Abstract. The new species Zephyranthes pseudoconcolor Flagg, G. Lom. Sm. & García-Mend. is described from Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí, and Tamaulipas, and figures are included. This species has affinities with Z. concolor (Lindl.) S. Wats. (authorial attribution of that combination, formerly incorrectly attributed to Benth. & Hook. f., is corrected in this paper) but is distinguished by having a smaller, pale lemon-yellow flower (inside and outside) basally increasingly lime with a lime-green perianth tube, shorter stigmatic lobes, and pedicel length greater than perianth length. For most of its taxonomic history, Z. pseudoconcolor has been identified as Habranthus concolor Lindl. or Z. concolor, resulting in H. concolor being redescribed as H. immaculatus Traub & Clint (with white perianth limbs inside and out). The new species and Z. concolor have been treated as distinct species for 60 years but with misapplied specific nomenclature.


Abstract We examined the functions of mothers' speech to infants during two tasks – book-sharing and bead-stringing – in low-income, ethnically diverse families. Mexican, Dominican, and African American mothers and their infants were video-recorded sharing wordless books and toy beads in the home when infants were aged 1;2 and 2;0. Mothers' utterances were classified into seven categories (labels/descriptions, emotion/state language, attention directives, action directives, prohibitions, questions, and vocal elicitations) which were grouped into three broad language functions: referential language, regulatory language, and vocalization prompts. Mothers' ethnicity, years of education, years living in the United States, and infant sex and age related to mothers' language functions. Dominican and Mexican mothers were more likely to use regulatory language than were African American mothers, and African American mothers were more likely to use vocalization prompts than were Latina mothers. Vocalization prompts and referential language increased with mothers' education and Latina mothers' years living in the United States. Finally, mothers of boys used more regulatory language than did mothers of girls. Socio-cultural and developmental contexts shape the pragmatics of mothers' language to infants.


This paper presents the first analysis of operating system execution on a simultaneous multithreaded (SMT) processor. While SMT has been studied extensively over the past 6 years, previous research has focused entirely on user-mode execution. However, many of the applications most amenable to multithreading technologies spend a significant fraction of their time in kernel code. A full understanding of the behavior of such workloads therefore requires execution and measurement of the operating system, as well as the application itself.To carry out this study, we (1) modified the Digital Unix 4.0d operating system to run on an SMT CPU, and (2) integrated our SMT Alpha instruction set simulator into the SimOS simulator to provide an execution environment. For an OS-intensive workload, we ran the multithreaded Apache Web server on an 8-context SMT. We compared Apache's user- and kernel-mode behavior to a standard multiprogrammed SPECInt workload, and compared the SMT processor to an out-of-order superscalar running both workloads. Overall, our results demonstrate the microarchitectural impact of an OS-intensive workload on an SMT processor and provide insight into the OS demands of the Apache Web server. The synergy between the SMT processor and Web and OS software produced a greater throughput gain over superscalar execution than seen on any previously examined workloads, including commercial databases and explicitly parallel programs.


In this paper, we aim to select the most appropriate Hydrogen Energy Storage (HES) method for Turkey from among the alternatives of tank, metal hydride and chemical storage, which are determined based on expert opinions and literature review. Thus, we propose a Buckley extension based fuzzy Analytical Hierarchical Process (Fuzzy-AHP) and linear normalization based fuzzy Grey Relational Analysis (Fuzzy-GRA) combined Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methodology. This combined approach can be applied to a complex decision process, which often makes sense with subjective data or vague information; and used to solve to solve HES selection problem with different defuzzification methods. The proposed approach is unique both in the HES literature and the MCDM literature.


A motivational model of gambling participation is presented. The model comprises five motivational dimensions: the dream of hitting the jackpot and transforming one's life, social rewards, intellectual challenge, mood change induced by playing, and – the fundamental motive for all gambling – the chance of winning. The model is primarily applicable to leisure gambling in contemporary western societies, but also helps us understand problem gambling. The model integrates the wide variety of motives individuals have for gambling and makes it possible to understand the specific appeal of gambling relative to other leisure activities. Gambling taps into human biopsychology, easily evokes powerful psychological processes, and connects with profound cultural meanings.


We performed a wide-area (2000 deg2) g and I band experiment as part of a two month extension to the Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory. We discovered 36 extragalactic transients including iPTF17lf, a highly reddened local SN Ia, iPTF17bkj, a new member of the rare class of transitional Ibn/IIn supernovae, and iPTF17be, a candidate luminous blue variable outburst. We do not detect any luminous red novae and place an upper limit on their rate. We show that adding a slow-cadence I band component to upcoming surveys such as the Zwicky Transient Facility will improve the photometric selection of cool and dusty transients.


The tumor necrosis factor type 1 death receptor (TNFR1) contributes to apoptosis. TNFR1, a subgroup of the TNFR superfamily, contains a cytoplasmic death domain. We recently demonstrated that the TNFR1 cascade is required for amyloid beta protein (Abeta)-induced neuronal death. However, the function of TNFR1 in Abeta plaque pathology and amyloid precursor protein (APP) processing in Alzheimer's disease (AD) remains unclear. We report that the deletion of the TNFR1 gene in APP23 transgenic mice (APP23/TNFR1(-/-)) inhibits Abeta generation and diminishes Abeta plaque formation in the brain. Genetic deletion of TNFR1 leads to reduced beta-secretase 1 (BACE1) levels and activity. TNFR1 regulates BACE1 promoter activity via the nuclear factor-kappaB pathway, and the deletion of TNFR1 in APP23 transgenic mice prevents learning and memory deficits. These findings suggest that TNFR1 not only contributes to neurodegeneration but also that it is involved in APP processing and Abeta plaque formation. Thus, TNFR1 is a novel therapeutic target for AD.


OBJECTIVE
Inflammatory responses play major roles in the development of acute lung injury following lung cancer surgery. The authors tested the hypothesis that thoracic epidural anesthesia (TEA) during surgery could attenuate both systemic and local inflammatory cytokine productions in patients undergoing lung cancer surgery.

DESIGN
A prospective randomized controlled trial.

SETTING
At Keio University Hospital, Tokyo, Japan.

PARTICIPANTS
Patients scheduled for lung cancer surgery.

INTERVENTIONS
Sixty patients were randomly allocated into two groups (n = 30 each group): the epidural group (group E), in which anesthesia was maintained with propofol, fentanyl, rocuronium, and epidural anesthesia with 0.25% levobupivacaine; or the remifentanil group (group R), in which a remifentanil infusion was used as a potent analgesia instead of epidural anesthesia.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
The lung epithelial lining fluid (ELF) and blood sampling were collected prior to one-lung ventilation (OLV) initiation (T1) and at 30 minutes after the end of OLV (T2). The concentrations of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, interleukin (IL)-6, and IL-10 in the ELF at T2 were increased significantly compared with those at T1 in both groups. The ELF concentration of IL-6 in group E was significantly lower than that in group R at T2 (median [interquartile range]: 39.7 [13.8-80.2] versus 76.1 [44.9-138.2], p = 0.008). Plasma IL-6 concentrations at T2, which increased in comparison to that at T1, were not significantly different between the two groups. The plasma concentrations of TNF-α did not change in both groups.

CONCLUSIONS
This randomized clinical trial suggested that TEA could attenuate local inflammatory responses in the lungs during lung cancer surgery.


Purpose: Brain metastases of breast cancer appear to be increasing in incidence, confer significant morbidity, and threaten to compromise gains made in systemic chemotherapy. The blood–tumor barrier (BTB) is compromised in many brain metastases; however, the extent to which this influences chemotherapeutic delivery and efficacy is unknown. Herein, we answer this question by measuring BTB passive integrity, chemotherapeutic drug uptake, and anticancer efficacy in vivo in two breast cancer models that metastasize preferentially to brain. Experimental Design:Experimental brain metastasis drug uptake and BTB permeability were simultaneously measured using novel fluorescent and phosphorescent imaging techniques in immune-compromised mice. Drug-induced apoptosis and vascular characteristics were assessed using immunofluorescent microscopy. Results: Analysis of over 2,000 brain metastases from two models (human 231-BR-Her2 and murine 4T1-BR5) showed partial BTB permeability compromise in greater than 89% of lesions, varying in magnitude within and between metastases. Brain metastasis uptake of 14C-paclitaxel and 14C-doxorubicin was generally greater than normal brain but less than 15% of that of other tissues or peripheral metastases, and only reached cytotoxic concentrations in a small subset (∼10%) of the most permeable metastases. Neither drug significantly decreased the experimental brain metastatic ability of 231-BR-Her2 tumor cells. BTB permeability was associated with vascular remodeling and correlated with overexpression of the pericyte protein desmin. Conclusions: This work shows that the BTB remains a significant impediment to standard chemotherapeutic delivery and efficacy in experimental brain metastases of breast cancer. New brain permeable drugs will be needed. Evidence is presented for vascular remodeling in BTB permeability alterations. Clin Cancer Res; 16(23); 5664–78. ©2010 AACR.


Understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms leading to melanocyte loss in vitiligo is a mandatory step in improving the overall management of vitiligo patients. Until now, the study of vitiligo was characterised by a fragmented approach, and it is very hard to share and compare the data obtained by the different teams. The scenario mirrors the pathogenic puzzle, but it delays a true productive focus on the disease. The in vitro research is based on different models, ranging from monolayer cell culture of epidermal and dermal cells or 3D reconstructed skin to histological data, gene expression, computer simulation profile. For each model, several different (biochemical, phenotypic, immunological) aspects have been considered, increasing the mass of data difficult to be merged. Our purpose was to provide a practical synopsis of consolidated and advanced possibilities in the study of vitiligo, showing how data have been poorly shared until now. Following a short overview of the background of the disease, the approaches, ranging from basic cell biology to molecular and 'omics' studies, are summarised. New fluorescent probes and techniques open new possibilities for functional studies. Next, intracellular and superficial markers of the melanocytes, the main involved cells, are listed. Moving the focus from the epidermal level to the systemic and subcellular ones, this review aims to propose innovative multidisciplinary options for the vitiligo understanding. This paper focuses on the major practical and theoretical questions to be solved. It may be the basis for a more coordinated and productive approach to the biological question.


This report concerns some preliminary measurements on the movement of the lower jaw in speech. Such measurements may be interesting for several reasons. One of these is that they more easily than measurements on the movements of other articulators may give some insight into the effect of stress, duration and position on articulator movement. Another reason is that the study of jaw movement together with other aspects of articulation may provide information on articulatory coordination. The effect of stress, duration and position on the extent of jaw movement has been investigated by studying jaw movement in the speaking of nonsense words with the structure /ta:ta:ta:t/ and /tatatat/. These two phoneme sequences have been spoken as nonsense words with the stress on the first, second or third syllable. Each of the resulting 6 variations has been spoken 10 times by both authors. Furthermore, one aspect of articulatory coordination has been studied, viz. the temporal relation between the start of the jaw opening movement and the vowel onset in intervocalic consonants and consonant clusters by recording jaw movement in nonsense words of the structure /daC&/, where /C/ stands for one of the following consonants or consonant clusters: /d, t, s, st, str, nst, nstr/ . All forms were spoken 10 times each by both authors.


In synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging, the presence of moving targets in the scene causes phase errors in the SAR data and subsequently defocusing in the formed image. The defocusing caused by the moving targets exhibits space-variant characteristics, i.e., the defocusing arises only in the parts of the image containing the moving targets, whereas the stationary background is not defocused. Considering that the reflectivity field to be imaged usually admits sparse representation, we propose a sparsity-driven method for joint SAR imaging and removing the defocus caused by moving targets. The method is performed in a nonquadratic regular-ization based framework by solving an optimization problem, in which prior information about both the scene and phase errors are incorporated as constraints.


A Fo Ben is always on the lookout for suitable Carphology titbits and comments on what has been included. Email the editorin-chief if you come across anything. of datasets from fi ve previous genome wide association studies for Parkinson's disease (5333 cases and 12 019 controls). Of the 11 signifi cant loci (p<5×10−8), six had been previously identifi ed (MAPT, SNCA, HLADRB5, BST1, GAK and LRRK2), and fi ve were new (ACMSD, STK39, MCCC1/LAMP3, SYT11 and CCDC62/H1P1R). In combination, these genes had a population attributable risk of 60%. More work is now needed to characterise fully their potential roles in disease pathogenesis and progression.


We consider pump-probe spectroscopy of a single ion with a highly metastable (probe) clock transition that is monitored by using the quantum jump technique. For a weak clock laser, we obtain the well-known Autler-Townes splitting. For stronger powers of the clock laser, we demonstrate the transition to a new regime. The two regimes are distinguished by the transition of two complex eigenvalues to purely imaginary ones, which can be very different in magnitude. The transition is controlled by the power of the clock laser. For pump on resonance, we present simple analytical expressions for various linewidths and line positions.


BACKGROUND
Childhood absence epilepsy (CAE) is one of the most frequently recognized syndromes among the idiopathic generalized epilepsies (IGEs). CAE is considered to be a genetic disease, with a possible polygenic inheritance pattern. The genes responsible for CAE have not been identified yet. The object of this study was to investigate whether or not CAE is associated with the gene encoding the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) type-A receptor subunits alpha5 (GABRA5) and beta3 (GABRB3) in a Chinese population.

METHODS
Five microsatellite DNA repeats, 69CA, 85CA, 155CA1, 155CA2, and A55CA1, adjoining chromosome 15q11-q13, were used as genetic markers. Both case-control study and transmission/disequilibrium tests (TDTs), as well as fluorescence-based semi-automated genotyping techniques, were used in 90 CAE patient-mother-father trios and 100 normal controls of Han ethnicity to conduct association analysis.

RESULTS
The frequencies of allele 5 of 69CA, alleles 2 and 8 of 85CA, alleles 6 and 7 of 155CA1, allele 2 of 155CA2, and alleles 1 and 11 of A55CA1 were significantly higher in CAE patients than in normal controls. To prevent spurious associations arising from population admixture, we further conducted TDT tests in the 90 CAE trios. The results of TDT analysis further suggested that microsatellite DNA repeats 85CA, 155CA1, and 155CA2 were associated with CAE.

CONCLUSIONS
GABA type-A receptor subunit genes GABRA5 and GABRB3 may be either directly involved in the etiology of CAE in the Chinese population or in linkage disequilibrium with disease-predisposing sites.


After an era of generic support for economic development and innovation, narrowly targeted transformation policy is back on the table. Recent advances in the fields of new industrial policy and transition thinking converge on the idea that achieving structural change requires governments to take an active role in overcoming inertia. Rather than just leveraging R&D investments and setting framework conditions, policy makers are urged to participate in the development of socio-economic systems around particular technologies. Associated policy support typically involves a diverse portfolio of system-specific interventions. The emergence of transformative policy, in this paper characterized by being selective, process-oriented and multi-instrumental, poses severe challenges to rising standards of public accountability. Evaluation methods for calculating the 'bang for the buck' of R&D-leveraging measures are ill-suited when policy mixes are supposed to enact economic transformation. We argue that, in order to see if aptly chosen policy design is bringing about actual change, assessments should gauge policy contributions to building up technological innovation systems (TIS). The TIS-literature provides a concrete but untapped basis for tracking how policy efforts affect conditions favoring the creation and diffusion of new economic activities. This premise leads us to introduce a scheme for structuring analyses concerned with (the links between) the organization, orientation and aggregate impact of transformative policy. We test it in a tentative assessment of the Dutch 'Topsector approach'. Besides facilitating continuous policy learning, our assessment scheme also serves to strengthen policy maker's ability to legitimize the adoption of heterodox economic approaches.


Transformative Apps (TransApps) is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded program whose goal is to develop a range of militarily-relevant software applications ("apps") to enhance the operational-effectiveness of military personnel on (and off) the battlefield. TransApps is also developing a military apps marketplace to facilitate rapid development and dissemination of applications to address user needs by connecting engaged communities of endusers with development groups. The National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) role in the TransApps program is to design and implement evaluation procedures to assess the performance of: 1) the various software applications, 2) software-hardware interactions, and 3) the supporting online application marketplace. Specifically, NIST is responsible for evaluating 50+ tactically-relevant applications operating on numerous Android™-powered platforms. NIST efforts include functional regression testing and quantitative performance testing. This paper discusses the evaluation methodologies employed to assess the performance of three key program elements: 1) handheld-based applications and their integration with various hardware platforms, 2) client-based applications and 3) network technologies operating on both the handheld and client systems along with their integration into the application marketplace. Handheld-based applications are assessed using a combination of utility and usability-based checklists and quantitative performance tests. Client-based applications are assessed to replicate current overseas disconnected (i.e. no network connectivity between handhelds) operations and to assess connected operations envisioned for later use. Finally, networked applications are assessed on handhelds to establish baselines of performance for when connectivity will be common usage.


Ever since Descartes introduced planar coordinate systems, visual representations of data have become a widely accepted way of describing scientific phenomena. Modern advances in measurement and instrumentation have required increasingly sophisticated visual representations, to ensure that scientists can quickly and accurately interpret increasingly complex data. Most recently, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have emerged as a technology which is capable of collecting a vast amount of data over space and time. The sheer volume of the data makes it difficult to be interpreted by humans into meaningful insights. This presents a number of challenges for developers of visualisation techniques which seek to ``map'' the data sensed by a network. Visualisation techniques helps to turn large amounts of raw data into credible visual information such as graphs, charts, or maps, that can assist in understanding of the meaning of that data. In this paper we propose a map as a suitable data visualisation and extraction tool. We aim to develop an in-network distributed information extraction and visualisation service. Such a service would greatly simplify the production of higher-level information-rich representations suitable for informing other network services and the delivery of field information visualisation.


The escapist experience requires great
immersion and participation. Tourists participating in escapist experiences embark
from their daily life and voyage to a specific place and do activities worthy
of their time (Oh, Fiore, & Jeoung, 2007; Pine & Gilmore, 1999). This
study attempted to apply the ground theory to interpret escapist experiences
and use Mudanwan Villa in the south of Taiwan as an exemplary place for the
escapists to be away from their daily life. "Mudanwan Villa was used as a key word in the traditional Chinese Google to search for comments
left by the villa visitors or other online respondents. Secondary data were
then collected from 25 blogs, Pixnets, or discussion forums in travel advisor websites.
Content analysis was used, following the grounded data techniques to do the
coding and find the themes by an inductive reasoning. The findings provide
three propositions. First, temporary residents coming to Mudanwan Villa actively
pursue positive experiences such as relaxation and enjoyment. Second, the
destination is so unique and special that visitors are willing to pay the high
price and endure the long-range transportation difficulties in order to arrive
at the villa. Third, the emphasized values associated with the escapist
experiences in Mudanwan Villa are detachment, pleasure, wealth, and social
recognition (Struch, Schwartz, & van der Kloot, 2002). The detachment value
indicates that visitors in the villa can get away from the daily routine and
immerse into the destination (Oh, Fiore, & Jeoung, 2007). The pleasure
value implies that the escapists can enjoy the space, experience the environment
nearby, and actively use any facilities here in the villa. The wealth value
suggests that those people who come to the villa are able to afford the high
price. The value of social recognition means that escapist experiences in this
unique destination become a status symbol to share with others. This study
provides useful information for managers to design a unique experiencescape
particularly perhaps to attract independent tourists from Mainland China.


Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is an important cause of mortality and morbidity. Although measured in CO levels are not always correlated with clinical symptoms, neurological symptoms may present in lower CO levels, and cardiac signs and symptoms may occur in high CO levels. Low levels of CO exposure are very rare causes of myocardial injury. In this case presentation, we aimed to report on a patient who had a 20% level of CO and high troponin level without cardiac signs and symptoms. A 26-year-old male presented to the emergency department with headache, nausea, and vomiting. The initial electrocardiogram showed ST-segment depression of 1 mm in Lead II(II)-Lead III(III) Lead augmented vector foot (aVF) and ST-segment elevation in Lead I(I)Lead augmented vector left (aVL). The patient's laboratory values were as follows: troponin I: 1.5 ng/mL and FCOHb: 20.7%. The first echocardiogram of the patient demonstrated global hypokinesia of the left ventricle. The coronary angiogram of the patient was normal. All patients considered to have CO poisoning should be evaluated with electrocardiograms, cardiac necrosis marker measurements, and an echocardiogram for myocardial injury regardless of the level of CO or the absence of cardiac symptoms and signs. (JAEM 2015; 14: 91-3)


An analytic expression for the ionization amplitude of hydrogen by electron impact is found to contain a polynomial by an optimal truncation in an asymptotic series and a convergent series. The ionization amplitude, i.e., the transition matrix element on the energy shell, is decomposed into two parts: the structure-scattering factor and correlation factor, based on an approximation of the projectile plane wave in coplanar asymmetric geometries. The contribution of these factors to the triple differential cross section is evaluated using the method of optional truncation of asymptotic and convergent series.


OBJECTIVE
Tuberculin skin testing with purified protein derivative (PPD) is part of tuberculosis (TB) screening in patients receiving infliximab. We assessed whether infliximab, a strong inhibitor of inflammation, suppressed dermal induration, the outcome of this test. We also reassessed the booster phenomenon and the interobserver variability in tuberculin testing.

METHODS
Forty-seven patients with various diagnoses, who had had a PPD test before infliximab use, were retested after infliximab treatment. The test was also assessed cross-sectionally among 31 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) after 8.6 [+/- 4.1 standard deviation (SD)] months of infliximab use and in 82 patients with RA who had never used this agent. Booster phenomenon and the interobserver variability of reading the test were reassessed among 163 infliximab-naive patients with RA and Behcet's disease (BD) and 47 healthy controls.

RESULTS
Among the 47 patients who received infliximab, and for whom sequential data were available, the mean skin induration was 5.9 +/- 8.0 SD mm before and 6.1 +/- 7.5 mm after 4.8 +/- 3.7 months of treatment (p = 0.890). In the cross-sectional study the mean PPD induration was 7.8 +/- 8.4 mm among infliximab-naive patients with RA, while it was 6.6 +/- 2.1 mm in those receiving infliximab (p = 0.271). Booster phenomenon was observed in 14/49 (29%) of patients with RA, 7/31 (23%) of those with BD, and 1/10 of healthy controls. Interobserver variability of PPD reading was good (kappa = 0.92).

CONCLUSION
Infliximab use does not suppress the skin reaction to tuberculin. We confirm the booster phenomenon and that the PPD skin test has an acceptable interobserver reliability for an in vivo test.


SDI (Software Defined Infrastructure) provides virtualized infrastructures to customers by slicing computing resources and network resources. One of the important problems for deploying SDI framework is to control the assignment of physical resources to a virtual network against changes of traffic demand and service demand. For this problem, VNE (Virtual Network Embedding) problem that maps a virtual network to physical resources has been addressed, but a centralized calculation was assumed. It is difficult to adopt the centralized approaches as a size of infrastructure increases and a number of VN requests increases. This is because the identification of current situation becomes more complicated. In this paper, we present a VNE method that works with a little information for the large, complicated, and uncertain SDI frameworks. To achieve this, the proposed method applies biological "Yuragi" principle. Yuragi, which is a Japanese word, represents a small perturbation to the system. Yuragi is a mechanism of adaptability of organisms and is often expressed as attractor selection model. This paper develops Yuragi-based VNE method that deals with node attribute and has a generality of a performance objective and runs in multi-slice environments. Simulation results show that the Yuragi-based method decreases VN migrations by about 45% than a heuristic method to adapt the fluctuations in resource requirements.


This paper is divided into three parts. The first part reviews the major regulatory procedures and goals of the federal milk marketing order program. It further develops the economic rationale on how the regulations achieve those goals and reviews the major benefits usually ascribed to milk orders. The second part of the paper contains a discussion of the major economic impacts of milk orders while the third part contains some conclusions and policy implications.


Pulmonary adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) is a rare type of non-small cell lung carcinoma that may develop life-threatening severe malignant airway obstruction (SMAO). Currently, limited therapeutic approaches exist for ACC-SMAO. We investigated the efficacy and safety of para-toluenesulfonamide (PTS) intratumoral injection for ACC-SMAO. In this phase III, multicenter, non-randomized, single-arm, open-label trial, we recruited eight hospitalized patients with ACC-SMAO between October 2009 and January 2011. Within the first year, patients received PTS injection for 2-3 sessions weekly, with 2 weeks as a single course. Pre- and post-treatment assessments, including vital sign assessment, dyspnea index, chest computed tomography (CT), were performed shortly before PTS injection and at day 30 post-treatment. We extended the observation to 5 years to determine overall survival. The primary endpoint was the CT-assessed airway objective response rate (ORR) at day 30. The key secondary endpoint was the overall survival (OS) at 5 years post-treatment. At baseline, mean airway tumor cross-sectional area was 153.3 mm2 (n=8), and the mean airway obstruction rate was 86.1%. The airway ORR reached 100% (33.3% complete remission and 66.7% partial remission). PTS treatment reduced the airway tumor size from 158.2 to 22.7 mm2 and the average airway obstruction rate decreased from 83.1% to 14.4% (n=6). The 5-year overall survival rate was 50.0%. Median survival duration was 4.98 years (range, 1.39-5.00 years). Four patients (50.0%) had stable disease. Compared with baseline dyspnea index, the transitional dyspnea index increased significantly at 30 days after treatment (mean difference: 5.40; 95% CI, 0.31-10.49; P<0.05). Adverse events were reported in 75% of patients (n=6), of whom 33.3% (n=2) and 66.7% (n=4) were rated as mild and moderate, respectively. No SAE was reported. In conclusion, PTS could rapidly debulk ACC-SMAO, resulting in considerable improvement of five-year survival rate.


A rapid fire launcher has been designed, built, and tested in single-shot mode for the Cannon Caliber Electromagnetic Gun (CCEMG) System. The 2.25-m long railgun has a rectangular cross-section (30 mm round bore equivalent) and has a series, two-turn augmented rail configuration. The gun is designed for rapid fire operation; three, five round salvos of 185 g integrated launch packages (ILPs) accelerated to 1,850 m/s with a minimum time between salvos of 2.5 s. Launch packages will be autoloaded at a repetition rate of 5 Hz via a hydraulic mechanism capable of up to 3,000 lb insertion forces. The railgun support structure and flexible buswork permit the railgun to recoil approximately 2 cm to mitigate the electromagnetic repulsion loads. Multiple 830 kA pulses provided from the CCEMG compulsator power supply require the gun to be liquid cooled for thermal management. Diagnostics for the single-shot tests include B-dots, flux rulers, voltage, and current measuring sensors. Other launcher diagnostics include rail conductor temperatures, coolant temperatures, and railgun preload mechanism (flatjacks) dynamic pressures. This paper presents the test results and general gun performance observations for single-shot, compulsator powered experiments.


: Fusion of Medical images derives useful information from medical images containing the data which has important clinical significance for doctors during their analysis. The idea behind the concept of image fusion is to improve the image content by fusing two images like MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) & CT (Computerised Tomography) images to provide useful &precise information for doctor for their clinical treatment. In this paper Discrete Wavelet Transforms (DWT) method has been used to fuse two medical images to decompose the functional & anatomical images. The fused image contains both functional information and more spatial characteristics with no color distortion. In the proposed work different fusion experiments are performed on Medical images by using seven wavelet transform methods - Bior, coif, db, dmey, haar, rbio and sym. Further explores the comparison between all fused image using the measuring parameters Entropy & standard deviation. Experimental results show the best fusion performance is given by theSymlets (sym) wavelet transforms.


The Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act of 2004 eliminated tobacco quotas and tobacco price supports and allowed producers to plant any amount or type of tobacco regardless of geographic location. The authors found that flue-cured tobacco producers made greater adjustments to their operations after the buyout than did burley tobacco producers. Flue-cured tobacco producers were more likely to increase tobacco acres per farm, pushing up the tobacco acreage per farm at a faster rate compared with burley tobacco producers. Flue-cured producers also were more likely to invest in their tobacco enterprises and invested more per farm after 2004. As a result of increased acreage, tobacco operations became more sensitive to changes in labor costs. With over 75 percent of tobacco farms using hired or contract labor in 2008, the availability and cost of workers have become increasingly important to tobacco producers. This report is based on data collected from the tobacco version of the 2008 Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS), which focused on U.S. producers of burley and flue-cure tobacco in 2008 and how their tobacco operations have changed since 2000 and 2004.


