL), but did not differ significantly in the TA or soleus.

CONCLUSIONS
MRI can be used to quantify lipid within human muscle tissue. MRI can also be used to detect differences in muscle lipid content among various muscle groups and between normal-weight and obese subjects.


The noise trader sentiment model of De Long, Shleifer, Summers, and Waldmann (1990a) is applied to futures markets. The theoretical results predict that overly optimistic (pessimistic) noise traders result in market prices that are greater (less) than fundamental value. Thus, returns can be predicted using the level of noise trader sentiment. The null rational expectations hypothesis is tested against the noise trader alternative using a commercial market sentiment index as a proxy for noise trader sentiment. Fama-MacBeth cross-sectional regressions test if noise traders create a systematic bias in futures prices. The time- series predictability of futures returns using known sentiment levels is tested in a Cumby-Modest market timing framework and a more general causality specification. The empirical results lead to the following conclusions. First, there is no evidence that noise trader sentiment creates a systematic bias in futures prices. Second, predictable market returns using noise trader sentiment is not characteristic of futures markets in general. Third, futures market returns at weekly intervals are characterized by low-order positive autocorrelation with relatively small autoregressive parameters. In those instances where there is evidence of noise trader effects, it is at best limited to isolated markets and particular specifications.


How to build a high-quality multi-domain dialogue system is a challenging work due to its complicated and entangled dialogue state space among each domain, which seriously limits the quality of dialogue policy, and further affects the generated response. In this paper, we propose a novel method to acquire a satisfying policy and subtly circumvent the knotty dialogue state representation problem in the multi-domain setting. Inspired by real school teaching scenarios, our method is composed of multiple domain-specific teachers and a universal student. Each individual teacher only focuses on one specific domain and learns its corresponding domain knowledge and dialogue policy based on a precisely extracted single domain dialogue state representation. Then, these domain-specific teachers impart their domain knowledge and policies to a universal student model and collectively make this student model a multi-domain dialogue expert. Experiment results show that our method reaches competitive results with SOTAs in both multi-domain and single domain setting.


In 2010, the European surveillance network for travel-associated Legionnaires' disease (ELDSNet, previously EWGLINET) received reports of 864 cases of travel-associated Legionnaires' disease, of whom 24 were reported to have had a fatal outcome. As in previous years, a very low proportion of clinical isolates were obtained (45 cases, 5.6%). In the 2010 dataset, male cases outnumbered female cases by 2.6:1 and had a median age of 61 years (range: 21-96), while the median age for women was 63 years (range: 12-95). The network identified 100 new clusters in 2010, of which 44 involved only one case from each reporting country and would probably not have been detected by national surveillance schemes alone. The largest cluster (having 14 cases) was associated with a cruise ship. Legionella species were detected at 61 of the 100 accommodation site clusters investigated. The names of five accommodation sites were published on the ECDC website.


How might our present understandings of our professional identities, our struggles, our achievements and our capacities for agency be better understood through the memories and accounts of those who championed our emergence? What might oral accounts of the emergence of our field offer beyond what can be gathered from its existing literature? Indeed, why look at the history of a professional field at all? This session approaches such questions by reporting on oral accounts of the emergence and evolution of ALL in Australia. As we note some of the insights and lived experiences of those engaged in the formative years of ALL, we invite reflection on how these insights and experiences may augment, refine and even challenge our understandings of our field's past and present. We argue that by understanding where we've been and where we came from, to inform where we are, we might be better able to (re)view where we might go. The specific project, "Making histories: Oral accounts of the development of Academic Language and Learning in Australian Higher Education" aims to be a dynamic, adaptive and permanent digital work in progress. It is work that we believe will be enriched by the continued engagement of ALL professionals as both researchers and subjects. It is also work that raises important questions about how we may continue to make sense of our professional identities in the complex and dynamic field of academic language and learning. We invite you to join us in this dialogue about the past, present and future of ALL.


BACKGROUND
Obesity and depression are two major health issues in contemporary societies. This study aims to address two fundamental questions: (1) what is the impact of macro-level adverse socioeconomic circumstances on depression? and (2) how do macro-level variations in the socioeconomic context affect the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and depression?

METHODS
Data from the 7th round of the European Social Survey were used, collected from a sample size of 37,623 participants and aggregated around a total of 20 countries. A random intercept multilevel model was constructed to study the variations in the relationship between depression and BMI. The contextual effect of risk of poverty, unemployment rate, and gross domestic product per capita were studied at the country level.

RESULTS
First, both unemployment and poverty risk were found to be positively associated with depressive disorders. Second, the results show that a higher risk of poverty at the macro level may increase the effect of BMI on depression in European countries.

CONCLUSION
The present study provides new evidence suggesting that the obesity-depression relationship will be, on average, stronger in countries with poor socioeconomic conditions. Therefore, adverse socioeconomic contextual conditions may increase depression associated with obesity.


If the recent attention given to Pig Iron Theatre Company is any indication, 2010 may be the year of the pig. Although the group's founders met 20 years ago, it was their 2003 show James Joyce Is Dead and So Is Paris: The Lucia Joyce Cabaret and the 2010 production of Chekhov Lizardbrain that landed the Philadelphia group in the New York theatre scene. Pig Iron's abiding investment in adaptation's possibilities and continued commitment to physically intricate performance is now being passed on through their latest venture: a training program in physical theatre.


Summary

1
While there are numerous studies of impacts by individual invader species, there are few syntheses of invader impacts on plant community structure and composition. We sought to identify native plant functional groups (PFGs) which are under-represented in post-invaded compared with non-invaded environments to determine whether different invader morphologies consistently suppressed native species richness within particular PFGs.

2
We conducted a meta-analysis of 20 international studies to analyse the effects of graminoid (grass and grass-like species) and woody (shrub or tree species) invaders on species richness within growth form, longevity and seed mass native PFGs.

3
Graminoid and woody invaders could not be distinguished by their effects on native PFGs: in most cases, native PFGs were negatively affected by both graminoid and woody invaders. However, within the growth form classification, we found that negative invader effects were greater for native graminoid than tree species. Perennial rather than short-lived species appeared more affected by invasion (particularly graminoid invasion). Species with small seed masses appeared more negatively affected than those with large seed masses, particularly by graminoid invaders.

4
Synthesis and applications. Despite different morphologies of graminoid and woody invaders, they had similar negative effects on species richness within a range of native plant functional groups (PFGs). Further, the response of many PFGs to graminoid invaders in particular was highly variable. In consequence, managers cannot rely on invader morphology to distinguish impacts and prioritize control efforts. While graminoid and woody invaders had similar impacts, they had particularly adverse effects on small herbaceous (especially graminoid) and perennial species. Managers should focus monitoring activities on these potentially under-represented PFGs following control of both woody and graminoid invaders. Native species belonging to herbaceous and perennial PFGs may require focused reintroduction following control efforts.


Students of English at Biskra University consider essay writing as a heavy burden that they have to cope with. Moreover, essay instruction still relies on product-oriented approach, yet writing practitioners recently highlights its failure to develop writing. This approach fails to develop students' writing and to raise their awareness of the importance of processing essay writing and the target genre features. To promote their essay writing, an instructional approach is required to be integrated in EFL classes of Biskra University. Instead, process-genre oriented approach offers its practical principles that can develop writing in terms of its process and genre knowledge. The present study is administered to investigate the effects of adopting this synthesized approach into EFL classes of writing in Biskra University. It further investigates its effects on the five aspects of essay writing: content, organization, vocabulary, language use and mechanics. It also explores its effects on the students' knowledge of genre features, purpose and audience. Third year students (N=116) participate in the present study: (N=63) students form the experimental group, and (N=53) students form the control group. The experimental group is exposed to process-genre oriented instruction while the control group receives product oriented instruction. A set of procedures are taken in the light of results obtained from a pilot study that takes place with a group of (N=25) volunteers from third year classes. Three research instruments are used to collect data in the present study. First, t-tests are conducted with the two groups: experimental and control. Second, a post-experiment questionnaire administered with experimental group further supports the t-tests scores, for it evaluates the students' perceptions and attitudes towards academic writing. Third, classroom observation also reports their writing performance in their classrooms. Based on the analysis of data, process-genre oriented approach proves to be an effective instructional approach to EFL writing classes of Biskra University


Guides teaching staff on many areas of copyright including limits to what can be provided to students, using images, screening video content in class, eReserve and the addition of material to the service.


