GIXRF (Grazing incidence X-Ray Fluorescence) is an analytical technique with high potential in the study of depth profiles and in the characterization of thin layered structures. To extract information from a GIXRF
measurement and determine the layer composition it is necessary to compare the experimental data with simulation. However at the moment this thesis has been written, there is no software widely recognized from the scientific community as the reference software for the analysis. For this
reason this work of thesis deals with the development of an analytical software and its application to several case studies. A program called GIMPy is presented. The program is capable to perform simulations of the expected GIXRF signal from a given model, but also of the expected fluorescence signal at high angle of incidence and the reflectivity (XRR). The use of a programming language like Python makes
the library extremely portable, easily extendible and flexible thanks to its object oriented syntax and scripting capabilities. GIMPy bases the modelling of the electric field propagation inside the sample and the expected
fluorescence from the theoretical description found in literature. Moreover a series of methods were developed to account for the effect of the instrumental set-up geometry, the detector response, indirect excitation and primary beam shape and energy composition. A round-robin related
to GIXRF comparison with several institutes developing an analytical software has been organised. The comparison showed a good agreement between the results obtained with GIMPy and the other programs. GIXRF has then been applied to the characterisation of several systems. A combined XRR and GIXRF analysis of multi-layered transparent and
conductive oxide films (TCO) of technological interest resulted in a nondestructive and precise characterization of their structures. Measurements were performed at the ESRF synchrotron facility and in the laboratory using a Cu tube as source. Combining the measurements performed with dif-
ferent instrumental set-ups the effectiveness of the combined XRR-GIXRFapproach, that has proved already effective in the past, has been further shown. It has been possible to evidence the existence of a thin inter dif-
fusion profile induced by annealing the samples, showing a sensitivity to structural changes in the depth of 0.5-1 nm.
GIXRF measurements performed on Sn implants in Ge provided information about the total dose retained by the sample after an implantation process. Synchrotron tunable excitation energy was extremely valuable for the fluorescence analysis.The two different modelling strategies used for data fitting, one using a SIMS profile as an input the other an analytical description of the depth profile, and returned values close to the one obtained with other techniques. A new technology based on the deposition of ALD coatings for the preservation of cultural heritage object has been characterised with XRR and GIXRF. The XRR measurements were effective in revealing the deterioration of the coatings after the effect of an accelerated ageing process. Moreover the analysis of GIXRF also revealed the formation of nano-particles at the top of the surface, and allowed the characterisation of their size and composition.
The last chapter shows some theoretical calculations investigating GIXRF potential in the size and chemical characterisation of nano-particles. It is shown how the experimental setup and the sample preparation can influ-
ence the outcome of the measurement. The theoretical calculations are also reinforced by the result obtained on some preliminary experiments on Gold nano-particles.


Social mix can be observed in many post-reform Chinese cities, yet the topic
has so far remained scarcely researched. Using central Shanghai as a focus,
this research asks how socially mixed neighbourhoods have emerged, what is
their internal structure, and how have locally-based social interactions been
affected by the emergence of social mix.
Based on a neighbourhood of 5 housing estates and other relevant examples,
this study shows that mixed neighbourhoods have emerged from an unplanned
and uncoordinated interplay among new market-driven commodity housing
developments, counter-market retention mechanisms on traditional estates,
government-led socially-orientated housing projects, residents' resistance to
redevelopment, and the lingering socialist legacy of welfare housing and
unclear property rights. Significant differences were found in residents' socioeconomic
attributes, living conditions, tenure and housing expenditure between
the traditional, new middle-income, and new upmarket housing.
The process of housing redevelopment and the creation of social mix have
diminished locally-based social interactions. Residents' intra-estate interaction
is the strongest in traditional estates, lower in the middle-income estate and
minimal in upmarket estates. The level of inter-estate interaction in the mixed
neighbourhood is weak. The emergence of social mix has brought about a
divergence in lifestyles and lifeworlds among the changed set of residents,
which is reflected in the spheres of mobility, residential stability, shopping, and
children's education. The level of inter-estate interaction has reduced from the
past when the neighbourhood was more socially homogenous.
Findings suggest that social mix and a weakening of local social interaction will
likely continue, and these will demand more scrutiny considering China's
development agenda on social harmony. Findings here concur with Western
studies on mixed communities that social mix does not lead to social mixing.
New policies and programmes to foster social interaction should be explored.


Free and informed consent of participants in research studies is a cornerstone of biomedical research, but this has not always been the case. Cells derived from tumor tissue of an American woman without her consent more than 60 years ago and named HeLa cells were eventually identified as belonging to Henrietta Lacks, a fact that became widely known in 2010 upon publication of a bestselling book about the woman and her cellular legacy (Skloot 2009). HeLa cells have been broadly disseminated to laboratories around the globe and have been at the forefront of biomedical research for more than five decades. Many key discoveries that have contributed to our understanding of the basis and mechanisms of life and also to significant advances in health care are attributable to studies that employed HeLa cells. To fulfill our responsibility to disseminate important research results, the editors of G3: GenesjGenomesjGenetics—a peer-reviewed, peer-edited, open-access journal of the Genetics Society of America— published early online an article in which the authors described the genome sequence of a HeLa cell line that promises to increase its utility and reveal its limitations for research. Soon after release of that article, the authors withdrew access to the sequence data in response to concerns about genetic privacy that the Lacks family expressed to Rebecca Skloot about their genetic privacy. Today, regulations in the United States and elsewhere require that consent be obtained before deriving a cell line from an identified person's tissue. But what should be done with useful cell lines derived long ago without proper consent, or in cases in which that consent could not anticipate future uses? Do we have obligations to the descendants of the original "donor?"Our recently acquired ability to decode DNA sequences of whole genomes has brought this dilemma into sharp focus. As responsible academic researchers and editors, we must seize this opportunity to address, in a constructive way, the questions raised by the study. In the short term, the editors of G3 will work with the authors of the study to make the sequence data available in a way that responds to the concerns of the Lacks family. One thing is clear: the sequence information will add immeasurable value to the large amount of genetic information available in the public domain about the HeLa cell genome, helping ensure that these cells continue to catalyze advances in cell and cancer biology. We must arrive at a resolution soon because publishing an article while withholding access to the underlying (genomic) data is incongruent with our goals as scientists and publishers. Beyond the short term, the Genetics Society of America intends to encourage thoughtful conversations on the ethical issues raised by this case, with the goal of helping to develop common standards for the acquisition and distribution of personal genomic information. Because of the significance of the questions, those conversations should engage those with appropriate expertise and experience, away from the "madding crowd's [sometimes] ignoble strife." But we must move with dispatch to engage the entire community in seeking solutions because everyone—scientists, clinicians, ethicists, and the public—has a stake in the outcome. Please collaborate with us in this important discussion.


Abstract. Snow spectral albedo in the visible/near-infrared range has been continuously measured during a winter season at Col de Porte alpine site (French Alps; 45.30° N, 5.77° E; 1325 m a.s.l.). The evolution of such alpine snowpack is complex due to intensive precipitation, rapid melt events and Saharan dust deposition outbreaks. This study highlights that the resulting intricate variations of spectral albedo can be successfully explained by variations of the following snow surface variables: specific surface area (SSA) of snow, effective light-absorbing impurities content, presence of liquid water and slope. The methodology developed in this study disentangles the effect of these variables on snow spectral albedo. The presence of liquid water at the snow surface results in a spectral shift of the albedo from which melt events can be identified with an occurrence of false detection rate lower than 3.5 %. Snow SSA mostly impacts spectral albedo in the near-infrared range. Impurity deposition mostly impacts the albedo in the visible range but this impact is very dependent on snow SSA and surface slope. Our work thus demonstrates that the SSA estimation from spectral albedo is affected by large uncertainties for a tilted snow surface and medium to high impurity contents and that the estimation of impurity content is also affected by large uncertainties, especially for low values below 50 ng g−1 black carbon equivalent. The proposed methodology opens routes for retrieval of SSA, impurity content, melt events and surface slope from spectral albedo. However, an exhaustive accuracy assessment of the snow black properties retrieval would require more independent in situ measurements and is beyond the scope of the present study. This time series of snow spectral albedo nevertheless already provides a new insight into our understanding of the evolution of snow surface properties.


Spain occupies a first ranking position in worldwide production and exportation for olive oil and table olives. Such position is enforced by the positive evolution of investment demonstrated by an increase of approximately 5% of area dedicated to this cultivation during the last 6 years. This study analyzes Spanish olive sector investment decision taking into consideration the technical efficiency as a relevant element that could impact that decision by integrating the real option approach and a dynamic stochastic frontier model. This analysis has been applied to a 158 Spanish olive farms using FADN data set. The results show that the technical inefficiency persistence parameter is fairly low to unity, which means that small technical inefficiency is transmitted to the next time period. The olive groves investment is irreversible and characterized by uncertainty on price and discount rate. An increase of discount rate means that the farmers take the decision to postpone investment. An increase on price along with a decrease of discount rate leads to the decision to invest with no option value of waiting to invest. The results suggest that the decision of investment in Spanish olive depends also on technical inefficiency and it persistence. The increase of farms inefficiency means that the decision is to wait to invest. Consequently, the inefficient farmers take time and wait to invest, while a smaller persistence parameter leads to the decision to invest.


We present a massively parallel algorithm for computing radiosity in a scene containing an isotropic scattering medium of high albedo. The algorithm is based on a new formalism: a coordinate evolution on the set of light rays in the scene. The evolution reparameterizes rays from their points of origin to their points of termination. Local coordinate systems on the set of light rays are distributed over a two-dimensional lattice of parallel processors, and transformations between coordinate systems are computed using only local communication between processors. The algorithm is implemented on a MasPar-1 which is a SIMD computer having over 2000 processors.