A special keynote paper, delivered at the invitation of the Embassy of Sweden in London, to a specially invited audience of international scholars and diplomats in association with the launch of the Fusing with Europe? monograph. In the paper, Lee Miles argued that Sweden was, to all intents of purposes, fusing with the European Union and acting as a 'selective supranationalist', regardless of the high level of federo-scepticism present inside the country


The study evaluated the management of the Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) in Zimbabwe. The study was prompted by the often perceived closing shop of these enterprises, disturbing entrepreneurship in the country and in Masvingo Urban in particular. From global perspectives on the role and contribution of the MSEs in leading the countries to meet some of their objectives of unemployment reduction, poverty reduction and economic growth and development, the MSEs are regarded as the veritable vehicles. Many countries of the world today rely on a vibrant MSEs sector. The manufacturing MSEs sector is viewed as the fulcrum for the general development of the economy.The study was a qualitative rooted in the interpretivist paradigm and was conducted in Zimbabwean manufacturing MSEs in Masvingo Urban in particular. A case study design was employed to allow for naturalistic methods of data generation. A sample of 10 managers and 10 owners of the manufacturing MSEs were selected to participate in the study. A multi-stage maximum variation sampling technique was used to cater for the various products that are manufactured by the MSEs in Masvingo Urban. These were purposively sampled to select information rich informants to be included in the research. The participants were either responding to open ended questionnaire or semi-structured interviews.The major findings of the research were that the managers and owners of the manufacturing MSEs in Masvingo Urban lacked management practices that are critical for success and survival of the enterprise in the contemporary and turbulent business environment. The management practices that lacked were capital management, marketing, accounting, purchasing, networking and training and education in business management. Another important outcome of the study was that the MSEs lacked awareness about principled business management. The major issues related to awareness about principled business management were the four fundamental business management principles of planning, organising, leading and control (POLC). It also emerged that the managers and owners of the manufacturing MSEs were affected by the business environmental factors in the category of regulations and policy issues, competition, social, political and technological. Related to these factors were lack of adequate infrastructure, access to justice, discrimination and lack of power to protect intellectual property rights as issues of concern to the performance and management of the MSEs.The study recommends that attempts be made by the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development to make sure that the owners and managers of the manufacturing MSEs access training and education in the area of business management. In fact the ability of these firms to become renowned entrepreneurs relies upon the relevant education and Vocational Education systems to provide and equip the entrepreneurs. Manufacturing MSEs must form alliances to safe guard against discrimination access to justice and protection of intellectual property rights. These alliances assist in making the voice of the MSEs heard in the various quotas of the manufacturing industry.


Orthophotos have been used extensively in many applications today. In an attempt to map the earth's surface in a shortest possible time and provide information for monitoring and planning, Orthophotos have proved reliable as far as these are concerned. Orthophotos are one of the most important base layers of data for GIS systems. The use of Orthophotos in a GIS often implies seamless image data. The major advantage of Orthophotos is their ability to be produced in a short time to provide up-to-date information for urgent planning. They are also produced at a less expensive production price than line or vector maps. The need therefore for quick and reliable data for many rising applications has led to the development in this technology and hence finding ways to make it better in terms of its appearance (radiometric enhancements) and geometric accuracy.This paper looks at the creation of an Orthophoto and enumerates the factors that ensure the geometric accuracy of the Orthophoto. Users of Orthophotos must understand that to make measurements on an Orthophoto, oneneeds to know the quality of the underlying surface description since this affects the geometric accuracy of the Orthophoto. In this paperthe geometric accuracy  with which an orthophoto is produced is analysed.Accuracies during theorientation of the input image and scanning resolution of the scanned image and accuracy at DTMsstage are considered in this paper. Keywords: Orthophoto, geometric accuracy, orientation and DTM.


Dynamic, actin-based protrusions function in cell-cell signaling in a variety of systems. In the dorsal thorax of the developing fly, basal protrusions enable non-neighboring epithelial cells to touch, extending the range over which Notch-mediated lateral inhibition can occur during bristle patterning. Given that actin-based cell protrusions can exert mechanical forces on their environment and Notch receptor activation is mechanically sensitive, how might cytoskeletal contractility contribute to Notch signaling? We identify a pool of basal non-muscle myosin II (myosin II) that regulates protrusion dynamics, promotes Notch signaling, and is required in signal sending and receiving cells for Notch-dependent patterning. We show that interactions between protrusions are extensive and subject to actomyosin contractility. The effects of reducing myosin II activity are more pronounced for protrusion-mediated signaling than for signaling at lateral cell contacts. Together, these results reveal a role for actomyosin contractility in Notch activation, signaling, and patterning in a developmental context.


Background : Recent studies have demonstrated that chronic kidney disease (CKD) is associated with dysbiotic gut microbiota. Therefore, the gut microbiota may be used as a biomarker and therapeutic agent to improve the health of CKD patients. Objective : To study the probiotic selectivity of isomalto-oligosaccharide (IMO) produced from tapioca starch and its application in a novel nutritional formula developed for hemodialysis patients. Methods : IMO was produced from tapioca starch in a pilot-scale reactor. The selectivity of IMO for probiotic strains was studied. Among six probiotic strains tested, two probiotic strains were selected for the development of a nutritionally-complete formula for CKD patients.The sensory attributes, probiotic survival and decapsulation, and the microbiological quality of the formula were evaluated. Results: IMO showed prebiotic properties by promoting the growth of pure cultures of the probiotics tested. The IMO powder and the commercial probiotics, Lactobacillus paracasei and Bifidobacterium animalis were used as ingredients to develop a nutritional formula for CKD patient with an energy distribution from protein:carbohydrate:fat of 18.43:35.29:43.27 and a total energy per 80 g serving of 400 kcal. It was found that 89.47%  of the encapsulated probiotics in the formula survived gastrointestinal tract conditions and 96.90%  of the probiotics were released after exposure to phosphate-buffered saline (pH 7.2) for 6 h. The sensory evaluation of the nutritional product showed no significant difference (p > 0.05) in its viscosity, taste, sweetness, saltiness and overall characteristics compared to a commercial product (Nepro ® ).The product also met relevant standards for the microbial quality of food products containing probiotics. Conclusion : The nutritionally complete formula developed, fortified with a synbiotic combination of IMO and probiotics successfully met the requirements of the WHO and the Thai FDA regulation. This novel formula for CKD patients is the first reported with fortification by probiotics and an IMO prebiotic. Keywords : chronic kidney disease, isomalto-oligosaccharide, hemodialysis patient, nutritional formula, probiotic


In the first part of this dissertation, the combination of ATLAS top quark measurements to constrain dimension-six operator coefficients is presented. Top quark measurements provide a powerful tool to constrain the electroweak interaction of top quarks. Many models of physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) predict deviations of top quark interactions from the Standard Model. The Standard Model Effective Theory (SMEFT) provides a framework to parameterize BSM effects in a model independent way. Combining top quark measurements allows to constrain several Wilson coefficients of the dimension-six SMEFT operators at once. Specifically, the combination of the 8 TeV t-channel single top cross section, the W helicity fractions and the single top decay distributions is studied. This allows to constrain a set of five Wilson coefficients, four of which generate modifications to the Wtb interaction vertex and one four-quark interaction. Systematic uncertainties are correlated between the measurements and these correlations are calculated and included in the combination. Limits are set simultaneously on all Wilson coefficients as well as individually. All limits are in accordance with Standard Model predictions.

In the second part, the new ATLAS 3D event display VP1-Light is presented. VP1-Light is a lightweight, standalone version of the general purpose 3D event display VP1. VP1 is tightly integrated into the ATLAS experiment's software framework, making the use of VP1 rather restrictive. With VP1-Light these restrictions have been eliminated giving ATLAS physics analysis users an easy to use event display.


Background: Stroke is a neurological disease that causes sudden loss of brain functions. One of the most important symptoms is hemiparesis, which due to the weakness of the trunk promotes a decrease in diaphragmatic power and impairs pulmonary function. In addition to the respiratory system, stroke can lead to impairment of the cardiovascular system. This occurs when the Autonomic Nervous System is affected, increasing the risk of the development of Heart Rate Variability due to sympathetic hyperactivity, this condition may predict an unfavorable prognosis after stroke. Case presentation: The aim of this study was to evaluate the variability of heart rate and respiratory muscle strength in a 61-year-old female patient diagnosed with a stroke three months prior to the study submitted to Neurofeedback training. That's the first report of this kind in the literature. Cardiopulmonary evaluation was performed with a focus on heart rate and respiratory muscle strength before and after an intervention with five brain training sessions using the Neurofeedback BrainLink LITE. Conclusion: After therapy, significant alterations in the Delta wave increase and reduction of the Alpha wave were observed, also changes in the Autonomic Nervous System parameters were observed, with reduction of the sympathetic activity and increase of the parasympathetic activity, along with that, a reduction in the stress index was observed. The intervention was still positive in the improvement of respiratory parameters, with an increase in the overall inspiratory muscle strength index (S-Index) and peak inspiratory flow (PIF). It is suggested that Neurofeedback is efficient in recovering functions related to Autonomic Nervous System and respiratory system.