A six-point programme for the prevention and pressure therapy of hypertrophic scarring started in 1975 at Odstock Hospital. The work reported here includes a pressure calibration of batches of the material chosen for pressure bandaging; a pressure study of the bandages on volunteers' limbs; and the formation of a pressure therapy clinic. The clinic results were similar to those reported by Thomson (1974) and were considered sufficiently favourable to justify continuing the clinic and instituting a policy of close review and early therapy for all burns patients. The programme proved the accuracy of the pressure sensor and attempted to develop an objective method of recording progress. Arguments for pressure versus occlusion as the therapeutic agent are discussed and supported by a case report. It is suggested that a controlled trial of pressure therapy should be carried out.


7alpha-Methyl-19-nortestosterone (MENT) is a potent synthetic androgen that cannot be converted to dihydrotestosterone. In this study we determined the relative androgenic, antigonadotropic, and anabolic potencies of testosterone vs. MENT in the nonhuman primate M. fascicularis. In castrated monkeys, dose-response relationships were generated for the effects of testosterone and MENT on gonadotropin levels, prostate growth, body weight, and lipid metabolism. In a pilot study, four monkeys were castrated, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to document a 50% loss of prostate volume within 8 weeks, verifying that MRI is a reliable means to measure prostate size in this species. Two additional groups of six monkeys each were then castrated and serially administered four graded dosages of testosterone or MENT via osmotic minipumps over 20 weeks. Complete suppression of LH was achieved with a minimum of 0.3 mg/day MENT, compared to 3.0 mg/day testosterone. MENT supported body weight 10 times more potently than did testosterone. Baseline prostate volumes were maintained with 0.1-0.2 mg/day MENT vs. 0.3 mg/day testosterone. Thus, in monkeys, MENT is 10 times more potent than testosterone with regard to the clinically desirable end points of gonadotropin suppression and anabolism, but only twice as potent at stimulating prostate growth. These results suggest that MENT may have a wider therapeutic index than testosterone for human androgen replacement and male contraception.


Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of all cases that had fetal MRI between Jan 2008–Dec 2009 to see if MRI added further value to the suspected diagnosis and if it changed further management. Results: Data was analyzed for 53 cases. 5 cases (9.4%) had MRI twice in pregnancy. In 41/53 (77%) cases, MRI was for CNS anomalies. Commonest indication was mild ventriculomegaly (VM) (n = 16, 30.2%), 'isolated' in 15 cases. MRI added further information in only 2 cases – ruled out absent CSP and ACC in one case and revealed presence of subependymal bleed in one case. For moderate and severe VM (n = 10, 18.8%), MRI added diagnosis of schizencephaly in one case only. Therefore for VM group, added extra information which changed management was in 3 (11.5%) cases. In 4 cases (7.5%), MRI was done for ? vermian dysgenesis. It confirmed diagnosis in 3 (75%) and excluded diagnosis in 1 case (25%). For cystic brain lesions (n = 4, 7.5%), MRI confirmed presence in 3 (75%) and excluded in 1 case (25%). In 7 (13.2%) cases, MRI was done for other CNS indicationsenlarged CSP, dilated 4th ventricle, microcephaly, cerebral dysgenesis & intracranial bleed. It excluded lesion in 2 (28.6%) and provided additional information in 5 (71.4%) cases. MRI following a single fetal death in monochorionic twins did not add any further information in 2 cases (3.8%). For non CNS indications (n = 7, 13.2%), MRI added value in 2 cases (28.6%). Overall, MRI changed management in 16/53 cases (30.2%). MRI contributed to decision to terminate pregnancy in 3 cases. Conclusions: In about one third of cases MRI added value and contributed to planning management and is therefore is a useful adjunct to ultrasound imaging in selected cases.


TNFalpha enhances the basal activity of the major Immediate Early (IE) enhancer/promoter of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) in the immature premonocytic HL-60 cell line. The stimulatory effect of TNFalpha is mediated by induction of the transcription factor NF-kappaB, which specifically binds to the 18-bp repetitive sequence motif of the enhancer region. Complex formation could be competed by oligonucleotides representing the 18-bp sequence motif or the prototype NF-kappaB sequence of the immunoglobulin kappa gene. In gel mobility shift assays antisera specific to NF-kappaB p50 and p65 subunits were shown to react with the DNA-protein complex. Addition of the antioxidant PDTC blocked TNFalpha-mediated stimulation in a dose dependent manner. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays indicated that PDTC prevents NF-kappaB induction. Furthermore, it is suggested that protein kinases like PK-C are involved in the TNFalpha signal transduction pathway which leads to the activation of NF-kappaB and its binding to the HCMV IE enhancer in HL-60 cells. Our data are consistent with a role of TNFalpha in reactivation of latent HCMV infection in premonocytic cells.


Deforestation and forest degradation contribute between 10 and 25% of total annual greenhouse gas emissions. The REDD+ program for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and promoting forest conservation, sustainable management of the forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks is one mechanism developed in an attempt to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Various
REDD+ initiatives have been trialled in developing countries, including for community forests (CFs), which are an increasingly common form of resource management. Through the program, incentives are provided to community forest
user groups (CFUGs) to encourage changes in management practices likely to increase sequestration stocks. There is, however, limited knowledge about the factors
responsible for enhancing carbon stocks in CFs, the likely trade-offs within communities and the potential for increasing sequestration stocks.

The overarching goal of this research is to evaluate the impacts and potential of REDD+ projects in CF systems. Results from this study provide information for the design and development of programs to increase sequestration and conservation benefits in developing countries. This study estimated carbon stocks and change in carbon stock, technical potential (maximum stocks), key factors affecting carbon stock and trade-offs between gains in sequestration and other foregone community benefits. The study covered 105 CFUGs operating within five major dominant vegetation types. Annual data of carbon pools comprising above and below ground biomass were used to analyse carbon stocks and stock changes. Where sufficient data and models for key species were available, the potential carbon stock was estimated. Social, economic and management data, including a review of existing relevant documents, key informant survey and focus group discussion were used to identify major drivers of forest carbon stock changes in CFs and added community effort and foregone cost added for REDD+. Total costs of REDD+ participation were compared with the potential carbon benefits to enable trade-offs to be identified.

This study found variations in sequestration rates between CFUGs. Key variables were species type, canopy cover, elevation, age, forest scale, agriculture landholding size, disturbance levels, biomass extraction and the use of alternative energy sources.

In comparing present carbon stock with the technical potential of carbon stock in forests, the study identified significant potential for REDD+ projects to increase
carbon stock in CFs.

On the negative side, changes in management practices added costs to communities, either through loss of forest products or through additional REDD+ activities, to the extent that the pilot REDD + projects were generally not economically beneficial for CFUGs. However, they could be made more beneficial with a reduction in the opportunity cost of community engagement (through scheduling) and the bundling of other non-carbon benefits together with carbon benefits. Outcomes could be improved through reducing 'leakages' resulting from a high dependency on forest resources through strategies such as the promotion of alternative energy sources (e.g. improved cooking stove and biogas).


Abstract The retained earnings hypothesis predicts that stock distributions accounted for by reducing retained earnings are a more credible signal of managerial optimism than stock distributions that do not reduce retained earnings. This study examines the costs of false signaling that are a necessary pre-condition for the hypothesis and finds them to be generally very small, calling the validity of the hypothesis into question for most firms. However, prior studies report broad-based market evidence consistent with the hypothesis. To resolve this apparent inconsistency, the study replicates and extends tests of the retained earnings hypothesis contained in three prior studies, and shows that the findings in support of the retained earnings hypothesis can be attributed to specification and measurement choices that bias the results in favor of the hypothesis. The support for the retained earnings hypothesis is weaker when the sources of the bias are removed. However, some support for the hypothesis remains for a limited set of distributing firms.


Pericardiocentesis with catheter insertion for pericardial drainage is a common procedure used for the treatment of pericardial effusions and of cardiac tamponade as well. The most commonly described complications of an indwelling pericardial catheter system are catheter blockage and infection. We present a rare case of a 63 years old patient with a pericardial catheter for pericardial effusion drainage. He was presented with elevated body temperature and chills, a day after a pericardial catheter insertion. His clinical examination did not reveal any particular findings, while the catheter had stop draining two days earlier. His laboratory examinations revealed slightly increased WBCs' (13.300/ml). Following that, a chest x-ray examination revealed winding of the catheter along the pericardium. Under general anesthesia, the patient underwent left thoracotomy; the pericardial catheter was found tight wreathed and infiltrated to the inner coat of the pericardium. The catheter was carefully removed and a pericardial window was then performed. His post-operative course was uneventful, and he was discharged five days later.