NL63 (HCoV-NL63) is a recently discovered human coronavirus that causes respiratory disease in infants and young children. NL63 productively infects LLCMK2 cells and ciliated epithelial cells of human airway cell cultures. Transmission electron microscopic (TEM) studies of NL63 infected LLCMK2 cells revealed that virions are spherical, spiked, and range from 75 to 115 nm in diameter. Virus replication predominantly occurs on the rough endoplasmic reticulum (RER), both perinuclear and cytoplasmic, and the Golgi. Plasma membrane budding was occasionally observed. As virus production increased, aberrant viral forms appeared with greater frequency. Unusual inclusions were present in infected cells including tubular and laminated structures. Pleomorphic double membrane-bound vesicles (DMV), measuring roughly 140 to 210 nm in diameter, were observed. The virus was released via exocytosis and cell lysis. In summary, we report the key morphologic characteristics of NL63 infection observed by TEM analysis.


This work reports the results of a layout-aware substrate modeling methodology for HVCMOS technologies. The model relies on the extraction of parasitic substrate network to simulate with circuit software parasitic lateral NPN bipolar transistors with multi-collector configuration. This allows to predict and analyze the injected substrate currents distribution through the chip and to explore different layout strategies to reduce the propagation of minority carriers through the substrate. Simulations results show good agreement in comparison with measurements at different temperatures.


A novel variant of the three-dimensional printing technique has been developed and used to manufacture NiTi parts. Instead of metal powder the process uses granules, which consist of a mixture of metal powder and organic binder. These granules are spread on a working table. Then a solvent is dispensed with a printer head to consolidate a selected area of the granule bed and the table is moved down. The "solvent on granule" printing process is repeated until a threedimensional green body is obtained. The green part is finally debinded and sintered to obtain a dense and fully metallic part. NiTi parts have been successfully produced by this technique with densities of about 95% of the theoretical density. Detailed information on the microstructure has been obtained by X ray diffraction. Sintered parts exhibit shape memory effect, which has been measured during thermal cycling under tensile stress.


The purpose of this article to critically analyse the core EU principles applicable to transnational organized crime: approximation of national laws and procedures, mutual recognition of judicial decisions and the principle of availability. These principles have been instrumental in closing various gaps created by divergence of criminal laws and justice systems among Member States and in promoting a common EU approach to the problem. Member States have also become more willing to implement measures such as framework decisions at the national level. These principles are explicitly or implicitly mentioned under the TEU and TFEU and therefore their legitimacy has been recognized under the current European legal framework. Nevertheless, it will be shown that a variety of problems, such as State sovereignty, a lack of due regard for protection of human rights, enlargement, and other practical difficulties are simultaneously affecting the ability of the EU and Member States to prevent and suppress the practice effectively. It is further argued that a criminal justice response to transnational organized crime on its own is not sufficient, and that the EU and Member States must address wider issues such as the supply of, and demand for, illicit goods and services.


A case study is presented for a heat exchanger subjected to a postulated beyond-design basis over-pressurization. Gasket behavior is explicitly modeled with commercial FEA software, and tuned to experimental data. Material (strain-hardening plasticity) and geometric nonlinearities are also accounted for. Both two-dimensional and three-dimensional analysis is performed and compared, and all results are compared with standard ASME Code design criteria for bolted joints leakage. Recommendations for use of FEA technology to assess the behavior of bolted joints subject to extreme loading behaviors are presented.Copyright © 2012 by ASME


In this paper, we study the symbol error rate (SER) performance of dual-hop multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) cooperative relay networks with orthogonal space-time block coding (OSTBC) transmission over independent, not necessarily identical Nakagami-m fading channels. Our analysis considers channel state information (CSI)-assisted amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying with the availability of the direct communication from the source to the destination. In particular, we derive a closed-form expression for moment generating function (MGF) of the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Utilizing this result, we can analyze the SER performance of the considered systems for M-ary phase shift-keying (M-PSK) and M-ary quadrature amplitude (M-QAM) modulations. We further investigate the cooperative diversity behavior of the considered relay systems by deriving asymptotic approximations of SER in the high SNR regime. Finally, representative numerical results are presented showing an excellent agreement with the Monte-Carlo simulations which validates our analysis.


The Sign'Maths project aims at giving access to pedagogical resources in Sign Language (SL). It will provide Deaf students and teachers with mathematics vocabulary in SL, this in order to contribute to the standardisation of the vocabulary used at school. The work conducted led to Sign'Maths, an online interactive tool that gives Deaf students access to mathematics definitions in SL. A group of mathematics teachers for Deafs and teachers experts in SL collaborated to create signs to express mathematics concepts, and to produce videos of definitions, examples and illustrations for these concepts. In parallel, we are working on the conception and the design of Sign'Maths software and user interface. Our research work investigated ways to include SL in pedagogical resources in order to present information but also to navigate through the content. User tests revealed that users appreciate the use of SL in a pedagogical resource. However, they pointed out that SL content should be complemented with French to support bilingual education. Our final solution takes advantage of the complementarity of SL, French and visual content to provide an interface that will suit users no matter what their education background is. Future work will investigate a tool for text and signs' search within Sign'Maths.


In very dilute solutions in water sodium dodecyl sulphate behaves as a completely dissociated electrolyte. Above a concentration c = 0.00722 N the equivalent conductance (Λ) falls sharply and micelles are formed. To throw light on the mechanism of micelle formation, the variation of Λ with c has been measured in a series of mixtures of water and ethyl alcohol. The curves for Λ against √c show a gradual transition from the type associated with micelle formation to a uniform curve characteristic of strong electrolytes. Addition of alcohol decreases the tendency to form micelles. When there is 40% or more by weight of alcohol, micelles are no longer formed. The critical concentration first falls on addition of alcohol and then rises again. The effects of alcohol addition can be interpreted satisfactorily by considering the radius of the micelle to be equal to the length of the paraffin chain and thus to be independent of the concentration and nature of the solvent. The energy changes involved in micelle formation are calculated. Aggregation can occur if the interfacial energy available from the destruction of the paraffin-solvent interfaces of the ions is greater than the work to be done against electrical repulsion. The interfacial energy is no longer the greater beyond 40% of alcohol. It is shown that alcohol molecules are not in solution in the paraffin interior of the micelles in the mixed solvents, but are strongly adsorbed on the micelle surfaces. The influence of regions of lowered dielectric constant around the micelles is considered. This is more important at high concentrations. The final fall in Λ with highly supersaturated solutions is attributed to the increased viscosity of the solution.


The presence and location of apoprotein B (Apo B) antigenic determinants in cholesterosis and cholelithiasis in gall bladder wall were detected for elaboration of modified Apo B role in pathogenesis of these diseases. Macroscopically changed parts of gall bladder (GB) wall of patients with gall bladder cholesterosis (GBC), and also macroscopically unchanged parts of GB wall of patients with cholelithiasis (CL) after cholecystectomy were studied. Macroscopically unchanged parts of GB wall obtained during autopsy of persons without symptoms of GB pathology were used as a control. Apo B location was studied with monoclonal (MAB 5F8 to Apo B) and polyclonal (PAB) antibodies; Apo B modified by malonic dialdehyde and oxidized by Cu2+ (4C11), Apo A with MAB1C5. Antibodies to CD 68 (specific marker of macrophages) was positive control, antibodies to trichinella--negative control. The most intensive accumulation of modified Apo B was revealed in foam cells region with accumulate lipids and form polyps that testifies to connection of apoproteins with lipids and foam cells and suggests their role in pathogenesis of GBC. More intensive staining of GB epithelial cells, particularly on GB peripheral parts by antibodies to apoproteins compared with surrounding tissues shows that bile is the source of detected modified apoproteins. Increase of absorption and accumulation of apoproteins in GB wall were also revealed in CL but these processes are less intensive than in GBS.


Traditionally, Radiosity algorithms have been restricted to scenes made from planar patches. Most algorithms for computing form factors and the subdivision criterion for hierarchical methods implicitly assume planar patches. In this paper, we present a new radiosity algorithm that is solely based on simple geometric information about surface elements, namely their bounding boxes and cone of normals. Using this information allows to compute efficient error bounds that can be used for the subdivision oracle and for computing the energy transfer. Due to the simple interface to geometric objects, our algorithm not only allows for computing illumination on general curved surfaces, but it can also be directly applied to a hieararchy of clusters. Several examples demonstrate the advantages of the new approach.


No woman has an "uneventful pregnancy" – a phrase which is commonly heard in western medical birth settings in the UK. Each woman births her child within a social context of her own. Midwives and other health care professionals need to have a deep understanding of the various lives childbearing women live in order to support them insightfully and practise in a nuanced manner.

The Social Context of Birth has been revised, updated and enlarged to provide an essential understanding of the different lives women live and in which they birth their children. For the first time, it also contains original primary research on the perspectives of student midwives as they progress through their three year training. This comprehensive guide provides countless valuable insights into the many different lives, experiences and expectations of women in their childbearing years in the twenty-first century, especially vulnerable women. Written by a team of highly experienced health professionals, it also covers contentious areas of maternity care, such as new reproductive technologies and fetal surveillance.

A true essential for all healthcare professionals who work with women giving birth, such as midwives, nurses, health visitors and obstetricians, and wish to deepen their knowledge of women's lives.