Abstract The HDV ribozyme is an RNA enzyme from the human pathogenic hepatitis delta virus (HDV) that has recently also been identified in the human genome. It folds into a compact, nested double-pseudoknot. We examined here the functional relevance of the capping loop L4 and the helical crossover J1/2, which tightly interlace the two helical stacks of the ribozyme. Peripheral structural elements such as these are present in cis-acting, but not trans-acting ribozymes, which may explain the order-of-magnitude decrease in cleavage activity observed in trans-acting ribozymes with promise in gene therapy applications. Comparison of a systematic set of cis- and trans-acting HDV ribozymes shows that the absence of either L4 or J1/2 significantly and independently impacts catalytic activity. Using terbium(III) footprinting and affinity studies, as well as distance measurements based on time-resolved fluorescence resonance energy transfer, we find that J1/2 is most important for conferring structural properties similar to those of the cis-acting ribozyme. Our results are consistent with a model in which removal of either a helical crossover or surprisingly a capping loop induces greater dynamics and expansion of the catalytic core at long range, impacting local and global folding, as well as catalytic function.


A demonstration house was previously built and commissioned in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada. The purpose of the overall effort is to evaluate the performance of a high-performance building located in the Canadian Arctic, while considering the unique social, economic and logistical challenges associated with its remote location. Previous work consisted of monitoring and reporting on the energy consumption due to heating between April 2016 and April 2017. The purpose of this ongoing research is to contribute experimental data regarding the functionality of ventilation systems in cold climates. This paper outlines the development, implementation and monitoring of a carbon dioxide-based demand-controlled heat recovery ventilation system that took place between April 2017 and April 2019. The system was equipped with two electric preheaters to ensure that frost build-up did not occur in the heat recovery ventilator (HRV) and adequate fresh air ventilation could be maintained. An electric heater was included after the HRV to control the supply air temperature. Monitoring of the ventilation system's performance took place between December 2018 and February 2019. During this period the electricity consumption of the HRV, preheaters, and supply air heater were measured for the fresh air required for two "theoretical" occupants. Flow rate and important temperatures in the ventilation system were also monitored to assess the system's performance. A comparison of the sensible recovery efficiency (SRE) of the HRV and overall system is presented. Experiments displayed that on average the SRE of the system and HRV was 35% and 72%, respectively. The total energy consumption of the ventilation system was 390 kWh over the two months, which translates to 6.30 kWh/day, an energy use intensity of 0.27 kWh/m/day and 4.49 Wh per L/s of fresh air.


Through the research of the scientific production of nursing on the permanent education of the patient in dialysis aiming at the best available evidence for the care with this type of patient, had been searched 10 texts for analysis being that, the 6 texts in Portuguese 3 they had dealt with on the education in health and 3 had treated on the dialysis. And of the 4 texts in English, 1 treated on education in health and 3, on dialysis. The used methodology was the bibliographical-manual in the databases DeCS of Bireme and Lilacs. In accordance with the cited notes, some lapsings of nursing that express the learning necessity on the treatment and the selfcare one in dialysis are the comment of the anxiety level and the process of thought; the recognition of certain answers and feelings, as frustations and sadnesses are common in the patient who initiates the dialysis process; to make the patient to understand the meaning to keep nutritional alimentary habits; e to emphasize the patient to read all the labels of foods and drinks and not to take medications in the medical lapsing. The conclusion is that we must always try an assistance of directed nursing to cure doubts, anxiety, making with that the patient so, participates in the search of the quality of the therapy proposal and in the quality of life, for the maintenance of its balance.


Abstract:What are the politics of accounting for and sharing LGBTQ history in the United States with broader publics? The US National Park Service released LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History in 2016, designed to serve as a foundation for identifying, evaluating, and preserving LGBTQ history and historic sites across the country. In a roundtable conversation in 2018, six authors of the theme study from various fields and training backgrounds reflect on the production, meaning, and future of these thirty-two chapters and the drastically different national political landscape from the one in which the study was written.


This article investigates the internal governance institutions of violent criminal enterprise by examining the law, economics, and organization of pirates. To effectively organize their banditry, pirates required mechanisms to prevent internal predation, minimize crew conflict, and maximize piratical profit. Pirates devised two institutions for this purpose. First, I analyze the system of piratical checks and balances crews used to constrain captain predation. Second, I examine how pirates used democratic constitutions to minimize conflict and create piratical law and order. Pirate governance created sufficient order and cooperation to make pirates one of the most sophisticated and successful criminal organizations in history.


IN thinking about the nature of the mind and its evolutionary history, cephalopods — especially octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid — have a special importance. These animals are an independent experiment in the evolution of large and complex nervous systems — in the biological machinery of the mind. They evolved this machinery on a historical lineage distant from our own. Where their minds differ from ours, they show us another way of being a sentient organism. Where we are similar, this is due to the convergence of distinct evolutionary paths. I introduced the topic just now as 'the mind.' This is a contentious term to use. What is it to have a mind? One option is that we are looking for something close to what humans have — something like reflective and conscious thought. This sets a high bar for having a mind. Another possible view is that whenever organisms adapt to their circumstances in real time by adjusting their behaviour, taking in information and acting in response to it, there is some degree of mentality or intelligence there. To say this sets a low bar. It is best not to set bars in either place. Roughly speaking, we are dealing with a matter of degree, though 'degree' is not quite the right term either. The evolution of a mind is the acquisition of a tool-kit for the control of behaviour. The tool-kit includes some kind of perception, though different animals have very different ways of taking in information from the world. It includes some form of memory and learning, means by which past experiences can be brought to bear on the present. In some cases it includes problem-solving and planning. Some tool-kits are more elaborate and expensive than others, but they can be sophisticated in different ways, with different tools present and more investment in one technology than another. One animal might have better ways of tracking the environment through its senses, while another may have simpler senses but more sophisticated learning. Different tool kits go with different ways of making a living. The ordinary term 'mind' is awkwardly or misleadingly applied to an animal with a very simple behavioural repertoire, but it is parochial to apply it only to humans.


: The apomorphine test is a well known indicator of therapeutic responsiveness to dopaminergic substances and a reliable instrument for the differential diagnosis of idiopathic Parkinson's disease. The relationship between apomorphine dosage and the following parameters, namely age, duration of disease, body height, body surface, skinfold thickness of the abdominal wall and the upper arm as a measure of subcutaneous fatty tissue, and amount of administered L-dopa was studied in 45 patients with Parkinson's disease in whom the apomorphine test was positive. In addition we investigated whether different doses of apomorphine resulted in significant differences of the parameters studied. The determined parameters correlated with the given dose of apomorphine (p < 0.05) and thus, represent a potential indicator for optimal L-dopa dose determination and intermittent or continuous apomorphine administration.


With this editorial, the editor provides (a) commentary on advancing trauma and resilience research; (b) an acknowledgment of the outstanding contributions of past editors, current associate editors, and editorial board members; and (c) a vision for continued growth, rigor, and advancement of Traumatology Journal. This issue continues the rich tradition of the Traumatology Journal and is a collection of eight articles that contribute to the discourse of advancing trauma and resilience research in the face of adversity.


In most parts of the world, the wind power generation, along with other renewable technologies, offers the sustainable, non-polluting and secure option for generating electricity over the long term. The increasing share of wind energy conversion systems (WECS), such as doubly fed induction generators (DFIGs), in electricity power generation would result in a reduction of conventional generator power plants. The variable speed wind turbine (VS-WT) units equipped with DFIGs contribute negligible inertial response to frequency variations. This paper compares different control schemes to provide frequency support in variable speed WECS equipped with DFIG during the system frequency changes. Addition of a supplementary control loop connects the turbine inertia directly to the grid and power can be exchanged with the grid during the frequency variations. Simulation results on a 9 MW wind turbine system equipped with DFIGs illustrate the contributions to frequency support with the proposed control strategies. Comparison of different control strategies have been carried out, when the system is subjected to the grid frequency excursion and load variation. Amongst the three control schemes considered in the present study, it has been found that inertial response of the proportional controller is the best. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique is used to tune the controller parameter for minimizing the frequency deviation and maximizing the release of energy. It has been found that inertial response of the system with the PSO optimised proportional controller gives improved results.


We present the design and the performances of a vertical Josephson interferometer, which can be inserted within superconducting loops in order to obtain controllable Josephson devices. The most interesting feature of the vertical interferometer is that the Josephson current is precisely controlled by a small transversal magnetic field parallel to the superconducting loop plane and can be modulated from a maximum to zero with high precision. This system can be used to realize a switchable flux transformer to couple quantum bits when desired as well as to vary the critical current of a flux qubit in situ. In the latter application, the vertical interferometer is controlled by a magnetic field orthogonal to the one applied to tilt the qubit potential, thus minimizing the cross talking of the two magnetic fields.


A long period grating (LPG) coated with polyvinyl alcohol has been developed and evaluated through exposure to a range of relative humidity (RH) levels (from 33%RH to 97%RH). The conditions for the creation of the sensor probes are described and the response of the device in terms of changes in the resonance loss of several of the spectral loss bands has been monitored. In order to make comparative measurements, a noncoated LPG was exposed to various known refractive index (RI) conditions and the grating response was monitored, analyzed and the results evaluated. This is then related to the change in RH when the sensor is exposed to various RH levels, as the coating RI changes, leading to the change in resonance loss. The PVA coated LPG sensor is showing a relatively fast response time of ~ 80 s to reach 97%RH from 33%RH and inducing ~ 2 dB change in transmission of resonance loss band.