In this paper, a quartz coaxial dielectric-barrier-discharge tube operated at different gas pressures and frequencies has been studied. A sinusoidal voltage up to 2.4 kVp with frequencies 34.5 and 47.5 kHz has been applied to the discharge electrodes for the generation of microdischarges. The experimental results confirm the filamentary nature of discharges when operated at different pressures (300, 600, and 1000 mbar) and at different frequencies (34.5 and 47.5 kHz). The relative influence of the given pressures and applied voltage waveforms on the discharge parameters has been analyzed. An equivalent electrical circuit model representing the multipeak phenomenon in the discharge has been developed, which validates the characteristics of the filamentary behavior. A series of simulations has been carried out in order to obtain the internal discharge parameters including discharge impedance which is not measurable during the experimental process. A close agreement between the simulated and experimental results has been obtained. From the experimental results and equivalent electrical circuit model, the dynamic nature of equivalent capacitance has also been reported.


An understanding of the fate of cyanide (CN) in mine process waters is important for addressing environmental concerns and for taking steps to minimize reagent costs. The utility of stable isotope methods in identifying cyanide loss pathways has been investigated in case studies at three Nevada gold mines. Freshly prepared barren solutions at the mines have cyanide δN and δC values averaging -4 ‰ and -36 ‰, respectively, reflecting the nitrogen and carbon sources used by commercial manufacturers, air and natural gas methane. Pregnant solutions returning from ore heaps display small isotopic shifts to lower δN and δC values. The shifts are similar to those observed in laboratory experiments where cyanide was progressively precipitated as a cyanometallic compound, and are opposite in sign and much smaller in magnitude than the shifts observed in experiments where HCN was offgassed. Offgassing is inferred to be a minor cyanide loss mechanism in the heap leach operations at the three mines, and precipitation as cyanometallic compounds, and possibly coprecipitation with ferric oxides, is inferred to be an important loss mechanism. Isotopic analysis of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) shows that uptake of high δC air CO2 has been important in many barren and pregnant solutions. However, DIC in reclaim pond waters at all three mines has low δC values of -28 to -34 ‰ indicating cyanide breakdown either by hydrolysis or by other chemical pathways that break the C-N bond. Isotope mass balance calculations indicate that about 40 % of the DIC load in the ponds, at a minimum, was derived from cyanide breakdown. This level of cyanide hydrolysis accounts for 14-100 % of the dissolved inorganic nitrogen species present in the ponds. Overall, isotope data provide quantitative evidence that only minor amounts of cyanide are lost via offgassing and that significant amounts are destroyed via hydrolysis and related pathways. The data also highlight the possibility that significant cyanide may be either retained in the ore heaps or destroyed via other chemical pathways.


The dynamic dependencies in financial market volatility are generally well described by a long-memory fractionally integrated process. At the same time, the volatility risk premium, defined as the difference between the ex-post realized volatility and the market's ex-ante expectation thereof, tends to be much less persistent and well described by a short-memory process. Using newly available intraday data for the S&P 500 and the VIX volatility index, coupled with frequency domain inference procedures that allow us to focus on specific parts of the spectra, we show that the existing empirical evidence based on daily and coarser sampled data carries over to the high-frequency setting. Guided by these empirical findings, we formulate and estimate a fractionally cointegrated VAR model for the two high-frequency volatility series and the corresponding high-frequency S&P 500 returns. Consistent with the implications from a stylized equilibrium model that directly links the realized and expected volatilities to returns, we show that the equilibrium variance risk premium estimated with the intraday data within the fractionally cointegrated system results in non-trivial return predictability over longer interdaily and monthly horizons. These results in turn suggest that much of the existing literature seeking to establish a risk-return tradeoff relationship between expected returns and expected volatilities may be misguided, and that the variance risk premium provides a much better proxy for the true economic uncertainty that is being rewarded by the market.


Obesity is a condition that is associated with too much body fat. More than one-third of women in the United States have weights that fall in the obesity range. One measure of obesity is body-mass index (BMI) which is an estimate of body fat based on height and weight. A person is said to be obese when their BMI is 30 or higher. For someone who is 5 foot 6 inches tall, a healthy non-pregnant weight range is 115 to 154 pounds. This same person is considered obese at 186 or more pounds. You can find your healthy weight range at https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/english_bmi_calculator/bmi_calculator.html.


Background Complementary therapies may increase the success rate of weight loss via a calorie-restricted diet. Acupuncture is a popular complementary therapy for obesity management. To our knowledge, no studies have summarised the effects of laser acupuncture (LA) on obesity. Objective To evaluate the efficacy of LA, in particular with respect to its impact on anthropometric features and appetite in obese adults, by conducting a systematic review of previous clinical trials. Methods We searched PubMed/Medline, Scopus, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, Embase and Google Scholar electronic databases for papers published through October 2016. All clinical trials in English containing either anthropometric indices or appetite parameters were included. Two reviewers independently examined studies based on a predefined form for data extraction and the Jadad scale for quality assessment in order to minimise bias throughout the evaluation. Results After screening the papers, seven clinical trials met the criteria and were included in the systematic review. Positive effects of LA therapy were seen in body weight (n=3), body mass index (n=5), waist circumference (n=4), hip circumference (n=3), waist to hip ratio (n=4) and % fat mass (n=3). Appetite parameters were reported in one study, which showed that LA can reduce appetite and increase the sensation of feeling full. Conclusion Although some studies have indicated beneficial effects for LA on obesity, the lack of evidence with high methodological quality made it impossible to reach a definitive conclusion about the efficacy of LA for obesity management. Further high-quality, randomised, sham-controlled clinical trials with a larger sample size are needed to shed light on the efficacy of LA for obesity management and weight maintenance.


It is a commonplace in Indian history that the decision to move the colonial capital from Calcutta to New Delhi was spurred by the political landscape of Calcutta: anticolonial nationalism had made Calcutta ungovernable. What is rarely asked is exactly what aspect of the urban attributes and political landscape of the city prompted this reaction? What made it difficult or impossible to carve out a twentieth-century imperial diagram in Calcutta? Based on readings of the nationalist and terrorist movements launched in Calcutta (and Bengal) during the first two decades of the twentieth century, I argue that what was at stake was the spatial legibility of the state. If New Delhi produced a clear description of the imperial state, making it visually explicit, Calcutta defied this legibility of the state. Anticolonial nationalism fundamentally altered the political geography of Calcutta as the capital city of empire: the colonial archives tell a story of a spatially beleaguered state. The story describes the process through which city space, even those that display the most authoritative diagram of power, is appropriated and disarticulated to produce a new political field.


In this paper, we propose a unified end-to-end trainable multi-task network that jointly handles lane and road marking detection and recognition that is guided by a vanishing point under adverse weather conditions. We tackle rainy and low illumination conditions, which have not been extensively studied until now due to clear challenges. For example, images taken under rainy days are subject to low illumination, while wet roads cause light reflection and distort the appearance of lane and road markings. At night, color distortion occurs under limited illumination. As a result, no benchmark dataset exists and only a few developed algorithms work under poor weather conditions. To address this shortcoming, we build up a lane and road marking benchmark which consists of about 20,000 images with 17 lane and road marking classes under four different scenarios: no rain, rain, heavy rain, and night. We train and evaluate several versions of the proposed multi-task network and validate the importance of each task. The resulting approach, VPGNet, can detect and classify lanes and road markings, and predict a vanishing point with a single forward pass. Experimental results show that our approach achieves high accuracy and robustness under various conditions in realtime (20 fps). The benchmark and the VPGNet model will be publicly available


Many studies have considered the Bible's relationship to politics, but almost all have ignored the heart of its narrative and theology: the covenant. In this book, Glenn Moots explores the political meaning of covenants past and present by focusing on the theory and application of covenantal politics from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Moots demands that we revisit political theology because it served as the most important school of politics in early modern Europe and America. He describes the strengths of the covenant tradition while also presenting its limitations and dangers. Contemporary political scientists such as Eric Voegelin, Daniel Elazar, and David Novak are called on to provide insight into both the covenant's history and its relevance today. Moots' work chronicles and critiques the covenant tradition while warning against both political ideology and religious enthusiasm. It provides an inclusive and objective outline of covenantal politics by considering the variations of Reformed theology and their respective consequences for political practice. This includes a careful account of how covenant theology took root on the European continent in the sixteenth century and then inspired ecclesiastical and civil politics in England, Scotland, and America. Moots goes beyond the usual categories of Calvinism or Puritanism to consider the larger movement of which both were a part. By integrating philosophy, theology, and history, Moots also invites investigation of broader political traditions such as natural law and natural right. "Politics Reformed" demonstrates how the application of political theology over three centuries has important lessons for our own dilemmas about church and state. It makes a provocative contribution to understanding foundational questions in an era of rising fundamentalism and emboldened secularism, inspiring readers to rethink the importance of religion in political theory and practice, and the role of the covenant tradition in particular.