The codeposition behavior of submicron sized diamond with nickel from nickel electrolytes has been investigated. Electroplating of diamond dispersed nickel composites was carried out on a rotating disk electrode (RDE). The effects of current type and current density on the electrodeposited Ni-diamond composite coating were investigated. The effects of pH and surfactants on the composite coating were also investigated. The hardness of coating was measured with varying electroplating conditions. As diamond was incorporated into the coating, the hardness of coating as well as the wear resistance was improved. The surface morphologies of the Ni-diamond composite coatings were observed using FESEM.


Political commentary is possible through "variety" theatre, this volume contends. Compiled from the April 2000 Theatre Symposium held on the campus of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, this collection of essays presents a compelling mix of theoretical and practical viewpoints from a broad diversity of scholars from around the country. What remains to be learned about the political objectives of Brecht's Lehrstriucke? What political power is resident in the satirical humor of Dario Fo's drama? What can we learn from Mordecai Gorelik's political/artistic philosophy that might inform contemporary practice? What was the impact of political theatre on Broadway between the wars? Is Thornton Wilder's Our Town the play we've always imagined it to be, or does it challenge the politics of its time? What is the role of theatre activism in raising consciousness about gender politics? These are only some of the questions addressed by this lively, informative discussion.


therapeutic doses has little effect on plasma potassium concentration seems to stem from uncontrolled observations.3 In those studies plasma potassium concentration was measured for one to two hours after salbutamol treatment and the above results suggest that the maximum hypokalaemic effect may have been missed. In each of our subjects the lowest level (3 4 mmol/l(mEq/l) and 3 65 mmol/l) was reached at four hours and this may. not have been the nadir. Thus oral salbutamol should be administered with caution where there is particular risk from hypokalaemia, as in digitalised patients, who may develop serious cardiac dysrhythmias.


Although there is a large body of research literature concerning the impact of childhood chronic illness on family relationships, very little of this has specifically focussed on the impact of childhood Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalopathy (CFS/ME). The current study therefore aims to investigate the impact of having a child with CFS/ME on family relationships from the perspective of parents. This study takes a qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews were used to explore 18 parents' experiences of having a child with CFS/ME and the impact this has had on family relationships. Interview data were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. The analysis led to the identification of 5 main themes: "Long and Difficult Journey", "Uncertainty", "Isolation and Restriction", "Focus on the unwell person at the expense of family life" and "Parental roles". They felt that life had become a constant struggle and often felt exhausted. They felt uncertainty, isolation and restriction. These parents talked about feeling like family life had become focussed on their unwell child, such that some expressed a need to escape from the situation. They also described how, as a consequence of managing their child's CFS/ME, family members could often feel marginalised and the illness could be seen as a destructive force. However, many parents also described working as a team and feeling that family relationships had benefitted in some way. The results of this study are in line with findings of other studies into other chronic illnesses. In addition, this is the first study to focus exclusively on the impact of CFS/ME on family relationships from the perspective of the parents, and is unique in that there is a dual focus on both mothers and fathers. Clinicians should be aware that parents of children with CFS/ME may need additional support, such as information as to what to expect at various stages of the illness and where to access the relevant support.


We have studied a range of pseudo-ternaries derived from the parent compound PrMn2 Ge 2, substituting for each constituent element with a smaller one to contract the lattice. This enables us to observe the magneto-elastic transitions that occur as the Mn-Mn nearest neighbour distance is reduced and to assess the role of Pr on the magnetism. Here, we report on the PrMn2 Ge 2−xSix, Pr1−xYxMn2 Ge 2, and PrMn2−xFex Ge 2 systems. The pressure produced by chemical substitution in these pseudo-ternaries is inherently non-uniform, with local pressure variations dependent on the local atomic distribution. We find that concentrated chemical substitution on the R or X site (e.g., in Pr 0. 5 Y 0. 5 Mn 2 Ge 2 and PrMn 2 Ge 0. 8 Si 1. 2) can produce a separation into two distinct magnetic phases, canted ferromagnetic and canted antiferromagnetic, with a commensurate phase gap in the crystalline lattice. This phase gap is a consequence of the combination of phase separation and spontaneous magnetostriction, which is positive on transition to the canted ferromagnetic phase and negative on transition to the canted antiferromagnetic phase. Our results show that co-existence of canted ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases depends on chemical pressure from the rare earth and metalloid sites, on local lattice strain distributions and on applied magnetic field. We demonstrate that the effects of chemical pressure bear close resemblance to those of mechanical pressure on the parent compound.


Intrinsic processes are assumed to underlie life history expression and trade-offs, but extrinsic inputs are theorised to shift trait expression and mask trade-offs within species. Here, we explore application of this theory across species. We do this based on parentally induced embryo temperature as an extrinsic input, and mass-specific embryo metabolism as an intrinsic process, underlying embryonic development rate. We found that embryonic metabolism followed intrinsic allometry rules among 49 songbird species from temperate and tropical sites. Extrinsic inputs via parentally induced temperatures explained the majority of variation in development rates and masked a relationship with metabolism; metabolism explained a minor proportion of the variation in development rates among species, and only after accounting for temperature effects. We discuss evidence that temperature further obscures the expected interspecific trade-off between development rate and offspring quality. These results demonstrate the importance of considering extrinsic inputs to trait expression and trade-offs across species.


With the end of the post-war boom in the early 1970s, the world economy has experienced large scale unemployment. From an assumption that the unemployment problem had been solved, and that full employment could be maintained through demand management techniques, we now live in an entirely different world. Any suggestion of a return to full employment is met with questions of whether such a thing is possible, whether it would not lead to inflation or to excessive trade union power, or in the case of individual economies to unsustainable balance of payment deficits. The contributors to this volume ask whether full employment policies would be affordable. Would they lead to yawning fiscal deficits which would in the end require a U-turn in policy with unemployment reappearing? This well-informed and original contribution to current policy debate faces up to these questions and considers what would be involved in a move to much lower levels of unemployment.


The influence of radical uncertainty and expectations on economic behaviour is indisputable, whether on entrepreneurship, innovation, investment, or the behaviour that contributes to the business cycle. It is rather surprising, therefore, to see widespread ambiguities in accounts of this crucial aspect of business life and, indeed, human existence. In particular, the frequent assumption ex hypothesis that radical uncertainty is non-measurable and non-explainable constitutes a major misunderstanding that obstructs the analysis of economic growth and development and, more generally, the study of economic dynamics. This essay first of all underlines the conceptual difference between uncertainty and expectations. It then establishes the possibility and delineates a method of measuring true or radical uncertainty by means of the monthly EU business tendency surveys. This method allows the derivation from these surveys of both more and better information than they at present provide, and also some indicators that are relevant mainly in an evolutionary perspective. In order to obtain a deeper understanding of such procedures, some applications have been carried out. A model of dynamic competition and the business cycle centred on the relation between innovation and uncertainty is then specified and tested using a FIML estimator.


This work is the first attempt to characterize the Surface Heat Island (SHI) of Lyon, using a dual approach: remote sensing and modeling. The remote sensing approach is based upon the processing of Landsat imagery : daytime Landsat 5 TM images (11th April 2011) and nighttime Landsat 7 ETM+ images (30th April 2011). For the modeling MesoNH, a non-hydrostatic mesoscale atmospheric model is used. For the most case LST retrieved from Landsat and LST obtained by modeling are compared. Means of surface temperature are close to 0.5°C to 2°C. The differences between two methods depend on the day or night conditions, and the accuracy of land cover database.


Estimating the cycle time of every job in a semiconductor manufacturing factory is a critical task to the factory. Many recent studies have shown that pre-classifying a job before estimating the cycle time of the job was beneficial to the forecasting accuracy. However, most pre-classification approaches applied in this field could not absolutely classify jobs. Besides, whether the pre-classification approach combined with the subsequent forecasting approach was suitable for the data was questionable. For tackling these problems, an artificial neural network (ANN) approach that equally divides and post-classifies jobs is proposed in this study in which a job is post-classified by a BPN instead after the forecasting error is generated. In this novel way, only jobs which cycle time forecasts are the same accurate will be clustered into the same category, and the classification algorithm becomes tailored to the forecasting approach. For evaluating the effectiveness of the proposed methodology and to make comparison with some existing approaches, some data were collected from an actual semiconductor manufacturing factory. According to experimental results, the forecasting accuracy (measured with root mean squared error (RMSE)) of the proposed methodology was significantly better than those of the other approaches in most cases by achieving a 16%~44% (and an average of 29%) reduction in RMSE over the comparison basis – multiple-factor linear combination (MFLC). The effect of post-classification was also evident.


The propensity of Staphylococcus aureus to cause acute endovascular infections during transient bacteremia is poorly understood. To examine the events leading to the attachment of staphylococci to endothelium, adherence assays were developed to study the role of blood factors in the mediation of staphylococcal adherence to cultured human umbilical vein endothelium in vitro. Results indicate that the preferential attachment of S. aureus to endothelial cells is mediated by fibrinogen adsorbed from plasma onto the endothelial surface. The binding is apparently specific because it could be blocked by goat anti-human fibrinogen antibody in a dose-dependent fashion while nonimmune goat IgG, mouse MAb against AG-1 (a platelet antigen found on the endothelial cell surface), nonspecific mouse MAb and rabbit antibodies to human vitronectin and fibronectin were not inhibitory. Our data also indicate that fibrinogen is a necessary but not the only blood constituent in the mediation of binding of S. aureus to endothelium. This was supported by the finding that fibrinogen alone, at a concentration equivalent to that in plasma, did not potentiate staphylococcal adherence as much as plasma while afibrinogenemic plasma reconstituted with fibrinogen did. Because fibrinogen is known to bind to endothelial cells, our data is consistent with the hypothesis that fibrinogen and additional plasma factor(s), possibly activated during inflammation, promote staphylococcal adherence to endothelium. In addition, the role of the fibrinogen binding receptor of S. aureus as an adherence factor to native endothelium is also suggested.