Objective: To determine the effect of maternal iron deficiency anemia on APGAR score of neonates at one minute.Patients and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted at Aziz Bhatti Shaheed Teaching Hospital Gujrat from January 2017 to November 2017. In total 380 patients (50% anemic and 50% non-anemic mothers) were included in study. Grouping into anemic and non-anemic groups was done, based on their hemoglobin level, MCV, MCH and ferritin levels. APGAR score at 1 minute was noted in neonates born to both groups. Data was analyzed using SPSS 20.0. Chi square test was applied to evaluate the difference of APGAR score.Results: Mean age in anemic was 27+4.6 years and in non-anemic 26+5.1 years. The mean hemoglobin among anemic was 8.9+2.1 g/dl and among non-anemic 12.3+1.2 g/dL. Mean MCV in non-anemic 85.7+3.8 fl, while among anemic was 62.4+4.1 fl Mean ferritin levels among anemic were 7.4+1.1 ng/ml. Neonates delivered by anemic mothers had mean APGAR score of 6.5+0.2 and those delivered to non-anemic had 8.7+0.5. The APGAR score of neonates delivered by anemic and non-anemic showed a significant difference (p-value 0.00). The relative risk of having low APGAR score of infant in anemic compared to non-anemic mothers was 29.00 (95% CI, 13.1798-63.8098) with p<0.0001.Conclusion: Maternal anemia is significantly associated with poor APGAR score in neonates.


The aim of this study was to evaluate the Class Pass Intervention (CPI) as a secondary intervention for typically developing students with escape-motivated disruptive classroom behavior. The CPI consists of providing students with passes that they can use to appropriately request a break from an academic task to engage in a preferred activity for preset amount of time. In addition, students are incentivized to not use the class passes by continuing to engage in the academic task and instead exchanging them for a preferred item or activity. Using an experimental single-case withdrawal design with replication through a concurrent multiple-baseline across-participants design, the CPI was shown to reduce disruptive behavior and increase academic engagement in three students who engaged in hypothesized escape-motivated behavior. Results also revealed that the effects of the CPI were maintained at a two-week follow-up probe and consumers found it to be acceptable. The limitations and implications of the findings for future research on effective classroom-based interventions are discussed.


Computer and mobile device screens are increasing in size and resolution. This increase in resolution causes problems with graphical user interfaces designed for lower resolution screens, as all information gets smaller and smaller. We present two novel techniques to make graphical user interfaces on high-resolutions screens more accessible and usable. We introduce a new in-place, localized zooming technique that works on a per widget basis. We also present a novel widget magnification technique that implements special modalities for common user interface elements, which affords widget-dependent magnification.


Aims The Intercollegiate Advisory Committee for Sedation in Dentistry (IACSD) published national standards for the provision of safe conscious sedation (CS) in dentistry in 2015. The purpose of developing this course was to improve patient safety, in the provision of paediatric CS training in our dental department, with particular attention to human factors training in medical emergencies. The departmentacts as a tertiary referral centre including the treatment of paediatric patients with complex medical needs. Methods The PD-SASNAcourse includes in-situ skills workshops and high-fidelity simulation scenarios with debrief of technical (including safeguarding) and non-technical skills. The course was designed by a paediatric dentist, paediatric registrar and anaesthetic registrar to meet the needs both of the staff and patients. Delegates comprised a multi-disciplinary group of 21 Dentist and Dental Nurses. Course performance was evaluated using 5 point semantic confidence and satisfaction scales. Opinions were collected via open-ended responses. Results Participants rated their satisfaction of course content and delivery as 'extremely satisfied'. Comments included 'very realistic' and 'enjoyed the opportunity to deal with emergency scenarios as a team in the clinical setting'. A number of latent errors were identified during the day such as the closest available telephone located in a room to which none of the team knew the code. Staff also identified opportunities for quality improvement projects such as bringing the emergency drug box in line with current guidelines and having laminated protocols located in each room to improve functioning under stress during medical emergencies. Conclusion In situ training using high-fidelity simulation and debrief alongside focused skills stations improves confidence in provision of safe CS and management of paediatric medical emergencies in dentistry. This course demonstrates the benefits of paediatricians collaborating with other healthcare professionals for the safety of our patients. Our remit to improve the quality of care offered to our paediatric patients extends beyond our immediate working environment and paediatricians have insight and knowledge to offer when such courses are being developed.


In this paper, we report on the development and implementation of a web-based mobile application, Grammar Clinic, for an ESL writing class. Drawing on insights from the interactionist approach to Second Language Acquisition (SLA), the Noticing Hypothesis, and mobile-assisted language learning (MALL), Grammar Clinic was designed as a series of outside-class grammar exercises in the format of sentence-level error identification and correction. 19 intermediate level ESL students at a large Midwestern American university used this mobile application in an English academic writing class during a 16-week semester. A mixed methods approach was chosen to investigate (a) the effect of Grammar Clinic on the efficacy of ESL students' self-editing as well as (b) their perceptions of this mobile application as a tool to improve their English writing. Our analyses show that students' performance on Grammar Clinic assignments reflects their progress in selfediting. This progress is seen in the positive correlation of the students' Grammar Clinic performance with their gains on a grammar post-test, an increase of self-editing corrections, and a reduction in errors in the final drafts of two major paper assignments. The impact of this web-based mobile application was documented using qualitative data that considered the students' use of and perception of Grammar Clinic.


In an information design research project at Malardalen University in Sweden intuitive map design for nautical navigation has been tested. In a laboratory experiment traditional electronic chart plotters in exocentric bird's eye view were compared with a 3-D map displayed in an egocentric "surface perspective". The 3-D maps clearly resulted in shorter decision times and less errors moving through a maze.


The lack of urban-specific climate data is, today, one of the major limits for an accurate estimation of the building energy performance in the urban context. The urban climate is substantially modified by the "heat island" effect that determines an increase of the air temperature compared to the surrounding rural areas. By contrast, the weather data used to run the energy simulations normally refer to rural or suburban weather stations, causing relevant errors in the energy assessment, especially in hot climates.This study aims at evaluating the accuracy of the "Urban Weather Generator" (UWG), a model developed for generating urban weather files from rural weather data in order to improve the accuracy of the building energy simulations in the urban context.To this purpose, the model predictions have been compared to actual observations in different urban sites in Rome and Barcelona. The comparisons have been conducted for one year of observations for each site, focusing the analysis on summer and winter months. The model accuracy has been assessed through statistical analysis of the average error.Results show that the UWG model is able to capture the general trend of the urban temperature. The accuracy of the prediction increases for urban sites located in a rather homogeneous urban fabric in terms of building density and vegetation coverage. In these situations, the model allows a good prediction of the urban air temperatures with low computational requirement and it can be a useful tool to improve the accuracy of urban energy analysis.


The relations between perinatal outcomes and physician specialty were examined in a retrospective study. Data pertaining to demographics, labor and delivery events, and maternal and neonatal outcomes were examined for 125 family medicine and 125 obstetric patients. Bivariate analyses showed no differences between the groups for demographics. Significant differences were found for two of 13 labor and delivery events: episiotomy and degree of lacerations. However, when multivariate analyses were conducted to control for possibie confounding effects, differences between the groups for episiotomy or degree of lacerations were no longer significant. The only significant difference between the groups on perinatal outcomes was that family medicine newborns had a significantly higher mean birth weight (3364.9 grams) than obstetric newborns (3147.1 grams). Stepwise multiple regression analysis showed that smoking and specialty account for approximately 10 percent of the variance in birth weight. Overall, the results suggest that, regardless of physician specialty, obstetric and family medicine patients had similar outcomes.


Taking its cue from the US Supreme Court judgment in Kiobel that restricted the extraterritorial reach of the Alien Tort Claims Act, this article explores how sovereignty structures the relationship between global resource exploitation and the localization of human rights in the international order of states. The argument situates international human rights law in an area of tension between national political self-determination and the global economic exploitation of natural resources. Global business operations in resource-rich developing countries undermine the protective role of sovereignty in relation to political self-determination that once justified the confinement of human rights to the territorial state legal order. At the same time, jurisdiction as an expression of sovereignty restricts access to justice for victims of extraterritorial human rights violations in Western home states of 'multi-national' corporations. I contend that this asymmetry should be resolved through a territorial extension of international human rights law that accounts for the human rights impacts of global resource exploitation. This entails that transnational tort litigation for corporate human rights violations should be appraised in the light of states' human rights obligations to ensure effective civil remedies for victims located outside their borders. Moreover, it suggests that victims' quest for justice through private litigation is not merely about the satisfaction of pecuniary damages but also represents a public and political attempt to reclaim their human rights in the judicial fora of Western states.