OBJECTIVE
To examine the influence of gestational age on seizures in the neonatal intensive care unit.

STUDY DESIGN
A cohort of 4165 neonates admitted to a university intensive care unit between 1986 and 1995. The incidence, time of onset, and etiology of neonatal seizures in the cohort were distributed by gestational age. Logistic regression and t test were used to examine the relationship between gestational age and seizures in the neonatal intensive care unit.

RESULTS
Seizures occurred in 356 (8.6%) infants. The seizure rate was parabolically related to gestational age, such that infants at 30 to 36 weeks' gestation had a 4.8% rate compared with 11.9% and 14.1% rates for infants < 30 and > 36 weeks, respectively (p < 0.001). Seizures manifested earlier in infants < 30 weeks (2.3 +/- 5.6 days of life) and > 36 weeks (3.7 +/- 8.7 days) gestational age compared with neonates 30 to 36 weeks (10.4 +/- 14.5 days) (p < 0.001). Intraventricular hemorrhage was the principal etiology underlying the higher seizure rate for infants < 30 weeks (p < 0.001). Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy and congenital malformations were primary factors for infants > 36 weeks (p < 0.01). Nervous system infections were evenly distributed across gestational age.

CONCLUSION
Gestational age exerts a considerable influence on the incidence, onset, and etiology of neonatal seizures.


We propose Automatic Curricula via Expert Demonstrations (ACED), a reinforcement learning (RL) approach that combines the ideas of imitation learning and curriculum learning in order to solve challenging robotic manipulation tasks with sparse reward functions. Curriculum learning solves complicated RL tasks by introducing a sequence of auxiliary tasks with increasing difficulty, yet how to automatically design effective and generalizable curricula remains a challenging research problem. ACED extracts curricula from a small amount of expert demonstration trajectories by dividing demonstrations into sections and initializing training episodes to states sampled from different sections of demonstrations. Through moving the reset states from the end to the beginning of demonstrations as the learning agent improves its performance, ACED not only learns challenging manipulation tasks with unseen initializations and goals, but also discovers novel solutions that are distinct from the demonstrations. In addition, ACED can be naturally combined with other imitation learning methods to utilize expert demonstrations in a more efficient manner, and we show that a combination of ACED with behavior cloning allows pick-and-place tasks to be learned with as few as 1 demonstration and block stacking tasks to be learned with 20 demonstrations.


In this essay, I will consider how law, religion, and democratic pluralism revolve around a particular issue: global migration. I use the term "global migration" to encompass a number of related issues that are often collapsed under the term "immigration." In nations that have constructed their identities around waves of settlers or migrants -- places like the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand -- immigration involves the formal reception of foreigners into the host country as potential new citizens. This is just one part of the migration of peoples around the globe. Migration also encompasses emigration, asylum, economic migration,and undocumented or irregular immigration. This larger collection of human movements presents new challenges to democratic nations in a global environment in which most have explicitly committed themselves to certain fundamental, democratic values and human rights norms. Furthermore, these same values relate closely to core notions of Christianity. Catholic social teaching is a tradition within Christianity that emphasizes the dignity of the human person and, as such, complements and supports key liberal values essential to democracy and modern human rights discourse.


Type Inference is used in programming languages to improve writability. In this paper, we will be looking more specifically at Local Variable Type Inference (LVTI). For those unfamiliar with LVTI, we will also give an in-depth explanation of what it is and how it works. There is a lot of debate surrounding Type Inference in modern day programming languages. More specifically, whether the costs associated with LVTI outweigh the benefits. It has found its way into many higher-level languages including C#, C++, JavaScript, Swift, Kotlin, Rust, Go, etc. In this paper, we will look at the usefulness of LVTI and its popularity since the release of Java 10. Our study will show that LVTI in Java has not received widespread adoption. We will also explain a possible reason for this, based on the information we have gather from our empirical study which involved statically analyzing 6 popular open source Java 10 projects. We will also discuss different scenarios in which Type Inference can obscure different programming errors.


Asthma is a condition of unknown etiology characterized by chronic airway inflammation. Cells that mediate the inflammatory response generate reactive oxygen species that, together with other respiratory tract naturally-occurring oxidant species, produce a rupture of the redox balance, generating oxidative stress. It has been proposed that oxidative stress can be reverted by supplemental or dietary intake of antioxidant vitamins such as vitamin A, C, D and E, and this way relieve, improve or protect people with asthma. In this research, observational and placebo-controlled trials with regard to the role of antioxidant vitamins in the course of asthma, published between 1979 and 2016, were reviewed. The search engines were Google and Google Scholar, whereas consulted databases were PubMed and The Cochrane Library. There were 75 articles relevant to the subject that were found and reviewed, and it was concluded that it is not clear if the intake of supplements of these vitamins has any beneficial clinical effect on asthma control. Further controlled, longer trials are needed to elucidate the role of these nutrients in the course of asthma.


If the Americans suffer from a 'Vietnam syndrome' that makes them pessimistic about the Third World and their role in it, the Soviets appear appear to suffer from a comparable 'Arab syndrome.' at least as far as the Middle East is concerned. Gorbachev's policies are raising expectations, and this could be a source of difficulty for him. A major crisis in the Middle East, in which the USSR was faced with the options of intervention or retreat, would threaten the dynamic of the Gorbachev period as much as one in Eastern Europe, and more than a crisis in Central America, since a failure to act in the Middle East could be seen as humiliating and dangerous in a region so close to the USSR.


ABSTRACT Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the etiological agent of tuberculosis (TB), has a unique cell envelope which accounts for its unusual low permeability and contributes to resistance against common antibiotics. The main structural elements of the cell wall consist of a cross-linked network of peptidoglycan (PG) in which some of the muramic acid residues are covalently attached to a complex polysaccharide, arabinogalactan (AG), via a unique α-l-rhamnopyranose–(1→3)-α-d-GlcNAc-(1→P) linker unit. While the molecular genetics associated with PG and AG biosynthetic pathways have been largely delineated, the mechanism by which these two major pathways converge has remained elusive. In Gram-positive organisms, the LytR-CpsA-Psr (LCP) family of proteins are responsible for ligating cell wall teichoic acids to peptidoglycan, through a linker unit that bears a striking resemblance to that found in mycobacterial arabinogalactan. In this study, we have identified Rv3267 as a mycobacterial LCP homolog gene that encodes a phosphotransferase which we have named Lcp1. We demonstrate that lcp1 is an essential gene required for cell viability and show that recombinant Lcp1 is capable of ligating AG to PG in a cell-free radiolabeling assay. IMPORTANCE Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by the bacterial organism Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Survival of M. tuberculosis rests critically on the integrity of its unique cell wall; therefore, a better understanding of how the genes and enzymes involved in cell wall assembly work is fundamental for us to develop new drugs to treat this disease. In this study, we have identified Lcp1 as an essential phosphotransferase that ligates together arabinogalactan and peptidoglycan, two crucial cell wall macromolecules found within the mycobacterial cell wall. The discovery of Lcp1 sheds new light on the final stages of mycobacterial cell wall assembly and represents a key biosynthetic step that could be exploited for new anti-TB drug discovery. Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by the bacterial organism Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Survival of M. tuberculosis rests critically on the integrity of its unique cell wall; therefore, a better understanding of how the genes and enzymes involved in cell wall assembly work is fundamental for us to develop new drugs to treat this disease. In this study, we have identified Lcp1 as an essential phosphotransferase that ligates together arabinogalactan and peptidoglycan, two crucial cell wall macromolecules found within the mycobacterial cell wall. The discovery of Lcp1 sheds new light on the final stages of mycobacterial cell wall assembly and represents a key biosynthetic step that could be exploited for new anti-TB drug discovery.