Sustainable development is raising increasing interest and efforts are being devoted worldwide in order to introduce the notion of sustainability in the curricula, from schools to PhD programs. The focus of this work is on reporting a teaching and learning experience aimed at introducing the students to the culture of sustainability, by means of a project that utilizes a leading visual programming environment and web 2.0 technologies, and is suitable for a relatively large group. The key idea was to tell a story through a computational artifact, whose development requires critical and creative thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration skills [6] as well as information literacy. This paper describes the pedagogical design of the activities, their objectives, class management issues, and the scaffolds to designing the animated story, to be implemented using a cutting edge, syntax-free visual language called Scratch. Both the humanistic and the scientific aspects were to be covered in each story about a selected topic in sustainability, in order to involve as much as possible of the teaching spectrum and create a truly interdisciplinary environment. The developed Scratch-based solution is also suitable for deployment on mobile devices using the App Inventor visual programming language.


The increasingly photorealistic sample quality of generative image models suggests their feasibility in applications beyond image generation. We present the Neural Photo Editor, an interface that leverages the power of generative neural networks to make large, semantically coherent changes to existing images. To tackle the challenge of achieving accurate reconstructions without loss of feature quality, we introduce the Introspective Adversarial Network, a novel hybridization of the VAE and GAN. Our model efficiently captures long-range dependencies through use of a computational block based on weight-shared dilated convolutions, and improves generalization performance with Orthogonal Regularization, a novel weight regularization method. We validate our contributions on CelebA, SVHN, and CIFAR-100, and produce samples and reconstructions with high visual fidelity.


Synthetic polymer receptors for the online monitoring of bioanalytes are formed directly onto quartz crystal microbalances using surface imprinting techniques. The molded materials are capable of enriching whole cells, viruses and enzymes on the sensor layer surface. Enzyme imprinted polymer layers are also effective as nucleation site for the induction of protein crystallization. Differential measurements are done with a single piezocrystal having two screen-printed gold electrodes for a sensitive and a reference channel.


Author(s): Nazer, Bobak Anthony | Advisor(s): Gastpar, Michael C | Abstract: In a network, interference between transmitters is usually viewed as highly undesirable and clever algorithms and protocols have been devised to avoid it. Collectively, these strategies transform the physical layer into a set of reliable bit pipes which can then be used seamlessly by higher layers in the protocol stack. Unfortunately, interference avoidance results in sharply decreasing rates as the number of users increases. In this thesis, we develop a new tool, computation coding, that allows receivers to reliably decode equations of transmitted messages by harnessing the interference structure of the channel. Applied to a wireless network, this enables relays to decode linear functions of the transmitted messages with coefficients dictated by the fading realization. Relays can then forward these equations towards the destinations which simply collect enough equations to solve for their desired messages. Structured codes (such as lattices) ensure that these linear combinations can be decoded reliably at the relays, often at far higher rates than the messages individually. Through examples drawn from cooperative communication including cellular uplink, distributed MIMO and wireless network coding, we demonstrate that this compute-and-forward strategy can improve end-to-end throughput in a network. As a consequence, we will see that structured codes can play an important role in approaching the capacity of networks. We also show that our techniques can result in both energy and delay savings for distributed signal processing over a sensor network. Finally, by viewing interference as implicit computation, we provide a new perspective on the interference channel with time-varying fading. We describe a simple interference alignment scheme that enables each user to achieve at least half its interference-free capacity at any signal-to-noise ratio.


Complex overlapping multiplets due to scalar couplings (n)J((13)C, (13)C) in fully (13)C-enriched molecules can be simplified by polychromatic irradiation of selected spins. The signal intensities of the remaining non-irradiated signals are proportional to the concentrations, as shown in this work for the anomeric (13)C signals of the α- and β-conformers of glucose. Homonuclear decoupling can therefore be useful for quantitative NMR studies. The resulting decoupled lineshapes show residual fine structures that have been investigated by means of numerical simulations. Simulations also show that homonuclear decoupling schemes remain effective despite inhomogeneous static fields that tend to hamper in cellulo and in vivo studies. Homonuclear decoupling schemes can be combined with dissolution DNP to obtain signal enhancements of more than four orders of magnitude. Polychromatic irradiation of selected spins does not cause significant losses of hyperpolarization of the remaining non-irradiated spins.


: The topic of this article is the insufficiently increasing rate of hospital admissions as a crucial factor for increasing hospital expenditures. The article focuses on the particular analysis of issues of induced hospital services demand, low level of effectiveness of the inpatient care system for referring, disproportions of accounted cases compared the need for therapies, patients' distrust toward lower sectors of healthcare, low efficiency of primary outpatient care and specialized outpatient care, lack of control, inadequate organization structure, strategy and improper NHIF regulation. The effective solving of these problems is a crucial term for improvement of the quality of inpatient care.


Genetic testing of genes that encode proteins expressed by liver hepatocytes (clotting factors, alpha 1-antitrypsin, cytochrome P450 enzymes) is common in clinical practice. These tests use DNA extracted from peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) and are based on the assumption that PBL DNA can be used as a surrogate for hepatocyte DNA. However, in individuals who have undergone liver transplantation, hepatocyte DNA is that of the donor while PBL DNA remains that of the recipient. It follows that in liver transplant patients, genetic testing of the recipient's PBL DNA does not provide accurate results for proteins expressed by donor hepatocytes. Therefore, genetic testing of clotting factors, alpha 1-1-antitrypsin, cytochrome P450 enzymes, and other proteins expressed by hepatocytes is unreliable and inappropriate in liver transplant patients (inappropriate genetic testing). A review of the records of 215 consecutive liver transplant patients at our institution identified: one medical error and one near-miss medical error related to inappropriate genetic testing, 14 cases of inappropriate genetic testing, and 21 unnecessary duplicate genetic testing requests. We recommend laboratories performing genetic testing create systems to prevent inappropriate and duplicate genetic testing and that physicians be cognizant of the appropriate indications for genetic testing in liver transplant patients.


In the early 1980s the Guatemalan army unleashed a scorched-earth campaign against civilians suspected of supporting antigovernment guerrilla forces. Faced with violent repression, indigenous people found various ways to survive. Some joined the guerrilla ranks, some fell in with so-called self-defense patrols controlled by the army, while others crossed the Mexican border to seek safety. In the mid-1990s, after more than a decade in refugee camps, the displaced migrants returned to Guatemala as retornados and started to rebuild their lives. Guatemalans in the Aftermath of Violence highlights the complex survival strategies of the returnees and their neighbors who had stayed behind. Anthropologist Kristi Anne Stolen lived among the Guatemalan peasants, gathering firsthand testimonies of their struggles. Their varied voices and differing points of view shed light on many facets of violence: the dynamics of its escalation, its destructive force, and its power to engender community and identity. By showing that for many refugees, exile did not always mean deprivation and victimization, but often recognition and even empowerment, Stolen dispels the simplistic notion that those exposed to violence are merely its helpless casualties. With lessons learned through interaction with the international aid and solidarity community during the years of exile, the returnees managed to reconstruct community and identity in a changed environment. This study of their efforts illustrates how poor and exploited people are able to endure, utilizing whatever opportunities they find to improve their lot.


Epidemiological data indicate that dietary consumption of cruciferous vegetables may reduce the risk of many cancers including breast cancer. Cruciferous vegetables contain high levels of glucosinolates; stable phytochemicals that when metabolized produce cancer-preventing active isothiocyanates. Isothiocyanates, such as sulforaphane (SFN) found in broccoli sprouts, are thought to prevent tumorigenesis through epigenetic mechanisms controlling the expression of tumor-related genes. Ingestion of broccoli sprouts results in rapid distribution of SFN to breast epithelium, however, the effect of chronic exposure to low levels of SFN on the growth of breast cells has not been fully explored. In the present study we assessed the effect of SFN on the growth of an immortalized breast cell line (MCF10A), and two breast cancer cell lines; the estrogen receptor positive MCF-7 cell line, and the estrogen receptor negative TMX2-28 cell line. We first determined the seeding densities for each cell line that resulted in 80% confluence after three days of growth in T-25 flasks: MCF10A (1 x 10 6 ), MCF-7 (8 x 10 5 ), and TMX2-28 (5 x 10 5 ) per 5 mL. Next, cells from each line were plated at the predetermined seeding densities in T-25 flasks and treated with either SFN (5 μM) or vehicle (0.02% DMSO) for up to 40 days. Every third day, cell cultures were photographed, after which the cells were resuspended in culture medium, counted using a hemocytometer, and the predetermined numbers of cells (seeding numbers) were returned to T-25 flasks and treated with SFN or vehicle. Cells not needed for seeding the flasks were archived for future analysis of gene expression and DNA methylation. Treatment with SFN decreased cell growth. After 22 days of treatment with SFN, mean proliferation of both the MCF10A and MCF-7 cell cultures was inhibited by 62% (t = 2.8; p = 0.02) and 72% (t = 2.6; p = 0.02), respectively. In contrast, the decrease in proliferation of TMX2-28 cells treated with SFN was not statistically significant (t = 1.2; p = 0.255) from the vehicle control at 22 days. However, by day 40, TMX2-28 cell cultures treated with SFN showed a significant decrease in mean proliferation 36% (t = 2.2; p = 0.04). Ongoing studies are examining the epigenetic mechanisms by which SFN decreased cell proliferation. Citation Format: Ashley L. Silvia, Eva P. Browne, Kathleen F. Arcaro. Chronic, low-dose treatment with sulforaphane inhibits growth of breast cells. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 5366. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-5366


This paper presents, a new recursive algorithm for the time domain reconstruction and spectral estimation of uniformly sampled signals with missing observations. An autoregressive (AR) modeling approach is adopted. The AR parameters are estimated by optimizing a mean-square error criterion. The optimum is reached by means of a gradient method adapted to the nonperiodic sampling. The time-domain reconstruction is based on the signal prediction using the estimated model. The power spectral density is obtained using the estimated AR parameters. The development of the different steps of the algorithm is discussed in detail, and several examples are presented to demonstrate the practical results that can be obtained. The spectral estimates are compared with those obtained by known AR estimators applied to the same signals sampled periodically. We note that this algorithm can also be used in the case of nonstationary signals.