Today, Novgorod is a small provincial town in northwestern Russia. However, in medieval times Novgord was a major city that served as a contact point between Rus' and Scandinavia, and later between Rus' and the Hanseatic League, the organization of German merchants that became an important trading partner for Rus'. From the perspective of Old Rusian language and literature, Novgorod is important because most of the birch bark letters have been found here. In section 2.3.7, you learned that these letters are a unique source of information about daily life in the Middle Ages. While birch bark letters can be fun to read, they display a number of dialect features that make them hard to penetrate. This chapter prepares you for the reading of birch bark letters by providing a survey of important dialect features. We explore orthography (section 14.1), phonology (sections 14.2–14.4), morphology (sections 14.5–14.6), and syntax (section 14.7). In section 14.8, we briefly discuss the role of the Old Novgorod dialect in the formation of the Russian language. This chapter is mainly based on Zaliznjak's monograph Drevnenovgorodskij dialekt (2004), which contains much more information than could be included in this short chapter. Click on the links below to learn more! 14.2 Birch bark letter 247 and the second palatalization


Uterine smooth muscle tumors are usually spindle cell lesions, but a minority is composed of epithelioid cells. Foci of clear cells can be found in these latter tumors. Recently, it has been shown that some of these tumors can be positive for HMB45, and some authors have advocated calling these lesions perivascular epithelioid cell (PEC) tumors or PEComas. The case we describe here clearly shows that the so called PEC is just a smooth muscle cell capable of changing its immunophenotype. The patient involved is a 29-year-old black woman who was found to have an epithelioid leiomyosarcoma of the uterus in November 1995. She was treated with a simple hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. A metastatic lesion was found in her liver. She, therefore, also received chemotherapy and was free of disease until October 2002, when a recurrent tumor was detected in her spine. After undergoing resection of the lesion at 2 different times, in 2002 and 2003, the patient was treated with radiotherapy and is currently receiving chemotherapy. On microscopic examination, the tumor in the uterus and liver both proved to be an epithelioid leiomyosarcomas that was diffusely positive for smooth muscle actin. Approximately 15% of the cells had clear cytoplasm, but sections from 2 different blocks were completely negative for HMB45. However, although the tumors resected from the spine in 2002 and 2003 showed features similar to those of the uterine neoplasm, but with a lower percentage of cells positive for smooth muscle actin and more clear cells, several of the clear cells were positive for HMB45. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case of a uterine smooth muscle cell tumor that became positive for HMB45 when it metastasized.


As a digital system becomes more important in recent years, software specification and analysis techniques become a central problem in the safety-critical systems. Therefore, the importance of software verification and validation (V&V) based on an adequate specification is more emphasized in view of the software quality. For a thorough V&V, it should be performed throughout whole software life cycle. However, these kinds of works are very difficult to perform systematically because of manual-oriented tasks. This paper introduces various CASE tools to support the system specification for a formal based analysis according to the software life cycle. These tools are integrated through interface functions between each tool. Consequently, an integrated environment of S/W specification and V&V is proposed for safety-critical systems. Integrated environment consists of SIS-RT for concept phase, NuSRS for requirement phase, NuSDS for design phase, and NuSCM for configuration management. After further development efforts, our integrated environment is believed to turn out to be a unique and promising software development and analysis tool to support throughout whole life cycle.


The authors present the case for allowing independent updates on replicated databases. In autonomous, heterogeneous, or large scale systems, using two-phase commit for updates may be infeasible. Instead, the authors propose that a site may perform updates independently. Sites that are available can receive these updates immediately. But sites that are unavailable, or otherwise do not participate in the update transaction receive these updates later through propagation, rather than preventing the execution of the update transaction until sufficient sites can participate. Two or more sites come to agreement using a reconciliation procedure that uses reception vectors to determine how much of the history log should be transferred from one site to another. They also consider what events can initiate a reconciliation procedure.<<ETX>>


ABSTRACT The potential of Bacillus thuringiensis Cry proteins to control the grape pest Lobesia botrana was explored by testing first-instar larvae with Cry proteins belonging to the Cry1, Cry2, and Cry9 groups selected for their documented activities against Lepidoptera. Cry9Ca, a toxin from B. thuringiensis, was the protein most toxic to L. botrana larvae, followed in decreasing order by Cry2Ab, Cry1Ab, Cry2Aa, and Cry1Ia7, with 50% lethal concentration values of 0.09, 0.1, 1.4, 3.2, and 8.5 μg/ml of diet, respectively. In contrast, Cry1Fa and Cry1JA were not active at the assayed concentration (100 μg/ml). In vitro binding and competition experiments showed that none of the toxins tested (Cry1Ia, Cry2Aa, Cry2Ab, and Cry9C) shared binding sites with Cry1Ab. We conclude that either Cry1Ia or Cry9C could be used in combination with Cry1Ab to control this pest, either as the active components of B. thuringiensis sprays or expressed together in transgenic plants.


Behavioural economics offers a critique of modern neoclassical economics by providing empirical evidence that the model of rational choice does not accurately describe human decision‐making processes. The existence of cognitive biases, what we might term 'agent failure', becomes reason to doubt the efficacy of unhampered markets, and is seen by some as a sufficient condition for government intervention. This article offers a critique of this argument from an Austrian and public choice theory comparative institutions perspective. Agent failure arguments are analogous to market failure arguments of the mid‐twentieth century and the same kinds of responses made against the latter are applied to the former. Behavioural economics arguments for intervention ignore the cognitive biases of political actors, neglect the comparative perspective that results from such biases, and do not examine the ways in which markets are superior to politics in providing the information and incentives actors need to become aware of their errors and correct them. The existence of imperfectly rational agents, like the existence of imperfect markets, is therefore not a sufficient condition for government intervention into the market.


Making the most use of abundant information in electronic health records (EHR) is rapidly becoming an important topic in the medical domain. Recent work presented a promising framework that embeds entire features in raw EHR data regardless of its form and medical code standards. The framework, however, only focuses on encoding EHR with minimal preprocessing and fails to consider how to learn efficient EHR representation in terms of computation and memory usage. In this paper, we search for a versatile encoder not only reducing the large data into a manageable size but also well preserving the core information of patients to perform diverse clinical tasks. We found that hierarchically structured Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) often outperforms the state-of-the-art model on diverse tasks such as reconstruction, prediction, and generation, even with fewer parameters and less training time. Moreover, it turns out that making use of the inherent hierarchy of EHR data can boost the performance of any kind of backbone models and clinical tasks performed. Through extensive experiments, we present concrete evidence to generalize our research findings into real-world practice. We give a clear guideline on building the encoder based on the research findings captured while exploring numerous settings.


Increasingly, the application of models in urban hydrology has undergone a shift toward integrated structures that recognise the interconnected nature of the urban landscape and both the natural and engineered water cycles. Improvements in computational processing during the past few decades have enabled the application of multiple, connected model structures that link previously disparate systems together, incorporating feedbacks and connections. Many applications of integrated models look to assess the impacts of environmental change on physical dynamics and quality of landscapes. Whilst these integrated structures provide a more robust representation of natural dynamics, they often place considerable data requirements on the user, whereby data is required at contrasting spatial and temporal scales which can often transcend multiple disciplines. Concomitantly, our ability to observe complex, natural phenomena at contrasting scales has improved considerably with the advent of increasingly novel monitoring technologies. This has provided a pathway for reducing model uncertainty and improving our confidence in modelled outputs by implementing suitable monitoring regimes. This commentary assesses how component models of an exemplar integrated model have advanced over the past few decades, with a critical focus on the role of monitoring technologies that have enabled better identification of the key physical process. This reduces the uncertainty of processes at contrasting spatial and temporal scales, through a better characterisation of feedbacks which then enhances the utility of integrated model applications.


Arguments for and against gun control are polarized at two opposite ends of a broad spectrum: personal liberties and social benefits. Brazil has introduced a referendum regarding the prohibition of firearm commerce and propaganda arguments, similar to the present ongoing discussion in the U.S. It has invoked socially and personally driven issues in the promotion of voting in favor of and against firearm control, respectively. Here, we used electroencephalography (EEG) technology to study the brain activity associated with a voter's perception one week prior to Election Day, of the truthfulness of these arguments and their influence on voting decisions. The present results clearly showed that this decision was not influenced by arguments that were introduced by propaganda, which were typically driven by specific social and self-interest motives. In addition, different neural circuits were identified in the analysis of arguments for and against gun control.


Building heat, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems are good candidates for demand response (DR) programs as they can flexibly alter their consumption to provide ancillary services to the grid and contribute to frequency and voltage regulation. One of the major ancillary services is the load following demand response (DR) program where the demand side tries to track a DR load profile required by the grid. This paper presents a real-time Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework for optimal operations of a micro-scale concentrated solar power (MicroCSP) system integrated into an office building HVAC system providing ancillary services to the grid. To decrease the energy cost of the building, the designed MPC exploits, along with the flexibility of the building's HVAC system, the dispatching capabilities of the MicroCSP with thermal energy storage (TES) in order to control the power flow in the building and respond to the DR incentives sent by the grid. The results show the effect of incentives in the building participation to the load following DR program in the presence of a MicroCSP system and to what extent this participation is affected by seasonal weather variations and dynamic pricing.


An AMPK family kinase could be targeted to increase insulin secretion in prediabetic states. To cope with the mild hyperglycemia that occurs in prediabetic states, pancreatic β cells compensate by increasing insulin secretion, a process that requires calcium influx into β cells through L-type voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs). Sakamaki et al. (see also Belgardt and Stoffel) found that salt-inducible kinase 2 (SIK2) was required not only for this compensatory response but also for normal insulin secretion. Mice with a β cell–specific, inducible knockout of Sik2 (SABKO mice) had higher blood glucose concentrations, decreased glucose clearance, and lower plasma insulin concentrations after feeding. Islets from SABKO mice had the same insulin content as those from control mice but secreted less insulin after glucose stimulation, suggesting a defect in insulin secretion. SIK2 phosphorylated Ser91 in p35. p35 stimulates the activity of CDK5, a kinase that attenuates insulin secretion by phosphorylating (at Ser783) and inhibiting the L-type VGCC, thereby reducing calcium influx. In a heterologous expression system, overexpression of SIK2 led to the proteasomal degradation of p35 in a manner that required the phosphorylation of Ser91 by SIK2 and the ubiquitin E3 ligase PJA2. Coimmunoprecipitation experiments revealed complexes of SIK2 and p35 and of p35 and PJA2 in MIN6 cells (a pancreatic β cell line). Manipulations that increased the abundance of p35, such as knockdown of SIK2 or PJA2, increased phosphorylation of Ser783 in the L-type VGCC and decreased calcium influx in MIN6 cells. Silencing p35 in islets from wild-type mice increased calcium influx and restored calcium influx in islets from SABKO mice. Insulin secretion was increased after glucose stimulation to amounts similar to those released from wild-type islets in islets from SABKO mice by silencing p35 or inhibiting CDKs. SIK2 abundance was increased in islets from mice fed a high-fat diet or from ob/ob mice, which are a genetic model of obesity. Impaired glucose clearance in response to a high-fat diet was more pronounced in SABKO mice than in control mice. Islets from ob/ob mice secrete more insulin, a phenotype that was attenuated by SIK2 knockdown. SIK2 was subjected to proteasomal degradation in MIN6 cells cultured under low-glucose conditions and was stabilized under high-glucose conditions. Thus, SIK2 promotes insulin secretion by preventing the inhibition of calcium channels, and strategies that enhance SIK2 activity could be used to stimulate insulin secretion in prediabetic states. J.-I. Sakamaki, A. Fu, C. Reeks, S. Baird, C. Depatie, M. Al Azzabi, N. Bardeesy, A.-C. Gingras, S.-P. Yee, R. A. Screaton, Role of the SIK2–p35–PJA2 complex in pancreatic β-cell functional compensation. Nat. Cell Biol. 16, 234–244 (2014). [PubMed] B.-F. Belgardt, M. Stoffel, SIK2 regulates insulin secretion. Nat. Cell Biol. 16, 210-212 (2014). [PubMed]