In this paper we consider a stochastic game for modelling the interactions between smugglers and a patroller along a border. The problem we examine involves a group of cooperating smugglers making regular attempts to bring small amounts of illicit goods across a border. A single patroller has the goal of preventing the smugglers from doing so, but must pay a cost to travel from one location to another. We model the problem as a two-player stochastic game and look to find the Nash equilibrium to gain insight to real world problems. Our framework extends the literature by assuming that the smugglers choose a continuous quantity of contraband, complicating the analysis of the game. We discuss a number of properties of Nash equilibria, including the aggregation of smugglers, the discount factors of the players, and the equivalence to a zero-sum game. Additionally, we present algorithms to find Nash equilibria that are more computationally efficient than existing methods. We also consider certain assumptions on the parameters of the model that give interesting equilibrium strategies for the players.


Activated carbon (AC) samples were prepared from the Borassus flabellifer flower (BFF) at different activation temperatures (600, 700, 800 and 900 °C) by a chemical activation method using H3PO4 as an activating agent. Scanning electron microscopy (HR-SEM) and X-ray analysis confirmed the surface morphology and the formation of graphite, and the amorphous nature of the activated carbon samples respectively. Fourier-infrared spectroscopy analysis provided the surface functional groups of the activated carbons. The BET specific surface area of the AC samples is found to be 633.43 m2 g−1 at an activation temperature of 900 °C. The dc conductivity was determined and the conductivity at ambient temperature was found to increase from 0.012 to 9.64 Ohm−1 cm−1. Electrochemical measurements were carried out using cyclic voltammetry (CV), galvanostatic charge–discharge (GCD) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) with a three-electrode system using 1 M KOH as an electrolyte, the active material (as-prepared AC) as a working electrode, Ag/AgCl as a reference electrode and platinum (Pt) as a counter electrode. The results indicate that BFF can potentially be applied as a precursor material for the production of low cost-high performance activated carbon electrode materials for electric double layer capacitors (EDLCs).


OBJECTIVES
Paracetamol is converted to an active metabolite AM404 via fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH). The aim of the present study was to ascertain whether a FAAH inhibitor URB597 antagonizes paracetamol analgesic activity (and to asses by this way the role of FAAH in analgesic activity of paracetamol).

METHODS
The interaction between a FAAH inhibitor URB597 and paracetamol was investigated in the writhing test in mice using an isobolographic analysis.

RESULTS
URB597 or paracetamol alone and in combinations produced dose-dependent antinociceptive effects. ED50 values were estimated for the individual drugs and an isobologram was constructed. The observed ED50 value for the URB57-paracetamol combination was 0.097 (0.062-0.247) mg/kg. This value did not differ significantly from the theoretical additive ED50 value for the URB597-paracetamol combination which was 0.108 (0.059-0.198) mg/kg. Thus, inhibition of FAAH by URB597 was not followed by the lack of analgesic activity in paracetamol.

CONCLUSION
The present results suggest that the analgesic activity of paracetamol is not dependent solely on FAAH metabolic conversion to AM404 and that paracetamol exerts analgesic activity also by additional mechanisms.


A novel control technique for sensorless vector control operation of a double-inverter-fed wound-rotor induction motor is presented. Two current controllers control the stator-side currents based on a vector control algorithm. Another V/f-type flux and frequency controller controls the rotor-side frequency directly. A novel frequency command profile for the rotor-side controller is suggested to make this sensorless drive operation reliable and reduce dependence on motor parameters at any rotor speed. A complete inverter power flow analysis is presented to show that the drive can deliver full torque from 0- to 2-p.u. speed for either direction of rotation. Thus, double the rated power can be extracted from the induction motor without overloading it. The proposed algorithm allows the drive to start on-the-fly without any rotor transducer. Results from a prototype 50-hp drive are presented.


The Pica-B computer is a simple abstract machine designed to: 1. facilitate the portability of a simple single user operating environment written in BCPL. 2. serve the pedagogic goal of providing a basis for teaching concepts of hardware and system architecture, systems programming and programming language design in a unified setting, and 3. serve as a possible solution to the current and future software crisis caused by the advent of the micro-computer. The Pica-B is based on Richards' Intcode machine but differs from it in the addition of an (interrupt) status register and a PDP-II style memory map of I/O devices. The status register and hence interrupt and device handlers may be programmed in Pica-B code (an extension of Intcode) or in a version of BCPL with an added inline code facility, the so-called vile command. An example is given or how interrupts and I/O are handled in the Pica-B computer.


Why is the discourse of extreme right parties so hard to characterize? Mapping Extreme Right Ideology proposes a new model of extreme right politics based on expressions of negative identity and authoritarianism. The model is comprehensively tested across 17 European political systems and 25 parties, using a textual analysis of party manifestos and press releases, a mass survey of voters, and interviews with leaders. Matthew Goodwin recommends the book to anyone looking for a sharper understanding of the role of party agency and supply-side dynamics in explaining extreme right party success.


Introduction: In hospitals and other healthcare settings the presence of airborne and sedimented fungi is an extrinsic risk factor for opportunistic infections involving both immunocompromised and non-immunocompromised persons. In hospitalized patients, it is estimated that 9% of hospital-acquired infections are caused by fungi. Lethality rate varies from 40% to 100% depending on the immunosuppression degree of stakeholders. To prevent healthcare-associated infections, the control of environmental fungal contamination through use of sanitizing/disinfecting practices is basic. However, the widespread use of common disinfectants could promote the growth of antibiotic-resistant superbugs and cause environmental harm. These aspects stimulated the search of new antimicrobial agents. The aim of this study was to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of essential oils of Mentha insularis Req., Mentha pulegium L., Mentha requienii Bentham, Artemisia caerulescens L. ssp. densiflora (Viv), Rosmarinus officinalis L. var. albiflorus, Rosmarinus officinalis L. var. lavandulescens, and Ocotea puchury major Mart. against fungi species frequently found in hospitals and potentially responsible for opportunistic mycoses. Methods: The essential oils' antifungal activity was carried out by agar disc diffusion technique. Results: All tested essential oils are effective, though to a different degree, against both molds that yeasts assessed. The major antifungal activity was showed by Mentha oils. Particularly, Mentha requienii and Mentha insularis oils were active until 1:8 dilution against Rhodotorula spp. and 1:16 dilution against mixed molds, while M. pulegium was strongly active until 1:2 against both fungi. Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, few or no data are available in literature on the activity of essential oils against hospital environmental isolates of fungi. Results suggest their potential application in sanitation procedures of the hospital, and in general, of the "care settings".


In this paper we study the formal modelling and verification of a network player system using Duration Calculus, a real time interval temporal logic. The system is modelled by the conjunction of a number of Duration Calculus formulae each capturing a basic property of the system. That the system satisfies the requirement is expressed by the entailment of the requirement formula from the system formula. We use an automated tool DCValid for verification. DCValid is a model checking tool and it cannot verify our system in the general form, and therefore a special instance is derived from the general model and subsequently checked using DCValid.


A phonological inventory is a repertoire of contrastive articulatory or manual gestures shared by a community of users. Whether spoken or signed, all human languages have a phonological inventory. In spoken languages, the phonological inventory is comprised of a set of segments (consonants and vowels) and suprasegmentals (stress and intonation) that are linguistically contrastive, either lexically or grammatically, in a particular language or one of its dialects. Sign languages also have phonological inventories, which include a set of linguistically contrastive signs made from movement, hand shape, and location.
 The study of phonological inventories is interesting because they tell us about the distribution, frequency, and diversity of gestures that individuals acquire and produce in the world's 7,000 or so languages. Their study has also raised important empirical questions about the comparability of linguistic concepts across different languages and modalities, in the use of statistics and sampling in quantitative approaches to comparative linguistics, and in the study of language ontogeny and phylogeny over the course of language evolution. As such, some recent research highlights include the following: quantitative approaches suggest causal relationships between phonological inventory composition and gene-culture and language-environment coevolution; the study of de novo sign languages provides important insights into the emergence of phonology; and comparative animal communication studies suggest evolutionary speech precursors in phonological repertoires of nonhuman primates, and potentially in extinct hominids including Neanderthal.


Objective The purpose of this critical review is to summarise the evidence for the following technologies/strategies related to diagnosing or managing sports-related concussion: quantitative EEG, functional neuroimaging, head impact sensors, telemedicine and mobile devices. Data sources MEDLINE, PubMed, Cochrane Controlled Trials Registers, SportDiscus, EMBASE, Web of Science and ProQuest databases. Primary search keywords were concussion, sports concussion and mild traumatic brain injury. The keywords used for secondary, topic specific searches were quantitative electroencephalography, qEEG, functionalMRI, magnetoencephalography, near-infrared spectroscopy, positron emission tomography, single photon emissionCT, accelerometer, impact sensor, telemetry, remote monitoring, robotic medicine, telemedicine, mobile device, mobile phone, smart phone and tablet computer. Results The primary search produced 8567 publications. The secondary searches produced nine publications that presented original data, included a comparison group in the study design and involved sports-related concussion. Four studies spoke to the potential of qEEG as a diagnostic or management tool, while five studies addressed the potential of fMRI to be used in the same capacity. Conclusions Emerging technologies and novel approaches that aid in sports concussion diagnosis and management are being introduced at a rapid rate. While some technologies show promise, their clinical utility remains to be established.