Ontology-mediated query answering is an extensively studied paradigm, where the conceptual knowledge provided by an ontology is leveraged towards more enhanced querying of data sources. A major advantage of ontological reasoning is its interpretability, which allows one to derive explanations for query answers. Indeed, explanations have a long history in knowledge representation, and have also been investigated for ontology languages based on description logics and existential rules. Existing works on existential rules, however, merely focus on understanding why a query is entailed, i.e., explaining positive query answers. In this paper, we continue this line of research and address another important problem, namely, explaining why a query is not entailed under existential rules, i.e., explaining negative query answers. We consider various problems related to explaining non-entailments from the abduction literature, and also introduce new problems. For all considered problems, we give a detailed complexity analysis for a wide range of existential rule languages and complexity measures.


Abstract Liposomes (composed of soy phosphatides) in the form of small unilamellar vesicles (SUV), when added to soil contaminated by crude oil, accelerate bioremediation. After three weeks incubation at 30°C, using soil experimentally contaminated (with 10,000 ppm crude oil), level of bioremediation increased from 40% without SUV to 75% with SUV (0.1 wt% phospholipids per dry weight soil). Similarly, for accidentally contaminated soil (with ∼17,000 ppm crude oil), addition of 0.1 wt% SUV to the soil increased the bioremediation level from 55 to 80%. The enhancing effect of liposomes is explained by two interrelated phenomena: a large increase both in total bacteria number and in diversity of bacterial species in the soil. Comparison after four weeks revealed 21 bacterial species in the presence of liposomes (many being oil-degrading bacterial species) and only nine species in the absence of liposomes. Both effects may be related to the physical effects of liposome phospholipids, which modify the crude oil by wetting it, thereby making it more accessible to the microorganisms. In addition, liposome phospholipids serve as phosphate and nitrogen sources for the bacteria.


In this work, the ground-state properties of Pt, Hg, Pb, and Po isotopes have been systematically investigated in the deformed relativistic mean field (RMF) theory with the new parameter set FSUGold. The calculated results show that FSUGold is as successful as NL3 in reproducing the ground-state binding energies of the nuclei in this region. The calculated two-neutron separation energies, quadrupole deformations, and root-mean-square charge radii are in agreement with the experimental data. The parameter set FSUGold can successfully describe the shell effect of the neutron magic number N = 126 and give smaller neutron skin thicknesses than NL3 for all the nuclei considered.


BACKGROUND/AIMS
The Food Consumption Survey, conducted for over 20 years by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment (MAGRAMA), is the most reliable source of data to evaluate the food consumption and dietary patterns of Spain. The aim of the present article was to review the diet trends in Spain and its evolution. Food availability assessment per capita per day, which allows the calculation of energy and nutrient intake and comparison with the Recommended Nutrient Intakes for the Spanish population is described. In addition, different markers of the quality of the diet have been also evaluated.

METHODS
The sample consisted of consumption and distribution data, obtained from the nationwide representative Food Consumption Survey for the period 2000- 2012. A two-stage sampling method was applied, where in the first stage the units to be sampled were towns or local entities, and in the second stage households which were going to be part of the final sample from those entities were selected. Units consisted of towns or local entities in the national territory. The data allowed the calculation of energy and nutrient intakes, using the Food Composition Tables (Moreiras et al, 2013). The quality of the diet was also evaluated: the adequacy of the diet in meeting the recommended intakes for energy and nutrients; energy profile; dietary fat quality; dietary protein quality; nutrient density; Mediterranean diet adequacy indices. The present data were compared with previous data obtained by our research group in 1964, 1981 and 1991.

RESULTS
Using the most recent data, average intake comprised: milk and derivatives (356 g/person/day), fruits (323 g/person/day), vegetables and greens (339 g/ person/day), cereals and derivatives (197 g/person/day), meat and meat products (181 g/day), fish (88,6 g/person/ day), oils and fats (41,6 g/person/day), sugar and derivatives (25,6 g/person/day), eggs (27,1 g/person/day), legumes (13,9 g/person/day) . There was also a high consumption of non-alcoholic beverages (437 g/person/day) and decreasing for alcoholic beverages (192 g/person/day) compared to previous surveys. In consequence, meat and meat product consumption was higher than the recommendations, whereas for cereals and their derivatives, vegetables and greens, fruit, and legumes and pulses, consumption was below recommendations for the Spanish population (GRUNUMUR, 2004; SENC, 2007). Some staple and traditional Mediterranean foods (bread, potatoes and olive oil) showed a dramatic decline when compared to data from Household Budget Surveys in 1964 data. Energy intake showed a marked decline when compared to the 1960's mean consumption, and show marked differences for food groups contributors. Energy profile shows too much coming from lipids vs carbohydrates and slightly higher from proteins.

CONCLUSION
Food consumption patterns in Spain and energy and nutrient intakes have changed markedly in the last forty years, differing somewhat at present from the traditional and healthy Mediterranean Diet.


—Coordinating the various Web services invocations is one of the key challenges of Service oriented Architectures. When services fail due to lack of availability this may violate Service Level Agreements causing financial penalties or customer dissatisfaction to providers. Therefore, it is crucial to develop a method of on-line coordination of these invocations in order to enhance the performance of the systems in place and avoid the overuse of services. This paper aims to present a Model Driven Architecture (MDA) approach to the auto- mated creation and integration of Protocol Services, which are deployed with the system to coordinate invocations between services. The outline of this method is as follows. Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) models of services are parsed and the PartnerLink for each Invoke activity is assigned to the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) file of the Protocol Service using MDA transformations. Then, the Protocol service is computed, generated and integrated automatically into the system. As a proof of concept, an implementation of the suggested approach was created, in the form of an Oracle JDeveloper plugin that automatically produces new Protocol services and integrates them with existing services.


Throughout the globe, agriculture is increasingly a part of city landscapes. Rising demands for water to supply agriculture, industry and cities are leading to competition over the allocation of limited water resources. It has been observed that coastal wetland settlements are usually worse hit by discharge and effluents of upper-stream water uses. This paper discusses the practice of urban agriculture (UA) and fishing, which is a predominant coastal activity in the coastal settlements of Ondo state of Nigeria.
It highlights the problems and prospects of urban agriculture on the local economies of the
study areas. Results from this study show that UA was a preferred complement to rural
agricultural practice. It was observed that UA complemented supplies from rural agriculture,
whereby arable crops and regular village menu items are produced along side perennial crops. Products like tomatoes, okra, African garden-eggs and peppers are produced to complement those produced from rural agriculture. Increasing coastal poverty was found to have assumed a staggering phenomenon in over 64% of the visited coastal cities.
Community food security at the household level in the study area has forced the community
to be involved in the following UA activities: (a) arable farming within open spaces and court
yards; (b) vegetable production; (c) paddy rice production especially in cities like Mahin,
Idiogba, that are located close to canals and lagoons; (d) cassava and yam production in
upland coastal cities such as Igbokoda and Igbekebo. The results show that as successful as urban agriculture seems to be, incomes from fishing and other aquacultural activities was
higher than rural and urban agriculture. Successful local water recycling has not been practicable in the study area and as a result the same quality of water is used for human, animal and agricultural purposes. Specifically, over 80% of household water demand is from canals, rivers and streams in these study areas. This was found to have a serious health implication. In monetary terms, incomes from fishing were found to be higher than that from urban agriculture by over 65%, however fishers still prefer to combine UA with fishing for reason of food intake (feeding the family with staple food varieties). Sustainable management of the coastal areas for overall productivity is advocated. Keywords : Urban Agriculture, Water, Local Economies AJFAND Vol. 8 (1) 2008 pp. 48-62


Aim: The aim of this study was to assess the treatment of keratocystic odontogenic tumor using enucleation and Carnoy's solution with peripheral ostectomy. Materials and Methods: Twenty-nine patients (14 females and 15 males) with age range from 12 to 62 years were included in this study and followed up for 7 years; all the patients were treated in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery of the Specialized Surgeries Teaching Hospital (Al-Shaheed Ghazi Al-Hariri Hospital-Medical City, Baghdad, Iraq). Enucleation followed by peripheral ostectomy and the application of Carnoy's solution is the standardized method of treatment. Results: This study showed (32.7%) unilocular radiolucency for the lesions (19.9%) as multilocular radiolucency. Furthermore, it showed that the recurrence rate by this method was 0% with a minimum neurosensory disturbance. Conclusion: The complications and morbidity originating from the application of Carnoy's solution occurred less frequently and were less serious than those associated with resection while the recurrence rate is 0% which is equal to the recurrence rate of resection.


A pole (1) is disclosed having a vertically extending support structure (2) and a plurality of substantially planar solar cell panels (4) for production of electric power, where the solar cell panels are arranged substantially vertically on the support structure. A plurality of holding members (3) fixed to the support structure and extending along vertical edges of said solar cell panels are provided so as to secure the solar cell panels to the support structure, wherein the solar cell panels and the holding members are designed and arranged so that a horizontal clearance (9) of e.g. 3.5 to 10 millimetres is provided along said vertical edges of the solar cell panels so as to allow for wind induced deflection of the support structure with respect to the solar cell panels when the pole is exposed to the environmental wind load.