The determination of benign or malignant nature of a neoplasm is an onerous responsibility of histopathologists. Recent advances in submicroscopy, remarkable as they are, have not spared them this momentous judgment. Histopathologists are expected to be able to predict the future biologic behavior of a neoplasm on the basis of its microscopic appearance. It is too much to always expect of them, but forced as they are to make critical decisions, the following are the essential criteria they timorously employ. A benign neoplasm typically has parenchymal cells with nuclear and cytoplasmic characteristics that are much like those of normal cells of similar histogenesis. The neoplastic cells are uniform in configuration and orderly in arrangement. There are but few mitotic figures, and they are normal in appearance. Growth of neoplastic cells is entirely expansive, without destruction of adjacent tissue or invasion of vessels. 1-3 In contrast, the malignant neoplasm generally has


Purpose
In competitive labor markets, promoting employees' learning becomes a key challenge for companies. However, in small German craft companies, employee development is always connected with worries about employee turnover. This study aims to investigate the current informal learning strategies of craft workers and how they use the strategies, the effect of learning on employees' internal and external marketability and beneficial workplace characteristics (autonomy, feedback).

Design/methodology/approach
An online prestudy (N = 131) explored current informal learning strategies. In the main study (N = 526), cluster analysis was applied to identify patterns of informal learning strategies. The relations of these patterns to workplace characteristics and marketability were investigated.

Findings
Four informal learning strategies were found (informal learning from oneself, from others, from other sources and from new media). Craft workers used combinations of the strategies (i.e. patterns): three learning patterns (balanced high, person-oriented and balanced low) differed in intensity and combination with the learning strategy use. More intense learning patterns were positively related to internal marketability but were not related to external marketability. Higher autonomy and feedback availability were related to higher learning engagement.

Research limitations/implications
Studies should have a broader view of informal learning strategies concerning different learning patterns. The use of new media is a learning strategy that might increase in the future.

Practical implications
Craft companies could promote different informal learning strategies without worries about employee turnover.

Originality/value
The study reveals how German small- and medium-sized enterprise employees use informal learning strategies in digitalized times and how human resources development can use informal learning strategies.


During neocortical development, many neuronally differentiating cells (neurons and intermediate progenitor cells) are generated at the apical/ventricular surface by the division of neural progenitor cells (apical radial glial cells, aRGs). Neurogenic cell delamination, in which these neuronally differentiating cells retract their apical processes and depart from the apical surface, is the first step of their migration. Since the microenvironment established by the apical endfeet is crucial for maintaining neuroepithelial (NE)/aRGs, proper timing of the detachment of the apical endfeet is critical for the quantitative control of neurogenesis in cerebral development. During delamination, the microtubule–actin–AJ (adherens junction) configuration at the apical endfeet shows dynamic changes, concurrent with the constriction of the AJ ring at the apical endfeet and downregulation of cadherin expression. This process is mediated by transcriptional suppression of AJ-related molecules and multiple cascades to regulate cell adhesion and cytoskeletal architecture in a posttranscriptional manner. Recent advances have added molecules to the latter category: the interphase centrosome protein AKNA affects microtubule dynamics to destabilize the microtubule–actin–AJ complex, and the microtubule-associated protein Lzts1 inhibits microtubule assembly and activates actomyosin systems at the apical endfeet of differentiating cells. Moreover, Lzts1 induces the oblique division of aRGs, and loss of Lzts1 reduces the generation of outer radial glia (oRGs, also called basal radial glia, bRGs), another type of neural progenitor cell in the subventricular zone. These findings suggest that neurogenic cell delamination, and in some cases oRG generation, could be caused by a spectrum of interlinked mechanisms.


A diverse workforce is essential for developing the nation's technological innovation, economic vitality, and global competitiveness. Yet, the under-representation of women, Latinos and African Americans has persisted in the field. In this study, we focus on African American male undergraduates majoring in information technology (IT). Despite the bleak numbers of African American males in IT there are still those who persist and graduate from a university and enter the workforce. To gain insights into those who do persist, we used a digital inequality framework to inform a qualitative study of undergraduates at two Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). We conducted interviews with 20 African American males to uncover factors that contribute to their choice to pursue an IT major. The findings reveal that the five constructs from this framework (technical apparatus, digital skill, social support, autonomy of use, and purpose of use) in addition to two new constructs (work ethic and IT career exposure) help to explain how and why African American males choose IT majors. The study contributes to the limited literature on African American men's academic success, and helps to clarify some of the mixed and contradictory findings about their career choices that exist in the current literature.


The ICRC visits prisoners all over the world, whether they are prisoners of war in camps or political detainees held in prisons or police stations. In 1990, ICRC delegates visited more than 84,000 prisoners in about 40 countries. These visits are made by teams of delegates, the number of whom varies depending on the number of prisoners to be seen. Each team is made up of Swiss delegates specially trained to carry out such visits, including at least one doctor.


................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................... iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................... iv TABLE OF FIGURES .............................................................................................. vii TABLE OF TABLES ................................................................................................. ix


Timber buildings can now stand very tall using new products. As timber materials are expected to be easily ignitable, the fire hazard of timber is a concern. Charring of the timber surface would maintain structural stability, but would also be accompanied by smoke. Although treating timber products with fire retardants would delay the ignition time under low radiative heat flux, toxic combustion products and unburnt fuel would be emitted immediately upon burning. More smoke and higher toxic gas concentrations such as carbon monoxide would be given off upon burning some fire retardants under high flashover heat fluxes. Due to the fast upward movement of smoke under stack effect, spreading of toxic smoke in tall timber buildings would lead to a hazardous environment. Engineered timber consists of derivative timber products. New engineered timber products are manufactured with advanced technology and design, including cross-laminated-timber (CLT), laminated veneer lumber (LVL) and glue-laminated timber (Glulam). The fire behaviour of timber products has been studied for several decades. However, the smoke hazards of using new timber products in building construction should be monitored. The objective of this study is to inspire stakeholders in fire safety of timber buildings, inter alia smoke hazards, to use new timber products to build tall buildings.


Recent experience suggests that many reengineering efforts fail, and that they fail for reasons unrelated to the technical ability of organizations to implement information systems. Our research suggests that the two principal reasons for failure are functionality risk and political risk, respectively, the organization's inability to understand its uncertain future strategic needs, and its inability to make painful and difficult changes in response to these future strategic needs. Recent research in the organizational change literature suggests that these risks are the result of conflict among the organization's current strategy, its espoused degree of change, the actually accepted and generally smaller degree of change, and the generally larger degree of change that would be in some sense optimal. Moreover, the conflicts among these may be unperceived or undiscussable within the organization, exacerbating the risks. We summarize in a few testable hypotheses our experience with managing the risks of reengineering, and use a small set of representative case studies to examine these hypotheses informally.<<ETX>>


This study examines the effects of the exchange rate and income on Turkish tourism trade balance (TB) using quarterly data for the period 1998–2011. The authors use tourism trade-weighted exchange rate indices and foreign income derived from country-based tourism trade. They employ Johansen's maximum likelihood technique to estimate the long-run effects of the exchange rate and income on tourism, and employ an error correction model to analyse the short-run effects. The empirical results suggest that income is the most significant variable in explaining tourism TB in the long run. The exchange rate and foreign income positively affect the TB, while domestic income negatively influences it. In the short-run, however, domestic income is the only significant factor. The authors also find no evidence of a J-curve effect in the Turkish tourism TB. These findings are robust to using nominal values.


Young children with complex communication needs are often severely restricted in their ability to communicate and develop language skills. A major barrier preventing these children from accessing communication is a lack of appropriate means to communicate. The present study investigated the implementation of nonelectronic visual scene displays (VSDs) as an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) tool, in combination with aided modeling with preschool children with complex communication needs. A single case, multiple probe design across participants was used to evaluate an intervention combining low-tech VSDs and aided modeling to increase the number of communication turns and unique semantic concepts expressed by preschool children. All children demonstrated notable increases in the number of communication turns and unique semantic concepts expressed. The findings of this study indicate preliminary positive results for a novel, low-cost AAC intervention that could be useful for preschool children to increase their participation in social communication contexts.