Knowledge of Palmer amaranth demographics and biology is essential for the development and implementation of weed management strategies. A field experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of Palmer amaranth density on seedling mortality, flowering initiation, and flowering progress throughout the growing season and biomass production and fecundity in wide-row soybean. The experimental design was a randomized complete block design with three levels of Palmer amaranth density-clusters: high, medium, and low. Palmer amaranth mortality rate was greater at high Palmer amaranth population density-cluster, reaching a peak within 30 to 40 d after Palmer amaranth emergence (DAE) (0.55 and 0.80 for 2014 and 2015, respectively), in comparison with mortality rate at medium and lower density-clusters. Likewise, as Palmer amaranth density increased, biomass and seed production per unit area of the weed also increased. Biomass production at the high density-cluster in 2014 was 664.7 g m-2 compared with 542.9 and 422.1 g m -2 at medium and low density-clusters, respectively. Similarly, biomass production at high density-cluster in 2015 was 100.6 g m-2 compared with 37.3 and 34.2 at medium and low density-clusters, respectively. In addition, seeds produced at high density-cluster were 1.5 million and 245,400 seeds m-2 for 2014 and 2015, respectively. Seed production was reduced by 29% and 54% in 2014 and by 65% and 75% in 2015 at medium and low density-clusters, respectively. Earlier flowering initiation (i.e., between 30 to 40 DAE) occurred in higher Palmer amaranth density-clusters, indicating a trade-off between reproduction and survival at high densities and more stressed environments for species survival. Palmer amaranth male-to-female sex ratio was greater at high densities, 1.3 and 1.9, compared with lower densities of 0.6 to 0.7 and 0.7 to 0.8 in 2014 and 2015, respectively. The plasticity of Palmer amaranth population and population-structure regulation, vegetative growth, and flowering shifts at various levels of intraspecific competition (i.e., high vs. low population density-clusters) and the trade-off between these biological transitions merits further investigation. Nomenclature: Palmer amaranth, Amaranthus palmeri S. Wats.; soybean, Glycine max (L.) Merr.


The present work reviews the deep-water cone fauna of New Caledonia and its Economic Exclusive Zone. It is based on the material collected for more than 40 years by oceanographic expeditions in the deep waters surrounding New Caledonia, organized by the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle-Paris/ORSTOM, then Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, in the framework of the Tropical Deep-Sea Benthos programme. A total of 2377 lots containing 5113 specimens collected in depths between 100 and 1260 m have been examined. About 770 specimens were collected live, and allowed for radular and DNA studies. A phylogenetic analysis, based on the cox1 gene, of the deep-water cone snail fauna of New Caledonia is presented, along with a detailed, fully illustrated taxonomic account with data on geographic and bathymetric distribution and radular morphology. A total of 76 different species of cone snails were identified among the collected material. Of these, 22 corresponded to typical shallow water species, which were most likely translocated into deeper water, whereas 54 could be considered true components of the deep water (below 100 m) cone snail fauna. Species of the genus Profundiconus represent 22%, whereas those of the genera Conasprella and Conus represent 28% and 50%, respectively. Eleven deep water cone species can be considered as endemic to the New Caledonia EEZ, representing 20.3% of the total. The most abundant species found (more than 400 specimens each) were Conus (Afonsoconus) bruuni, Conasprella (Boucheticonus) alisi, Conasprella (Conasprella) boucheti, and Profundiconus vaubani. The new species Conus (Taranteconus) samadiae sp. nov. is hereby described.


Sixth Normal Form (6NF) is a term used in relational database theory by Christopher Date to describe databases which decompose relational variables to irreducible elements. While this form may be unimportant for non-temporal data, it is certainly important when maintaining data containing temporal variables of a point-in-time or interval nature. With the advent of Data Warehousing 2.0 (DW 2.0), there is now an increased emphasis on using fully-temporalized databases in the context of data warehousing, in particular with next generation approaches such as Anchor Modeling. In this paper, we will explore the concepts of temporal data, 6NF conceptual database models, and their relationship with DW 2.0. Further, we will also evaluate Anchor Modeling as a conceptual design method in which to capture temporal data. Using these concepts, we will indicate a path forward for evaluating a possible translation of 6NF-compliant data into an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) Schema for the purpose of describing and presenting such data to disparate systems in a structured format suitable for data exchange.


Background: Kidney calculi are the most common cause of kidney failure. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of renal colic and its risk factors in the patients referred to two emergency departments during a year. Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in two hospitals in Kerman city, south-east of Iran, for one year from March 2019 to March 2020. All the archives of the two emergency departments were reviewed, and the required information was recorded in a checklist. The data was analyzed in SPSS 20 software. Results: A total of 504 patients were included in the study. The prevalence of renal colic was 0.5%. Most of the patients (58.5%) had an age between 19 and 39 years, and the majority (60.1%) were males and had a body mass index (BMI) above 25. A family history of renal colic was reported in 68.7% of the patients, and 63.9% had either hypertension or diabetes. Most of the patients consumed less than 3 liters of water per day. The highest referrals were seen in autumn (31.5%) and summer (27.4%). Conclusion: Considering the relationship between renal colic and age, sex, BMI, occupation, a family history of the disease, the presence of underlying diseases, the amount and type of drinking water, and the season of referral, it is recommended to control these risk factors to reduce the incidence of the disease.


Education has always been considered as the linchpin for a country's economic and social development. The dropout rate in schools especially in developing countries has always been a problematic issue and the situation has further been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study primarily aims at studying the factors affecting the school dropout rate during the pandemic. Lockdown is the first step that any country starts to adopt for the safety of its general public. This severely affects the masses' financial conditions, especially for the parents of students at risk, as the dropout rate increases with financial pressures. The slogan "stay home stay safe" has further aggravated the fear of the parents to send their children out and attend schools. The data for the study was collected from 20 public and private schools of two divisions, including seven districts of the province of Punjab, Pakistan, using interviews of policymakers, parents of dropouts, teachers, and students. The study is a corollary to several issues already highlighted in various other articles to transpire the details of drop-out rates in developing countries in general and Pakistan in particular. The study revealed financial conditions, lockdown effects, mode of learning, government policies, fear of death, the psyche of the parents, socio-cultural effects, the role of teachers and administrators, most affected level, and some contributory factors amongst the major factors. Finally, the study analyzes the effects of dropout and will help suggest measures to control the dropout rate in Pakistan in particular and developing countries in general.


Cognitive radio system (CRS) technology can help respond to the growing mobile traffic demand by improving network resource usage and gaining access to new shared spectrum bands. This article presents a cognitive radio trial environment (CORE) consisting of cognitive engines (CEs) to control different radio systems [e.g., long-term evolution (LTE) and wireless open-access research platform (WARP)-based networks]. Load balancing and authorized shared access (ASA) are demonstrated using the trial environment with promising results. The ASA-based spectrum sharing trial is presented for the first time with a real-life mobile network accessing a shared spectrum band under a licensed shared access (LSA) regime. Cognitive decision making brings intelligence to the usage of the radio and network resources and, at best, increases considerably end users? quality of service (QoS) compared to the standard systems, as shown for QoS-based offloading.