We present results from the first year of operation of the STAR data-acquisition (DAQ) system using a Myrinet Network. STAR is one of four experiments to have been commissioned at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory during 1999 and 2000. The DAQ system is fully integrated with a Level 3 Trigger. The combined system currently consists of 33 Myrinet Nodes, which run in a mixed environment of MVME processors running VxWorksj DEC Alpha workstations running Linux, and SUN Solaris machines. The network will eventually contain up to 150 nodes for the expected final size of the L3 processor farm. Myrinet is a switched high-speed low-latency network produced by Myricom and available for PCI and PMC on a wide variety of platforms. The STAR DAQ system uses the Myrinet Network for messaging, L3 processing, and event building. After the events are built, they are sent via gigabit ethernet to the RHIC computing facility and stored to tape using HPSS. The combined DAQ/L3 system processes 160-MB events at 100 Hz, compresses each event to 20 MB, and performs tracking on the events to implement a physics-based filter to reduce the data storage rate to 20 MB/s.


Extrinsic faulting has been discussed previously within the so-called difference method and random walk calculation. In this contribution it is revisited under the framework of computational mechanics, which allows expressions to be derived for the statistical complexity, entropy density and excess entropy as a function of faulting probability. The approach allows one to compare the disordering process of an extrinsic fault with other faulting types. The ℇ-machine description of the faulting mechanics is presented. Several useful analytical expressions such as probability of consecutive symbols in the Hägg coding are presented, as well as hexagonality. The analytical expression for the pairwise correlation function of the layers is derived and compared with results previously reported. The effect of faulting on the interference function is discussed in relation to the diffraction pattern.


Several results of large deviations are obtained for distributions that are associated with the Poisson--Dirichlet distribution and the Ewens sampling formula when the parameter $\theta$ approaches infinity. The motivation for these results comes from a desire of understanding the exact meaning of $\theta$ going to infinity. In terms of the law of large numbers and the central limit theorem, the limiting procedure of $\theta$ going to infinity in a Poisson--Dirichlet distribution corresponds to a finite allele model where the mutation rate per individual is fixed and the number of alleles going to infinity. We call this the finite allele approximation. The first main result of this article is concerned with the relation between this finite allele approximation and the Poisson--Dirichlet distribution in terms of large deviations. Large $\theta$ can also be viewed as a limiting procedure of the effective population size going to infinity. In the second result a comparison is done between the sample size and the effective population size based on the Ewens sampling formula.


Healthy infants in the age group of 9 to 20 weeks post term have a distinct movement pattern called fidgety movements. The abscense of, or anomalies in these movements are indications that the infant may suffer from Cerebral Palsy. Data from video clips of infants have been extracted and used as features for classifying these movements as normal or abnormal. An earlier project used the concept of motiongrams for extracting the centroid of motion and quantity of motion of the image from each frame of the video clips. This project attempts to improve the dataset by extracting the same features using the concept of optical flow. Using the classification methods that yielded the best results from the motiongram project, the new dataset based on optical flow was constructed and tested for comparison. The image was as before divided into four quadrants with a circle of varying radius in the middle. Tracking how the centroid of motion moved between the separated areas of the image generated a transition probability matrix. By classifying on the entropy and variance of this matrix, a sensitivity of 90,0% and a specificity of 94,6% was reached, which was an improvement compared to the best classification result based on motiongrams with a sensitivity of 90,0% and specificity of 86,6%. The overall performance of both methods are around a sensitivity of 90% and a specificity of 70%. Using motiongrams and optical flow to extract features from video data for classification has turned out to be a promising approach for a simple and non-invasive objective tool for diagnosing infants with Celebral Palsy. The movement information in an optical flow field does however have a much higher potential for generating discriminative features than just as the simple representation a centroid of motion actually is.


Transformation groups, such as translations or rotations, effectively express part of the variability observed in many recognition problems. The group structure enables the construction of invariant signal representations with appealing mathematical properties, where convolutions, together with pooling operators, bring stability to additive and geometric perturbations of the input. Whereas physical transformation groups are ubiquitous in image and audio applications, they do not account for all the variability of complex signal classes.
We show that the invariance properties built by deep convolutional networks can be cast as a form of stable group invariance. The network wiring architecture determines the invariance group, while the trainable filter coefficients characterize the group action. We give explanatory examples which illustrate how the network architecture controls the resulting invariance group. We also explore the principle by which additional convolutional layers induce a group factorization enabling more abstract, powerful invariant representations.


Prolactin elevation is a side effect of all currently available D2 receptor antagonists used in the treatment of schizophrenia. Prolactin elevation is the result of a direct antagonistic D2 effect blocking the tonic inhibition of prolactin release by dopamine. The aims of this work were to assess the correlation between in vitro estimates of D2 receptor affinity and pharmacokinetic–pharmacodynamic model-based estimates obtained from analysis of clinical data using an agonist–antagonist interaction (AAI) model and to assess the value of such a correlation in early prediction of full prolactin time profiles. A population model describing longitudinal prolactin data was fitted to clinical data from 16 clinical phases 1 and 3 trials including five different compounds. Pharmacokinetic data were modeled for each compound and the prolactin model was both fitted in per-compound fits as well as simultaneously to all prolactin data. Estimates of prolactin elevating potency were compared to corresponding in vitro values and their predictability was evaluated through model-based simulations. The model successfully described the prolactin time course for all compounds. Estimates derived from experimental preclinical data and the model fit of the clinical data were strongly correlated (p < 0.001), and simulations adequately predicted the prolactin elevation in five out of six compounds. The AAI model has the potential to be used in drug development to predict prolactin response for a given exposure of D2 antagonists using routinely produced preclinical data.


Earthquake-resistant wooden houses have been built in Japan for a long time. It has been clear that the buildings absorb the vibration energy in the joint parts of the wooden structures. The mechanism of energy absorption distorts the wood of the joint. Therefore, it is important to develop joint parts that can be easily exchanged for continued absorption of such energy. It has been reported that biomimetic composite materials that imitate bone have a load decentralization function and a shock-absorbing function. Wood has cell structures that resemble bone. Therefore, it seems a logical step to consider biomimetic composite materials that can be applied to wooden buildings. In this study, we propose to create a wooden building joint using a biomimetic composite material. The joint is constructed of aluminum lattice and plastic. In order to test whether this joint structure would successfully absorb energy from earthquake vibrations, in this paper we present results from an investigation into material characteristics. Linear analyses were executed on the material. Load-displacement curves were made by the constraint displacements and calculated reaction forces. Results indicated that the material has nonlinear characteristics. We infer that the composite aluminum and plastic material absorbs the vibration energy because of its nonlinear characteristics. Based on study results, we conclude that using this composite material for proposed joints can have significant benefits towards the earthquake-proofing of individual houses.


the technical difficulties and risks to mother and foetus are such that small intraperitoneal transfusions would appear to be more practical, especially if treatment " early " in pregnancy is to be attempted. It is not correct to imply that only one exchange transfusion would always be satisfactory. One feels sympathy with the St. Bartholomew's staff having to work under the glare of publicity and one hopes that their case will not be the forerunner of a series of heroic intrauterine operations the indication for which must be extremely limited. Your warning on the unknown immunological implications of intrauterine transfusion is timely, but reference to published work would have been helpful. Is the use of heparinized blood for intrauterine transfusion contraindicated ? Why should washed irradiated maternal erythrocytes be those of choice ? Do you advocate the routine administration of gammaglobulin to infants after intrauterine transfusion ?-I am, etc.,


Business sustainability becomes an important issue in the present competitive business world. Therefore, organisation has to commit to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a part of their business strategy. One of the important components of this strategy is the effective and transparent communication about CSR. This study examines the CSR communication in the company websites undertaken by the WRAP (Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production) certified apparel manufacturers in India. It also analyses whether the companies have mentioned regarding the Companies Act 2013 in their company website. The purposive sampling method was used and only the WRAP certified apparel manufacturing companies were included in the study. Data was analysed using the descriptive statistics. The study includes 180 WRAP certified apparel-manufacturing companies in India. Among them 118 were Gold rated, 2 silver rated and 60 Platinum rated. The finding shows that only 48% of these companies had CSR information in their company websites. In addition, only 3% of these companies gave some information about the companies' act 2013 in their company websites. In other words, majority of the firms in the apparel industry fail to disseminate the CSR information via website. Furthermore, only a few firms have mentioned the companies act 2013 in their websites. In general, the lack of proactive CSR communication among the apparel firms in India is perceptible. However, it does not necessarily show the absence of CSR action in these apparel-manufacturing companies.


The Second World War, unlike the First, fostered the projection of 'characters'. Thanks to the media, many of the Allied commanders became household names, known as much for their successes and defeats on the battlefield as for their personalities. This book provides a brief review of the careers of some of the most notable figures to achieve high command in the Allied forces, a list that includes General of the Army Omar Bradley, Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, General George Patton and General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower. These characters are brought to life through numerous illustrations, including photographs and colour plates.


Prokaryotic transcripts constitute almost always uninterrupted intervals when mapped back to the genome. Split reads, i.e., RNA-seq reads consisting of parts that only map to discontiguous loci, are thus disregarded in most analysis pipelines. There are, however, some well-known exceptions, in particular, tRNA splicing and circularized small RNAs in Archaea as well as self-splicing introns. Here, we reanalyze a series of published RNA-seq data sets, screening them specifically for non-contiguously mapping reads. We recover most of the known cases together with several novel archaeal ncRNAs associated with circularized products. In Eubacteria, only a handful of interesting candidates were obtained beyond a few previously described group I and group II introns. Most of the atypically mapping reads do not appear to correspond to well-defined, specifically processed products. Whether this diffuse background is, at least in part, an incidental by-product of prokaryotic RNA processing or whether it consists entirely of technical artifacts of reverse transcription or amplification remains unknown.