The present work discusses the characteristics of the thermal effects at microscale. The thermal effects are divided into two types, steady and unsteady. The unsteady thermal effect focuses on the thermal response of object during heating. It relies on the object thermal inertia. Thermal response phenomena have seldom application of practical uses in devises at conventional scale. However, the miniaturization in device size due to the development of the state-of-the-art technology makes it possible to utilize thermal responses due to its significantly reduced thermal inertia. The swift thermal response can be utilized in the designs of micro dual-layered metal membrane pumps, phase change pumps, polymerase chain reaction (PRC). For steady type the thermal effect in microchennels varies with the boundary conditions and flow parameters. The relative importance of different forces changes with the scale going down. The viscous dissipation and the work due to expansion may not be neglected for the convection inside a microchannel; the conduction in the wall has to be considered in the calculation of the Nusselt number for microchannel. The relative importance of different heat transfer mode also varies with size. The natural convection presides over the heat transport inside a microchamber and the heat through an air gap by thermal radiation may exceed that by conduction at nanoscale. All the above mentioned variations make the heat transfer at microscale different from that at conventional scale.Copyright © 2005 by ASME


The availability of external funding, especially access to credit can be defined as a problem for all size companies across the world. Each size of company has different financial problems waiting to be solved and access methods to be used. Companies always need funds for their operational expenses, working capitals and new investments. On the other hand they need funds for growing and changing their sizes as well. Tranferring to upper level (size) requires additional financial sources which will be used for new investment, research and development facilities, increase in production and human resources capacity, reaching new markets etc. Unfortunatelly MSMEs especially start-up, micro, small sized companies have similar access to finance problem besides other problems in all countries regardless of their development level. Main aim of the book is showing to different financing ways, supports and grants that companies can apply in the United States and Turkey comperatively.


The distributions and physical conditions in molecular gas in the interstellar medium have been investigated in both the Galaxy and towards external galaxies. For example, Galactic plane surveys in the CO J =1-0 line with the Columbia 1.2-m telescope and with the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory (FCRAO) 14-m telescopes have been able to trace spiral arms more clearly than HI surveys have been able to reveal, and indicate that most of molecular mass is contained in Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs). Extensive maps of the whole Milky Way showed two prominent features, the 4-kpc molecular ring and the Galactic center. The physical conditions in the Galaxy have been studied by comparing the intensity of CO J =1-0 line with those of other lines, e.g., 13 CO J =1-0, higher J transitions of CO, and dense gas tracers such as HCO + , CS, and HCN.

Previous studies were however strongly biased towards regions where CO emission was known to be intense. The radial distribution of molecular hydrogen shows that most of the H 2 gas which is indirectly traced by observations of its associated CO emission, originates from the inner Galaxy (Dame 1993). Extending outwards from a galacto-centric distance of ~7 kpc, the H 2 mass surface density decreases dramatically, and HI dominates over H 2 in the outer Galaxy. What are physical conditions of molecular gas where the CO emission is relatively weak, and can we really trace all of the molecular gas through obervations of CO? These kinds of problems have not been solved yet, but are addressed in our study.


An innovative arbitrary waveform defibrillator for animal research is presented. The system is based on two power linear amplifiers in bridge configuration, and it is capable of delivering 10J shocks of arbitrary shape and duration. The system is battery operated, has an isolated output, and is PC controlled via LabView. The system can be used to test new waveforms by comparing them to traditional ones, in in-vitro experiments. Loads with impedance ranging from 15 to 75 ohms can be connected. A maximum of 380 V, 10A can be delivered to the loads. The use of a proper power supply and additional external resistors limit the power dissipated internally, so that up to 1.7KW can be delivered to the load. Starting from an estimation of the load impedance a LabView application calculates the proper settings for the power supply and the additional resistors, if needed. Effective voltage and current are measured and collected in the PC. Examples of waveforms as well as results from experiments of isolated rabbit hearts are presented.


A Rao-Blackwellised particle filter is used in the estimation of the parameters of a linear stochastic state space model. The proposed method combines the particle filtering technique with a Kalman filter using marginalisation so as to make full use of the analytically tractable structure of the model. Simulation studies are performed on a simple illustrative example and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in comparison with the conventional extended-Kalman-filler-based method. The proposed method is then applied in the estimation of the parameters in a railway vehicle dynamic model for condition monitoring and the desired results have been obtained.


Tumor hypoxia, either preexisting or as a result of oxygen depletion during photodynamic therapy (PDT) light irradiation, can significantly reduce the effectiveness of PDT‐induced cell killing. To overcome tumor hypoxia and improve tumor cell killing, we propose using supplemental hyperoxygenation during Photofrin‐PDT. The mechanism for the tumor cure enhancement of the hyperoxygenation–PDT combination is investigated using an in vivo–in vitro technique. A hypoxic tumor model was established by implanting mammary adenocarcinoma in the hind legs of mice. Light irradiation (200 J/cm2 at either 75 or 150 mW/cm2), under various oxygen supplemental conditions (room air, carbogen, 100% normobaric or hyperbaric oxygen), was delivered to animals that received 12.5 mg/kg Photofrin 24 h before light irradiation. Tumors were harvested at various time points after PDT and grown in vitro for colony formation analysis. Treated tumors were also analyzed histologically. The results show that when PDT is combined with hyperoxygenation, the hypoxic condition could be improved and the cell killing rate at various time points after PDT could be significantly enhanced over that without hyperoxygenation, suggesting an enhanced direct and indirect cell killing associated with high‐concentration oxygen breathing. This study further confirms our earlier observation that when a PDT treatment is combined with hyperoxygenation it can be more effective in controlling hypoxic tumors.


An immune active cancer phenotype typified by a T helper 1 (Th-1) immune response has been associated with increased responsiveness to immunotherapy and favorable prognosis in some but not all cancer types. The reason of this differential prognostic connotation remains unknown. Through a multi-modal Pan-cancer analysis among 31 different histologies (9,282 patients), we demonstrated that the favorable prognostic connotation conferred by the presence of a Th-1 immune response was abolished in tumors displaying specific tumor-cell intrinsic attributes such as high TGF-ß signaling and low proliferation capacity. This observation was validated in the context of immune-checkpoint inhibition. WNT-ß catenin, barrier molecules, Notch, hedgehog, mismatch repair, telomerase activity, and AMPK signaling were the pathways most coherently associated with an immune silent phenotype together with mutations of driver genes including IDH1/2, FOXA2, HDAC3, PSIP1, MAP3K1, KRAS, NRAS, EGFR, FGFR3, WNT5A, and IRF7. Our findings could be used to prioritize hierarchically relevant targets for combination therapies and to refine stratification algorithms.


This special issue of European Education honors one of the founding figures in comparative and international education, Professor Andreas Kazamias. Andreas has often described himself as a scholar of multiple identities: a Greek Cypriot; a humanist intellectual and Socratic "gadfly"; a moral reformer; a university professor of comparative education; and a founder and key intellectual shaper of the field of comparative education, among others. This special issue is a celebration of Andreas's life and career, and the multifaceted ways that his various identities have touched and shaped the field of comparative education and generations of comparative education scholars and their ideas. The special issue includes contributions that explore, utilize, and build on key concepts and figures that Andreas has developed (such as paideia of the soul, the modern cosmopolis, and epimythion); it also includes contributions that reflect on Andreas's tremendous impact on the lives of his colleagues and students, and reveal new facets of his identity, such as rabid American football fan. The introduction mirrors the diversity of contributions in the special issue, touching first on Andreas's career as a professor in comparative education, then reflecting on traveling and thinking with Andreas, and finally describing the themes around which the special issue is built. It includes some of the key aesthetic materials around which Andreas has organized his work, and which he reminds us are essential to the construction of a "democratic homo humanus" and to the cultivation of the attitudes, dispositions, and virtues that make us fully human. none defined


In this paper, we characterize and evaluate the effectiveness of a pseudo-random-based implicit functional testing technique for analog and mixed-signal circuits. The analog test problem is transformed into the digital domain by embedding the device-under-test (DUT) between a digital-to-analog-converter and an analog-to-digital converter. The pseudo-random testing technique uses band-limited digital white noise (pseudo-random-patterns) as input stimulus. The signature is constructed by computing the cross-correlation between the digitized output response and the pseudo-random input sequence. We have implemented a DSP-based hardware testbed to evaluate the effectiveness of the pseudo-random testing technique. Our results show that we can achieve close to 100% yield and fault coverages by carefully selecting only two cross-correlation samples. Noise level and total harmonic distortion below 0.1% and 0.5%, respectively, do not affect the classification accuracy.


Floating Car Data (FCD) applications are based on the collection of geo-localized information updates that are issued by vehicles roaming in a given area. These data are an essential source for traffic information and are widely employed by Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). We present and examine a hybrid networking architecture and protocol that are used for the efficient execution of such a collection process. We employ a VANET-based multihop dissemination logic to spread control messages and elect designated nodes. Those nodes are exploited to report vehicular data via LTE communications. The performance behavior of the proposed protocol is evaluated through the consideration of two real urban scenarios. In comparing with performance bounds that characterize the performance behavior attained by state-of-theart hybrid integrated VANET and LTE mechanisms, we show our approach to offer a substantial reduction in the traffic load rates induced over the LTE cellular radio access system.