Two-dimensional electrophoresis was used to resolve approximately 162 polypeptides from the isolated oral apparatus of Tetrahymena thermophila. The molecular weight range was between 110 000 and 15 000 Daltons. The polypeptides had apparent isoelectric points between pH 3.3 and pH 7.2. Electrophoretic analysis of isolated ciliary axonemes and fractionated oral apparatuses made possible the assignment of polypeptides to structures within the oral apparatus. Approximately 24 polypeptides, including alpha and beta tubulins, are probable components of the basal body-basal plate complex. At least 5 of the oral apparatus polypeptides, including alpha and beta tubulin, are components of the oral apparatus ciliary axonemes. Approximately 138 polypeptides are components of the oral apparatus framework.


Long distances transmission in mobile communication is considered serious problem especially in 3 rd and 4 th generations for mobile systems. In order to keep service efficiency in long distance similar to small distance case, two possible solutions are proposed; first is by applying efficient amplification and equalization stages at receiving end. Second solution is by applying relaying network between source and destination. In this paper two relaying techniques were introduced; amplify and forward (AF) relaying and smart AF relaying. Both mention relaying techniques have been simulated using MATLAB program in case of MIMO CDMA and OFDM systems.


We present a novel similarity measure (likelihood) for estimating three-dimensional human pose from image silhouettes in model-based vision applications. One of the challenges in such approaches is the construction of a model-to-image likelihood that truly reflects the good configurations of the problem. This is hard, commonly due to the violation of consistency principle resulting in the introduction of spurious, unrelated peaks/minima that make the search for model localization difficult. We introduce an entirely continuous formulation which enforces model estimation consistency by means of an attraction/explanation silhouette-based term pair. We subsequently show how the proposed method provides significant consolidation and improved attraction zone around the desired likelihood configurations and elimination of some of the spurious ones. Finally, we present a skeleton-based smoothing method for the image silhouettes that stabilizes and accelerates the search process.


In the 130,000-strong Forensic Photography Archive, held at the Justice and Police Museum in Sydney, there are slightly over two thousand mysterious mug shots, taken between 1919 and 1930. Although the photographs (in the form of glass plate negatives) were found without any accompanying documentation, research has shown that most of the subjects were full-time, professional criminals: repeat offender pickpockets, breakers, conmen and conwomen, gunmen, drug dealers, shoplifters and so on.1 The collection, it turned out, presents a snap - shot, imperfect and partial, of Sydney's professional underworld of the 1920s. A continuing research priority has been simply to find out who the subjects were, and what they did, not only as criminals but also as everyday urban citizens. Research into the lives of criminals and outlaws, however, can produce strangely lopsided results. The points of high drama - the criminal act itself, the flight, the arrest, the trial, sometimes an escape, and so on - may be quite retrievable, recorded by officialdom and sometimes by the press. But the remaining bulk of the person's daily life, the hours of the day when he or she was not actively engaged in illicit acts, often remains stubbornly obscure. The purely crime-related facts, on their own, may produce an oddly unfinished, atomised picture, giving little sense of how any individual person actually inhabited their own life, and how that life was woven into the lives of those around them.


Information technology is a very important part of the organization. IT is expected to provide a good profit for the company. However, as technology evolves, it is often exploited by some irresponsible parties that can lead to the emergence of threats and risks from the use of technology. The organization needs to measure the level of information security to identify the system's weaknesses and threats to the organization. Standards for measuring information security are COBIT 5 subdomain manage security services (DSS05) and NIST SP 800-55 revision 1. This study is comparing the two standards. Comparative analysis uses qualitative analysis based on three aspects in information security that are confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Based on the analysis result obtained the advantages and disadvantages of each standard .


Objective
To investigate the regulating effects of Kruppel-like factor 6 (KLF6) on the apoptosis of human lens epithelial cells (HLECs) by activating transcription factor 4 (ATF4) pathway and explore the bio-molecular mechanism of KLF6/ATF4-induced HLECs apoptosis.

Methods
HLECs (HLE-B3) were cultured using high glucose DMEM medium.The eukaryotic expression plasmid pEGFP-C2-ATF4 was transfected into the cells by liposome 2000 in the ATF4-transfected group, and pEGFP-C2 was transfected in the empty plasmid group.Then the cells were exposed to 20 mJ/cm2 ultraviolet ray B (UVB) for 200 seconds, The morphological changes of the cells were observed by hematoxylin & eosin staining and Hoechst33258 fluorescein staining.Cultured cells were transfected using pEGFP-C2-KLF6 and pEGFP-C2 plasmid and pSilencer-KLF6 (siKLF6) and pSilencer plasmid, respectively, and the expression of ATF4 protein in the cells was detected by Western blot assay.Culture cells were divided into four groups.pEGFP-C2 and pSilencer plasmids were co-transfected into the cells in the empty plasmid group; pEGFP-C2-KLF6 and pSilencer empty plasmid were co-transfected into the cells of the KLF6+ pSilencer group; pEGFP-C2 empty plasmid and pSilencer-ATF4 were co-transfected in the cells of the siATF4+ pEGFP-C2 group; pEGFP-C2-KLF6 and pSilencer-ATF4 plasmids were co-transfected in the cells of the KLF6+ siATF4 group, and then the cells were exposed to UVB.The apoptosis of the cells were detected by ELISA assay.

Results
Cultured cells grew well in the normal control group with the uniform morphology and regular arrangement.The karyopyknosis, karyorrhexis and enlargement of intercellular space were found in the cells exposed to UVB.In the ATF4 transfected group, the number of cells was decreased.The relative expression level of the ATF4 protein in the cells was 0.99±0.06 and 0.13±0.02 in the UVB+ ATF4 transfected group and UVB+ pEGFP-C2 plasmid group, respectively, with a significant difference between them (t=23.13, P<0.01). The relative expression levels of KLF6 and ATF4 proteins in the KLF6 transfected group were higher than those in the empty plasmid group, and the relative expression levels of KLF6 and ATF4 proteins in the siKLF6 group were significantly lower than those in the empty plasmid group (all at P<0.01). ELISA assay showed that the apoptotic rate in the ATF4 transfected group was 1.37±0.11, which was significantly higher than 0.31±0.11 in the normal control group (t=8.034, P=0.001); the apoptotic rate of the cells was increased in the KLF6+ pSilencer group and decreased in the siATF4+ pEGFP-C2 group in comparison with the empty plasmid group (P<0.01, P=0.02). In addition, the apoptotic rate in the KLF6+ siATF4 group was remarkably lower than that in the KLF6+ pSilencer group (P<0.01).

Conclusions
KLF6 promotes the apoptosis of HLECs induced by UVB radiation.Silence of ATF4 gene reduces the apoptotic rate of the cells.ATF4 is probably a target factor in the regulating pathway of KLF6 to apoptosis.

Key words:
Kruppel-like factor 6; Kruppel-like transcription factors/metabolism; Activating transcription factor 4; Epithelial cells, lens; Cell line, crystalline; Humans; Apoptosis


This study focuses on the social value created by Turner Contemporary. The research and analysis was undertaken by the COaST research group at Canterbury Christ Church University on behalf of Turner Contemporary. The methods used are based upon SROI (Social Return on Investment) principles, and set out to measure social value created relative to the value of the resources invested.

Data was collected using a range of methods including interviews with key personnel and outside stakeholders, focus groups, workshops, observation, surveys and desk research.

The report analyses and calculates the social value created by Turner Contemporary during the gallery's April 2015–March 2016 financial year. The report is intended to be used in the gallery's strategic planning by helping the organisation understand where its activities achieve the most social value in relation to its investments, and to manage future return in its business planning. It will also be used as an advocacy document to report to stakeholders, and to support applications for sponsorship, resources and funding.


In this paper, we present space shift keying (SSK) as a new modulation scheme, which is based on spatial modulation (SM) concepts. Fading is exploited for multiple-input multiple-output(MIMO) channels to provide better performance over conventional amplitude/phase modulation (APM) techniques. In SSK, it is the antenna index used during transmission that relays information, rather than the transmitted symbols themselves. This absence of symbol information eliminates the transceiver elements necessary for APM transmission and detection (such as coherent detectors). As well, the simplicity involved in modulation reduces the detection complexity compared to that of SM, while achieving almost identical performance gains. Throughout the paper, we illustrate SSK's strength by studying its interaction with the fading channel. We obtain tight upper bounds on bit error probability, and discuss SSK's performance under some non-ideal channel conditions (estimation error and spatial correlation). Analytical and simulation results show performance gains over APM systems (3 dB at a bit error rate of 10-5), making SSK an interesting candidate for future wireless applications. We then extend SSK concepts to incorporate channel coding, where in particular, we consider a bit interleaved coded modulation (BICM) system using iterative decoding for both convolutional and turbo codes. Capacity results are derived, and improvements over APM are illustrated (up to 1 bits/s/Hz), with performance gains of up to 5 dB.


Non-standard coherent neutrino scattering off nuclei is extensively studied through realistic nuclear structure calculations performed within the framework of the quasi-particle random phase approximation (QRPA). More specifically, we focus on the accurate estimation of the number of events expected to be measured by the COHERENT experiment at the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge, as well as by the reactor neutrino experiments TEXONO and GEMMA. To this purpose our study concentrates on the relevant detector materials 20 Ne, 40 Ar, 76 Ge and 132 Xe. In this context, we obtain stringent constraints on the vector and tensor non-standard interaction parameters and examine their impact on various electromagnetic neutrino phenomena such as neutrino magnetic moments and neutrino milli-charges. Our results indicate that the aforementioned experiments offer significant prospects to probe neutrino properties predicted in theories beyond the Standard Model.


Dielectric behaviour of concentrated solutions of different mole fractions of N, N-dimethylformamide in various nonpolar solvents has been studied using precision LCR meter with four terminal liquid dielectric test fixture over a frequency range 20 Hz to 2 MHz at 303.15 K temperature. The dielectric parameters namely dielectric constant (ε′), dielectric loss (ε′′) and static dielectric constant (ε0) have been determined by capacitive measurement method. The limiting dielectric constant (ε∞) has been determined by Abbe's refractometer for the same solutions at 303.15 K temperature. Kirkwood correlation factor g has also been calculated using determined values of ε0 and ε∞,to gain information about the orientational behaviour of N, N-dimethylformamide in different non-polar solvent environments.


The American experience tells us that a fair and efficient stock market is vital for the exit of venture capital from their successful portfolio companies. Unfortunately, the current multi-tier stock market in China, including the Main Boards, the Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Board (SME Board) and the Growth Enterprise Markets (GEM), cannot offer smooth exit channels for Chinese domestic venture capital either because of their demanding listing rules or because of their problematic listing approval systems. Confronted with this unsatisfactory situation, legal reforms must be carried out as quickly as possible.


PurposeThis paper investigates whether sustainability performance (SP) protects financial performance (FP) for firms in both developed and emerging economies during the COVID-19-induced economic downturn.Design/methodology/approachUsing a recent sample of firms in 34 countries between 2003 and 2021, the authors employ ordinary least squares regressions, moderations and the Heckman two-step method to test the hypotheses.FindingsFirms with strong SP have higher FP in developed and emerging economies in the upcoming year. During the COVID-19 crisis in 2020–2021, the impact of sustainability on FP is pronounced in developed but not in emerging economies. Furthermore, cross-listings expose firms in emerging economies to high-standard institutional mechanisms in developed economies. Thus, sustainable firms in emerging economies cross-listed on European stock exchanges are more profitable.Practical implicationsFor regulators and standard setters, the global-level comparative analysis helps them find solutions that may assist firms in improving SP globally (e.g. mandatory reporting) and enduring crises resiliently. For institutional investors, the study reveals the relatively different impact of sustainability risk for firms in developed and emerging economies. For practitioners and private sector firms, this study contributes to the dialogue on what makes firms more resilient in COVID-19. Although COVID-19 might be temporary, the lessons learned could protect firms from future crises.Originality/valueThe authors contribute to the contingency perspective between sustainability and financial performance by providing recent empirical evidence in a global setting during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors demonstrate how different external institutional mechanisms (rule-based governance and relation-based governance) and cross-listing affect the SP-FP relationship during a crisis. The authors extend the knowledge in crisis management literature with a comparative study and fill the research gap on how SP affects FP for firms in emerging economies compared to developed economies.


Objectives: Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia has a mortality rate of 20-40% and is mainly caused by central venous catheter (CVC) infection. We aimed to investigate differences between patients with methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) and methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA) bacteremia due to CVC infection. Methods: This retrospective study, of data collected between August 2004 and March 2016 at a single Tokyo hospital, compared the clinical background characteristics, complications, and 60-day mortality rates with positive peripheral blood cultures and positive semiquantitative cultures. MRSA carrier is defined as those with a history of MRSA detection by skin, urine, or sputum culture. Results: The median ages for the 17 MRSA and 19 MSSA patients were 72 and 55 years, respectively (P < 0.01). The occurrences of baseline disease (MRSA vs. MSSA) were 59% vs. 16% (P = 0.01), respectively, while those of complications, including septic shock, were 48% vs. 16% (P = 0.07), respectively. Catheter placement duration, time from fever onset to CVC removal, and time from fever onset to antimicrobial therapy initiation were similar in both groups. Sixty-day mortality rates were 35% and 5.3% (P = 0.04) in the MRSA and MSSA groups, respectively. Conclusion: MRSA carriers and older patients were at higher risks of CVC infection than MSSA bacteremia patients. Patients with MRSA bacteremia had higher septic shock and 60-day mortality rates despite appropriate antimicrobial therapy.


Abstract Three new types of arthropod are described from Cambrian intertidal lithofacies of the Elk Mound Group and St. Lawrence Formation of Wisconsin and the Potsdam Group of Quebec. These arthropods are preserved ventrally in sandstone in life position and in three dimensions, allowing detailed characterization of limb morphologies, labrums, and other organs such as eyes. A taphonomic model is presented, illustrating this unusual, uncompressed, three-dimensional style of preservation. Arenosicaris inflata n. sp., from the Terreneuvian-Furongian Elk Mound Group and the Furongian St. Lawrence Formation, is the earliest unambiguous occurrence of a malacostracan phyllocarid. This 3 cm long arthropod had ovate valves, five pairs of biramous pleopods, and at least 3 pairs of thoracopods. Mosinieia macnaughtoni n. sp., a large (>10 cm long) euthycarcinoid of uncertain affinity with flattened or paddle-like appendages also occurs in Elk Mound strata. Mictomerus melochevillensis n. sp. represents a new euthycarcinoid family and is the first known non-trilobite arthropod from the middle Cambrian-Furongian Potsdam Group of Quebec. M. melochevillensis n. sp. is large (8–10+ cm long), with as many as eleven pairs of well-preserved homopodous, uniramous, non-paddle-like limbs. Both M. macnaughtoni and M. melochevillensis differ substantially from previously known euthycarcinoids in limb morphology and represent the oldest known representatives of the group. Additionally, both M. melochevillensis n. sp. and M. macnaughtoni n. sp. possess morphologies that are consistent with abundant subaerial and subaqueous Diplichnites and Protichnites trackways known from these units, suggesting that these may be the earliest land-going animals.


The merits of conventional vibrating wire sensor(VWS) used for roof pressure monitoring are introduced, based on photoelectric single coil VWS and ZigBee technique, this paper has designed a wireless sensor network node. In the mean time, this paper has designed the circuits of wireless communication module、the software design approaches of sweeping frequency and networking for wireless sensor network nodes. Compared to traditional vibrating wire sensor used in roof pressure monitoring system, which not only solves the electromagnetic interfere problem in the course of frequencies' excitation and picking up but also avoids the difficulty when setting up equipments and laying wires.


Tributyltin (TBT) is a pollutant, mainly introduced to the environment as a marine anti-fouling agent. The aim of this work was to assess and develop sustainable and cost-effective remediation technologies for TBT-contaminated dredged materials. For this purpose, analytical methods were developed for sediments and sediment leachates. For the sediments, a triple extraction followed by derivatisation and measurement by gas chromatography with pulsed flame photometric detection was employed, avoiding the lengthy concentration step of the organic layer. The TBT detection limit of ca 0.04 mg Sn/kg in sediment was below the suggested limit of 0.1 mg/kg for sea disposal of TBT-contaminated dredgings (OSPAR Commission). For the leachates, derivatisation and extraction into hexane was used. Also, a new procedure, with the potential for automation, was developed for the simultaneous analysis of multiple water samples, based on in situ extraction and derivatisation on C18 solid phase extraction cartridges. No legislative limits existed for TBT in leachates, therefore the detection limits of ca 6-10 ng Sn/L achieved were regarded satisfactory, as they were below or similar to the EQS for coastal and estuarine waters or freshwaters (2-20 ng/L TBT). A pilot investigation was carried out on a dockyard to evaluate the use of X-Ray fluorescence as a screening method for the presence of TBT in sediments. Due to tin contamination such a technique was not suitable for the site examined. Incineration was found to remove TBT but it would incur very high costs. Ultrasonic destruction was not effective enough, even on TBT-spiked water solutions. Carbon products, pure clays, organically modified clays, zero valent iron, fly ash and cements were screened for their abilities to prevent TBT leaching, using a leaching test. The best performer was a powdered activated carbon product which, even mixed with cement that increases the leaching of TBT, delivered a TBT-free (< 5 ng Sn/L) leaching test result 33 days after the mixing. The result showed that this technique could provide a solution for the immobilisation of TBT in contaminated dredgings by mixing this relatively low-cost, multi-purpose and inert additive, with or without cement according to the site specific requirements.


Purpose: Suicidal behaviour is a common in prisoners, yet little is known about the factors that may protect against thoughts of ending one's life. The main aim of the present study was to specify and test a structural model to examine the relationship between three criminal social identity dimensions (in-group affect, in-group ties, and Cognitive Centrality) and suicide ideation while controlling for period of confinement, age, and offense type (violent vs. non-violent). Design/methodology/approach: Participants were 415 male juvenile offenders incarcerated in prisons in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) Pakistan. A structural model was specified and tested using Mplus to examine the relationships between the three factors of criminal social identity and suicidal thoughts, while controlling for age, offender type, period of confinement, and substance dependence. Findings: The model provided an adequate fit for the data explaining 22% of variance in suicidal thoughts. In-group affect (the level of personal bonding with other criminals) exerted a strong protective effect against suicide ideation. Originality/value: T he research contributes important information on suicide ideation in Pakistan, an Islamic country in which suicide is considered a sin and subsequently a criminal offence. Results indicate that Juvenile offenders' sense of shared identity may help to prevent the development of thoughts of death by suicide. Consequently, separating and isolating young prisoners may be ill advised.