PSYCHOLOGICAL SYMPTOMS IN ANKYLOSING SPONDYLITIS. STUDY OF THEIR PREVALENCE AND DETERMINANTS INTRODUCTION: In recent years the importance of psychological factors in inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis or systemic lupus erythematosus has been recognized. However, in Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS) little attention has been paid to these factors; few studies have evaluated the presence of psychological disorders in this disease. OBJECTIVE: To establish the prevalence of symptoms of anxiety and depression in patients with AS and to identify demographic, clinical, analytical, metrological and radiological data that may predict their presence. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Cross-sectional study performed in 160 AS patients attended in accordance with a standard protocol. The following variables were evaluated: age, sex, marital status, educational level, employment status, time of evolution, age of onset, presence of peripheral arthritis, visual analogue scale (VAS) of pain, night pain, disease activity evaluated by patient (VAS), presence of uveitis, previous surgery, comorbidity, smoking habit, BASFI, HAQEA, BASDAI, HLA B27, ESR, RCP, modified Schober test, thoracic expansion, occiput-wall distance, radiological sacroileitis and BASRI of cervical and lumbar spine and hips. Depression was assessed with the adapted Spanish language version of Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI). Scores of 18 or above were taken as representative of depression. Anxiety was assessed by the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) including the subscales of Trait (T) and State (S). Scores of 8 or above on either subscale were considered to reflect presence of Anxiety symptoms. In the statistical study, we performed a descriptive study and an analytical study including bivariate and multivariate analyses with logistic regression models for qualitative variables and linear regression models for quantitative variables. RESULTS: Symptoms of Depression were found in 23.1% of patients, State Anxiety in 23.1% and Trait Anxiety in 24.4%. BDI and STAI S and T scores were associated with pain, night pain, disease activity evaluated by the patient, BASFI, HAQEA, BASDAI and BASRI in lumbar spine. BDI scores were associated with Anxiety. STAI S scores were also associated with BDI and STAI T and STAI T scores with comorbidity, ERS, Modified Schober's test, BDI and STAI S. In Hierarchical Regression Analysis, BASFI was the only independent variable associated with Depression and Anxiety. Variables included in this analysis explained 26.4% of values for Depression, 24.4% for STAI S and 23.7% for SRAI T. CONCLUSIONS: Psychological symptoms of Depression and Anxiety are frequent in patients with AS and are related fundamentally to activity and functional capacity. The functional capacity observed by BASFI is the only independent determinant of the presence of psychological symptoms. An association was found between symptoms of Depression and symptoms of Anxiety.


A polyethylene glycol/citrate mixed solution was fed into a single channel of a Y-type micro-channel on a microchip as an aqueous two-phase system. A phase separation multi-phase flow with a liquid-liquid interface was generated due to a phase transformation. An annular flow, one of the flow types in the phase separation multi-phase flow, was observed through bright-field microscopy. The flow consisted of citrate-rich inner and polyethylene glycol-rich outer phases. We attempted to separate and collect the two phases in the single channel into two separate Y-type channels. When the pressure losses for the separated channels were not very different, we observed symmetric flow in the Y-type channel. When the pressure losses were quite different, the polyethylene glycol-rich phase with higher viscosity was selectively distributed to the separated channel with lower pressure loss. Thus, the polyethylene glycol-rich phase was successfully and intentionally collected from the chosen Y-type channel via the creation of annular flow in the single channel.


Replacing a fossil fuel-powered car with an electric model can halve greenhouse gas emissions over the course of the vehicle's lifetime and reduce the noise pollution in urban areas. In green logistics, a well-scheduled charging ensures an efficient operation of transportation and power systems and, at the same time, provides economical and satisfactory charging services for drivers. This paper presents a taxonomy of current electric vehicle charging scheduling problems in green logistics by analyzing its unique features with some typical use cases, such as space assignment, routing and energy management; discusses the challenges, i.e., the information availability and stakeholders' strategic behaviors that arise in stochastic and decentralized environments; and classifies the existing approaches, as centralized, distributed and decentralized ones, that apply to these challenges. Moreover, we discuss research opportunities in applying market-based mechanisms, which shall be coordinated with stochastic optimization and machine learning, to the decentralized, dynamic and datadriven charging scheduling problems for the management of the future green logistics.


This project arises from the need to conform to safety regulations four spaces very different from each other: the Social Sciences Periodicals Library, the Geography Department Library, the Geography Museum, and for the next five to seven years the Library of Economics. The library should in fact be transferred in the building of the Department of Economics, now under Restoration. These libraries are set in adjoining historical buildings from the 17th and 18th centuries, overlooking one of the oldest streets in Padova. The safety requirements called for a radical rethinking of library space arrangement, which has to match the needs of different types of public, and the relationship with the new little Geography Museum. In order to satisfy the needs of a diverse audience, the space has been rearranged with an approach similar to that found in public libraries, and adjusted according to different users' needs. Every space is flexible thanks to adaptable furniture, and the reading rooms can be used for workshops, lectures and exhibitions. The aim of this project is to meet the different needs of the audience (scholars, students and school kids) in a safe environment, adding value to the historical buildings where such spaces are situated.


In recent years, an efficient method of performing analyses and computations on graph networks, regarding recent and up-to-date data, has been needed due to continuous growth of datasets. Personalized PageRank is one of the most well-known computation methods for graphs. Personalized PageRank computes the relative importance or relevance with respect to a set of given nodes, called start nodes or bookmark. However, the online computation of Personalized PageRank on a massive size of datasets is infeasible due to its huge computational cost. So many applications have considered the way of precomputing Personalized PageRank for all or some nodes, keeping them in a secondary storage, and reading the results on demand. This method, though, has two problems; it requires an enormous size of storages and it is difficult to adopt up-to-date data to affect the results. For applications that cope with frequent updates to data such as search logs or social networks, the precomputation is not a suitable method. In this paper, we suggest a novel algorithm, ProbScoring, an approximate method of finding the top-k nodes at query time, that leverages the advantages of layered graphs. ProbScoring is far from those issues, and it is empirically verified that ProbScoring is a fast and accurate method.


Due to the complex interaction of light with mixed materials, reflectance spectra are highly nonlinearly related to the pure material endmember spectra, making it hard to estimate the fractional abundances of the materials. Changing illumination conditions and cross-sensor situations cause spectral variability, further complicating the unmixing procedure. In this work, we propose a supervised approach to unmix mineral powder mixtures, containing endmember variability. First, the abundances are estimated by calculating the geodesic distances between the mixtures and the endmembers. It is argued and experimentally validated that the estimated geodesic abundances, although not correct, are invariant to external spectral variability. Then, a supervised approach is applied to learn a mapping from the obtained geodesic abundances to spectra that follow a linear model. To learn this mapping, groundtruth fractional abundances of a number of training samples are required. Although any nonlinear regression method can be used to learn the mapping, Gaussian process is found to be suitable when a limited number of training samples are available. The trained model is applicable to all manifolds that contain a similar nonlinear behavior as the trained manifold, e.g., when the same mixtures are measured by another sensor. Using the output spectra, a simple inversion of the linear model reveals the true abundances. Experiments are conducted on simulated and real mineral mixtures. In particular, we developed data sets of homogeneously mixed mineral powder mixtures, acquired by two different sensors, an Agrispec spectrometer and a snapscan shortwave infrared (SWIR) hyperspectral camera, under strictly controlled experimental settings. The proposed approach is compared to other supervised approaches and nonlinear mixture models.


Because Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 involves a subject that remains highly controversial in our polity (sex roles and interactions among the sexes more generally), and because it targets a highly sensitive area (education), the administration of that statute by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has long drawn criticism. The critics have not merely noted disagreements with the legal and policy decisions of the agency, however. Rather, they have attacked the agency's decisions for being illegitimate—for reflecting the agency's improper imposition of value judgments on the statute. Three key applications of Title IX have drawn the most controversy in this regard: gender equity in intercollegiate athletics; transgender students' rights; and sex-based harassment and assault on college campuses. This symposium essay argues that the critique is misplaced. One may agree or disagree with OCR's applications of Title IX in these three key areas. But these applications are not illegitimate. To the contrary, they are implementation decisions made consistent with the longstanding "core" conception of discrimination — intentional disparate treatment. These decisions are inherently contestable, because even the "core" conception can be instantiated in many ways. But there are strong reasons to believe that OCR is best positioned to choose which instantiations to adopt. This essay thus shows how disputes over Title IX implicate broader questions of what discrimination means, as well as broader debates involving the legitimacy of the administrative state.